Christmas in Zambia

Christmas has come and gone here in Zambia. It was a lot different than Christmas in Michigan but it was still wonderful.

On Thursday, we met with the ladies from Sugar village again. This time it went very well. Elizabeth, Beatrice, and Christopher were the three Zambians who all showed up, but this time we also had eight kids join us. We told the story of Jesus' birth and then we decided to act it out with the kids and everybody loved it! The mood was much lighter than it has been in the past few weeks and we are hoping that we were able to break through a little bit.

On Friday, we met with the women at Tobacco Farm and with Lizzy in Singanga village. Both of these meetings went well. Lizzy ended up retelling the story in Lozi four times to the children! She then asked us if she could keep our drawing so that she could tell it to others.

We had a tutoring party on Saturday, which consisted of dressing up the students to do a nativity story reenactment as well as making paper chains and glitter star ornaments. In the afternoon we had a Christmas party with the children's home. During the evening we showed the nativity story movie and then we shared the God story through candles. It went very well and we had a huge turnout of roughly 70 people from the villages!

After our Christmas morning service on Sunday, we went over to a Faith's house for a Christmas party. Faith is also with Love's Door and it was so wonderful to just enjoy the food and the fellowship without planning anything! And finally, we finished our celebrations with a Love's Door get together on Monday night. We had a nice dinner and then we did a small gift exchange.

The parties have been great but we are ready to get back to normal life. We are excited for all of the things that will happen in 2017!

Lizzy telling the story of Jesus' birth

Some of the tutoring students dressed up as nativity animals

Candlelight service

Last Week

This past week went well! We are both almost recovered from colds that we had. Allison is in the midst of trying to get rid of ring worm, which has not been fun.

But the highlight of our week was meeting with a group of ladies at Tobacco Farm (the name was changed to Fruit Farm last year but the new name hasn't caught on with the locals yet). This was our second time meeting with a few of the ladies who live at Tobacco Farm. We met a woman named Angelina when she came to our church at Love's Door a few weeks ago and from there she has connected us and invited us in.

Angelina is a true person of peace. She is hungry for the gospel and is a gatherer of people. Her younger sister Jenny, and coworkers Frieda and Sandra met with us last Friday. They had some really great questions about whether God forgives unknown sins and what to do when you feel like no one is hearing your prayers.

We are so excited to continue our relationship with these women. They are soaking up Jesus stories and hopefully will soon be passing them on to others. Angelina has also blessed us with bananas from the Tobacco Farm and she said that she will butcher up two of her own pigeons for us free of charge. We are excited to try the new meat!

The women in Sugar Village have been much more difficult. There is a lot of influence from the New Apostolic Church, which has been discouraging people from fully accepting us. There are strong denominational pulls in Zambia that sometimes takes the place of really being a Jesus follower.

The New Apostolic Church, among other beliefs, believe that the current "apostles" who run the denomination have more authority than scripture. They also believe that they can grant salvation and that witchcraft and Christianity can coincide. We are still learning more and more what these local congregations believe but we are realizing that it is a big barrier.

So please pray for us as we continue to try to share the true Jesus!

Surprise!

There is a lodge a couple of miles away called Siankaba. It is a beautiful place on the Zambezi River. A night for two at this lodge costs roughly $1000! Earlier this year, some people here at Love's Door became friends with some of the Siankaba staff through volleyball. There is a volleyball court near Siankaba that their staff uses frequently. Just about every week we walk over and play for an hour or two against their staff.

This past week, Siankaba invited us to have a braai (the Zambia way of say of referring to cookout or grilling) with them. We found out this week that the manager extended the invitation to include staying a night at the lodge! So on Wednesday evening, a group of us from Love's Door headed to Siankaba. We played volleyball for a couple of hours and then we were shown the beautiful lodge. It is gorgeous! You can check it out online if you wish: www.siankaba.net

They fed us supper and stayed up late into the night chatting with us. We had breakfast there the next morning and then headed out around 10:00. It was a lovely getaway to just relax and recharge. We also found that the staff of Siankaba really enjoyed having others to share in the joys and struggles of working in the villages. They have a number of projects currently going such as building wells and building a school as a way of giving back to the community. It will be interesting to see if we can partner in the future or at least how this friendship will grow. But for now we are so grateful for the wonderful surprise respite that we received!

Supplies

Every Tuesday we head into Livingstone for group meetings and to purchase supplies. There is a store in town called Shoprite, which is similar to an American grocery store. They have most food items that we need plus additional items such as soap, hygiene products, etc. Around town there are various other stores that carry different supplies like paper, furniture, construction materials, etc.

Most Zambians shop at the many outdoor markets. These can be fun to walk through with so many people packed together selling specific items. We have used these markets for clothing, vinyl flooring, wood, containers, and some food items. There are also people all over who sell things on the sidewalks, usually food items or electronics. This is where we mainly purchase bananas, pineapples, and avocados.

Often times when we are in town, we eat out at a restaurant for lunch. There are a number of cafes and restaurants that have a variety of foods and prepare American food as well. So after a week of not eating meat it is nice to grab a burger, pizza, Zambian Mexican, shawarma, or some other food that might contain meat or cheese!

We are in the process of finding fish suppliers in the village and we may even be able to purchase a chicken periodically. We should be receiving our first fish tomorrow from a local villager as long as he is successful. There are some villagers who purchase items such as eggs in town and then resell the in the village. But they are pretty hit and miss as to whether they will actually have stock.

So it is usually an experience trying to find certain items! Sometimes it is like a treasure hunt and sometimes it is frustrating. And we always have to be weary of receiving the Mzungu (white person) prices.

