Birthdays, Critters & A Snake

The month of March is full of birthdays for the Eleeo Project families here in Chikankata. The list includes our workers Movety and Pauline, Kerri, Caleb and Maddie Roberts and our very own Chichi. This past week we celebrated the blessing of six years of life for this amazing young man!

These past few weeks have also provided many adventures in discovering all the critters that live in and around our house. We have seen centipedes, toads, chameleons, praying mantises, huge butterflies and months and the occasional snake.

God's creation and beauty in this place continues to amaze us. Much more to come!

A Miracle For A Prince

As we have shared in the past, we have been blessed to be a part of seeing many lives touched by the power of God. Testimonies of blind eyes opened, malaria and HIV being healed have been just some of the ways God has poured out His love and compassion upon many of the Zambians we serve.

This past week, just as we were leaving for church, one of our new workers, Terren, came to ask for $5 dollars so he could take his very sick four month old baby to the clinic. Prince is Terren first born son and was suffering from a very high fever. While a fever may seem a routine ailment for those of us growing up in the West, here in Zambia it is a common killer of the young and elderly. We gave Terren the money but shared that we serve the Great Physician and believed God could heal Prince even before Terren reach home. Later that afternoon we were greeted at our back gate by a very grateful Terren with a smile from ear to ear. He informed us that when he had arrived back at home all of Princes symptoms had disappeared.

Praise God, for the testimony Prince's healing will be to the many Tongas we live amongst. We will be sure to send some pictures of Prince in the near future!

Using What’s In Our Hands

Do you remember the story in 2 Kings 4 where Elisha helps the poor widow and her sons? In that story he instructs her, “Tell me, what you have in the house”. One of the lessons God has been teaching us over these past few weeks is to become more aware of the many opportunities He has placed in our hand to advance His Kingdom. Too often, we have found ourselves consumed with planning on how we are going to reach out to the masses of unreached peoples here in Southern Zambia. Yet, God has positioned us in a place where the opportunities to expose people to His Glory exists just outside our back door. In essence, He is asking us “What do you have in your hands?”

For example, Kerri and Elise have continued to conduct a Bible Study with some of the women that work on our property. We also have been introduced to eight young men that we employ to help with the development of Water Valley (the name of the piece of property where we live). Pray for wisdom as we invest in the lives of these individuals and expose them to Glory of our Heavenly Father.

Composting

One of the foundational pillars of our agricultural program, Farming God’s Way, is teaching Zambians to look at what God has given them in creation. As they look at the great provision the Father has provided for them in creation we then attempt to encourage them to become good stewards of whatever He has placed in their hands. Recently, we shared these principles during the assembling of a compost pile to help fertilize the garden we previously blogged about. Fertilizer is an essential input into realizing a profitable harvest, but for many Zambians the cost involved in purchasing chemical fertilizers is beyond the means they have available to them. Our exercise proved that God had provided all the materials they needed to produce a comparable and organic solution to this issue……compost.

During the exercise we took brown material (cut dead or during the winter months), green material (cut green or during the summer months) and manure. We then constructed a pile that was nearly 8 feet wide and deep and almost 5 feet high. In eight weeks this pile should provide enough plant food to sustain an area roughly the size of an acre.

Pray that these types of outreaches would not only help provide tools in assisting Zambians to overcome the oppression of physical poverty, but more importantly teach them the principles to deal with the depravity of their spiritual poverty as well.

Gardening God’s Way

Over the past three weeks we have jumped into the project of constructing a vegetable garden. Not only will this garden serve as a means by which we will be able to provide vegetables for the Roberts and Whitfield families, but it will also act as a demonstration plot through which we will be able to disciple Zambians by teaching agricultural techniques based upon the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

As we have been preparing this plot of land it has been amazing to recount just how many agricultural examples Jesus used to share about His Father’s Kingdom (parable of the sower and the seed). Pray that the main harvest of this piece of land would be Tonga souls won for the eternity!

Water Valley!

Water Valley is the name of our property! We live on a commercial farm owned by local white Zambian farmers, The Reeve family. They grow wheat and soy beans. There is a dam close by and we have a beautiful view of the surrounding villages and farms! Our house and the Roberts (our teammates) are about a football field apart. The farmers fixed up the two houses and made them so nice for us to move into. What a blessing! Thank you Jesus!

Power Outages!

We have experienced many power outages as we suspected living in the bush. Last week Luke spent all day installing solar lights throughout our house! What a HUGE project that was and what a HUGE mess. Not only were the walls covered in red dirt, but so were Luke and I (I was his lovely assistant). Quite amazing to think that our whole house is made from red clay bricks!