Stop the Spread

Sunday, July 31st

2011-07-31T15:09:00.000-07:00

Today our team decided to take a bit of a rest day. We didn’t set any alarms, but most of us woke up around 7:30am anyway just out of habit… and by “habit,” I mean the giant rooster that crawls up to our window, fluffs out his feathers and screams until we’re all shuffling around at exactly 7:28 every morning.

Megan, Jim and I took a long walk into the suburbs of Mufulira just to relax and kill some time. We stopped at a tuck shop and watched a father buy his family some snacks and sodas on their Sunday stroll. It’s still funny to me that no matter how different our cultures are, there are still these small undertones of familiarity. That father getting his family snacks from the tuck shop struck a chord in both Megan and me. It reminded us both of our dads stopping to get us yogurt or snacks on those laid-back family days. As we were talking about all this, Jim- as our adoptive father for this trip- bought Megan and I each an ‘AppleMax’ soda.

Our morning of rest wrapped up as we all got ready for Martinz wedding. We were at the church by 2:00pm and the wedding procession started around 3:00pm. Martinz had asked all of us to take photos for him. In my mind, I was picturing the four of us sneaking around with our cameras, hoping not to disturb the ceremony. By the time the bride was walking down the aisle, there were about 20 people, crowding the aisle with their cameras and camera-phones. It was like being a member of the paparazzi. The ceremony was slightly similar to ceremonies in the U.S. The bride and groom sat across from one another and shared vows and a couple of “I do’s.” They then signed the wedding certificate in front of the full congregation. Then, the congregation flooded outside the church with them and took tons of photos. I tried to get a couple shots, but ended up getting elbowed in the ribs. I am clearly not built for intensely competitive photography.

Eventually, the bride, groom and wedding party crowded into cars and were taken to a house for a meal, while the rest of us were taken to a local high school for the reception. About an hour and half later, we were gathered inside and the wedding party entered one at a time. A couple of family members spoke for the bride and groom and then we were all fed a traditional Zambian meal- maize bread, pasta, rice, chicken and cake. After the meal was done, everyone lined up and shook hands and cheers with the whole wedding party. It was really a beautiful day and we’re wishing the best for Martinz and Cecilia!

We’re having a few last meetings and a team dinner tomorrow and then we head to Ndola for our flight on Tuesday morning. It’s been a great trip and we can’t say enough wonderful things about the people who have touched our lives on this trip. We’re all looking forward to heading back to our friends and family in the U.S. See you all soon!

-Katie

Thursday, July 28

2011-07-29T15:28:00.000-07:00

Today began like many other of our days here this week have. Duane continued with his amazing HIV Hope seminar here in Mufulira - Equipping students to go out and become advocates for teaching others about HIV/AIDS. Tannen, Megan and myself headed out to Murundu for the day. We spent the morning with the ENFYS Women’s Group - a collection of women that come together regularly for worship and fellowship in the village. Usually, the women are the ones asking us questions, but today we turned the table. We worked to learn about their lives - What is village life like for these women? What role do fathers play in the children’s lives? How are young women educated as they grow up? It was amazing to see them light up and teach us. By the end, we were cracking one another up sharing stories and traditions from both Zambia and the U.S. To close the morning, our team handed out bags for the women with sewing kits, nail polish and other presents. Their reaction was incredible - They cheered and shared hugs and had huge smiles on their faces. It’s still amazing to me how easy it is to connect with these women without sharing a language or a cultural background. We’ve become such close friends in such a short time. They feel like family.

Today’s ending, was unlike any other evening we’ve had so far. There is a woman we met a few days ago named Fridah. The moment I saw Fridah, I realized she was something special. She has an energy in her eyes and smile that lights up everyone around her. Fridah has been attending Duane’s seminar and also letting us teach our computer classes at her internet café. After tonight’s class, Megan, Tannen and I were completely exhausted from the day. But once the shop had emptied, Fridah turned up the music and blasted Zambian songs into the café. Then, she came down and started teaching us traditional dance moves. Fridah is the Zambian Shakira. Tannen, Megan and I are the Zambian Three Stooges. Fridah can somehow manage to move her hips while gracefully moving her arms. Tannen, meanwhile, “expresses herself best using less grace” and “more arms!” (And yes, that’s a direct quote). She then shot across the dance floor like a crazed albatross. It was an amazing ending to a full day of work. We couldn’t have asked for anything better or anyone better to share it with. Thanks Fridah!
We miss you all. Thanks for all the well wishes!

-Katie

Wednesday, July 27

2011-07-27T23:58:00.000-07:00

After being the blog police for our first week here it’s probably about time that I blog myself before I become too much of a hypocrite. This week we have several things going on simultaneously that are running all week –

HIV Hope seminar, led by Duane in the mornings
Enfys women group workshop in the morning, led by Megan and I
Youth Entrepreneurship workshop at Murundu Basic school, taught by Megan and I (sometimes Katie) starting at around noon
Vacation Bible School (VBS), taught by Kathy and Lauren in the early afternoon

The result is a daily structure this week that is somewhat fixed, but the material and sometimes the people vary. Stuffed around the above activities are a bunch of odds and ends. Today Lauren stayed home sick. Dad (sorry, calling him “Jim” just doesn’t feel right) stayed home with Lauren and built a ladder so that the kids in Murundu have a better way of getting to the roof of the maize mill where they regularly climb to put maize for drying. Duane, Katie, and Kathy spent the morning with the HIV Hope seminar. Then Duane swapped out with my dad at home and Katie, Kathy and Dad headed off to Murundu after lunch. Katie and Kathy jumped right into Bible school with the kids, who had just finished lunch when they arrived. I’m glad to see that the daily lunch portions have gotten bigger for the kids and each child has a plate since the number of children under our care has been reduced.

Megan and I had a blast teaching the Enfys women for a couple hours in the mornings each day this week. I have been looking forward to spending time with them and it has been really good. We have had about 20 ladies coming consistently, the same ones who meet once per week in our absence. Even with the translator I found it easy to engage the group and generally connect with them. When a point resonates with them they clap and cheer. Their attitude makes our time with them so much fun, so we are probably becoming spoiled as facilitators. We’re teaching mostly about entrepreneurship, with emphasis on a knitting business that they are eager to start as an example. We also taught about oral-rehydration and Fena (who runs an STS club in Tanzania) taught them how to make a healthy porridge. I’m excited about this porridge because it can substitute the more normal porridge that is made of only maize. It can be made of all local ingredients and is cooked the same as the maize porridge and “sits” in ones stomach in a way that is nice so it seems to be culturally appropriate. Tomorrow is our last day with the Enfys women, so we will wrap up and give them our care packages which my mom put together.

After meeting the women, Megan and I headed straight over to Murundu basic where we are going through some of the basics of entrepreneurship. With the language barrier we have brought it down to the bare bones, but it’s nice to spend time with the kids. From there it was back to Grace’s Place where Dad, Kathy, Katie, Fena and I met with the Earn It youth for group discussions, interviews, and distribution of their care packages.

Okay, this is getting long. Those remaining up at the moment are indaba-ing in my room, so I’m signing out for now. :)

Tannen

Monday, July 25

2011-07-25T23:52:00.000-07:00

I can’t skip to Monday until I’ve written about Sunday first. I’ll start with two facts: 1: You have not been to church until you’ve been to church in Zambia. 2: You have not heard music until you’ve heard a group of Zambians sing. Jim, Lauren, Megan and I drove to a church just outside of Chingola and were greeted and led to the front row, where the church-goers had given us the only bench with padding on it and set up a small table with flowers. From 9:00am to about 11:00am we watched groups trade off the stage to sing and dance. Just when you thought it was time for the service to start, a man would come up and announce that another group had prepared a program for us. There were old women, young men, children, even the pastor got up a couple of times and danced around. Then, all the women gathered in the back of the church and sang their way up to the front, singing one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. I don’t even know if they realize just how powerful that moment was for all of us.

After church ended at 1:00pm, all the gatherers form a line outside the door that wraps around the building and you shake hands and greet one another until everyone has left the building. It is like kindness is a by-product of being Zambian. I can’t get over the camaraderie of the people. Their personalities radiate such goodness; it makes all of us happier the longer we’re around them.

Today, our groups were separated again- one group, including myself, went to day 1 of Duane’s ‘HIV Hope’ Seminar. Duane is working with LRPI to help spiritually educate attendees on HIV/AIDS. So many people here are misinformed on the disease, mainly due to mis-education or cultural barriers that prevent information from flowing to generations effectively. Duane works with the attendees to truly teach them to recognize the correct facts on HIV/AIDS and also how to retrain themselves and others to prevent and eradicate the disease. The seminar continues through Friday, when the students will present their own teaching ideas for their fellow classmates.

-Katie

Saturday, July 23

2011-07-23T22:33:00.000-07:00

Today is Tannen’s birthday. If you take nothing else away from this post, remember that. And send presents. In honor of her illustrious birth, as well as Kathy’s (which is later this week), we ate dinner at the Copper Cabana, a stylishly thatch-roofed bar & grill / restaurant / music-thumping social hotspot. Mufulira seems to be benefiting from the increasing demand for copper.

Tannen and I spent the day at the Church Planting School, hosting an Orphans & Vulnerable Children (OVC) workshop. We were discussing LRPI’s philosophy for orphan care, as well as hearing from some potential partner organizations that we’ve either already been working with, or were identified by Johnny during his sojourn here. We had Joseph and Hilda from Enfys, the Chibesas and two of their students from Tanzania, Simon (our first loan recipient), Jane Chinyama (interested in developing an OVC program at her church), Herbert from Solwezi, and Terry and Idah from our Regional Office. All of these folks have a real heart for this ministry, and it’s inspiring to hear their stories and vision.

The highlight for me was a comment Joseph made that a couple of our Earn It alums, who have graduated from school and now have jobs, have started giving back to the program. Not only have they gone on to see success in their own lives, they’ve also been motivated to pay it forward, which is one more step towards sustainability.

So altogether, not a bad day. Plus there was cake. And ice cream. Some team members, who will remain unnamed, may have consumed ice cream 3 times today. In their defense, every ice cream machine in town has been out of order since we arrived, and today they were so excited to find a working one, they had to stop in twice. But that was before they were informed that there would be birthday dairy delights this evening. We shouldn’t judge. Not too much, anyway.

~Megan

Friday, July 22 from Duane

2011-07-22T22:30:00.000-07:00

My name is Duane Crumb and I spent my first week in Zambia facilitating a seminar in Kitwe to empower local people to be effective HIV educators. While normally we try to limit attendance to 20, they cut off registration at 35 from six different local churches. What a blessing it was to see God open the hearts and minds of the participants each day during the week. Each day they became more comfortable and confident talking about all of the issues related to HIV.

Today, the final day, each participant presented a project they had created during the week of a tool they can use to teach people about HIV. The presentations ranged from beautiful original songs they wrote to wonderful dramas, to posters, slogans, poems, and other very creative ideas. They are VERY excited about all their new-found abilities to motivate people in their culture to make the life-choices that will keep them free of infection and overcome stigma and discrimination.

Please pray that they will find many opportunities to share the insights God has given them. We will also appreciate your prayers for all of the people who will be participating in a new seminar we will begin on Monday morning here in Mufulira.

Friday, July 22nd

2011-07-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

Dear supporters, family, friends, and whoever else happens to fix their eyes upon this blog:

Today was quite the adventure for our team! Megan and I started the day by visiting two of the clubs run by STS in the local high schools of Mufulira. We were guided around by Martinz, one of the club facilitators. After the morning, Megan and I rode the bus to visit Murundu where Joseph and Hilda introduced us to three separate families of the village. The women allowed us to interview them about daily life in the village and also let us take photos of their homes and activities. We were doing it to create a profile of life in the village so that those of you who aren’t able to come to Zambia can still get an idea of what life is like here on the ground - What we ended up taking away was much more significant. There was a moment when Joseph stopped, turned to Megan and said, “You are changing the lives of these women… You are making a difference in the life here.” There are certain moments when you aren’t so sure that all the work is changing life significantly, when the problems seem too overpowering. And then, you walk into a village to take pictures and Joseph tells you that you are making life better. It was so simple, but it hit Megan and me pretty hard. After we left each house we were swarmed by the orphans, each of our hands being split between six to seven kids on each side. Whenever I turned around Megan had two calm lines on each side of her, kids holding hands with one another, grinning and walking lightly. However I, for some reason, had at least two kids trying to climb my legs, three on my right fighting over my pinky finger and one kid who managed to zip himself into my backpack. Nevertheless, I’m counting that as my weightlifting for the day. Hope you’re all doing well. We’re loving it over here!

-Katie

Kathy, Jim, Tannen and I went to two different districts where we met up with some Zambian women. It was interesting and eye-opening to discuss the needs within their community. There are so many, but solutions are coming as ideas are being launched to help better empower the women so they can successfully provide for their families. We passed out Moringa seeds and Jim spoke with the women on how to plant these remarkable trees that produce exceeding amounts of nutrition for better immune systems. Our team is aiming to minimize starvation and sickness and also explain them how to make a business out of it. The team is confident in the people of Mufulara to rise up out of their current circumstances, as we are here to reach out a hand and help. Awesome experiences took place today including being able to lay hands on two disabled children with cerebral palsy and pray for them. We spent all day with these women from both the districts speaking about LRPI and showing the love of God. We got to read scripture and then pray with the women before heading off to the next location, where disabled children were kept. It was a very big day for the team reaching into the hearts of the people and seeing their needs right before our eyes. We are recording the priorities of the people and formulating ways we can help in the different areas that need to be contributed to. Lots of love from our team here in Zambia, may God bless you and thank you all for the prayers. The Lord is truly moving here in Africa! ;]

-Lauren

Thursday, July 21st

2011-07-22T06:37:00.000-07:00

Hello from Mufulira! We have just wrapped up with day two of our trip and everything is going well. Our trip began Wednesday with a full day in Murundu - visiting Grace’s Place clinic, the school and spending time with the wonderful children and teachers. The day included interviewing the students and staff about operations at the site and we also had the opportunity to sit in on some classes. After a long day, the children guided our team from the village, holding hands with each of us and smiling.

Today, our team split up into two different groups. Group one travelled to Murundu again to spend some time with the orphans that attend Enfys. The orphans shared some common Zambian games with the group. Then, Lauren, Tannen and Kathy took photos of the orphans to send back to their prayer partners back in the United States. The team also handed out care cards decorated by volunteers. Around lunchtime, each orphan was given a full plate of beans, vegetables and nshima.

After visiting the orphanage, the group was fed lunch (wonderful Zambian grub!) and guided through the village by Joseph. Joseph has lived in Murundu village for about fifteen years and knows the ins and outs of the village. He also knows the struggles that many villagers still deal with on a daily basis. With the knowledge our team gains, we are able to brainstorm more ideas to improve life for Murundu citizens and hopefully help sustain our ongoing projects.

Team two headed out to CCM, a private Christian school in Kitwe, to observe and meet with a group called SAINTS, run by a man named Coach Rick out of Florida - a man with exponentially more energy than the 80 children he taught today. SAINTS is on their first trip to Africa, but you wouldn’t have known by the success of the program they have been running this week. Coach Rick and his team had amazing respect and attention from all of the kids, ranging from preschoolers to sixth grade - not always an easy task. After completing the lessons for the day, Jim, Megan and I met with the coach to discuss the possibility of using SAINTS to improve some of our own programs here at LRPI. After today, we are really looking forward to working with the group and continuing to build with Coach Rick and his team.

Tomorrow, our teams will be splitting up again to spend time with some clubs, visit with care-givers, interview some families in the village of Murundu and also meet with a few HIV/AIDS victims in the village. We will write again soon. Thank you for all of your prayers.

Tannen, Jim, Megan, Katie, Lauren and Kathy

Megan - Dec 16-18 (Thur-Sat)

2010-12-18T12:47:00.000-08:00

I’m happy to report that I did not die from either the mystery disease or the malaria drugs I took, but I can’t say that I would like to repeat either experience. I have, however, discovered the new Zambian weight loss program, which is pretty much: feel like death, don’t eat for 3 days.

Happily, by Thursday I was sufficiently recovered to walk the 2 kilometers into town with the team for our meeting with the Facilitators. Tessa actually headed in early for a continued discussion on Counseling. I wasn’t there to see it, but I heard positive reports, and I think a lot of the Facilitators are interested in becoming more proficient at helping their students work through some challenging issues.

The Facilitators’ meeting focused on how to implement the business development workshop for the students next year – it was universally agreed that we ought to focus on a few pilot schools, rather than invite a limited number of students from each school to a larger workshop. Although it will take longer (several years, perhaps) to reach all the schools, we want to make sure we offer the students enough attention and depth that they really grasp the tools we are teaching them, and can successfully apply them. We are hoping that over the course of next year’s workshop, the students will be able to generate business plans and proposals, which will allow them to start a business run by their club. Students regularly request funds for t-shirts, sports equipment, inter-club events, and even school fees for their club members, and we would like to empower them to earn their own money to support their clubs. These will also be solid foundational tools that they can take with them as they go on to college or out into the “working world” where they will most likely need to create their own jobs, since the employment rate in Zambia is so low.

