noon day sun

“Commit your ways to the Lord,
trust in Him and He will do this:
He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn,
The justice of your cause like the noon day sun!”
Psalm 37:5-6

We have been brainstorming for the future, and trying to tie up things that could have an end. So it feels good! We took the boys to school to get them registered. Oh wow! You would have thought they just got into Harvard! They were so excited. There are 5 boys who work in the garden and then will sell the produce to make some money to put towards school. The guidance counselor at the school is very educated. (it is a very rural school, so you can never be certain) he has such a heart for the most vulnerable. He is soft spoken and really cares. He asked them each their age, why they left school, what grade they were in. 3 of the boys who are 15 will be in 3rd grade, and 2 of the boys, one who is 12 one who is 15 will be in 4th grade. They didn’t care; they were just excited to go back. Then he took us to a village close by where a lady sews uniforms, so they all got measured, oh wow, what a joy! It was just such a wonderful feeling to see this happening. But we know that the reality is: they will struggle, even in these low grades. Mike who works with us is committing to keeping them accountable with the gardens, and tutoring them on Saturday. We believe they can be next leaders, with discipleship and responsibility given to them! With people who believe they are worth so much by their side to encourage them!

Tuesday we went to talk to their guardians about the gardens and school. We found Michael’s sister who has 2 young kids of her own. She told us Michael told her he was gardening, but she didn’t believe him. But she said she would make sure He goes to school, even if his mom didn’t. Sitting there with her and a few kids around, and Michael in the background – I just got this wave of realization. These kids have nothing, no one believes that we would see them as worthy to invest in, worthy enough to give a small plot of land, some seeds and our time to help them plant a garden to. Sadness just overwhelmed me. But also the feeling of where else could we be?! I Thank God for the honor of loving His Kids.

We are brainstorming about how to identify vulnerable kids, and how to identify and respond to abuse. We are seeing that God must bring us Contentious people in the villages who commit to caring for the needs of the vulnerable, who will identify family problems, and not give in to fear of what others will think or say. People we can train in how to council children though grief and abuse issues. People who will be a safe place. So pray that God brings these people who will stand up for the rights of the poor and need, who will hold people accountable and bring what is done in darkness to light.

These are also pictures of the orphan home! It is coming along quickly and will be done in a few weeks!

PS Jeremiah and I went out on the river in wooden homemade canoes. We were in separate canoes, and we stayed right along the shoreline, we weren’t in rapids at all! But wow that was scary enough! We are going to have to work up courage if we are going to become real fishermen! (and fisherwoman!)

A Promise of Restoration
Isaiah 4:2
“In that day the Branch of the Lord
will be beautiful and glorious;
the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory
of all who survive in Israel”


The justice that is lacking, the mercy that has not yet come to be, the times of jealousy, anger, pride and arrogance will fall away. The Lion will lie with the lamb.
This is our prayer for these villages. That the branch of the Lord will be beautiful and glorious, that He will reach out his branch and restore what is broken to wholeness.

Meeting with the headmen from the village was eye opening. Not many acknowledge the ill treatment of orphans or even children in their own community. – although we know it exists. The meeting over all was a success – I suppose – the headmen agreed that they had a need for an orphan home, so the social welfare social worker can now God willing, write up her recommendation letter and put us one step closer to getting liscenced. But it left a sour taste in our mouths. It was difficult to get them to acknowledge their need to help the problem of orphans in their own villages. They all kept putting it back on us. Asking “but what are you going to do fo us!?” and we would ask them in return what can you do for them? How can we partner, what are some ways we can help these children get into school through ways they can help in the communities? (gardens, basket making, chicken business etc) and they insisted on bringing up all the issues with these ideas (where do they sell their veggies? Monkeys eat their gardens, marketing their produsts is a problem… yet the head man of Singanga village, where we are located has made a very successful garden business dispite all these problems.
We have adopted the policy of wanting them to show initiative in a project before we assist them. But when it comes to orphans, we want them to see it as their own problem. When a child is orphaned, it them puts more pressure on his or her relatives to care for him. It creates a worse quality of life for everyone involved. Now we have old grannies caring for 5 – 10 children! So we are trying to get them to understand we do not have the answers, if they don’t have ownership of the project, it will fail. But it has been years of having NGO’s and foreigners hand them money and their own solutions instead of empowering them to solve their own community problems.

This is what we face. There seems no easy answer. Creating a childrens home is one small answer, because we believe that investing in a few vulnerable, rasing them up as leaders will in turn affect the country and continent, but this isn’t the answer for most. So our question remains, how can we empower those who will stay in their current situations? How do we do justice? How do we defend the rights of the orphan an widow?

Giving them tools to denfend themselves, with no infrastructure to support their cries seems to defeat the purpose. If a child is being sexually abused, and tells someone, they will then be looked at by the community as ruining the family name, and will not be welcome back most likely. So they must be willing to give up their family (no matter how loose this term is) and home. With the rates of abuse in the rural areas, this it is impossible to support and house them all! So where do we turn!?
Please pray with us. This issue will only get louder, and we need to be educated and trained to meet these growing needs.

Update

this picture is of a chicken run (the little houses in the back ground, and fishing nets (the tall things in the front)
kids carrying water from the river
a hut in the village with laundry on the line
girls carrying their dishes to the river to wash them.

