Can you imagine a place where the
majority of people cannot read or write?
A place where there is no work? A village where 6 years ago Jesus was
not known? And yet this place has a beautiful culture, rich landscape, and a
people group that is more aware of the spiritual realm than most North Americans.
It is with great joy (and a bit of anxiety) that we share with you our next
journey. This coming fall we will be moving to Zambia, Africa.
After much prayer and consideration we
will be partnering with an organization called Love’s Door for All Nations.
This is something we have both prayed about since before we were even engaged,
and we are excited to follow after a passion, desire, and calling that the Lord
has placed on our lives.
Love’s Door for All Nations is located
in Livingstone, Zambia (think Victoria Falls). Part of our time will be spent
in town and the other portion of our time will be spent about an hour away in
Singanga village located right along the Zambezi River.
In moving forward with this process our
next step is to attend training in October. The training is called CPx and it
is located in Kansas City. CPx is a church planting training where we will be
equipped to plant basic churches and share the gospel.
Our roles at Love’s Door for All
Nations are not yet set. The team on the ground in Zambia would like us to
come, spend some time getting to know the culture, pray, and figure out where
we would best fit in and where the Holy Spirit is leading us to work. The
village where a majority of our work will be done was an unreached people group
approximately 5 years ago before the founders of Love’s Door settled there, so
a lot of our time will be spent discipling local Zambians.
Allison was in Zambia 2 years ago and
assisted in the launching of a tutoring program for the students that were
sponsored to go to school. This program takes place on Saturday mornings as a
way for Love’s Door to create accountability for the students that are being
sponsored to go to school. Academics, life skills, and Bible stories are an
important part of these mornings. While Allison was there it was her dream for
this program to function on other days of the week after school, in smaller
group settings, and with children who have disabilities and may not have the
opportunity to go to school. We would love to get involved in that program again
when we arrive this fall.
Love’s Door is also working on different
programs to create industry in the village. Benjamin is interested in small businesses
and will likely be involved in that process. This may be through developing
local agriculture or through setting up small production. We will spend a
number of weeks investigating how best to approach this challenge.
We are excited to share this decision
with you and are looking forward to having you join us in walking this journey.
We will have a blog that we plan on updating as we are able. You can find
updates at attemasinzambia.blogspot.com
For more info…