Friday was reserved as a planning day for the Annual General Meeting (AGM), which of course meant that it was immediately filled with a thousand endabas. It is entirely futile to allocate “planning time” in our schedule. Zambian Time is a finicky thing. After a full day meeting at the church planting school, the locals are perfectly happy to sit around singing or playing some Zambian version of hacky sack for 2 hours, while the rain prevents you from going home. But as soon as the rain lightens and you show signs of packing up, 6 people suddenly need to talk to you now now. (Which is sooner than now.) Asking them why they couldn’t have talked to you over the past 2 hours will only result in their sudden incapacity to understand English. Similarly, if their inscrutable Zambian Time sense tells them that you will be at home all day (regardless of your intent to be planning so that the AGM doesn’t last 12 hours) they will all discover that they need to meet with you, and will proceed to come by the house, utterly preventing you from accomplishing anything.

And so it was that on Friday we spent a significant amount of time with Simon, learning wonderful things about how traditional Zambian spouses respect each other. Women respect their husbands by welcoming them home on their knees, serving them food on their knees, bringing them water in bed on their knees. Men respect their wives (I had to ask) by 1. not shouting at them, 2. not chastising them publicly in front of guests, but rather waiting until they are alone. R-E-S-P-E-C-T. I don’t think Simon understands what it means when I stare at him incredulously. I also find it hilarious when Bishop Muleya tells us that we should find some nice Zambian men to marry. I don’t think my knees could take it. Not being shouted at publicly though, now that would be a perk.

On Saturday, we sent Sarah off to the airport with a fond farewell to one of our finest chefs. These Paynes are certainly worth having around for their creative culinary skills. Sarah was also instrumental in making sure that I got lots of sleep and ate the occasional piece of bread while I was “down” as they say, so she has my thanks.

Saturday afternoon was consumed by the AGM with the Executive Committee (EC), which is comprised of several hard-working and committed Zambians. The EC has been one of the greatest STS accomplishments for 2010. They have really taken ownership of the Zambian side of the organization, keeping the Facilitators motivated and on track, dealing with distributing the funds, helping us organize this trip’s workshop, and preparing to take over a significant chunk of Johnny’s monitoring & evaluation role in 2011.

I’ll leave the tales of Sunday to another lucky blogger, but I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Tannen - Dec 14-15th

2010-12-15T13:09:00.000-08:00

Yesterday and today was our Business Development Workshop, which we are leading for the first time. Attendees included all of our “STS Facilitators” who are the leaders in each of the clubs, a couple of “Club Parents” who are the liaison between the club and the school, and a small number of promising OVC Advocates. The workshop itself is primarily a path-finder for a 5 day workshop that we hope to host at the schools in 2011. The long term goal is to assist the clubs to become self-sufficient (decrease dependency on foreign support), and simultaneously provide the students in the clubs with practical skills for providing for themselves and their families in the future. We have observed through the years that many of the students who manage to pay for and complete their high school education struggle to find something to transition to when they graduate. College is not an option for most, and the high schools are not focused on providing them with a vocation or essential life skills. A small percentage of high school graduates are able to find jobs, and too many of them become idle. Our hope is that this program can help to span the gap between the reading-writing-arithmetic-type of education to something that can practically assist them with their lives upon graduation. In the same vein, we would like to encourage them to start businesses that result in a product that will provide for core community needs such as food and clothing. I had a conversation about the need to develop basic vocational skills and focus on providing the essentials for survival with one of my brothers before leaving for Zambia, and this conversation helped me to put these concepts at the forefront of my mind.

That’s probably enough philosophy for now, so back to the workshop… we kept the STS leaders and OVC advocates together yesterday morning. We started late due to late arrivals, but once we got going I enjoyed facilitating the morning and early afternoon activities. We covered some introductory materials, expectations, and brainstormed business ideas. These ideas were reduced to ones that had a reasonable capital investment and were determined to have the most benefit to student members and the community, and the greatest chance of success. Small groups formed and discussed which business would be the best fit for them. We started from a list of 50+ ideas, reduced to the top 8, and at the end everyone ended up choosing either farming for ground nuts or chicken rearing but I think that we learned something from the process and I do think those businesses fit the bill.

Megan was sick, but made it in around lunch time. She taught about “making money” – market strategy, minimizing expenditures, and risk management. Our late start & lunch time made it so that she had to compress her materials, but it was a nice overview which is in alignment with our objective for these two days. She impressed me with her ability to power through her sickness and coherently teach these subjects, engage the audience, and provide appropriate and thoughtful responses to their questions.

Today, Megan was even sicker than yesterday (we think as a response to the additional malaria meds that she took yesterday). We were all somewhat dehydrated since we ran out of clean water the night before, but she woke up very thirsty so I scavenged around the house and managed to find a few sips of clean water & some boiled water which Sarah had turned into lemonade the night before. Johnny had to make a run home a little later in the morning, so he brought her home some bread and purified water which was basically the only thing that she wanted.

At the workshop, we started off in the traditional way with some great music. Fena Chibesa, who hosted part of our team when we were in Dar Es Salaam last year, led us in Zambian & Tanzanian worship songs which I really enjoyed. Afterwards we split the OVC Advocates from the STS leaders for the rest of the day. Johnny taught those who had come in support of their OVCs. I didn't have the opportunity to hear what he was saying, but I know that he has a solid understanding of the needs of his group and a nice teaching style. He had made colorful poster boards with good content which he duct taped to the wall to reference in support of his message, and the couple of times that I passed by it seemed like his group was engaged and I got a verbal confirmation that “it went good” at the end of the day.

Megan didn’t end up making it out of the house, so I had the facilitators to myself for the day. One of our long-time STS-Zambia members, Terry, taught a session in the morning on business planning. I’m really glad that he used his education and experience in business to help us teach and I think that it added a lot. I have nothing but good things to say about his preparation, content, and presentation and it flowed well with the rest of the day. I mostly focused on the management of people and finances, the content of which had been prepared with the help of a state-side colleague. The emphasis was on starting a small business with their club, but we also discussed applicability to their clubs in general. Despite just getting over being sick and generally being somewhat fatigued, I found the day to be very enjoyable, interactive, and productive. I left with the feeling that we had accomplished something and the verbal and written comments from the facilitators and club parents confirmed this for me.

Back at the house, Sarah already had dinner going and we enjoyed our bucket baths since the day had been somewhat hot. Megan is still sick but has been sleeping and resting a lot and appears to be on the road to recovery. So don’t worry Megan’s Mom and Dad but please do continue to keep her in your prayers!

Chisuma mukwai,

Tannen VZ

Tessa - December 13th

2010-12-13T13:01:00.000-08:00

This afternoon Tannen, Megan, Sarah and I headed to Murundu. The driver was a risk taker; even the Zambians were fussing at the driver. One Zambian man thanked God for surviving when we made it to Murundu. Many children ran to meet us down the road from Enfys school to escort us. While Tannen and Megan met with Hilda and Joseph about financial issues I taught a bulk of the children "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," "Here’s the church here is the steeple, open it up to see all the people" and the hand trick where you have middle fingers wiggling on either side of your palms. The last interactive activity proved to be a bit more difficult than the other 2. Next, I lined up the kids outside so we could pass out yo-yo balloons. It went well at first because we selected 1 child at a time to go inside, get a balloon from Sarah and sit down. However, when the room filled up and there were still children coming from the village we needed to move them out for space. Tranquility ended and chaos began. The children began trying to get the air out of the balloons, the children in line outside started pushing and fighting, it became very loud and they ignored directions. I wished very badly in that moment to know more Bemba. Help was asked of Joseph so we could gain some order. The children who already had balloons would not get away from the school door and some tried to get another balloon. Even after Joseph told them to go under the shelter, they returned. As I watched the kids, I became saddened at the meanness and fight for survival that arose. In a childlike way it became a bit barbaric. Some balloons destroyed within minutes. I wanted to communicate love, boundaries and service but I found it very difficult with the amount of children and language barrier.

It was a mutual decision eventually to shut the door after all the balloons were handed out. Sarah went to play soccer with some older boys from the Earn It Program. A few kids stayed around and I went outside to read them a children’s “Dear God” book. I also had my small dry erase board to help teach them new English words. I started with about 8 kids sitting with me which grew to approximately 30. It was fun and they were a captive audience... smothering in fact. :) Rebecca (one of the school teachers) arrived halfway through the story and helped interpret which was helpful for the kids I’m sure.

The dichotomy of the 2 experiences was difficult, yet a rewarding experience. I feel it was a good reminder of the Lord’s love for us despite our selfishness and flesh outbursts. Often times when God gives us what we want we lose sight of what is most important and develop an attitude of deserving what is given and destruction can occur. However, when we openly accept what we need from the Father there is often more peace and good ultimately is the result.

Blog for Sunday, December 12th

2010-12-12T12:56:00.000-08:00

Muli Shani ? (How are you?)

This is Sarah blogging… my first STS blog! I am Johnny’s older sister and I am visiting Johnny in Africa and getting to help with some STS missions as well. On Sunday we traveled to Showers of Blessings Church in Kitwe to worship with their congregation and listen to Dr. Thinus preach. It was my first time in an African church! In typical African style, there was music playing and people came in slowly over the next hour. The choir sang tirelessly for us and was composed of 3 men and 4 women with beautiful voices. They sang from their souls with deep conviction. We swayed along with the music and tried to pick out a few words and sounds to hum along. We were asked to sit in the first pew as guests of honor. Dr. Thinus then preached about the responsibility of believers to encourage each other daily to keep believing in the face of hardship and to reach out to members who have stopped coming to church, from Hebrews 3. Dr. Thinus preached in English but had an interpreter who was as expressive and as sincere as he was. I enjoyed hearing the Bemba language but having to pause after every phrase sometimes interrupted the flow of the message.

After Church we went to lunch at the pastor’s house. The pastor also works at the bank and has a very nicely furnished middle class home. We enjoyed a delicious meal of rice, potatoes, beef stew, cabbage, chicken, Nshima, and gravy.

We visited the souvenir market in Kitwe, which houses about 20 stalls under one roof selling all manner of wooden animals, copper bracelets, printed cloths, native paintings, musical instruments, carvings, jade jewelry, and chess sets. We each picked out gifts for loved ones back home to share the magic of Zambia with them. The price for each item was negotiable and we were forced to learn how to haggle to get a fair price. Tessa went from very nervous about the whole process and not wanting to do it by herself to having the vendors eat out of her hand while she walked away with half their goods for a very good deal!

Sunday evening was bittersweet as we said out goodbyes to Etricia, Andre and Dr. Thinus who were leaving at 3:00am to set off for South Africa.

Update from Johnny

2010-12-11T13:01:00.000-08:00

Today was a special day, an important day, and one that will stand out as one of my proudest moments of my life in Zambia in 2010. I was very proud of the Zambians who worked to make this activity happen and I was also very proud of what it represented. The activity I’m referring to was the field day for the Mufulira and Ndola adolescent HIV support groups. Despite only knowing and working with these groups for the last 3 months, my passion for HIV support groups has its roots in my work at UCLA’s Center for Community Health in 2006. I also have fond memories of my time volunteering with the Botswana Baylor Teen Club in 2009, also a support group for adolescents living with HIV. Of the many programs, organizations, and issues I have engaged with over the past 5 years, working directly with persons living with HIV has been the most fulfilling.

These groups existed before I came to Zambia, though they might never have met if I had not taken the initiative to bring them together. Bringing people together is in fact one of the most powerful tools we have in fighting the HIV epidemic. This ministry has always found its strength in the community of believers. Africans living with HIV often have an unmet need for community because others discriminate against them because of their HIV status, though some also internalize this attitude and count themselves unworthy of the intimacy that comes from disclosing their HIV status to others they love and trust. It was my vision and my hope that as these groups came together during this field day, the sports, small group discussions, entertainment, and meal would not just be remembered as an enjoyable weekend, but the beginning of the realization that there are many people just like us, feeling the same fears, wishing for the same futures, needing the same acceptance as part of a family. I really will miss these guys and gals a lot but it gives me a lot of happiness to know they have met and will be able to grow closer to each other even in the time that I must be away from them. I am reminded of the Passport messages by Louie Giglio in which he asserts that our enjoyment of Heaven will not only be found in the presence of God, but the reunion with fellow believers whom we knew, loved, and poured our lives into. If that is true, and I think it is, then I know that I have much to look forward to even if my days in Zambia in this life are shorter than I expect.

Update from Tessa

2010-12-09T06:19:00.000-08:00

The Enfys women’s workshop was to start at 9:30 a.m., you can already guess we didn't start at that time but of course, God knows it was better. At 10:00 we gathered and sang while we waited on others to show up. We were in the main school (Grace’s Place) room which is ½ the size of a college dorm room. Their voices roared against the concrete walls as they praised God in Bemba. I became overwhelmed with God’s presence and again humbled that it is me who will be standing and sitting before these women to teach them. I who have no children, I who have never been married, I who have never been physically or sexually abused, I who live in comfortable conditions and I who have many more rights culturally as a woman. At the time I couldn't distinguish what was happening with my feelings. I just knew I couldn't hold back my tears. I think the above is what it was about. In reflection I believe I was also thinking about the women at the prison (where I work in the states) as well and the number of women/children the Lord has entrusted to me over years. When I began speaking, I began crying. I prayed for them and Beauty, an interpreter, was quiet I realized after she wept with me.

I noticed that the women were very focused on their children and how to better their futures. It was important for them to communicate their desire for support concerning business opportunities, basic and spiritual needs being met. They seemed burdened by the idea of not being able to care adequately for their children. They communicated feelings of failure and being distracted from their relationship with God because of their everyday problems. Enfys women were also open about their involvement with God and His love. They expressed His love for them and that everything is done by His grace. It seemed their answer for hard times and weakness in faith is to kneel, pray, repent, seek God’s face and ask for power. Tannen and Megan’s time seemed to be fruitful not only for information but punctuating they are not alone. The second half of the workshop was more teaching and less discussion. Fana (missionary from Tanzania who is originally from Mufulira) talked with them about caring for their infants. Although I couldn’t understand everything she said, what I did catch seemed very valuable. It was evident God used the workshop today by connecting with their basic needs, emotional information and spiritual edification.

Next, I helped Tannen and Megan interview teens who are in the Earn It Program. This program provided an opportunity for older teenagers to work jobs to earn money for their education: high school and college. Fana helped me with translation and Tannen and Megan fend for themselves with the students. Although I only interview 3 teens, it was cool to see how this program is affecting their lives through education, occupational skills and interaction with Martinz (Manager of Earn It Program). Tannen shared on the taxi ride home from Murundu her excitement with what she saw in the kids and the progress the program seems to be encouraging.

Tonight with 4 of us crammed in the back of a taxi (Tannen, Megan, Fana, and myself... the taxi being a compact car) in the rain and dark, riding through massive pot holes on a mud road and Fana playing Tanzania music from her cell phone is just difficult to describe, but everyone should try it. :)

Welcome to Mufulira (written by Megan)

2010-12-08T06:13:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Mufulira. It’s the rainy season, FYI, in case the periodic, deafening pounding on the tin roofs didn't give it away. Oh, and the enormous flying ants, landing in your food, hair, and/or mouth, would also like to express their pleasure at your arrival.

We are all gathered at 158 Jomo Kenyatta (take a look on Google Earth):
· Tannen, fearless leader, slightly jetlagged
· Megan, sidekick, coffee addict
· Johnny, faux blond, ending his tenure of a year’s stay in Zambia
· Sarah, biologist, recent PhD, but we won’t hold that against her
· Tessa, counselor, cuts her teeth on this teaching thing tomorrow
· Dr T, Tricia, and Andre, the South African contingent

You know you’re projecting the right image when on your taxi ride from the airport, a boy on the side of the road, seeing your car full of muzungus (pasty people, such as ourselves), shouts with great enthusiasm, “MONEY!”

Today was spent in Murundu, visiting Hilda and Martins at the Enfys orphanage school, currently occupying the clinic building that has yet to become a clinic. We got a tour of the toilets & showers in progress, septic tank is installed but no water yet. I’m waiting for the day they get that up and running, because as we were leaving, several kids sprinted outside, hiked up their skirts and publicly relieved themselves next to the clinic. I think some commentary on that will need to get incorporated in tomorrow’s hygiene program…

Several of the boys from the Earn It program were working on rebuilding the feeding shelter, where the orphans are fed every day. Earn It is designed to employ local youths to help with the farming, infrastructure maintenance, milling, etc, and in return pay for them to go to school. So far, 14 youths are employed for a few hours each week and are back in school.

After a long walk through the very red mud, we had a late lunch of traditional nshima with relish and chicken, and were collected by Dr T. We went with him and Bishop Muleya, from the church planting school, to observe a home cell church that was established by one of their students, who will be graduating on Saturday. It was in a very rural village, which appeared to be comprised of mostly children, with a healthy population of chickens, goats, and stray dogs. It’s also mango season, so the mango trees are all heavily laden, and many of the kids were clutching the juicy fruit and biting right through the skin.

More to come…

Megan

Connections (Johnny Payne)

2010-05-31T08:20:00.000-07:00

The movie I Heart Huckabees contains two “existential investigators” played by Lily Tomlin and Dustin Hoffman, which seek to help their clients to make connections between all the events, persons, and circumstances in which they find themselves, in order to draw out underlying meanings, or spiritual truths we might say, about their own lives as well as more grandiose ones like the existence of the universe. Making connections allows the characters in the movie to view individual persons, events, and circumstances in a way they would not otherwise appreciate. For example, losing one’s job becomes an opportunity to rediscover a more fulfilling vocation, meet new friends which strengthen one’s self-awareness as well as providing distance from stagnant and discouraging colleagues.