The boys are doing great. It is going to be so difficult to leave them. We are praying for a way for what is going on with them to not depend on us. We gave them as a prize for attending English classes a comic book of the life of Jesus. Jeremiah has been teaching them the stories according to the pictures and they have memorized it! (In Lozi, their language). It is so inspiring! They are asking deep questions about how to hear God, how God and Jesus are related. Yesterday Dan gave them a plot of land to garden. We had Collard greens already started so they go to transplant them and now must keep them alive and in about 2 weeks they will be able to sell it! We have worked out that we will account for the money they make and we can put it towards something they need. They all agreed that they want to go to school! A new term starts end of August!

Pray for favor with the headmen of the 9 villages in the chiefdom the property is in. (9 is only the ½ villages that are closest to us) Thursday July 15 we have a meeting with them to ask for their support of the children’s home. This is an important part of helping them, all the villages around, to take ownership of the project. We are also attempting to get the social worker form social well fare to this meeting because she must talk to people in the villages to find out if they want the home before she will write a letter of approval. This letter is needed to get licensed as a home that cares for orphans and vulnerable children. The social worker has been nice but is very hard to catch, we go down to her office about 4 ties a week just to try to find her and tell her about the meeting, we only found her once. So pray God opens doors and give us favor in the governments eyes.

We also must get licensed with Department of Societies, to become a licensed children’s home. And when we went there (a miracle we found it, it is a little unmarked in a courtyard of other offices, a room with papers just everywhere, no computer) she gave us the forms we needed to fill out, and the amount we need to pay to become registered, but she informed us she had no receipts and that she didn’t know when the office in Lusaka would send it.

Jeremiah has been selected for scholarships, but he must have an interview next week Friday over the phone/Skype so pray the connection works and that the committee gives him the scholarship.

It seems like many things lately have been coming up, as far as logistics having to do with importing the vehicle (tax free) and catches that we are all (especially Dan) spending hours on working out. In Africa nothing happens smoothly, but it can be frustrating and exhausting. But we are excited about the ways God is pouring into the people’s lives here, the projects He is building through support like yours! People wanting to come, and ideas about small businesses and gardening and building techniques and fishing techniques. For these we are so excited and grateful! We have such hope for these villages, to go make disciples of even more rural villages in their own country and continent. To give them a kingdom perspective. But we are pushing through so many barriers. Thank you so your love support and prayers!

flying home made kites!
God was Amazed
Isaiah 59:15-21
The Lord looked and was displeased to find there was no justice.
He was amazed to see that no one intervened to help the oppressed.
So He Himself stepped in to save them with His strong arm, and His justice sustained Him.
He put on righteousness as his body armor and placed the helmet of salvation on his head. He clothed Himself in a robe of vengeance and wrapped Himself in a cloak of divine passion.
He will repay His enemy for their evil deeds His fury will fall on His foes.
He will pay them back even to the ends of the earth.
In the west people will respect the name of the Lord, in the east, they will glorify Him.
For He will come like a raging flood tide driven by the breath of the Lord.
“The redeemer will come to Jerusalem to buy back those in Israel who have turned from their sins.” Says the Lord.
“And this is my covenant with them,” says the Lord, “my spirit will not leave them, and neither will these words I have given you. They will be on your lips and on the lips of your children and your children’s children forever. I, the Lord have spoken!”

God was amazed that no one helped the oppressed! Aren’t these amazing words?! Our heart is that we can be God’s strong arm in flesh. That we would model after our ultimate servant leader to fight for the rights of the poor and needy, and speak on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves! But what does this practically mean?

By creating this project from the ground up, our heart is to empower. Empower; this seems a simple enough word, but what practically does this mean to you?
Seriously – what would you do when you see children who look like they have never bathed, they are not in school, they wear the same clothes every time you see them and they always seem hungry. What would your response be?
Would you
A: raise enough money (from the west) to feed them every time you go out to the village?
B: Give them a new wardrobe out of your own closet?
C: teach them, give them pencils and notebooks?
D: something else?
This is the hardest thing we face. Are any of these empowering them? What does God’s justice look like? Do these feed into the mindset that missionaries and aid workers have created for years- African’s dependency on the west, on white people. They express through their words and attitudes that they believe “white people are richer, and must be smarter, and have what we, poor Africans need. We need to ask them (westerners) to give us things to meet our needs.” This may sound harsh but anyone who has ever worked tirelessly in a developing world; even just Africa knows this is often the case. And every day we seek God in how to face it and respond to it.
How do we EMPOWER them?
Our policy has become, teach them to thrive in their gardening skills, even the 15-year-old boys. They can gain pride in what they accomplish by growing and selling crops to allow them enough money to go to school. We have them memorize scripture (a passage from a psalm) before we give them a bible. We want them to value what they are given, to work and in response take care of the things they are given.
We do teach the boys English, that is what we can give them out of ourselves, our time and energy and love, but instead of buying them a work book (something that defines them as a student like the other kids who go to school) we had them make it with paper we provided, second hand card board and a leaf made into a binding. They loved it because they made it with their own hands! When they come ten times (in about 2 weeks) we will give them a small prize that they earned by attending class! This is what we are learning gives them pride, and combats the mentality that they need us. We want to teach them to inspire each other, disciple each other, lead their own Bible studies, and practice English with each other.
Wow it is hard, but to us it is so important that they grow into Zambians who see they can change their destiny, that they can be leaders, and stand for things they believe in even when they then become “different”. Please pray for us, pray for them. That we would walk this fine line according to God’s best for these beautiful people.