Fear or Forgiveness

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

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.

First month in Africa

Hi to all of you makuas (white person) out there in the states. That is what we are called here. We arrived in Zambia on Feb 7 and have had many adventures since then. we are living in the home of Ellie Hamby, one of the directors of the yearly medical mission. It has been very comfortable even in the heat and rain. We have fans to run at night and we sleep under mosquito netting. Although we take anti malarial medicine each week , nothing is 100% foolproof. Don has been adjusting to things done on Zambia time, meaning very indirectly and slowly. I have also been trying to get some order in the hospital storage area. I spent 2 weeks moving all of our supplies into catergories and having shelves built. Simple huh? Not here. The workers used the wrong supports for the shelves which were very expensive and they all fell off the wall when I touched them. So its back to the drawing board. You have to remember to preserve the relationship even at the cost of efficiency. We have gone on an outreach to the Kolomo High School in town last Sunday. It is pretty incredible. They have 1200 students, most of them boarding, as is the custom here. Without any adult supervision or direction many of them meet regualrly each Sunday for a worship service. We went and were welcomed warmly and one of the missionaries, David Gregersen, preached. But they had a student who taught the sunday school lesson, and one to lead singing and do the commmunion table. It does seem a little different to take communion from one cup. It was all they had. But they were so joyful and welcoming to us. One of their traditions at most of the churches is for a small group or indivduals to come up and sing after worship is over. They did that and then insisted that the 4 visitors come up and sing 2 songs. That was a first for Don. As we left they stood in a line in order for all of us to shake their hands and wish them Mobuka Boti.

We do plan on starting an outreach on aids testing, counseling and treating as soon as the vehicle is ready. Nothing is close by us. Aids is devastating all of Africa and we hope to be part of the work prepared to teach and treat the people.

I have to take the national nursing exam in June in order to work legally at the clinic. So I have been studying each day. Unlike the U.S. exams, these are essay not multple choice. It has been 20 years since I graduated and I haven't done any obstetrical or pediactric nursing since school. I have two nurse-midwife types here who are coaching me. We met with the builder today with plans to enlarge the current home availble f or us to live in while we are here. The kitchen here is often outside over an open fire. So when this house was built the inside kitchen is about the size of a closet with a minature stove and refrigerator. We are excited to be able to have a place to settle in finally. I am cooking from scratch and we plan on starting a garden when we get moved in. My mother would be amazed. I never wanted a garden when I was younger and certainly didn't ever expect to be making meals from scratch.

Whenever we need supplies the shortest trip is 2.5 hours over potholed roads. You tell everyone you are going in order to see what anyone else may need. Gas for the car is @6.50 a gallon. So no trip is taken lightly.

We have adopted a student, a ninth grader, who walked in the pouring rain over 30km, to get a place to go to school. Both parents are dead and he was shaking from fear when he approached us about helping him go to school. He needs fees and tuition money and uniforms. These are all essentials here. We will tell you more about him on another blog. Sorry I have rambled but we haven't been able to get online until now. So more later

Leza Amulikie, Amen




Don and Laura

Steps on the journey

Hi to all of those of you who have been surrounding Don and I with prayer for this very moment of the journey with God. We leave Sunday Feb 4 for a flight to London and then to Lusaka,Zambia and then a five hour drive to Namwianga. Tonight at my prayer group we talked about how God had been preparing us for just this moment. It has been unbelievable how we can look back and see Him leading us with community that has enlarged in scope and deepened in spirit. We believe that without community our souls would shrivel. So as we begin this first step in the journey to Africa, we merely continue in the steps of those before us and pray that we will lives the kind of life that interacts with the new community he is leading us to join.

Views to Remember

This is a view to remember.