This concept has been important to me in discerning how God is working in my life and how to minister more effectively to others. However, making connections is definitely not an exact science. For instance, Job and his friends spent a long time discussing the connection between his hardships and what God was doing and why He was doing it, all to no avail. When we reach the point of total confusion about the connection between our life and God’s plans, it is helpful to remember “[God’s] ways are not our ways”.

Connections which we have been experiencing the past two weeks in Zambia as a team have been many and have given us a lot of encouragement that God is present in what we are doing. For example, the dramas which the students (8th-9th graders) have come up with reveal the bleak reality which they face in their personal lives. Both girls and boys groups frequently, almost exclusively, portrayed the norm for young people in their community: boys, inspired by American hip hop videos, meeting up with girls, dressed “a la Rihanna”, and quickly preceding to have sex (this was inferred or referred to by the characters), without mention of HIV status or condoms. The pressure to follow in this behavior, despite the well known consequences (all characters tested HIV+), is more significant than most of us could appreciate from an outsider’s perspective. While the connection seems so obvious in the play, actually resisting the temptation to pursue such a relationship and to refuse sex is extremely difficult and very few teenagers are able to maintain abstinence until they are married. HIV infection statistics bear this out.

Some connections which need to be made are not being made. For example, answer the following based on your own experience or what you have read:

A. Does the knowledge of HIV differ between Christians and non-Christians? Testing rates? Percentage of singles who abstain from sex?

B. Has the presence of HIV been handled by the Church better or worse than the general public or other faiths?

C. Have our prevention efforts been based on a scriptural understanding of extending grace to the fallen and discipline to the non-repentant?

I believe the Church has overlooked the connection between who we are in Christ and what we do in the world and why we do it. Agape love is the unstoppable force with which Christ intends for us to overcome the darkness of the world, yet we fail to connect how this love should appear in our daily lives and especially how to love others which are not ready to love us in return.

The longer I work in the HIV education ministry the more consistently I find that people struggle to make connections between important things and are generally distracted by the unimportant. Many are eager to understand risks involved with using razors or condoms while they have never tested for HIV even once in their life. At one of the schools we are teaching at during this trip, 2 out of 20 teachers polled had ever received a formal training on HIV/AIDS (those two were lasted trained in 2006). While I became concerned that they needed training for their own sake as well as to share information with the students, I quickly reminded myself that knowing one’s HIV status would be far more important than knowing what HIV does to the immune system or most of the rest of our lessons’ content. Like most Africans, few teachers are willing to test for HIV, even fewer are willing amongst those who have a reason to believe they may test HIV+. Recently we offered HIV testing immediately following our Sunday morning service at my church in Mufulira, and only 16 out of 170 in attendance chose to test (2 were positive). Even in the US, the majority of those who are HIV+ have not tested since being infected, thus they are not aware that they may be transmitting it to others.

We have spent a lot of money on teaching people about transmission and prevention, on treatment, and other interventions like prevention of mother-child transmission, but few countries have attained a position in which a significant majority of citizens test regularly for HIV or in which those infected are aware of it. Likewise, only 3 countries have attained significant decreases in their HIV infection rates (and these may be easily reversed). This means the number who should be enrolled on ARVs is still far less than it could be if more tested and far less than it will be as epidemics become more connected by regional and global development. Already, we have concerns that treatment costs will not be manageable beyond the near future. Are we missing a serious connection between testing and prevention?

As we teach students about the reproductive system, sexual transmission of HIV, the immune system, and testing/treatment choices, we hope that both information as well as our encouragement and educational activities will give them the ability to make better connections between those truly important things, not only to prevent HIV transmission but to help them realize what God is doing in their lives and how they can reach their potential as children of God.

Day of the People (written by Jami Ward)

2010-05-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

Church doesn’t start in Zambia until around 10:00 hours. What were we to do with all this extra time? :) Many different things, some slept, some cleaned, and some enjoy the worship music! Whatever was done, it was a well welcomed time of rest and renewal for all. We set off by foot to Agape church and enjoyed a nice service given by Dr. Thinus on how we’re challenged to not focus on the bad doings that are going on all around us but to stay focused on G’d. And to remember he’s in control. Bishop Mulaea then gave a short testimony about the HIV/AIDS conference they all attended. We ate lunch prepared by the church ladies out in the open lot in front of the church, like a picnic. It was amazingly good food. We then walked back to the house where Matt and Austin changed into more comfortable clothes. Then we headed off to Glenis’s church to give an HIV/AIDS talk to her group. The talk went great where everyone had tons of questions. We had that one guy who no one could figure out what he was asking ... and he was innately angry ... but beside him, all questions were answered and everyone was very positive and learned a lot. The night was concluded at Carmelitar and Rebecca’s house where they prepared us a Zambian dinner. A Zambian drink was prepared for us, which was called Mumkyo. It’s basically maze mill and millet. We played with the kids and danced and sang. All 7 of us road home in Dr. Thinus’s little Volkswagen car, now that the cockroaches (what Zambians call the police) were now all asleep! You couldn’t ask for a better day.

Sports Clinic Day (Austin)

2010-05-29T18:25:00.000-07:00

Today was Sports Clinic Day! I was very excited for today as this was my big to-do. During preparation of our trip Jami had assigned me the task of Coordinating the Sports Clinic. That meant coming up with the games, organizing the teams, and developing a “Sports Safety Presentation” that would be presented after the games were over.

The event itself was held at a community sports arena down the street from Butundo Basic (the local school). When Jami, Matt, Jill, Sidney and I arrived at the sports arena we were greeted by Pius, Henry, Duncan and Davison, who would be translating for us. There were already some kids playing soccer when we got there but the child population quickly jumped up to around 100+ kids when news had spread that we had arrived. Once most of the kids had shown up we played “Red Light, Green Light” to get the kids warmed-up and excited about the games. Afterwards Matt and Jill lead stretching circles for the boys and girls while the translators and I went around and placed the children into teams by tying colored strings on their wrists. Once finished we broke the kids up into their colored teams and started the games. The whole event worked like a well oiled machine. Jami, Matt, Jill, and Sidney were team leads and helped get the kids get ready for each event, the translators did a fantastic job of explaining the rules of each game to the kids, and I did my best to keep the whole event moving smoothly with minimal hang-ups. The actual game events were as follows: Wheel Barrel Race, Dizzy Race, Three-Legged Race, Relay Race, Tug-o-War. The teams were very evenly matched and there was strong competition throughout the whole event.

After all the games were said and done we handed out these frozen water pops (which was total chaos) and then settled the kids back down so we could talk to them about sports safety. This was my first time actually using a translator to teach so I was a little nervous but I had been watching Matt all week in class so I understood how it would work and it went quite well. I talked to the kids about sports safety focusing on what to do if one of their friends was injured or if there is blood present. Matt helped out by playing the part of my injured friend and Jill helped by playing the parts of both an Adult and a Doctor. After the presentation we said our goodbyes to the children and headed back to Dr. Thinus’s house very satisfied with the outcome of the day’s events.

We Can’t Get A Bus Day (by Jill Hansen)

2010-05-28T19:50:00.000-07:00

Today was our last day @ Eastlea and Murundu, and the day that the students had an opportunity to apply what they’d (hopefully) learned throughout the week by presenting their own independently developed skits about some aspect of HIV/AIDS to all 4 groups of students, with a prize for the best overall skit. In an effort to make the grading process as legitimate and fair as possible, we used a rubric that allowed 10 points each for originality, creativity, message, and working within the 5-minute time limit; all of us team members plus the facilitators formed the panel of judges. I conducted a quick quiz of my class before I herded them over to the student center for the presentations, and was pleasantly surprised by their quick and accurate responses. I wasn’t sure how effective my lessons had been since I’d had a different translator nearly every day, the last of whom had been an Eastlea teacher who had “translated” by paraphrasing everything I said in English prefaced with “What she was saying is…”

The presentations were all quite entertaining, despite all covering basically the same events: boy (or girl) meets girl (or boy), who pressures them to have sex. Girl (or boy) finds out that they have HIV, and the parents/grandparents/friends reject the HIV+ person. Most of the skits concentrated on portraying the seduction process and, since the teams were made up of all girls or all boys, each got creative with their portrayals of the opposite gender. The girls teams had the baseball caps, slouching walks, and awkward pick-up lines of the stereotypical Zambian high school boy down pat, while the guys teams stuck out their butts and pranced their way across the stage in comical portrayals of their female counterparts. A team from my class actually won with their well-choreographed and melodramatic presentation that culminated in a perfectly timed ensemble admonition not to have sex before marriage. I’m so proud of my girls! It’s so encouraging to see the spark of initiative and thirst for knowledge spring up in the eyes of these precious students, especially after a long week of feeling as if I were a less than effective teacher. :)

We left Eastlea right on (Africa) time, so about 30 minutes after we said we would, and had to hike quickly to the taxi stop (i.e. the side of the road) so we could make it to town in time to pick up a minibus and get to Murundu by 14 hours (2 pm). Finding 2 taxis is always a problem, but we managed to do so in record time. Once they dropped us at the Murundu minibus stop, we decided against climbing into the “Liverpool” minibus (they all have names) that sported 3 broken windows, a flat tire, and a non-functioning trunk latch. Unfortunately, the buses are not on any sort of fixed schedule and the unspoken but omnipotent Minibus Drivers Code requires that the first bus to arrive must be filled before the next bus can leave, so we had to wait for 15 people to brave Liverpool and 15 more to fill up the equally sketchy bus in line behind it before we found one that looked remotely road-worthy. That process took about an hour, and by that time we decided that it was worth the 60,000 Kwacha (~ $12) to pay for the extra seats to hire a minibus to take all of us to Murundu, instead of waiting another hour for a safe minibus for 2,000 Kwacha each (K 20,000/ $4 total). By the time we arrived at Murundu Basic School (after having been stopped by the police for illegally changing lanes-and watching the bus handler hotwire the bus to get it started afterwards), most of the children and teachers had gone home for the day. We did find about 50 of our group members, though, and set up the skits in one of the classrooms. Honestly, we weren’t sure what to expect, but the kids did a wonderful job! Watching Zambian high school students perform skits about HIV/AIDS entirely in Bemba (with occasional snatches in “Bemblish,” as they call it :) ) is quite an experience, and the Murundu kids went all out. The possibility of winning a certificate is an incredibly effective motivational tool for the average Zambian student, and these kids were no exception. We were entertained and enlightened to see how these students see HIV/AIDS in their everyday lives, and left the school exhausted but pleasantly surprised at how well the kids seemed to have assimilated the lessons. We’re all looking forward to the sports clinic @ Butondo tomorrow, and to not having an Indaba tonight. :) Overall, I think God has used this week to teach us patience and faith in His ability to work even when we’ve had to change all of our best laid plans, and to keep a sense of humor no matter what comes our way.

Immigration Day (Blog from Jami Ward)

2010-05-27T19:40:00.000-07:00

Thursday started out like a standard Zambian day, the rooster was crowing by the window, the sun was beginning to shine in a big blue sky and my mosquito net was beginning to fall. I was awoken by Jill bringing me a piece of bread with thickly spread chocolate Nutella, which is a highly effective means of getting me out of bed! We all ate breakfast, packed for the day at the schools, grabbed water and headed out on foot. We walked to Eastlea where we met the STS Zambian facilitators to teach the last day’s curriculum. The celebration of Freedom Day on Tuesday, 25th of May, meant that we had to squeeze the getting tested topic in with transmission/prevention talk. Being that it was a last day for the students to practice their presentations, we all gave the students a little extra time to practice along with extra guidance. We also all spent sufficient time answering the student’s questions about HIV/AIDS and making sure that any misconceptions were clear. The girls had lots of additional questions about pregnancy and mother-to-child HIV transmission. For the life skill lesson, we encouraged the students to think about what life means to them. The topic was quite abstract for a lot of them but good discussions was had. After teaching at Eastlea, we walked out the back gate of the school, as usual and walked to the corner where we again caught a taxi which would take us to the bus stop for the bus to Murundu. We were walking towards the bus, where the drivers were waiting for us, when we were stopped by two men who claimed to be with immigration. The immigration officer talked to the Zambians first, asking what we were doing here. Johnny asked to see his papers proving he was who he said he was. He proved he was with the immigration office and proceeded to ask for all our passports. He harped on the fact that we should have registered as travelling as a business. We disagreed but then convinced them that we’d do better next time. This pleased them and then we spoke some Chibemba which made them laugh, which seemed to do the trick. We assumed they were trying to find a way to get just a few Kwatcha out of us! They failed!! During this whole charade, a bus driver who remembered Austin from the day before was loudly signaling for him to bring us to get on his bus. Once released from the immigration officers … we all went and jumped on the minibus to Murundu. We barreled off, down the road to Murundu, tightly packed in the minibus. We got to Murundu basic where we all went and taught again! The girls at Murundu declared to Jill that, “they know everything there is to know about HIV/AIDS and sex.” Slightly overconfident perhaps! We practiced the relay for the sports clinic on the students at Murundu. It didn’t prove to be the easiest game to organize but it was fun. With a little reorganization it would work perfectly. Overall, it was a terrific day filled with lots of great talks and fun!

African Freedom Day! (Blog from Jill Hansen)

2010-05-25T19:34:00.000-07:00

Happy African Freedom Day! :) Schools were closed today, so we took the morning to stock up the pantry @ Shoprite, then headed to Murundu to spend the afternoon with Pastor Joseph. Jami and I helped Martins water the burgeoning tomato crop, which they will soon be selling to help cover transport costs for the orphanage, before moving on to the new moringa saplings- all using the sprinkler/irrigation system that Mr VZ had installed last summer. It’s delightful to see the orphanage moving even closer to self-sufficiency. :) We were called back to the house for lunch, but first pitched in- literally- to help the guys load maize onto the roof to dry. 5 guys on the roof, 1 on a ladder, and 10 on the ground formed a human grain elevator and made relatively quick work of all 5000 kg / 11,000 lbs. By the time Hilda’s scrumptious meal of nshima, sweet potato leaves, and chicken was served, it was all we could do to flop onto the couches in exhausted but happy stupors.

After lunch and a much-needed break, we set off for Game Day at the orphanage, where we saw their new maize mill and introduced the kids to the classic pastimes of Tug of War, Dizzy Races, and Wheelbarrow Races. There is nothing quite so heartwarming as the gleeful laughter of happy children, and I know their joy blessed us as much as our spending time with them blessed them. :)

We had so much fun at the orphanage that we departed too late to catch a taxi in time, and ended up waiting for an hour for a minibus that would fit all 8 of us. The time passed quickly, though, just sitting on the sun-warmed ground and enjoying fellowship in the balmy African winter evening. This is what STS is all about- ministry and fellowship.

First Day of Work (by Matt Porter)

2010-05-24T19:27:00.000-07:00

We awoke early this morning and made our way to Eastlea in the hopes of meeting with the headmaster of the school. Previously he had been adamant that we needed to have our classes from 11-13 hours, which would effectively kill any chance of visiting two schools per day. Fortunately, he was willing to accept starting at 10 and knocking off at 12. The kids were well behaved and we could see that many of them were very intelligent. We taught about the immune system with games and demonstrations. Some of the students were labeled helper T-cells, some B-cells, Killer T-cells and of course we had a compliment of random diseases. For some reason, you don’t get many volunteers when you ask “who wants to be Syphilis?” maybe it got a little mixed up in translation. I think our only two problems were the short teaching time and the language barrier. I have a hard time judging whether or not they just aren’t confident in their English abilities or if they have no clue what we are saying. After class, we went outside for games and the most peculiar thing happened. Johnny asked if anyone wanted a bible lesson and he actually drew a huge crowd, larger than the groups playing soccer, Frisbee, or any of our other games. I found it to be very refreshing that kids would actually want to learn about the bible. We walked to the bus stop to catch a bus and waited for about a half hour before one of the Zambians said that buses don’t run during the lunch hour so we would have to take a taxi. It makes you frustrated at first but if you don’t adapt it will make you go crazy, just remember TIA (This Is Africa). Finally we made it to the bus stop for Murundu, our last school of the day and climbed aboard. I learned that sunglasses are the most valuable thing that you can bring with you on the mini bus, if you want to know that story I’ll have to tell you all about it later. Either way, Murundu Basic school was great and the kids were easier to teach than last year. By the time we made it back home, all of us were exhausted and in need of sleep, but we still had to cook dinner together. Johnny and Jill are amazing chefs who actually enjoy cooking, while the rest of us are merely helping where we can in the hopes of sharing the load and of course eating sooner. I think that our group will get along just fine and have a great trip.

Traveling to Zambia (Austin)

2010-05-22T18:15:00.000-07:00

I awoke Saturday morning to Matt and his freshly shaved head staring down at me. He was wearing one of our custom made ”STS” T-shirts and coaxing me to get up; it was 4am. As I was stumbling through the living room to go to the bathroom I could see Jami in the dining room clipping papers into our lesson plan binders while Matt returned to weighing luggage. At about a quarter till 5am Rich shows up to help us load our luggage into his car and drive us the 3 hours north to JFK airport. We took turns being Rich’s co-pilot while the others napped ... wait let me rephrase that, we attempted to take turns then all of us promptly fell asleep 10 minutes later. Rich was kind enough to let us nap until we arrived at JFK. We said our very gracious goodbyes to Rich and then proceed inside to get our tickets and check luggage. The best way I can explain our 13 hour flight from New York to South Africa is a combination of awakeness, followed by movies, followed by napping, followed by some light reading, followed by some airline food, followed by some more movies.

