Update on our Groups

Here is a brief update on how our groups are going: 

-Tobacco Farm: we are officially a church! Praise God! This past week we had a meeting where we discussed what a church is. Everyone agreed that what we are doing is church and we want to recognize it as such. Both of us our super excited about this progress!

-Lizzy & Mama Ruth: this past week we took communion together! We were nervous going into it because Mama Ruth is heavily influenced by the New Apostolic church and we didn't know if she would be okay with taking communion in her home. We spent a lot of time in scripture seeing what the first church did, and we took communion together with nshima, meat, and water. The Lord is working in mighty ways here. This week we hope to talk about recognizing ourselves as a church, which would be a huge step!

-Sugar Village: We discussed baptism again this past week. Beatrice, who is very sick, wants to be baptized. Hopefully this week she will be feeling better and she can be baptized. 

Mama Ruth checking our words with scripture from a Lozi Bible

The Lord's Supper

Last week we met with Angelina and her sister Jenny at Tobacco Farm. This time we focused on the Lord's Supper because we had heard from Angelina that she had stopped taking it due to feeling unworthy from past mistakes and some strongly held denominational views on communion. We started off by sharing the story of the first Lord's supper from 1 Corinthians 11. Then we talked about what it meant. Both Jenny and Angelina had many questions about things like, children taking communion, what types of food could be used, why some people use intinction, and where communion could be taken. It was neat to see the Holy Spirit work as we could see a lightbulb go on in Angelina and her views dramatically change. 

At one point, Jenny responded to a question saying "we are the church! The Bible says that my body is a temple and when we come together to meet we are the church. So we are not limited to taking communion in church building." It was awesome to see her get it! We looked at Acts 2 where the early church constantly ate together and broke bread (celebrated the Lord's Supper) in their own homes. When we had finished discussing, we asked if they would want to join us in taking communion right there in her house with whatever food she had. Jenny and Angelina's faces lit up and we were all very excited. We took the Lord's supper with nshima (typical Zambian dish) and water. It was one of the best communions we have ever experienced. This is the first time we've taken communion in any of our groups and we are really excited to experience more of it. 

Our House!

Here are some pictures of our new house!

The kitchen

The living room

The bedroom

The bathroom

The shower

The hallway leading from the kitchen/living room to the bedroom (the bathroom is on the left)

The backside of the house

The front door

Our view of the Zambezi River from the patio

We're Back!

So we are back in Zambia! After about 40 hours of travel, including flying around in circles for an hour waiting for a storm to move past the Livingstone runway, we made it safely to Zambia. Another hour taxi ride through the beaten up road from rainy season and we made it to a river that had grown over the road. It has rained so much since we left! At this point the taxi had to make us walk with our four suitcases, one carry-on, and a backpack because the taxi couldn't make it through the stream. We removed our shoes and ferried our suitcases across the river with the help of two boys who we had never met before. Dan and Regina picked us up with a vehicle on the other side shortly after and we finished our journey to our home in Singanga village.

We have a new house now! Instead of living above the team kitchen in a loft, we now have our own house. Wahoo! We will post pictures later with a description of the house. But it is so nice to have our own place to call home and be able to use a flush toilet :)

Things have seemed to change rapidly here. It is amazing how you can experience some culture shock after being gone less than two weeks. Things have progressed on the base, new kids faces have appeared, and surprisingly, the world doesn't stop when we go away!

Monday evening we had a wonderful surprise. Angelina, who works at Tobacco Farm, stopped by. We meet with her and some women every week as one of our church planting groups. She knocked off work (clocked out) and then walked 45 minutes in her work clothes to come and visit us because she learned that we were back. We talked until it was almost dark and then we sent her home with our flashlight. It was so good to spend time with her and know that we have friends here!

Flying to Zambia

We are going back to Zambia today! We are ready for some warm weather and the chance to see everyone again. Please pray for us as we transition back into a different culture and team life.