When we started this blog, while still in Abilene, we thought the hard things we would have to face and overcome would be missing family and the body of believers whom we love so much. That has been hard, but so far not the hardest. Many of you already know that in the three months we have been in Zambia, I have had Malaria, and the home we were staying in was robbed while we were taking our friends back to the airport in Lusaka. However last Wed night Don answered our door and a man with a gun stood there. We often had visitors early in the evening. They might be students from Namwianga mission school or a neighbor, or one of the people from the hospital about to have a baby. So it isn't unusual to open our door. But that night the young man high on alcolohol, or drugs just nervous stood there with a gun and demanded (with profanities in English) all of our money. As we began to give it to him I started to pray out loud. I prayed that God would protect us and that God would stop this man . He then took our phones and our computer. All the time he yelled he would shoot us if we didn't do as he said. So after he left we ran out the front door and across the road to the nieghbors home. Then we got in our truck and took off down the road to another missionary couple. They called the police and alerted the rest of the missionaries in case he would try another home. When we returned some time later with the police many of the other people who lived around us near the hospital were there to comfort us and find out what all had happened. Now the problem is the residual fear we have. Each person coming to our door makes us jump, and we now keep our iron burgle gate locked even in the daytime. We hate that. We are grateful God did protect us from harm, but we still are a little jittery each evening around 7PM which was the time he came. However the outpouring from all of the zambians here have been astounding and very welcomed by us. Each one of the members of the mission have been by to encourage, say how very sorry they are and to pray with us. They are angry that someone from their country would do this to someone who has come to help them. Of course we dont hold zambians responsible but they do. So we have determined that our God is still in charge, and when He brought us here he intended for us to stay and finish the work He has set for us to do. We refuse to allow Satan to mess with our minds. So the fear is better and I thought that was the end of this. However I read Jim Clark's blog on forgveness. Well, it leaves me in a quandry. According to the verse he quoted, because Jesus came to forgive us through the cross, We must not only pray for this enemy of ours but we must forgive him. So in a practical way here, if the police catch him, they expect not only me to identify him , but to watch them beat him. That is their custom here. I have already known that I couldnt do that, but am I able to forgive him the fear he caused us, the loss of our valueable computer which is our connection to the rest of our world, and the worry he caused our family. I have no choice as I see that verse and I pray that I will have that change of heart. Please pray that we will be bold in our words to the police and to him as to our conviction on this matter. Also Pray that we will remember that God's purposes will not be thwarted by anyone. We want to be like Peter when he was told to stop doing and saying what God had told them to, that after jail and beatings they only asked for boldness not safety. We count ourselves blessed to be chosen to suffer for Jesus. And we pray that we will allow Jesus to change our hearts to see this young boy who robbed us as He does.
In Him we live
Don and Laura
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Thursday, May 10, 2007
wanders no longer
We finally got to move into our own home last month, On Easter weekend. We have done some remodeling on an existing home and love having our own place. It is small,@1000sq feet, but that is all relative. It is more than the mud hut many of the people here live in. Just today we finally got our own internet connection. We can be on line as much as we want and so I plan to update this site much more often.
I have been working at the hospital/clinic in the mornings and studying for the National nursing exam I must take in June. Dr Neese was here in April and met with the staff to talk about future plans for the hospital. Many good ideas were discussed with suggestions from the Zambian staff on ways to improve current care. One of the needs is for a delivery packet to be made up to give to almost due women. Just this week our worker told us at the end of the day that his wife had delivered their son at home. He lives in one of those mud floored huts. There is so much danger in these deliveries, that these packs could save lives. For ten dollars we can provide a pack which incorporates all the basic items needed to safely and cleanly deliver their baby. We plan on handing them out for a small fee. It would be about the equivalent of 50cents. This way we can have incoming money to replinish these packs and also one of the Zambian nurses said the family would value something not just given to them more.
I am astounded by the Zambian women who do so much here. They are the heart of each home and they are patient and persistent when they need something for their family. They believe in Christian education. They work hard to pay for their child to be able to attend school. All of the schools here have tuition and require a uniform to attend. Let me tell you about one of the boys here. Chimuka was working during the school break for the man who was doing some brick work for our house. He asked me on the first day of school if we could help him buy school shoes. They are not allowed, nor would they dream of going, to school without uniform shoes. So we took him to town and bought him some shoes. Then we drove him to the basic school here at Nawianga and found he still owed tuition from last term and didn't have money for it or for the new term. We paid for that and then got him some notebooks, and some extra clothes, and a trunk with a lock because he is a boarding student. Before you imagine this was very expensive, remember how much more U.S. dollars are worth. Anyways , it was little compared to our ideas from America. The joy on his face was worth every Kwawache spent. We hope to continue to get to know him and help him . Because school is beyond the reach on many kids here, he is 16 years old and now in the 7th grade. He hopes to continue on up through college. If we accomplish nothing more while we are here than to help Chimuka to finish school we will have done a lot.
I have been working at the hospital/clinic in the mornings and studying for the National nursing exam I must take in June. Dr Neese was here in April and met with the staff to talk about future plans for the hospital. Many good ideas were discussed with suggestions from the Zambian staff on ways to improve current care. One of the needs is for a delivery packet to be made up to give to almost due women. Just this week our worker told us at the end of the day that his wife had delivered their son at home. He lives in one of those mud floored huts. There is so much danger in these deliveries, that these packs could save lives. For ten dollars we can provide a pack which incorporates all the basic items needed to safely and cleanly deliver their baby. We plan on handing them out for a small fee. It would be about the equivalent of 50cents. This way we can have incoming money to replinish these packs and also one of the Zambian nurses said the family would value something not just given to them more.
I am astounded by the Zambian women who do so much here. They are the heart of each home and they are patient and persistent when they need something for their family. They believe in Christian education. They work hard to pay for their child to be able to attend school. All of the schools here have tuition and require a uniform to attend. Let me tell you about one of the boys here. Chimuka was working during the school break for the man who was doing some brick work for our house. He asked me on the first day of school if we could help him buy school shoes. They are not allowed, nor would they dream of going, to school without uniform shoes. So we took him to town and bought him some shoes. Then we drove him to the basic school here at Nawianga and found he still owed tuition from last term and didn't have money for it or for the new term. We paid for that and then got him some notebooks, and some extra clothes, and a trunk with a lock because he is a boarding student. Before you imagine this was very expensive, remember how much more U.S. dollars are worth. Anyways , it was little compared to our ideas from America. The joy on his face was worth every Kwawache spent. We hope to continue to get to know him and help him . Because school is beyond the reach on many kids here, he is 16 years old and now in the 7th grade. He hopes to continue on up through college. If we accomplish nothing more while we are here than to help Chimuka to finish school we will have done a lot.
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