The next morning, after we finally landed in Johannesburg, South Africa, we had planned to meet up with Jill, who had taken separate flights from Tennessee. But not before I was harassed by the airport security for having too many batteries in a single bag. FYI: 16 batteries in one bag = bad, 16 batteries scattered in 4 bags = quite alright. So after my little battery debacle, we met up with Jill and I was introduced to both her and a giant fake giraffe in the airport terminal lobby. Jill later described our connecting flight as, “waiting in the terminal lobby for the bus, so we could wait on the bus for a bus driver, so we could wait outside the airplane for the pilot, so we could wait on the airplane for takeoff”. Luckily the 2nd plane ride was only about 3 hours long and we slept almost the time.

After we landed in Ndola, Zambia we had to go through customs to get our visa’s before we could officially enter the country. It was quite funny explaining to the security guard who was checking my baggage that all the toys I had packed in my suitcase were my “personal games” and weren’t going to be sold or gifted to anyone. Once outside Jami, Matt, Jill, & I waited for Johnny (who lives in Zambia at Dr. Thinus' house) to come pick us up. Johnny arrives with a taxi about 10 minutes later and after some luggage Tetris we head off towards the town of Mufulira and Dr. Thinus’s house. Now as a first time international traveler it did take some getting used to the fact that cars drive on the left side of the road but that driving anomaly quickly took a backseat to the fact that African drivers will just drive on whatever side of the road has less pot holes so really we were driving on the right side of the road half that time anyway.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful as Dr. Thinus wasn’t going to be arriving until the next day so when we arrived at his house we just unloaded our stuff rested from our long trip.

-Austin

1/9/10 from Johnny

2010-01-09T09:27:00.000-08:00

We are all very tired, its 5am on Saturday morning and we have finished our last meeting. We couldn’t have spent any more time or energy this week, that’s for sure. STS concluded a facilitator training (and facilitators-to-be) around 5pm on Thursday, we had 28 graduates complete our training which covered topics like how to write a lesson plan, interactive teaching methods, as well as HIV transmission, prevention, treatment, and the immune system. The evaluation of the training by the facilitators was very positive, they were extremely appreciative of our efforts to partner with them in this ministry and share the knowledge and skills we have. We also interviewed all of our trainees individually and found that many had very impressive and admirable goals for their clubs or other kinds of HIV/AIDS ministry in 2010.

Also, I am particularly excited about working with churches to give them information, training, strategies, and support as they find God’s calling to this ministry and to the lives of their members affected by HIV and AIDS. I have several friends who already have expressed interest in teaching information to the members of their churches. I continue to be inspired by the way that God uses tragedies like the deaths of HIV+ persons to draw others closer to Himself and call their surviving family members to this ministry as part of the process of grieving, redemption, and renewal. My heart goes out to those who have persevered in this ministry for many years, seeing many they care about die along the way, and often finding resistance from persons and groups despite the fact that there is no one left in Botswana, Zambia, or perhaps Southern Africa who has not been personally, intimately affected by the stigma, suffering, poverty, anger, fear, despair, and death which HIV has wrought.

We had an amazing Friday in Murundu, playing with 100 or more children, very eager and curious about some people which appear much different than them. The Enfy’s Orphan project in Murundu which we support has made great progress in its income generation through the director’s agricultural business which includes pigs, chickens, tomatoes, potatoes, moringa, and maize. It has completed building a clinic which we are tentatively hoping to staff with a VCT counselor who will offer free, spiritually-inspired counseling and HIV testing to the residents of Murundu. 3 of our club facilitators and I are planning to pilot a health/spiritual education program with the orphans about twice a month. In fact, we believe we will need to cover many different topics which are particular to these children’s situation in Murundu and the challenges of orphanhood.

I wish safe travel and blessings to my colleagues who are returning to their homes, jobs, and families. Their desire to seek God and to give Him their vacation time and their savings to come here, and their leisure time in preparation for their trips continues to fan the passion which I have for this ministry and for God. These guys are the real deal, the vision you read on our website is lived out, and its been an awesome team to be a part of. If any of you reading this think you may be interested in what we do and why we are doing it, contact us, perhaps there is a calling somewhere there. Let God take you where He wants! Stay well.

Blessings

Johnny

Night in Africa - from William

2010-01-09T09:19:00.000-08:00

If you happen to be in the bush, then nighttime is exciting. At dusk, the path in front of you glows orange-red with the setting sun, and the sky is kiln-fired to a bright pink and brushed with dusty blue pigments. The earth, the sun, and the trees, the people, the birds, and the fields of maize that stretch out beside you, and even the houses are all clearly made of the same red-orange-pink-blue stuff, and that stuff is in you and in all things, and you walk among the orange stuff and you see the pink and blue stuff, and you are in all that stuff, but you are a part of all that stuff, as well, the stuff that stretches out and makes more room to let the glow of evening fill up the spaces between all things. And then the sun sets, and all the stuff of the earth is glued back together, crystallized into rigid shadows and outlines, dark on light, black superimposed on black. The sense of being a thing among related things begins to fade. You continue along the path, and the outlines of the trees loom up in front of you, guiding your turns. The path glows faintly, if there is a moon out, but early in the evening only the shadows (which are really grasses) and the sound of your feet on the sand can tell you - Yes, this is the path. The way forward is still this way!

Night time is not always quiet. In the center of the villages, the bars are blasting and thump-thump-thump-thumping Congolese rhythms, with the clear intention of deafening everyone for miles, and electric lights blaze overhead, their arcs of light askew and casting fanciful shadows of passersby and shoppers - but not shadows so much as elongations of their souls, cocked at the odd angles that the geometry of Fate might construct to contain them, bouncing off the walls of shops and the uneven leafy-ness of bushes in a mad attempt to transcend The Here, to ascend to Heaven in one quick jump. These shadows, black forms on yellow and white backgrounds, they shimmer and dance out of pace with their bodies, until they shrink down, crammed again into their vessels by enveloping darkness. The shoppers pass on, and the music is still thump-thumping.

So you turn away to the outskirts of the village. There, the night sounds fade to crickets and the path leads away from the village, back towards the fields. The smell of woodsmoke hangs limply in the air, a twinge of humanity's presence in this dark, inhuman world. A dog yips at something until another dog joins in, and another, and another, and suddenly the whole world is howling at something indistinct and thrilling, something bigger than the moon - the moon which has just peeked it's head over the tops of the distant trees, and sits there swollen and still growing, waiting for the right time to grab hold of her rightful seat in the sky - but still something not quiet as big as the sky and all the stars in it. The howls die away, and the occasional voice is heard behind you. A ladle is dropped, laughter suddenly jumps up from the nearby houses. A villager appears - really, you can't see her until she is right in front of you - walking along with a load of wood on her head. Her dress is dark fabric on dark skin enveloping her dark eyes in her head, invisible under her load are her dark tresses, so no wonder she appeared as a ghost in front of you, nothing more than shadow falling on silk. She is late coming home, didn't beat the sun back to the compound, firewood piled high, and people are waiting. Behind you, she turns a corner and disappears into the mystery of blackness that is the night, that is Africa itself.

Mystery has always bred magic. (After all, what is the magician but a controller of illusion, the Ring Master of normality, of rules and oaths, the inventor of a bubble in which things are unknown, unknowable, and mysterious?) And the mystery of night propels you forward with one swift step into the center of town. In one instant, you are in urban Africa, where night has the tang of metal ground into dust and the feel of leather worn, scuffed, and cracked. Here you notice that the air has cooled from the late afternoon rains, and the puddles catch the streetlights, flashing sodium orange globes up at you as you walk past. On raised and covered sidewalks, the evening people - a people seldom met in daylight - these people are crowding close to the artificial lights still on in store windows and hanging under the sidewalk's roof, sticking close to that thing they will not suffer in the day, churning out popcorn or samosas on charcoal fires, selling odd handkerchiefs and battered gents' watches, soliciting exotically at the edge of shadows, or barking at the yawning, toothless portals of nightclubs, from whose dimly lit interior comes the sounds of more Congolese music thump-thumping, the smell of bodies pressed tight against the real blackness, and shouts of revelry in the artificial nighttime.

Further away from the center of town, the lights fade down to just streetlamps. (The moon is still rising, but now it is obscured entirely by the trees around you.) Along the edge of the street, the sidewalk gradually gives way to a path in the grass, then fades to a track amid grasses cut low just today, then descends down to the street and over the curb, and flows away on the asphalt, invisible. You walk along the edge of the road, following the raised black-white-black-white paint of the curb. Soon, the night's orb spreads a glimmer of silver through the tops of the trees, but no light reaches down to the ground yet, just the black-white-black-white of the curb and your feet softly padding along in rhythm, left-right-left-right, still the same rhythm of the thump--thump-thump-thumping in the clubs and in the village, and the whole world is moving 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2 with you. In and out of the streetlights, you walk through their pools of yellow light, the buzzing of electric daylight above. At first, your shadow leaps out behind you, stretching to grasp at the inky street, but then it is compressed around you, becomes a blanket wrapped around your body as you reach the center, then - sensing relief - it rushes again towards the nighttime on the other side. Your shadow always reaches the far side of the light first, where it waits, taunting you, but ready once again to travel with you through the nighttime.

The street is not yours alone, however. Behind you, the whistle of the cars becomes a rush becomes a crashing elephant becomes a beeping horn - Do you need a Taxi, my Friend? - and then flies past, leaving a womp-womp-womp-womp sound of unevenly filled tires on unevenly worn pavement and the light in front is replaced with the dull, red-orange-amber, evil grin of the tail lights, watching you with warning and malice - Don't Follow Me! In the opposite lane, the cars appear as if by angelic appointment, just two (but often only one) white globes suspended near where you think the horizon might be. Again the whistle and the rush and the crash of elephants and also a beeping horn - Should I take you to your destination, Boss? - and then it passes you, showing you the same demonic smile, issuing the same demonic warning - Don't Follow Me! A dog darts across the road, tail between her legs, not trespassing into the light, just skirting the edge of the street lamp's domain. Other people walk along - before and behind you - their dark skins reflecting only brown and orange light under the streetlamps, then disappearing into the night between the lights again, and again glowing, now disappearing, until they turn off the road and into a compound or down a side street.

You walk along 1-2-1-2 until you pass under the last streetlamp. The darkness is there, waiting. Now the people walking along here are fewer. And, like the woman in the field, they appear as a whisper of motion, more of a hint of being there than something truly seen, just at the edge of vision where night takes Truth and Knowing and Safety and smelts them all into mystery.The lights of the houses on either side stab brightly into the dark, short rapiers thrust into the folds of something much to large to comprehend, let alone wound or slay. You look away because they rob you of what little perception can be had without moon or sun or torch to light the road in front of you. Now the road is becoming rutted, riddled with potholes. The cars no longer speed past you, but creep, winding along various paths of their own designing, seeking the low, smooth bottom of the road - a rivulet flowing through a river otherwise tormented by rocks, eddies, and whitewater. When the headlights of the cars catch people moving in front of them, their silhouette stands out from the ankles upwards but disappears at the knees, melting back into darkness. Their shadows reach out in front of them, though, tall and proud and you can't begin to tell which of these mysterious figures belongs to whom, for is it the shadow standing in the air or lying along the ground?

You leave these troubling ghouls of nighttime and walk to the edge of town. Again, you have reached the fields and the bush, and you stand at the top of a rise, which descends slowly to a river before rising again to the forest on the other side. All of this you can see clearly - the mango trees lining the path, their branches loaded with sweet fruits, the grasses swaying along the river's edge, bowing in obeiscence to the soft breeze, the outline of a house across the bank, and the lines of maize and sweet potato beds running in exact parallel through it all, criss-crossed by the wandering paths carved out by ten thousand feet. A veil of moonlight seems laid down upon the earth, illuminating most things, but revealing nothing in the face of her mystery.

-William

1/7/10 from Johnny

2010-01-07T09:23:00.000-08:00

Hello friends,

I am very excited to be posting on the STS Trip Blog for January 2010. First, I am very excited to begin a year in which I will be working for STS from Mufulira, a ministry which I feel the Lord has been preparing for me over the past few years and which I am deeply grateful to be a part of. The first few days (and travel from Virginia to Mufulira which began on Friday 5pm at Richmond Intl Airport and ended Monday at 5pm when I was dropped off at the bus station in Mufulira), I have felt the Lord’s hand on me and on the group of Americans and Zambians which are spending this week in training in preparation to lead the clubs we are coordinating in several communities across the Copperbelt. Today was especially powerful- we had some really beautiful and moving worship to start the day and just before lunch break. The way that Zambians allow music, song, and dance to attune their spirits to worship resonates with me, I dig it! Despite their already impressive enthusiasm for and ability to soak up all of the training sessions’ content, the facilitators continually bless us with their passion to take their learning back to their students and to plan outreach activities to cover an even greater number of people (many of whom were not and are not reached by government and other NGO programs).

1 Thess. 5:11,14 was embodied through an amazing testimony from a Zambian woman who shared with our facilitators the fact that she has tested HIV+, the struggles she had experienced before she came to accept her status, and the overwhelming love of God which has given her a renewed sense of belonging and purpose in Christ. Likewise, many of us were encouraged by her request to test, thus knowing our HIV status, and we had # test today, some of whom it was their first time. Praise God!

Pastor Terry shared a message on “Vision,” it was a powerful word which the Lord gave us through him! I could feel everyone’s spirit buzzing, as a result, we transitioned directly into some awesome praise songs. Pastor Terry said that there are people who don’t know what is happening, people who ask “whats happening?” and finally people who makes things happen. God’s calling of our Zambian and American volunteers to this ministry is evidence that He is with us, He is in the lives of the people we live and work with and pass on the street, and that He is making things happen! My prayer is that we continue in faith and obedience, allowing the Spirit to work in our lives and in STS’s activities.

The community which I have already found and which I expect to build an even deeper relationship with in the volunteers and other persons associated with STS is something that I have been thanking God for constantly, and I encourage anyone who is reading this trip’s blog who has experienced the same reception and fellowship with STS as I have to find an opportunity to let them know what they mean to you.

1/4/10 from Jami

2010-01-04T22:51:00.000-08:00

Our early morning started around 6:30am. After fighting with my mosquito net for the vast majority of the night, the morning came too soon! Note to all, duct tape doesn't really stick to anything when it's hot and humid. I will describe our first day at the STS training seminar here in Mufuliria, Zambia as wonderful with a hint of frustration. Six of the STS Facilitators were present for the training today as well as former students from STS clubs. Some logistics such as food, snacks, transport, lodging, quality of accommodations, water and don't forget talk time have been requested throughout the day, hence most of our frustrations. The training session in contrast have been nothing short of awesome. All the discussions, learning, participation, attentiveness from everyone is refreshing and lends itself to the hope that there really is change being made in the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS. During my discussion with my group on Attitudes in the Classroom, I have them act out difficult scenarios and they are to role play to work on dealing with difficult conflict. One exercise required that two boys be talking and are being disruptive to the class. The one teaching realizes this and has to deal with it accordingly. The ones participating in this exercise acted so perfectly that I thought they were reading my notes from my working notebook. Johnny had arrived back from holiday and visited us at the Church Planting School. Once the day was complete we fit six people into a taxi and drove to 158 Jomo Kenyta! There we were greeted by Shadi and family as well as the smell of wonderfully good home cooked food. Reuben is the designated cook on this travel trip. It's nice to have someone in the house who actually "likes" to cook and does a great job. There were nightly indabas, my mosquito net was diligently fixed by Mr. Porter who's become the STS rope tying expert. Matt also brought a flashlight that has a red laser pointer combination. Therefore, it became a means of entertainment for the evening. The children at the house "loved" chasing it as it was moved across the ground. I've never heard Elizabeth (Shade's little girl) laugh so much. It was fun to watch them chase the laser around, play and have fun.

It's raining, for the very first time, on me here in Zambia! It's amazing. I've been coming here for many years and have barely seen a cloud in the sky. Now I've experienced what it's like here in the rainy season. At various times throughout the afternoon it pours rain. I've started to keep track of the times to see if I can see a pattern. My station in the training seminar is located outside, at the Church Plant School, under an awning. This location isn't very good if it starts to pour rain. A good rule of thumb is to make sure all your supplies are in bags, if traveling during the rainy season!

All-in-all it was a wonderful day and it's nice to be back home in Zambia! We're all looking for what's to come during this week's seminar.

Thanks,
Jami

1/4/10 from Megan (HIV Ed Team)

2010-01-04T19:33:00.000-08:00

Happy birthday to me. Feel free to send presents. You’ll need lots of postage.

In other news, we have successfully arrived in Mufulira. The train ride from Dar Es Salaam across Tanzania and into Zambia was amazing. The scenery in Tanzania is gorgeous (puts Zambia to shame) and once we got up onto the plateau, it was blissfully cool. Which means that we spent the first 12 hours in extremely uncomfortable heat and humidity - 7 people plus 14 bags in a 2nd class compartment intended for 6 people with presumably no luggage whatsoever. We had to pile the bags on one of the bunks, so we slept seven people on 5 narrow bunks. I use the term “slept” loosely, since you have to wake up every 30 minutes at a minimum to adjust your position (“my tailbone!”, “oh, my hip”, “my arm is asleep”, “I can’t feel my legs”, etc. for 6 hours) and to prevent yourself falling onto the cockroach-infested floor when the train makes sudden stops.

