Good things are happening!January and the start of February have been exciting and busy for us here in Zambia. We are still seeing God work in an amazing way. I love when things begin to happen that can only be a result of the power and authority of the One True God. We continue to see new souls reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ weekly, and the strongholds of the evil one beginning to break down.
We have reached into 17 villages now, with 14 of those making the walk to our first church, Chabantu Missionary Baptist Church. (It was 107 degrees this past week, too!) When planting season and “rainy season” ends, we will start new Bible study groups in many of these villages. Our prayer is that these Bible study groups will become future church plants. Many of those currently attending the church services are walking from 45 minutes up to 2 hours so they can attend.
This past Sunday, we had 102 people for services. Imagine 102 people praising God on a dirt floor in a building that is just under 700 square feet. It is a mixture of beautiful voices praising the God they have just come to know in a cloud of dust. Our current Bible study group meeting in the church building is growing weekly. Our members continue to invite their friends and family to come and see what God is doing, and people are responding. We had a workday this last week to clear some land beside the church building, and over 200 people showed up to help.
Speaking of the church building, we put new doors on the building and have begun leveling the dirt floor to be ready for cement. We are also hoping to be able to put glass in the windows in the coming months. This will help keep some of the animals and bugs out of the building, although I have become quite used to preaching/teaching while a chicken, goat, dog and the occasional pig wanders through. A few cows have poked their heads into the doorway to check us out, but they must be from another denomination because they don’t stay for long.
We have also started building toilet facilities for the church. We built a small “mud and stick outhouse” a few months ago, but it needs an upgrade. We have one hole dug, 10 feet deep by 10 feet wide and 16 feet long. This will allow us to build concrete-style outhouses over them. We made over 800 concrete blocks to be used for this structure, and we will begin making more concrete blocks for the other two toilets in the upcoming weeks. These will be the only toilets for any of the communities around us. These are very important for us, not just for privacy and convenience, but for health reasons. Since December, we have been battling a cholera outbreak here in Zambia. God has continued to protect us here where we are serving, but just a couple hours north of us, there have been several deaths reported.
Another area we are assisting the community is through a school for the local children. In order to attend school, the children, starting at age 4, walked for over 1 hour 30 minutes — this is if they attended school. The local leaders reached out to Sharon and me to see if we would advise them to start a school close by the church. Our primary goal here is not to build schools but to bring the gospel and make disciples. However, to reach people, you must walk alongside them. Discipleship is a life-on-life experience and truly caring for not only for their eternal needs but also their current needs. We see Jesus walking with His 12 disciples, sharing meals with them, training and discipling them so they could be shaped into His image. We currently have over 100 children enrolled in the school, Chabantu Baptist Academy, and they are meeting in the church building. The children attend weekly Bible studies as part of their curriculum.
This last week, we spent time cutting down trees to make poles for another structure so we could spread the children out for better learning. I had a small chainsaw I thought could do the job, but I soon discovered it wasn’t the “little engine that could.” So, several men took turns with a homemade axe and finally got the trees down and trimmed up into poles. We will purchase blue tarps in town to serve as walls this week. The toilets I mentioned will also be for the students and teachers during class.
Right now, the children only go to class for a half day as we cannot yet afford to provide for them. We were given a plot of land for the school to plant a field with corn and vegetables and pray that by the next school term, we will have enough food to feed the kids. The field was another praise for us. Not only was the land given, but we had the community come together to prepare the field and plant it. Everyone came with their oxen and plows and finished the 15 acres in less than 2 hours!
I mentioned the rainy season in quotes earlier for a good reason. It is called the rainy season because this is the only time of year we receive any rain; but for the last 3 years, Zambia has been getting less than 50% of the usual rainfall. Please pray that God will open the clouds and allow us to receive abundant rain in the next few weeks. The food stores here are already dangerously low, and another poor season would be devastating. The corn fields are already beginning to burn up and turn yellow from lack of rain, and irrigation is just not available. We have one well, known as a borehole here, for people within about an hour’s walking distance. Most of the people within the villages cannot miss any more meals because they are already close to starvation.
Please join us in praising God for all the souls being saved, the new choir team for the church, the new floor for the church and the toilets being built. We also ask you to pray with us for rain, for the five men being trained as pastors, for the cholera outbreak to end and for the stronghold of the witch doctors to continue to be broken.
Our needs for this ministry are a larger chainsaw, benches for the church, glass panes for the church windows and acoustic musical instruments for the church. (pastorquill@gmail.com)