Living Acommodations in the Village

We have heard that people have some questions about our life here, so we are going to start some blog posts attempting to answer these questions. If you have specific questions please leave a comment and we'd love to answer.

What are your living conditions? 
We are temporarily living in a little one room, loft-type apartment. There is a pavilion on Love's Door's base where tutoring, church, and all our team dinners in the village occur. There is a kitchen in the pavilion, and above the kitchen is the little room where we are staying. We have a bed with a mosquito net, two little tables, a chair, and a dresser in our room.

The kitchen below our room is the team kitchen, which we also use because our room does not have one. The rest of the team is in the village Wednesday through Sunday, so we have to share the kitchen during those days. There is no refrigerator or oven in the team kitchen but we do have a propane two-burner stove that we use. We also do have solar panels that are able to provide a couple of lights and power to charge cordless tools and phones.

Here is a picture of the pavilion. Our room is up top and set back in the back third of the pavilion above the kitchen. The rest of the pavilion is open with benches to allow for the many other uses.

There is no bathroom in our room, so we use the team dual chambered composting pit latrine (sounds fancy, but it is kind of like an outhouse where the waste composts for 6 months after the pit is full and then we take it out to use on fruit trees that we are trying to grow). The toilet is surrounded by bamboo reeds, so we hang up a sign that says "in use" to let people know it is occupied.

Please send more questions our way! 

Worship Nights

The past two Saturday's, we have held worship nights in the villages and God has been on the move! The first worship night was held in Sugar village. We spent the first portion of time singing and dancing with people from the village around a fire that was started in a central location. A mixture of Zambian and American songs were played as we worshipped with our whole bodies. We can't move quite like a Zambian but we tried! 

We then broke into a time of prayer African style. This means that everyone lifts their voices at the same time and we all cry out collectively to welcome God to move. We then offered people to come forward with specific prayer requests and we began to passionately pray for each need as the songs of praise continued. 

God worked in such a mighty way in Sugar village! One lady was completely healed of soreness in her back and shoulders. Another lady was healed from back pain and headaches. And another woman was partially healed of her foot pain. There was also a drunken lady who began to have demonic manifestations that threw her body around and tried to throw her into the fire. These demons were silenced and cast out and she returned to a right mind. 

We followed up with most of these people this week and we were able to hear some of the stories of healing. One lady shared how her night terrors have ceased since this worship night. But the devil is still at work trying to convince bystanders that what happened that night was actually satanic. So please pray for the kingdom of Jesus to continue to spread through Sugar village and that the seeds that were planting would grow and blossom.

This past Saturday we held a worship night at Stanley and Lumba's house in Singanga village. We had a much smaller group but the power of God was still present as we blessed this house and claimed it for Jesus. A few people from the surrounding houses joined us. One lady named Lizzy was present and she began to have demons manifest in her. She first became so weak almost to the point of passing out and then her body was thrown around violently. We prayed over her and were able to cast them out and she returned to a stable mind. And she was in church this morning testifying to the power of God over the evil attacks that have been bombarding her! 

Awesome things have been happening! Please pray for us as we continue to hold worship nights and call on God's authority to be present. Please also pray for this area that the devil would lose its grip and people would be set free as we take this area for Christ's kingdom. 

Thanks!

The Power of a Greeting

I hear people in the States often complain about the shallowness of greetings. We say "How are are you?" and we fully anticipate the returning "I'm good, how are are you?" It is never expected that anyone would ever respond with anything other than "good", "fine", "busy", "okay", etc. We don't actually ask to know how people are but rather just to acknowledge the other person. I have also been annoyed with the shallowness of many of these brief greetings, however, my short time in Zambia has given me a different perspective.

In Zambia, everyone stops to ask how the other person and their family is doing. The response 95% of the time is "fine". In the languages that we hear it sounds like "motozi chwani" (Lozi language), "muli bwanje" (Nyanja language), along with the greetings in Tonga, Toka, and Bemba that are in this region of Zambia. Yes, there are a lot of languages in this small area! Zambia has a population that is 1 1/2 times the size of Michigan but it has over 70 languages! 

It is easy to dismiss all of these greetings as being empty banterings. The fact that they all use the word "fine" instead of "good" sounds even more shallow to my ears. However, I am learning the power of a greeting. In Zambia, it really is an act of acknowledging a person and recognizing that they have value. It may be displayed through being the first to give the greeting when crossing paths with someone who is older to show them respect. It may be recognizing a person's value by tipping a hat, extending a handshake, stooping down to one knee to greet someone sitting, or giving two hand claps as you say the greeting to another passing by. It is all about the action of respect, acknowledgment, and expressing that you notice this individual and believe that they have value. It is even more powerful when we are able to speak that greeting in the other person's heart language. The smiles get bigger and the value is displayed as they realize that you are not just another white tourist rushing by not caring to take the time for a simple greeting.

And that is what the kingdom of God is all about. God noticed us and had so much compassion that he sent His only son Jesus to this earth. He was sent here to speak our language and to notice the outcasts who were labeled as widows, orphans, uneducated, sinners, tax collectors, and aliens. And Jesus demonstrated the ultimate act of love by dying for us that there would be no separation between God and His children.

And the kingdom has advanced through slaves being able to sit at the same table as their masters to partake in the Lord's Supper. Through divisions of wealth, race, and education being torn down as we are all one body of believers. And we hold to the message that everyone has value, is made in God's image, and deserves respect because of what Jesus did.

So this simple greeting is profound to me. I do think it is amazing when people are able to sprinkle truths about God in their greetings so that it becomes even more of an intimate experience. But I just really want to be the person that takes the time to notice the people around me and thereby express the value that God places on each of His kiddos!