The cockroaches were actually a late addition, when our first car was deemed unfit for service (something that sadly could not be fixed with a four foot pipe wrench and excessive banging on the joint between the cars). They said we had to get out of the car and unload all our bags through the window so we could stand on the side of the tracks in the rain for an undetermined amount of time. We declined that offer and opted to simply move our bags into the next car while the whole train moved forward and back on the tracks for about an hour. Apparently there is not a clear procedure for replacing a car (which could be construed as a good thing if it doesn't need to happen that often, but judging by the number of abandoned, tipped over, and rusted out cars along the route, I’d say the normal procedure is simply to dump the offending car and let the passengers walk to the next destination). They did eventually succeed in inserting the staff car where ours had been, but the staff gets the short end of the stick when it comes to quality living conditions. Jim is our master cockroach stomper, and taught us a thing or two about how not to jump onto the benches and scream like little girls at the site of a scurrying, hideous, creepy critter (you may be noticing a theme here by now).

Aside from that, the ride at large was awesome. We did see a herd of giraffes (twiga = giraffe, in Swahili), a couple warthogs, and a bunch of antelope things which may have been impala. It was fun seeing all the people run out to the train as it passed – they come through twice a week, but the kids still get really excited and there are a bunch of people selling things through the windows at every stop. We also met some interesting people on board, including a nice chatty guy with the MCC (Mennonite something something) working in Zambia, and a couple girls with FORGE, which also stands for something, doing aid work in Zambia. We didn't get a whole lot of sleep so you’ll have to forgive the lack of details. The food was pretty good, and we only had one upset stomach (which actually resulted in tossed cookies out the window of the moving train – one more reason not to stick your head out the window unless absolutely necessary – you don’t want to be downwind of that…).

We arrived about 6 hours late, but were greeted by William (yay! Newly arrived from the states via Johannesburg) and Felix, who works for Zamtel up in Muf, and two other Zambians we’d never met before. You’ll be delighted to hear that a 7 passenger minivan can in fact hold 8 STS’ers, 3 Zambians, a million bags AND a stray Canadian who needed a lift to Ndola. So yeah, 3 hours in the van made those dingy train cars look like the Hilton. But we made it safe and sound, and got to enjoy a substantial rainstorm on the way. Good times.

We did some HIV ed stuff today, but I’ll leave that for the next blogger, since it’s not my birthday anymore, and I need some sleep. Sendamenipoe, mukwai (we’re back in Bemba territory now).

Megan

1/4/10 from Reuben (Moringa Team)

2010-01-04T19:27:00.000-08:00

Mulishani mukwai? (hello, how are you? in Bimba) and Habari yaku (Hello, in Swahili).

The team has concluded our work for this trip in Tanzania and traveled on to Mufurila. We learned just a little bit of Swahili while in Dar es Salaam and are now back in the copper belt of Zambia, muddling our way in Bimba. I do wish I had more of a gift for language, English included.

During the last STS workshop day in Dar es Salaam the team prepared about 50 planting bags and distributed them to interested pastors and students at the workshop. Several people were very excited about the moringa information we provided and were discussing organizing local projects to promote the trees and knowledge of their health and nutrition benefits.

After our two day travel by train to Zambia, we began our first working day this morning (04 Jan 2010). The moringa trees at Dr. Thinus's house are looking very well, healthy, and full of leaves and pods. We plan to harvest leaves and make moringa powder for the orphanage in Burundi. The Mufurila saw mill provided the lumber required to build drying trays and we nearly completed construction of 10 trays and a rack.

It's great to be back in Zambia and greeting again the people we know here.

Reuben

12/31/09 from Tannen (HIV Ed Team)

2009-12-31T19:14:00.000-08:00

Today was the second day of our two day HIV Ed seminar in Dar. We have it organized so that we split the attendees into 4 groups and Jami, Megan, Matt and I simultaneously teach our topics for one group. We have one session in the morning and then we rotate for the one after lunch so that at the end of the 2 days all of the participants have had been to each station. This allows us to work in smaller groups and have more interaction with each of the participants. All of the older / adult women are in one group, younger women (teens and young twenties) in another, young men in the third, and adult men in the fourth. Their knowledge base and interest changed from group to group, so we found ourselves covering slightly different topics depending on who we were working with, though the general topics were the same. Most of my time was spent covering the basics of testing and treatment of HIV, but it was a very interesting mix of discussions and I thoroughly enjoyed working with each group.

We have one man from the Masai tribe named Musa in our seminar, and we heard through Chibesa last night that the boys in this tribe need to hunt and kill a lion in order to “become a man”. So yeah… we definitely asked him about that today. A very interesting and fun conversation ensued. Apparently when boys are 16 or 17 they must hunt their first lion. Once they locate the lion they tire it out by running and chasing after it. When the lion gets tired it stops and prepares to fight the Masai boy. The boy wraps his hand in a cloth and allows the lion to bite it. When the lion latches onto his hand, the boy takes his knife and jabs it into the heart of the lion (up), then cuts off its head (down). If the boy cannot kill the lion then reinforcement comes in to assist (more men with spears) and once the boy recovers from his wounds he must go back to training so that he can try again. WOW! First of all, I cannot imagine chasing after a lion, though I must admit that the thought has a certain appeal. Then giving it my hand as bait … what?? And how hard would it be to kill and cut off the head of a LION when it is biting my hand and scratching me with his claws. I asked Musa how long it would take to train me to kill a lion and he said “one month.” Apparently one time they did train an Aussie and he made it out alive. Something to think about for the future… he also told me that he’d like to take us to meet his family and tribe next time we come, which a more realistic possibility for in case we don’t have enough leave time for serious lion hunting. Musa shared with us other interesting things about his culture: their diet consists largely of milk, meat, and blood; the youth are discouraged from becoming educated; their faces are branded with circles under the eyes and two lower front teeth are removed as signs of their culture; there is some “sharing” of wives; etc. I was very, very impressed with Musa’s willingness to tell us about his culture, along with his sense of humor, desire to learn, and overall countenance.

After we presented the certificates of completion at the end of the day and provided everyone with a small, bagged moringa plant we invited people to stay and teach us more about their culture, especially topics relating to the spread of HIV. We have people from several different tribes, but spent most of our time talking to Musa about the Masai people and a man named Tito about the Wakulya tribe. Tito is very concerned for the young girls from his tribe. When these girls are in their teens they are taken to be circumcised (genital mutilation), then immediately made to walk 18 kilometers. Many girls have died from this practice since they are still bleeding when they must go for the long walk. The government of Tanzania is opposed to it but has not been successful in stopping it, partly because the people have started to perform the procedure at night. For male circumcision, several boys line up and are cut using the same knife. Tito asked us to come to his village and assist with providing education in these areas.

Tonight was our last night with the Chibesa Family. Chibesa and Fena have been incredibly hospitable to Jami, Megan and I. Fena works hard to prepare food, water, and make us feel at home. It has been great to get to spend this time with them so that we can know them better and see how they live their lives and interact with each other and their baby girl. They are the kind of people that the more I know them the more I like them.

That’s all for today!! Hakuna Matata!

Tannen

12/30/09 from Matt (HIV Ed Team)

2009-12-30T18:53:00.000-08:00

Sadly no one will see this in time to calm their fears about our arrival in Africa, but a little late is better than never I guess. Tanzania in the summer has been very different than Zambia so far. Due to abundance of water, both falling from the sky and pouring out of us, we have been taking one to two baths a day. I have never appreciated a cold shower so much as in the absence of air conditioning. Even though several members of our team have had trouble sleeping and needed to sleep in the living room under the fan, I have passed out every night and not even remembered my dreams. It’s kind of sad because the malaria medicine I’m taking is supposed to give you some incredible dreams.

So far we have visited the Indian Ocean, which was at least 90 degrees, and collected sand dollars to make necklaces. The people here are different than those in Zambia, we have not received the enthusiastic welcome in the markets. However, we were welcomed by our hosts and those who attended the seminars with joy. On our journey to the airport to pick up Tannen, Jim, Drew, and Megan, we gave a Masai tribe member a ride. He was security guard and interesting to say the least. We found out that he carried a long knife and a permit to kill people who were attempting to enter a house that he was guarding. Not surprisingly, with capital punishment for armed robbery and Masai guards, there is a strong deterrent for crime in general.

I noticed that the roads are much better in Dar Es Salaam than Mufulira, but at least the mini buses are similar. I was reminded of their danger and excitement when we hit a bridge embankment on the ride back from the airport and were thrown two and a half feet to the right. Fortunately we weren't going very fast and there were only a few bruises and bumps. As for the dangers that we have been protected from, I was about two inches from stepping on a scorpion on the second night, which induced a couple of responses that came out at the same time. Because of curiosity, I wanted to look closer and in contrast I felt like screaming like a little girl while yelling “kill it! kill it! kill it!”. OK, it wasn't that bad, I didn't end up yelling, and I was a little more calm than the situation called for. Happily I have been checking my shoes for unwanted visitors ever since.

As for the seminar, we had a good turn out and even with the language barrier, the students have been attentive and willing to learn. One highlight was when one of the Masai people wrote his story on our chalkboard. It is against their culture to teach children so it was especially touching to see him write in English that even though he was proud of his culture and would not leave it, he wanted to learn and would go against the wishes of his parents. He provides an interesting perspective in the classroom and has promised to teach us more about the Masai people; I’m excited about this. I would say that all five of our sessions went well even with a reduced schedule. So far, the biggest obstacle has been the heat and humidity. Jami and I constructed a whiteboard using four small whiteboards and duct tape, five minutes into her session the duct tape let go and the board was no more. Fortunately we have been trained to be adaptive by circumstances in Africa.

We are all doing well and hope to find Internet access soon so that we can share our stories. In summary, the people, food, and location is all great and we have been enjoying every minute. Until the next time, thank you all for your continued prayers and I hope to write again soon.

Matt

12/30/09 from Drew (Agriculture Team)

2009-12-30T18:44:00.000-08:00

Got to love this tropical weather! Hot at night, hotter in the day. We almost got a cab just to get the AC.

Matt, Reuben, Dad (Jim), and I are staying with Pastor Gervase and his family in a house. The fly zapper works well but the scorpion had to be killed the old fashioned way (shoe).

Today we finished the first day of work. After we ate breakfast Reuben, Dad, and I (team moringa) took a walk to look for a spot to plant moringa. We went about five feet and Dad spotted one….. No, not a place to plant moringa, a moringa tree about 18 feet tall with a 100+ pods and lots of leaves. Very useful for our work shop. We looked all over and that was the only moringa tree we saw.

After that Pastor Gervase, Reuben, Dad, and I went to an orphanage with shirts and candy. Just one of many in great need. They drink from a well (four feet hole in the dirt) and eat whenever they can.

Then we took a taxi to the church and walked around till the HIV ED team got done. We (team moringa) gave a ½ hour speech on moringa. I think that went over well.

All in all it was a good day.

Thank you for praying

Drew

12/29/09 from Megan

2009-12-29T18:38:00.000-08:00

"They've got cool bugs here, man." That would be Tannen's interpretation. Mine is "Ack, spiders! Ack! Get them off me! I'm gonna die!"

We also have a rather fantastic lizard keeping us company. Jami, Tannen, and I are staying with Pastor Chibesa and his wife, Fena, somewhere on the outskirts of Dar Es Salaam. Chibesa is Zambian, but has been living here since 2008, assisting Bishop Gervase Masanja, whose church we'll be borrowing for the next two days for our seminar.

We all arrived successfully, with only some of us delayed, and sans Tannen's bag (but who really needs clean underwear anyway?). While we were luggage hunting in the Nairobi airport, apparently Jami, Matt, and Reuben were here traipsing around on the beach, which they tell us is very close by. Hopefully we'll get a chance to check out the Indian Ocean before we have to depart. (And yes Mom, if this gets posted before Friday, we have train tickets, and no, I'm not going to run around by myself and get mugged.)

Okay, so I just took a shower. I don't want to give the impression that I'm ungrateful, because Chibesa and Fena are opening their home to us, which is seriously awesome, but I wouldn't want you to miss out on the opportunity to laugh at me. So the shower is essentially a bucket full of hot water that you pour over your head as you stand over the toilet which is a ceramic-lined hole in the floor. In short: do not drop the soap. Also, this would be an excellent time to shave my head. And most of all, I cannot BELIEVE how much water I waste taking a normal shower. I'm astounded by how little I can get by with even with the obnoxiously long hair.

Now it's back to revising my outlines for our seminar, because we're compressing a 4 day seminar designed for Muf to fit into 2 days, and we're adapting for translators. So far, my Swahili only extends to "Jambo!" (how are you?), "Habari" (hello), and "rafiki" (friend - why yes, I did learn that from the Lion King). We'll see how much more we can pick up in the next 48 hours.

Love to all,
Megan

Reuben's Last Blog 8-3-09

2009-08-03T03:44:00.001-07:00

The last few days have been much more quiet as our numbers have lessened being beginning early Friday morning. Myself, Jami and Matt are the last of the Americans to depart. We said many of our farewells last night to those we have met, worked with and shared these last two weeks. This morning was filled with our final packing, and some football with the children in the backyard. Until next time. Mwende Bweino.

Reuben

Matt's Last Blog 8-3-09

2009-08-03T03:44:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, it's been a while since any of us have blogged because we are running around like crazy people trying to get things done. I have been asked to summarized the last few days in one final blog. We finished up with the schools on Friday with sketches, games, presentations and songs. Jami, Rebecca and I rewrote the words to Amazing Grace to speak about HIV and it turned out really nicely. It was difficult to sing though because by Friday we all had sore throats and runny noses, but we are all feeling a lot better since then. So Friday night we showed the Jesus film in Murundu and if it is possible to drown in small children, it would happen in Murundu. Jami, Reuben and I were given the task of crowd control and it was nearly impossible, however with a few choice Bemba words like STOP and NO, and the use of a big stick we survived. Pastor Joseph and Dr. Thinus prayed for the crowds when the movie ended, and they all seemed to be excited about it. However, when the dust cleared we were all covered in dirt, about five shades darker, and unable to take a shower because the water in Mufulira turns off at ~22:00. Reuben had a bandage on all night and when he took it off, it was the closest thing to Zebra that I've seen since I've been in Africa. I don't know about anyone else, but I washed my hands about four times the next day and used hand sanitizer and each time I got a little lighter in color.

On Saturday, we took William and Heather to the Airport, but stopped at a snake farm first. It was a little sad to see the place so run down, but it's cool to stand less than a foot from a black mamba or a cobra that are being stored in unlocked display cabinets. You think about the people around you and wonder if someone will decide to slide one of the panes of glass to the side. So we said our goodbyes and came home to find that Jami and Dan had been working non stop for about 12 hours to ensure that the STS local clubs were sustainable. You could see how tired they both were, but there was still a lot of work to be done. We came back home for a traditional South African meal and the frantic packing began.

On Sunday morning, we all went with Dan, Carrie, Bashidan, and Liam to see them off. We watched the beginning of a copper plate import business taking off as Dan and Joel purchased hand made copper plates. We said our goodbyes, hugged and took pictures as four of our team left for home. Hopefully their flights all went well. After leaving the airport, we stopped at the roadside markets and Jami argued with a man named Brian for an hour trying to get a giraffe. She got the carving, but not for the price she wanted, so she swore to never wear a dress in Africa again. Jami met with Ida to set up the STS computer and library, while Reuben and I discussed the nature of sin and the Law with Dr. Thinus. Once at home, Jami was still working like... well normal for her... but incredibly hard to finish the STS budget before we all leave. We said our good byes to some of our friends and finished packing. I think that we will all welcome the rest that the 20 hour plane ride can bring, but we will definitely miss Zambia, especially the people that we have come to know and love.

-Matt

8/1/09 from Reuben

2009-08-01T14:16:00.000-07:00

The house has been very busy as we work to complete our projects in the final days. Friday was our last working day at Joseph's house and the clinic. We wished our future doctor and pharmacy friends (Mike, Jake and Alden) well at 4 am this morning, as they departed for Livingston to see victory falls. Joel, Liam and I finished up everything we could on the clinic and hung the "Gracie's Place" sign above the door before departing. The team constructed desks, benches and shelves for the clinic, all of the furniture is being stored at Joseph's house for safe keeping until the doors on the clinic are in place. Our work has made a good start and we hope to see the clinic come to be a place of health and healing.

The agricultural work has gone well. We finished seeding the intensive cultivation plots on Thursday, with 500 seeds in each of the three plots, just north of the shade house. The shade house is filled with over 1000 planting bags, 1073 to be exact :D Many bags and seeds remain and Joseph has the additional supplies in safe keeping to continue with more planting bags in the future. We have shared seeds and planting bags with several other people and hope to spread seeds and knowledge of moringa farther this year.

The irrigation system for the vegetable garden and moringa is working nicely. Bringing water to the field is perhaps the best accomplishment of this year's work in the fields. This will enable much more ease in growing the moringa and other crops year round.

Many hands, minds and hearts have helped with this year's work and many people will continue the work here in Zambia after our American team has departed. May our work continue to grow and bring life and health.

Mwemde Bwino, Good Journeys,
Reuben

7/28/09 - Reuben's Agriculture Blog

2009-07-28T16:39:00.000-07:00

The agriculture and construction projects continue to go well. Jake, Mike and Alden helped Joel build desks and tables for the clinic today at Dr. Thinus' house in Mufulira while I worked on Moringa at Joseph's house in Murundu. We will take the completed furniture to Joseph's house in the morning and once the doors are secured to the clinic, it can be moved there.

I was the only one going to Murundu this morning so I rode the mini bus from Mufulira to Murundu. This was my first time navigating Zambia on my own. The bus dropped me off in the center of Murundu and after a short walk in the wrong direction, I quickly found my way back on to the correct path and arrived at Joseph's house in short course. I was asked by several people on the bus and in the streets while I walked what I was doing/why I was here. I talked about both the HIV Ed in the schools and the agriculture work with people and they were very interested. I must stick out a bit here for some reason... j/k

Our planting bags are progressing steadily. We had our highest production day yet, 250 bags! That brings the total to 750. The shade house should be able to hold 1500 seedling at capacity. I expect to continue the planting bags for the rest of this week to fill as much of the shade house as possible before we all return to the USA. Joseph and company can of course finish filling the shade house after the STS USA team departs, but it would be a joy to see it full before leaving Zambia. The area for the intensive cultivation plot was tilled today and I have 1500 seeds soaking over night (approximately, I didn't count them all...). We have some minor bugs to work out with the sprinklers and sprayer hose and nozzle, but nothing that should be too difficult.

Take care wherever you may be.
Reuben

7/28/09 from Heather

2009-07-28T14:08:00.000-07:00

Muli Shani Everyone!

Let me start by saying Tannen and Megan are greatly missed, as is the rest of the VanZwieten clan (though I am very happy to have fewer people to fight with over the shower in the mornings). I hope everyone had an uneventful trip back and is enjoying the luxuries of home in America.

Today was a wonderful day here in Zambia! My group (Carrie, Dan, William, and I) traveled to Luansobe, just around the corner from where our sports camp was held the past two Saturdays. We each have a classroom of about 30 students, which is a bit more than we would like but it is working out quite well! I should also mention that the students are fluent in Bimba, which means they are not quite so fluent in English -- in fact only about 10 of my students can say a few words in English, and only about 4 can actually speak and understand English. My class is made up of Grade 7 pupils ranging in age from 13 through 17. It is the older children who have a much better grasp on the English language, but we still have some words that simply do not translate from English to Bimba. Today we discussed the basics of HIV because the majority of the students could not answer the quiz questions I presented yesterday. Also, my translator was the teacher, so I am not quite sure that we were on the same page. Today I had one of the STS translators, a pastor from Tanzania, Chibesa and he was wonderful to work with because he has our same vision in mind. Also, he can understand me, even when I speak quickly, which happens frequently.

We went to our second school today, Kalanga Basic School, and did not have as much luck because, for the second day in a row, the students are completing their exams. We were told yesterday to come back at 13:00 hours today because testing would be over, but the Civics exam was about to begin so we could not have the students.

Not being able to go to Kalanga worked out alright though because the construction team was very busy building furniture for the Murundu clinic, Grace's Place, at Dr. T's house. Joel, Jake and Alden were already busy working on the furniture when we pulled up in our taxi (thank you Alfred for being a very trustworthy driver for us!). William and Dan joined in, as did Mike who was just returning as well, and by the end of the evening three desks and one exam table were completed. All of the furniture looks great and is very sturdy should there be any "screaming and wriggling" children, in the words of Joel.

Jami, Matt, Liam, and Rebbecca were at Murundu for the first time today and they said that it went quite well. To quote Matt "there were a lot of kids and Liam played with balloons." In other news, Jami has lost her voice today and is having trouble talking over a whisper. We have tried to encourage her to not talk as much, but anyone who knows her knows that is not going to happen, nor will telling her to slow down and not work so hard. Please keep her in your prayers so that she will have a voice back tomorrow and the rest of the week to teach the students all she knows in 4 days. She said that it's hard enough getting them to understand English, much less when you cannot raise your voice above a whisper. Jami did not lose her voice until the end of class today, so hopefully there will not be any time without a voice. Matt and Reuben had gone into town to get bread where they also picked up a Fanta for her. The Fanta did not improve her voice, but it did boost her spirits.

On an unrelated STS point, I NEVER want a pet monkey! Liam brought the neighbor's monkey into Dr. T's house to show to everyone. I was happy just taking a photo of it, but then my curiosity got the best of me and I followed the monkey and the pet monkey (hahaha) outside. Liam sort of threw the monkey at me, which I didn't have to catch because he clung to me like a tree branch. I moved a tad too close to the door and the monkey was off my back faster than he had gotten on it and onto the door frame instead. I tried to comfort him and pull him off the door, and the next thing I knew he had bitten me! No blood was drawn, so no panic please, this is not the next Outbreak The Movie in progress. The monkey came over today and I stayed clear of the critter altogether.

Adventures in Zambia are sure to continue! Please do not forget our whole team in your prayers, especially as the traveling for everyone back to America will begin in a few days.

Heather

7/27/09 from Reuben

2009-07-27T17:59:00.003-07:00

We began the day bright and early at the saw mill to pick up the load of timber for furniture for the new clinic in Murundu (Grace's Place). After that we returned to town for painting supplies and were off in a taxi to Murundu. I was dropped off at Joseph's house for work on Moringa while Joel, Jake, Alden, Mike, Liam and Rebecca when to the clinic to paint and clean.

The Moringa project is progressing steadily. Myself and many of Joseph's sons worked on the planting bags most of the day. At day's end our count was 500 plus. Our current space will allow for approximately 1500 planting bags in the shade house. I ended my planting efforts a little sooner than expected today when the HIV ed team stopped by Joseph's house in Murundu around 1500. Three muzoongos (forgive the misspelling, its the local term for white people), me, Jami and Matt and four Zambians, Pastor Terry, Martinz, Carmelitar and Rebecca took a trip to the Congo border for some shopping.

We hope to start the intensive cultivation portion of the Moringa project tomorrow and continue to fill planting bags until the shade house is full. Our timber is secured in the hallway of Dr.Thinus's house as we all turn in for some well earned rest.

7/27/09 from Matt

2009-07-27T17:59:00.002-07:00

It's been almost a week since my last blog, but here it goes. The kids have been great in all the schools that we have been to, and it is incredibly difficult to say good bye to them. However today we started with a fresh new intake of students, which should be a lot smoother than the last round. Jami, Pastor Terry, Martinz, Carmelitar and myself all went to Vineyard Basic today, and from what I can tell the kids are very intelligent, fluent in English and shy. I would have liked to have seen more HIV knowledge, but I guess that's part of why we are here. After we finished, we waited for a notoriously unreliable taxi driver to pick us up, but after a half an hour we walked to get a minibus.

The minibus seems to be a staple of third world countries and is still by far the most effective method to convert an atheist in the world today. If you aren't praying while you are bouncing on a seat that pivots backwards toward a back hatch that is wide open and tied down with twine, you are most likely clinically dead. However, we safely made it to Murundu basic a half hour late, and found that the students had been sent home. In America, I would have been pretty upset because Dan and I set this up a week prior, but here it seems normal. As a result, we got to tour the clinic, the agricultural project, and we went about 200 meters from the Congo to buy some material for a tailor in town. Both Reuben and I bought some before taking a chance on the long ride back to Mufulira in another minibus. Overall, it was a great day, which seems to be the trend here. I hope all is well at home; I will continue to keep you all in my prayers and I thank you all for keeping us in yours.

Matt

7/27/09 from Liam

2009-07-27T17:59:00.001-07:00

Hey ya'll! This is Liam. Today was a great day. I'm almost done with the painting. Today, Rebecca and I finished the sun painted on the wall in Grace's clinic. We have to put the background colors and the words Under 5 painted on the wall. It took about a week to get the regular first coat of paint on. I had to cram into a taxi of 8 people that couldn't go over 10 mph and the tail of the taxi was dragging on the ground. I got home and ate lots of food that was goooood! Went and hung out with some homies and one of them had a pet monkey... now my monkey. I'm thinking of different ways of smuggling it back to the USA. All input is welcome. Good night!

Liam

7/25/09 from Jami

2009-07-27T17:59:00.000-07:00

Sleep has been in short supply the last couple of days as we've all tried to cram in as much as possible in our few short weeks here in Zambia. Time does has a significant way of changing once your feet touch Zambian soil! We rose early and almost frantically as we had to be out of the house by 8AM on the dot so that we (Dan, Carrie, Liam, Reuben, Matt, Heather, William, Joel, Jacabo, Rebecca, Carmiltar, Terry, Chibasa, and I) could arrive for the sports clinic on time and allow Dr. Thinus to arrive back at the house at 9AM to pick up Tannen, Megan, Jack and Jim for their return trip to the USA. We had to all say our fast goodbyes... jump into the van and off we went... on time. We were all sad to know they were all leaving us. We've all had such an amazing time together. We miss them.

The sports clinic today was awesome! How much fun is it to travel all the way to Zambia and get to play and teach tennis and basketball... two of my favorite sports in the world! Everyone will be glad to know that I didn't break anything and wore ankle braces on both ankles!!! I taught tennis to about 100 Zambian girls. The portable tennis nets worked out perfectly. We put chalked lines down that were scaled against a full size tennis court. The kids enjoyed helping us make the courts. I brought the special foam tennis balls for beginners to practice with, which worked out really good. Before we started, Reuben and I gave an exhibition on how to play tennis. That was fun and they all cheered for us. We hit some ground strokes and volleys. They liked the volleying the best. We had one court for boys and one for girls. That way the girls wouldn't get pushed to the side. Which seems to happen a lot with sports. But that wasn't going to happen with me there!!! For the last hour of "sports time" we had the boys leave the basketball court and the girls took over. I taught them how to guard and shoot... it was fantastic! The girls were so tired when we were finished but they seemed to have a great time. We had volleyball, basketball, tennis, football (soccer for us USA folks) and a new addition was martial arts. Matt did a demo after our tennis exhibition and the kids LOVED it. It was amazing to look up and see 50 plus Zambian boys all doing martial arts in unison. He had his own little army. It was really a cool addition. The last hour we had presentations, one for the boys and one for the girls. We went over some basics about HIV/AIDS and then the girls talked about gossiping and what we think about ourselves as women.

Another interesting part of the day was I met a Zambian boy, about 19 years old, who was deaf. He was so interesting. He could sign. There apparently is a school around here that is for the blind and deaf. I don't know anything about it except it exists. I cannot sign much. I only know how to sign the alphabet and how to sign I love you. So I did the best I could. I signed my name to him. He was signing in Bemba though... and I don't know that much Bemba... so we kind of had two language barriers. But we did manage to communicate. He taught me how to sign his name and my name, without spelling it all the way through. He was so smart and so much fun to get to know.

The day ended with 14 tired STSers and many tired kids. We hopped on a minibus and we ate our food as quickly as possible as we headed home. We spent the rest of the day resting and William and Matt put up a basketball goal at Dr. Thinus' house for the kids. It was awesome. I then I taught the kids how to shoot. Later in the afternoon, Elizabeth (Josephine & Shadi's little girl ~ 2 years old) fell asleep sitting in my lap, so cute! Later that night, Dr. Thinus and Shadi made a giant bonfire and we roasted marshmallows and sat by the fire. It's been cold here so the fire was a welcomed source for heat! All-in-all it was an amazing day!

Jami

7/24/09 from Carrie

2009-07-25T15:09:00.000-07:00

Muli shani (hello) from all of us in Zambia. The HIV education team (Dan, Carrie, William, Matt, Jami) finished its last day for the first week of teaching at Mutamba Basic School and Greyson Basic School. Around 9:30 in the morning we took taxis to Mutamba where we met with some teachers involved in an Anti-AIDS club at Mutamba. After a presentation Dan gave on Stop the Spread Clubs, the teachers eagerly agreed to partner with us, thus beginning a new phase of HIV education for the students at Mutamba. Carmelitar, a local 29 year old retired teacher, will facilitate the STS club at Mutamba, organizing weekly club meetings with club parents and "aunties." Carmeltiar will go in depth on the topics that we taught the students this week, covering basic biological information on HIV to reducing the stigma people infected with HIV may face by encouraging the students to understand that HIV affects everyone-mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. The teachers at Mutamba are very excited about fusing the club Anti-AIDS into the STS club.

Overall, teaching at Mutamba was a great experience; the students were cooperative and bright, active participants, which helped fuel a discussion based lesson. On the first day of teaching we had them begin planning for a presentation at the end of the week. In my (Carrie) class of 25 girls, the girls split up into four groups and began working on their project. On Friday morning each class room presented their projects. We had skits on sugar daddies, getting tested for HIV and songs on the effects of the HIV crisis in Zambia. The school-wide presentation was a big hit at the school. After saying our goodbyes to the students, the headmaster at Mutamba, Henry, invited us into his office to thank us for all our hard work during the week. All the teachers were very appreciative of STS, so much so that they wrote a combined 'thank you' letter to us. Henry had one of the students read the letter aloud to the HIV ed group. STS looks forward to the years to come of partnership with Mutamba Basic School.

We ate our lunch (PB&Js) on the walk from Mutamba to Greyson through downtown Mulfilira. Walking through the markets, eating lunch, laughing, and talking with the rest of the team was always a nice transition from one school to the next. I have been learning tremendously from all the rest of the group on how intricate teaching can be. It is like an art to learn to get the students to talk and open up. On Tuesday when I walked into the classroom full of girls staring at me from across the room, in the first five minutes I could barely get words out of my mouth, but after encouragement and support and mostly strength that is not my own, I have begun to enjoy teaching. In the mornings I would teach the girls at Mutamba and then help and observe Jami as she taught the girls at Greyson. It was a wonderful balance.

Once we wrapped the classes up at Greyson, the group set out for the market. Outside of Shoprite, the local grocery store, a group of little beggar boys always gather around the Muzungus (that would be us!). Most of them do not have shoes, so Dan bargained for a pair of shoes at the market for one of the boys. It is hard to see children walking around shoeless, knowing that they do not even have money to feed their empty stomachs. If you lived in Zambia, it would be nearly impossible not to adopt some of these orphaned children.

In the evening, all seventeen of us piled into the "Say Yes to Jesus" van and drove to Murundu where we were supposed to show the Jesus film in Bimba. Unfortunately, the speakers were having some issues, so we will have to come back next Friday. While in Murundu, Jami was offered some children for a good price from a drunk man. s.c.a.r.y. I wonder what the going rate for children is these days... Because of the large crowd, the hordes of children, and drunk men and the fact that it was dark, Murundu did not have the safest feel to it. When we got back, the girls received some excellent self-defense tips from the guys. Jami, me and Heather are well protected by the household of men!

7/25/09 from Jim -- Irrigation/Moringa Team

2009-07-25T14:54:00.000-07:00

Two weeks are over. They were amazing. The irrigation / moringa team started out with plans to install a simple sprinkling system. This turned into a huge irrigation system that covers about an acre. We installed a submersible pump and pressure tank, over 2000 feet of pipe, 200 feet of electrical lines, 23 sprinkler heads, 11 gate valves, 4 hose bibs, and a misting system for our shade house. The shade house was built the second week, complete with a large work table. We have completed about 300 planting bags and have a capacity of 2000. The last 1700 will be completed next week. Each bag will have a moringa seedling that will be ready for planting at the beginning of rainy season (October).

We also almost finished the pump house. The concrete footer and block walls are done. The roof and door will be done Monday. The well had a dangerous opening with children always around. We covered the top with concrete and a safe cover will be installed on Monday.

We ordered the wood for the clinic today. Next week the painting, murals, shelving and furniture will be built. The clinic will be partially stocked and ready for operation.

Our entire team of 19, including Dr T + Tricia, worked together amazingly well and everyone's strengths were put to good use.

Jim (Bashi Tannen)

7/23/09 from Heather

2009-07-23T16:53:00.000-07:00

Hello from Zambia! And HAPPY BIRTHDAY to our fearless leader Tannen!!

The past two days have gone really well with the girls at Pamodzi, the school Megan, Tannen and I are teaching. The first day (Tuesday) was a tad disheartening because all of the girls sat in the back, right hand corner of the room and would not move up to the front of the class near the muzungus and really didn't know what to think about class participation. Wednesday and today really made me change my mind! These girls are engaged, very intelligent, funny, participating in every discussion, and all around amazing!! The future of Zambia is looking very bright because of these incredible young women.

Yesterday we discussed life choices and how to make good decisions. They seemed to really like our 3 part system for making decisions:
Step 1 -- Is the choice Lawful?
Step 2 -- Is the choice Wise?
Step 3 -- Weigh the pros and cons of the choice

Today we discussed topics specific to females, which in an all girls school would really be all of the topics discussed. We talked about how women need to be support systems for each other and not use gossip to put other girls down or gain popularity. The girls really enjoyed our main activity of listing all of the good things girls can be on the blackboard and the promises God made and what he thinks about each and every one of us (we are wonderfully and fearfully made, God loves each of us, etc.). Then each girl blew up a balloon and wrote something mean someone had said to them on the balloon. We then taped the balloons over all of the good things on the board to show that the hurtful things people say about us can cover up all of the good things God wants us to know about ourselves. Each student then got to come to the front of the room and *POP* the balloon with the hurtful thought and say "That's a lie!" The whole activity went over very well and the girls seemed very empowered. (And a word of advice, should you every come to Zambia, the #1 fashion no-no is wearing tight pants.)

The school was in testing today, so we had to go early which meant we had more time in the afternoon to go to Murundu and see the orphans get fed -- the place was pure chaos! We also had the chance to check out the new clinic and see the artwork Liam has been doing in one of the rooms. We then went over to Joseph's house where all of the work is being done on the property to provide a well and shade house for the trees being planted and it looks amazing! Thanks to Joel, Jim, Jack, Alden (though apparently construction may not be his favorite thing), and everyone else that is making the project look so good and help so many. I also got to practice a few "football" skills, which really could only be considered football because it involved me throwing a foot ball as high in the air as I could and watching the kids scramble to catch it. Has anyone mentioned how serious these kids are about sports?!? They put competition a whole new league!!

But now it is time for bed because this week has been a long one. I hope that everyone reading is doing well and will continue to keep our crew in your prayers.

Heather

7/22/09 from Reuben -- Irrigation Project

2009-07-22T15:20:00.000-07:00

The team continues to work very well together and make steady progress in Murundu on the irrigation system for the vegetable garden, and the shade house for the Moringa planting bags. Our delivery of timber arrived from the Congo yesterday and we had put nearly every piece to good use by the day's end today. The shade house is completed except for the spray system that will tie off the of irrigation and water the planting bags as the seeds germinate. We plan to begin the Moringa planting bags tomorrow and complete them in the coming days.

The team visited Joseph's orphanage in Murudu for the first time of this year's trip. There is space for a four room clinic (Grace's Place) at the orphanage and after we complete our work at Joseph's house on the irrigation system and shade house, we plan to build furniture for the clinic. We are staying busy every day and enough supplies are available to fill the needs of our work. The whole team remains healthy and excited about continuing the work and we look forward to sharing pictures of the irrigation system coming to life.

The Zambians are amazing and working with them every day teaches me more than I can put into words. The boys help us in the fields in the mornings before they go to school and Joseph's wife prepares lunch for us each day. Some of the young men help us as well and the work would not be nearly as far along without everyone's efforts.

Take care and be well,
Reuben

Greetings from Zambia from Matt

2009-07-22T15:02:00.000-07:00

So, I have been in Zambia for a grand total of three days, and have loved every minute of it. The people are wonderful and just about everything is an adventure. The first school we went to had examinations and could not let the students meet with us, but we found a replacement and have been teaching at two schools every day. The first school is called Mutomba Basic, where I teach 22 students. They are incredibly intelligent, more polite than any student I have ever met in the states, and hungry for knowledge. However, there is a language barrier that has me simplifying what I say to the point that I no longer use complete sentences when I talk. Jami has been making fun of me for it, but if I don't, the kids will not understand. At the second school, Greyson Basic, there are far fewer students and I have been teaching a single student named Sydney. He is in sixth grade, shy, and will have a personal tutor, HIV educator, Life skills coach, for the whole week. I don't blame the students because they wait an hour each day for us to come after school lets out and they do not pack lunches, 12 hrs without any food is not something that the candy we give them can satisfy. Either way, I have taken all of their names down and will be praying for each and every one of the students while I'm here and will continue when I get home. I can see God working in their lives and I would like to see how they make out in the coming year.

I have been working with two translators, Martin and Sydney, who are amazing men of God. They have a joy and a passion within them that is easy to see and comes out while they speak with the students. Its great to allow the students to express themselves in Bemba (their native language), because otherwise I would be struggling to get anything meaningful out of the students. I was a little worried about our progress with the students on the first day, but as time has passed I can see that they are opening up to us. Today, we did an awesome demonstration using Coke Zero and Mentos to illustrate what pornography does to your sexual appetite. With each day, I believe that our team will help to change these kids lives for the better.

Now for the fun part. I was initially sad because I missed a trip to 6 flags the weekend I left, but when I rode in Dr. Thinus' van from Ndola to Mufulira, I knew that I wasn't missing out on any of the excitement. The van is a petrol powered roller coater on these roads. Never let me complain about the roads in Boston again, there are potholes here that could swallow a school bus! We are staying with 19 people in the house right now, so the basics like privacy, modesty, and showers are in short supply. Fortunately, deodorant is not and we all are getting along great. I love shopping here, but because we are white, they charge us close to double for everything. If you keep that in mind, you get a really good idea for how much you should be paying. As for the food, I don't eat this well at home. We have had beef curry, stew, chicken carbonara and enshima with fresh chicken. When I say fresh, I mean I carried out the boiling water this morning to where they were being plucked. Pointing this fact out tends to turn some people into temporary vegetarians, but it doesn't work on me, it was all delicious.

I'm glad that I could write a blog for this evening, and I thank you all for your prayers. Please continue and I hope to write more in the coming week as the first half of our team departs. I love you all and hope that all is well.

Respectfully,
Matt Porter

7/21/09 from Dan

2009-07-21T18:54:00.000-07:00

Greetings to everyone in the States! Since I have not updated everyone, I will give some reflections on my time here since arriving this past Friday. But to start, I will tell you of the progress of today. First of all, the HIV Education Team 1 (William, Carrie, Jami, Matt, and Dan) went to two schools today, one in the morning at Mutamba, it was our first time there this week. It was a great school, with a highly organized administration. We asked for 6 classrooms and for 20 people to be in each classroom, single gender. The Deputy Headmaster said "No Problem" (a common Zambian phrase). And lo and behold, 20 minutes later we walked into each classroom, with the exact number of seated students. I have been here 6 times, and that was a first. We found that they knew very little about HIV/AIDS, so most of us spent our time going over HIV/AIDS information, to set a foundation. I had a great group of guys (Grade 8 and 9), they were very lively and, as the class went on, they became very talkative. In Zambia, the students are used to lecture style, so to transition to more discussion based teaching takes time. But these young men caught on fast, with the help of candy. Then the Deputy Headmaster gave us a ride to the other school (Greyson Basic), which was VERY GENEROUS. This was our second day at Greyson and unfortunately some of the students that we had yesterday were not in school this time. Also, the pupils had to cut out early, so our time at this school was a little less regulated, but we taught as much as we could. Then we took a trip to the Copy Shop (took a long time). Then, in preparation for an illustration for tomorrow, we bought two liters of Coke Zero and walked back to a side alley and dropped half a pack of Mentos in and watched it fountain into the sky (the boys on the street enjoyed it thoroughly). Then we stopped at the corner store and enjoyed an ice cream under the retiring sun. It was a great day here in Zambia.

The HIV Team 2 (Tannen, Jami, Heather) spent the morning working on future STS things for the upcoming semester, they have been the busiest of bees in this hive. Then they went to Pomodzi Girls in the afternoon and tag-teamed a group of 25 girls. We have been to Pomodzi many times, so it is always good to revisit a place and encourage old friends and make new ones!

The Agriculture Team (Jim, Uncle Jack, Reuben, Alden) nearly finished the irrigation system, only some final sprinklers are left to put in. The project has become a larger scale project than even they expected. They have irrigated around an acre from a single well, which is a pretty impressive feat.

The Construction Team (Joel, Drew) got the wood for the shade house today and nearly finished the shade house already. They have a couple hours of work left tomorrow and then they will turn their efforts toward building furniture for the clinic.

The Health Team (Mike, Jake) worked in a clinic today, diagnosing and treating Malaria, treating a baby with pneumonia, and making home visits in the community. Pretty impressive!

And Liam continues to paint, make new friends, and prove himself to be a lot more of a Zambian than any of the rest of us lame "Muzungus."

As far as reflections go, it is good to be back in a place that is truly beginning to feel like a second home. It is strange to walk through the streets of Mufulira and see the things that have changed and how many things have stayed the same. This place and the people soak into you, especially when you drink of the experience time and again. As things in your own life change, things here change too, but in a different way. It is fascinating to be here, it always is. I am looking forward to and asking God to open our eyes to His movements, His hand, His face. So continue to pray for us, that He would give us open eyes to see Him and open doors to share Him with others. Thank you for your prayers. They are what makes what we do of Him. Please continue...

7/18/09 from Heather

2009-07-19T18:31:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to have 100 Zambian children running at you with all the speed and fury of a Cheetah? Well, the three newbies (Carrie, William, and me, Heather) found out just how that feels, but we'll get to that in a minute.

The day started fairly early with Dr. T's cheerful morning wakeup call followed by a quick breakfast. We piled a bunch of soccer balls, basketballs, and volleyballs into the back of the van for the sports clinic we would be running later in the day. Everyone piled into the van and off we went to Luansobe for a day of sports and fun (and a little work of course).

The plan for the day was to clean up the sports fields and basketball court then have a little fun teaching the students a little more about the sports they loved to play. The clean up turned out to work fairly well because the older male students were put to work with shovels scraping the grass that had grown up over the edges of the basketball court. The next age bracket of boys picked up rocks from around the fields and courts. The young children were tasked with picking up the trash and the billions of little husks and scraps from sugar cane from around the same area. I got the bright idea to have a contest between my team of about 10 boys and Tannen's team of the same. I lost the attention of these young boys fairly quickly, though I kept the contest going by myself with only the help of a 2 year old who could not understand a word I said. He would collect a piece of trash, show it to me, then take the single item (wrapper, stick, bag, etc.) to the heap. Tannen of course took home the gold on the most trash collected, but this is mainly because, like the lovely Maria from the sound of music, she began singing at the top of her lungs a Zambian song she had learned -- which of course sent the kids running. Kids, I may mention, including my 10 little hooligans who began piling trash in the competition's pile instead of ours. The favorite song of the day was one involving the phrase "everything is double double, everything is triple triple" which I'm sure you could have heard from space as there were at least 40 kids following her around by this point.

After cleanup the students were allowed to play the different sports with little STS team member involvement then the real fun of the Sports Clinic began. Dan and William (my husband) were in charge of basketball. If you asked either one of them when the last time they picked up a basketball it was before the word "teen" was in their age. Nevertheless, the kids seemed to have a wonderful time and even learned something. Megan led a group in soccer (football) drills to the boys who were not too busy playing a very rough game of football on their own. I have never seen such young children have such incredible football skills!! Watch out David Beckham (or whoever is impressive in the world of football today -- obviously I am not a follower of the sport myself).

Now the sport few kids really knew much about was volleyball, but boy did we have a large group of people to teach the eager students! Thanks to Gino from the Florida Beach Volleyball Tour, we were able to supply the school with a volleyball net installed by many members of the VanZwieten family, Joel Wolf, and a few others. The net looked great and the kids seemed to have a wonderful time, including watching a few "pro" exhibition matches and even participating in a few of their own.

After the sports came the "short" STS presentation. Because we were told it wouldn't last more than a little bit, the three newbies (remember them? The ones attacked by the so-called Cheetahs?) agreed to watch the kids who were too young or too hyper to sit through the talk. Let me say, bad idea to anyone thinking about such a task. By the time the search and rescue team came for the naive newcomers, the total kid count was well over 100 and the total body count could have been 3 had Drew VZ not delivered a secret message that stated simply, "We can't hold them back much longer! Send HELP!"

All in all, the day was so much fun and very productive. The students got to help clean up their community, play some fun games, and learn about HIV/AIDS, all good goals for a Saturday afternoon.

I pray that everyone reading this is doing well and is continuing to keep this trip and its members in their prayers.

Have a great night,

Heather

7/16/09 from Tannen

2009-07-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

Drew, Liam, Megan and I met some locals downtown at 8 am and headed out to Murundu for the morning. Drew and Jacabo (Shadi's son) painted while Liam and Rebecca (the Enfys teacher's sister) started sketching for the under 5 clinic at Grace's Place. Right next door is a shaded area where they have the afternoon feeding program for 200+ kids, and this is where the women meet. My cousin Renelle packed something for us that is somewhere between playdough and clay and can be used to make earrings, buttons, beads, and other things. We had fun putting the different colors together and then cutting it into round or square pieces and cooking it in a make-shift oven (a pot with coals over and under it). I am interested in finding out what supplies they can find locally to do something similar to this, but I am pleased to see the women excited about making some crafts and earning money for their families.

The woman who will be heading up the educational component of Enfys is planning to focus her efforts on the women and the younger kids. She said that "if you educate the women, you educate the whole household," which makes a lot of sense to me. Things like good hygiene, learning English and how to read and write may be a starting place, and they seem eager to learn.

Public transport doesn't always work at the same pace as we would like, especially from the village. Today was no exception, and Drew, Liam, Megan and I found ourselves waiting for a taxi in Murundu for over an hour. This gave us some extra time to play with the kids, since 30 or so of them had followed us to the area where the combi/bus comes. Drew and Liam are very comfortable hanging with the local crowd, and they get plenty of attention. Megan and I took to teaching a group of kids the electric slide, and it has to be more fun here than at any wedding back in the day. The kids love to hold our hands, poke at our funny white skin and hair, and do about anything that we can come up with on the fly. I'd like to just sit and hang with them all day, but the taxi did eventually come and that was the end of it for today.

This afternoon was our last at Butondo High School. The students have been working on HIV-related projects this week and they presented them today, so Drew and Liam joined us to listen in and help judge the competition. They put a fair bit of work into them -- one group visited a hospital, another group taught HIV education in a basic school, another group surveyed people in the community, and others presented skits, poems and songs. It was great to see what they came up with! There are a lot of bright students and they were overall a great group to work with this week.

Dr T and my dad are teasing me for writing a novel, so I think that's my cue. Hope all is going well back in the states! Thanks for reading our updates. :)

Tannen

7/16/09 from Oom Jack -- Irrigation System

2009-07-16T14:29:00.000-07:00

The last two days Jim, Alden and I have continued to work on the irrigation system. After making a few measurements of the well and the irrigation field, we have decided to use a medium to high pressure (50 psi) impulse driven sprinkler system with a submersible pump (there is electric available). We were able to purchase a suitable pump in Kitwe, a small town about 50 miles from here. With the help of some local men we were able to drop the pump into the well and make enough connections to pump some water. The well was pumped down to make sure that it had sufficient capacity to supply the irrigation system. After the test we have confidence that it does.

Today we went back to Kitwe and purchased the remaining supplies needed to begin the installation of the emitters. Tomorrow we hope to have enough of the plumbing done to begin testing some of them.

We have a very good team here that I enjoy working with. We are making good progress and at this time are further along than I expected to be.

"Oom" Jack

7/15/09 from Megan

2009-07-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

Today Tannen and I went to visit the women's craft group in Murundu with Hilda. There are about 15 women using strips cut from plastic bags to crochet handbags - they're very well designed, and I was impressed by the ingenuity of their hook-making. They file down pieces of thick gauge wire that they can find lying around, and then cut a notch in the end to form a hook. They learned the bag technique from Villages of Hope, a non-profit down south that we visited back in February. There's a national craft fair that they plan to take their bags and beaded jewelry to later in the year.

I should also mention that we went to Twatasha clinic yesterday with the musketeers. The head of the clinic is a wonderful Catholic nun who trained as a nurse in Germany (I gather that she must be fluent in at least 4 languages), and she took a good chunk of time out of her morning to show us how an HIV test is conducted. Of course, she needed a volunteer, so Tannen and I decided that this would be a good time to experience first-hand exactly what we are always recommending that our kids do. So we got tested. It was a little bit scary - there's always this thing lurking in the back of your head saying, but what if... I have hugged kids with sores, what if one of them was positive... I have been working in a country with a 1 in 6 infection rate, what if I got a cut that I never noticed and somehow exchanged blood with someone... The scenarios you construct in your head don't even make sense, but when it comes to waiting for that little tester strip to tell you whether you need to be on some serious drugs for the rest of your life, it's amazing what you come up with.

I am happy to report that we're both HIV negative, though I can't say much for our pain tolerance, since we both yelped pathetically when pricked in the finger. I have a new appreciation for the relief of that moment when a tiny little strip of paper tells you that you have nothing to fear - and exactly how much we are asking of these kids who might have much more reason to be afraid of a positive result.

In the afternoons, we've been at Butondo High School, which is in the midst of exams for the 12th graders. It was a little bit crazy getting organized the first day, but both yesterday and today went well. This year's format is much more interactive than we've done in the past, and the kids are really getting into it. We've had them brainstorming projects to raise HIV awareness in their communities, and they'll be presenting them tomorrow. One group went to visit a local hospital today (and one kid got his hand x-rayed, just for fun), and another went to visit a basic school (for grades 1-8) to talk about HIV. I'm impressed by how quick they are at taking the initiative and doing things, with just a little motivation from us.

Now time for more endabas, the never-ending meetings which haunt our every waking moment. It's going to be all kinds of crazy when everyone else arrives on Friday and Saturday...

Love to you all,
Megan

7/15/09 from Liam & Drew

2009-07-15T14:13:00.000-07:00

We painted today. In the under 5 clinic room, each wall is going to explain a step in which Moringa takes to grow and prepare it for eating. There are going to be things like banana trees and sunsets and stuff in the background. We recruited Rebecca (a teacher who is helping Enfys), Jacob (Shadi's son), and Joseph's son to help.

The kids must have asked my name and how old I am 100 times. The same kid asked me at least 20 times. Now Liam just tells them "Muzungu." They are very observant of our skin color. They taught me a new word - "Jinga" which means bicycle.

The one fish that I (Drew) ate was sub-par. Liam ate some guppies, too. Don't ever eat those things! EV3R?!?!!

Drew dominated Liam in an imaginary game of soccer. Liam destroyed Drew in an imaginary game of volleyball (as they say, the malaria pills give you some pretty weird dreams).

Liam likes the African pace of life, but it drives Drew crazy.

Working in the village is good. It is an amazing experience to be here and we hope to come back.

Liam and Drew

From Bashi Tannen -- Irrigation System

2009-07-14T15:21:00.000-07:00

We laid out the whole project today, which consists of almost one acre of vegetable gardens and moringa groves. Once the irrigation project is complete, hopefully we will have a Garden of Eden that will provide food for 200+ orphans, the church planting school, and funds for the orphanage. Hundreds of feet of ditch were dug & most of the material was ordered or purchased. Jack's knowledge of farming was put to good use - for someone who claimed he doesn't know much about irrigation systems he sure has an incredible hidden talent! There is a lot of potential and the soil quality is good. With irrigating, the garden should be able to produce year round instead of only during the 5 month rainy season.

By the end of tomorrow we are hoping to have the pump wired and pumping water. The irrigation network system will not be in place yet since we are waiting for the manufacturing of the pipes (plus this is not exactly a one day project anyway).

Jim (aka, Bashi Tannen)

PS from Dr T: The Zambians would gladly compliment these two gentlemen with the following expression: "MWA BOMBENI EPASHILI PAKULEKA" (well done, keep it up!).

7/14/09 from Jake

2009-07-14T15:20:00.000-07:00

Hello from Zambia! This is my fourth day in Mufulira. I have thoroughly enjoyed my stay thus far! Today we visited the Chawama clinic to observe the healthcare system in the town. Although rather undersupplied, the nurses still manage to serve the healthcare needs of nine thousand people. I spent the morning with a retired anesthetist, who serves as the local doctor, observing how patients were assessed and medication was prescribed. Later that afternoon, we sat in on family planning sessions, as a nurse administered birth control to help local women better plan for their next child. Overall, it was a very interesting and educational day learning about differences in care here in Zambia. A long walk back provided me a chance to take in the beautiful countryside and a meal of rice, onions, tomatoes, and tiny fried fish this evening should provide me ample energy for tomorrow's adventure.

7/13/09 from Tannen

2009-07-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

We're here in Muf!! Its nice to be back. :)

Yesterday after church we headed down to Murundu to check out the situation for the agriculture projects and see how things are going with Pastor Joseph and Hildah (Enfys Orphanage). Between yesterday and today "Wom" (Uncle) Jack and Jim surveyed the area where they are planning to setup an irrigation system and formulate a plan. They have plans to irrigate nearly a full acre. They went to Kitwe this afternoon to find the right material (pumps, pipe, etc.), & order what was needed. The work to build it will commence tomorrow.

In the morning the rest of us headed out to take a look at Grace's Place, which is the house that was recently built with rooms for an under 5 clinic, STS counseling center, and storage for supplies. Liam has been making sketches tonight so that tomorrow him and Drew can start working to paint the under 5 clinic and the STS counseling center. We plan to buy the paint as soon as the shop opens in the morning so that they can begin.

There is another clinic in Murundu, and we went to take a look at this in the morning as well since the 3 musketeers - Jake, Aldin & Mike - may spend some time volunteering there and also donate some supplies. This clinic is always over-booked, and the people often wait outside for the whole day to receive care. The single-room clinic that Joseph is building will help to lessen the load and allow more children and pregnant mothers to have care. Right now there is only the one clinic in Murundu which is serving the entire village of 18 - 20 thousand people, plus people from surrounding villages. We learned that yesterday alone 3 children died, and many were walking along the road at the same time as we were for the burial of an 8 year old girl. Unfortunately, this is the norm and there are frequently even more (last Sunday, for example, 6 people died). The majority of deaths is with children, and many of them die of malnutrition. The coffins are typically taken to the grave site by bicycle either that evening or the following morning. We hope that the irrigation system and the intense cultivation of Moringa will help by providing vegetables throughout the year and increasing the nutritional content of the food which Moringa is especially good for. The clinic should also help by providing some care and assisting with the distribution of Moringa. We are proud of the work the Joseph, Hildah, and others are doing to bring hope to their community & help those who are in need.

Megan and I spent the afternoon at Butondo High School. We had about 50 kids there for our program, and as usual we did some on the fly re-orgs. The sessions that we are running are very interactive and we had a great group of students to work with, so we had fun. We are planning to be there in the afternoons from Monday through Thursday of this week.

Tannen

Flight

2009-07-11T04:17:00.000-07:00

Oom Jack and Bashi Tannen (Uncle Jack and Tannen's dad) slept most of the 16 hours from Atlanta to South Africa. They and the rest of the group then ate at Pierre's house, slept, and are now on board for the final leg to Zambia. It's a good trip so far because those two enjoy sleeping and eating. When they arrive, they will sleep again and be ready for REAL preaching and dancing at the Sunday services. The service lasts for most of the day.

Karen VZ

2009 Zambia Trip

2009-07-09T23:57:00.000-07:00

The first five members of this year's STS team just left Atlanta on a nonstop to South Africa. The plane was about an hour late. They will stay overnight with a friend that has helped them through the years, David Jordaan. The next day they plan to fly to Zambia. The group is made up of Liam Benkert (an artist from California), Megan Sheridan (an aerospace engineer from California), my brother Jack (an agricultural engineer from Ohio), Jim Sr. and our son Drew. You can watch Megan packing at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2u47OgTQA4. We all had similar packing experiences. Jim and Drew took four complete volleyball set ups, volleyballs, several pounds of moringa seeds, a moringa capsule maker, several containers of moringa powder, 100 STS team shirts, tools, many new volleyball shirts for orphans and the necessities to live in Zambia for a couple of weeks.

Jami heads to Zambia later this month with another group. Next week her job takes her to Huntsville where Tannen lives. It would have been so wonderful if they were together to organize like they did to start STS so many years ago.

Three medical students from California will be added to the first group when they get to South Africa. They have supplies for the new "Grace Place" clinic. "Grace Place" is named for Holly's daughter. They helped fund it. While in Zambia two years ago, Holly had several sick days. We were so excited to find the cause of the sickness would have the middle name Grace.

The medical students had planned to go to Central America for HIV/AIDS work that is similar to that of STS. Plans were cancelled because of unrest in the country so at the last minute they bought tickets and joined our group. Hopefully, Liam and Drew can paint murals on the walls while the three set up the clinic. I spent last night forming ideas for wall paintings that will combine the trauma program, clinic work and Grace Place theme. I dream of using medicine, moringa, toy animals, stickers, and trauma information to help women and orphans through rough times.

Next week, Jack and Jim plan to start building an irrigation system for moringa and garden vegetables. Megan and Tannen are scheduled to run HIV/AIDS programs at two schools. The blogs should explain what really happens. Every year the plans are very different from the results.

Karen VZ

Happy Father’s Day from South Africa!

2008-06-15T06:44:00.001-07:00

This is just a quick note to let you know that we have safely arrived in South Africa and will be leaving tonight around 11:00 pm for Amsterdam. All of our luggage is also safely with us as of right now, so please continue to pray that it stays that way! A friend of David Jordaan’s, Darvie, picked us up from the Jo-burg airport and brought us to his home to help him celebrate Father’s Day. We are leaving in a few minutes to go to a lion park, Monte Casino shopping mall, and a few other classic South African sites. He is a true blessing to give up his day to spend with us! We are thrilled!!!! We are also eagerly looking forward to being home with you soon.

God bless!

~ Elizabeth

Last Blog ~ From Dan

2008-06-14T16:23:00.000-07:00

So this is it, the last blog of the trip. We leave this wonderful house and man (Dr. Thinus) at 6am for the airport. In some ways, it feels like we are leaving home for another home... its a strange feeling. But before I reflect on the trip as a whole, I want to catch everyone up on our last couple days here.

Our remaining time at Vineyard Christian School was a blessing. It continued to be clear that the Spirit of God is dwelling in that school. We spent Thursday ministering about "What if you've made a mistake" and it just seems like the situation that these students were struggling with did not have the heaviness of the other schools that we have worked in. I think a lot of our time this year has been a ministry of restoration rather than prevention, but it seemed that Vineyard was more prevention... so praise the Lord.

We spent Thursday afternoon at a massive rural high school called Butondo. The Zambians we have been working with (STSer's and Church Planters) pretty much ran the program. Our goal was to hand it over to them by the end of our time, and they did a wonderful job. One of the STS guys, named Terry, who is a very sweet and humble man, delivered the biology talk, which was amazing... I have never seen a group of students so quiet during a talk about the biology of HIV. Then one of the Church Planters named Chansa (the youngest and most shy of the group) talked about myths. He was so bold; we were all so proud of him. Then Joseph, a church planter, talked boldly about saving sex for marriage. It was an older crowd and there was a sense that many of them had already made a mistake. So Henry (the STS-Zambia coordinator) ended with one of the most poignant and engaging presentations of the gospel of grace that I have ever absorbed. You could feel it in the air... seriously. There is something about when the beauty of the gospel is really shared. The story of a God who sent his son to die for a world that didn't deserve it. The story of God's great love for his children. There was no condemnation, no guilt... only grace. It became clear that, for some of these, it was the first time they had heard the true gospel... not one heavy with judgment, not threatened with hell... but a gospel of love and restoration. There was a lightness in the room. He asked who would like to receive Christ and about half of the room raised their hands, and I really think they meant it. We prayed with them. Then we worshiped, we celebrated. We moved the tables back and just danced... African, American, we were all the same in that moment. We sang our lungs out. I have heard people say that music is a language in itself... I believe that now.

Friday morning was our last with Vineyard. The church planters took the lead and formulated their own skit and talk about stigma. It was encouraging like you couldn't believe; they did an amazing job! We ate our last traditional Zambian lunch and then took the Church Planters out for ice cream and said our sad goodbyes. We spent the rest of the afternoon sleeping. I always find it to be amazing how exhausted my body, mind, and spirit are at the end of our time. It is like the Spirit strengthens us, but when it is all over, we begin get a grasp of the real weight of what we have been doing.

On Friday evening we planned a bonfire (lovingly known as a Bushman's Television). As the Lord would have it, the water went out, and then the power shortly after. It was a classic African moment. So we enjoyed the fire under that massive African sky, next to the sprawling mango tree, breathing the brisk winter air, hearing the dogs howling in the distance, smelling the familiar scent of smoke, and sharing laughs and stories and sausages. It was as close to perfect as one could imagine.

Saturday morning was spent resting and enjoying one another. Max and I spent the afternoon taking pictures in the market... which blessed both of us greatly. Then we all met in town at this pizza place which is surprisingly delicious. And ended the evening in the living room worshipping, reflecting, sharing the Lord's Supper, and praying for one another... a family. Tomorrow we fly to Joburg early in the morning and one of Dr. T's friends is picking us up and taking us to his home to eat lunch with his family, and then to a lion park. We leave Joburg near midnight for Amsterdam, then to Washington, arriving in the early evening of Monday. Pray for us in transit, that we would enjoy our last days together and for safety. Pray for our reflection in the months to come, that the Lord would draw out the truths from our time in this wonderful place.

All in all, this has been an amazing month. The spiritual intensity has been more than ever before. God's presence has been evident. Much of that is due to each and every one of you. Your prayers have strengthened us when we were weary. They have given us joy when we carried sorrow. They bore our burdens and lifted our heads. They breathed spirit into our works. Thank you, each of you. Thank you for fighting with us. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for loving us and supporting us. Thank you.

With Love,

Dan

Update from Casie

2008-06-10T13:11:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends and Family!

Things are going well here in Zambia. We began our day at Vineyard Christian School where the kids are really sweet and humble. It’s really a joy to work with them because they have such sweet spirits. We talked about transmission and getting tested before we broke up into small groups. We have struggled with the small groups at this school because the kids are so quiet. We’ve had a hard time getting them to talk and open up but I have high hopes for the rest of the week. After Vineyard we headed over the church planting school for some YUMMY inshema! Oh how I LOVE inshema J Within about 30 minutes we all piled back into the van on our way to Chibote! We have been going there in the afternoons since last Monday so many of the team members have been able to build some good relationships with the girls there. We spent some time dancing, singing, and just having fun with them before Dan talked about relationships. We had several Zambians that are on our team get up and share from their heart with the kids as well. It’s really good to see the Zambians ministering to their own culture. They have an opportunity that us, Muzungus (white people), will never have. The heart of STS is to empower the Zambians that are here and know the culture to minister to the people around them. All in all, today was a good day. When we came back to town, Ida (the secretary for the Church Plant School… who is AWESOME) took the girls to get material to make Shetengays (African skirts). It was fun to walk around the market and look at all the different colored clothe. Max and I have discovered that we are an amazing team when it comes to making dinner! I can assure you that STS is eating WELL. Unfortunately, Jesse and Angie have not been feeling well today so I gave them some meds to help with fever and put them to bed early. Hopefully they will be able to sleep it off and begin feeling better in the morning. For some reason, illness has hit the team really hard this year.

As our time is coming to an end, I am sad to leave but looking forward to coming home. It will be really good to eat American food and sleep in my own room without four other roommates. It has been good to talk with different people about things that could happen in the future with STS.

So I must admit that I have learned A LOT of new things here in Zambia…. I learned the other day that if you try to catch a baby chicken… the mother chicken will attack you!! WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?!?! I ALSO learned that momma chickens don’t actually bite you… Dr. T has THOROUGHLY informed me that momma chickens don’t bite! They WILL, however, impale you with their talons and flap their wings fanatically until they achieve what they want! I ALSO have to admit that I have tried… many a time… the catch the stupid roosters that wander around our yard. The other day I was sitting on the step watching this bird awkwardly cluck around the yard (there were several roosters in the vicinity) so I JUMPED UP and ran as fast as I could. For some reason I had decided that I wanted to catch the rooster… What I DIDN’T think about was WHY I would want to do that and what I was going to do with it when I did catch up to it. Well I got really close to the thing and realized that #1 I am insane, #2 I have no idea what this thing is going to do to be when I pick it up, and #3 I have two other angry roosters chasing me now that I pissed off their friend. Needless to say, I did not catch that rooster… I ran far far away… into the house where I was safe. :-)

Well I love you all and hope you are well. I wish I could write more but I must go to bed!

Casie

Monday Monday

2008-06-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

We started off the week going to a new school called vineyard. There were around fifty kids—all of whom were suspiciously angelic. When we broke into small groups Elizabeth and mine’s group practically whispered the whole time; the girls were so quiet and shy. Hopefully tomorrow they’ll warm up.

After vineyard we surprised the girls at Chibote and returned for week two. It was wonderful to see familiar faces and be able to build on relationships that were started last week. We did a skit (or sketch as they say)—actress of the day award goes to Elizabeth. She played a fantastic crazy woman at the first school, and an even better disgusting slob (mud smeared face and all) in the afternoon.

We broke into small group, which was lovely. Most of the girls in my group were ones I had talked to at various points during last week and our conversation as a group was very organic—nothing about it felt forced. We sat in the sun and talked about getting tested (almost half of the girls in my group had already been tested which is exciting), whether kissing is a sin or not, and so on. Leaving the school was emotionally light compared to Friday; being able to say “I’ll see you tomorrow” definitely brought some comfort.

Update from Elizabeth - Sunday Worship in Kitwe!

2008-06-08T17:11:00.000-07:00

Good evening, family and friends!

It is finally the close of a restful weekend here in Zambia, and the team is gradually trickling off to their various rooms to journal, read and sleep. We are starting our final week tomorrow, and that realization brings a mixture of joy and sorrow.

This morning, Dr. Thinus was invited to preach at one of my favorite churches, The Showers of Blessing Church in Kitwe. We all loaded into the “Say Yes to Jesus” van and took off for a beautiful worship service. Dr. Thinus has been friends with Pastor Seafus and his wife Sarah since the early 90s, and their friendship makes this church feel like home to me. The entire congregation welcomes us annually with wide open arms and treats us with amazing hospitality. Our team joined enthusiastically in the singing and dancing that accompanies Zambian praise and worship, which was followed by a time of “blessing”. Our team wasn’t quite sure what was happening, until Dr. T. explained that it was a time in which the pastor led the church members to encourage each other and stop looking only unto their own needs. Jesse and Dan boldly stood up to give “blessing” speeches for the church body! :-) Dr. T. introduced our entire team and then finished the service with a wonderful sermon on the life of David, which stirred our hearts. We exited the church in typical Zambian fashion – forming a receiving line to shake the entire congregations’ hands as they one-by-one exited the building. Everyone continues singing and dancing right out into the church yard! I love it! The various team members stood around the church yard, conversing with the new friends we’d made at Chibote Girls’ School this past week (also in Kitwe). It was really neat to see many of the same girls that we had prayed for plugged into the church community this morning. All too soon, Sarah started herding the girls into her personal car and shooing the men towards Dr. T.’s van.

As soon as we were packed like sardines into her vehicle, she began to laugh and said she wanted to “bless” us with shatangai skirts (no idea if I spelled that right!). These are traditional Zambian wrap skirts made out of the brightly colored local fabrics. We were stunned, but grateful. She and her sister Maggie took us to a street vendor and let us pick out fabric that we liked for our skirts! When we got back to her house, Sarah spirited the fabric away to a tailor friend of hers, who cut the fabric into appropriate lengths for our skirts. By the time we left Kitwe, all the team females were decked in Zambian shatangai skirts!!!! In the meantime, several of the other women from church had started a wonderful lunch! How Pastor Seafus and Sarah love to bless us with good cooking. They prepared massive quantities of green beans, squash, carrots, potatoes, rice, chicken, sausage, cole slaw, and of course, nshima (maize-meal…almost like grits!). We ate, and ate, and ate, until we could eat no more!!! It was delicious, and I am always struck by their willingness to bestow such goodness on us. They live in a very small house in a little village on the outskirts of town – that meal is not indicative of their “normal” living, I’m sure. And yet, they go “all out” to bless us when we come! Angie and I escaped the after-lunch economics conversation in favor of playing in the street with some neighborhood children until it was time to go.

We returned to Mufulira for a “quiet” night at the house. Everyone putters around in a semi-normal routine of showers, snacking, email-checking, guitar-playing, reading, playing soccer with the boys from next door, etc. But tonight was different. Tonight was Austin’s last night with our team. We gathered in the living room to share lows and highs of the week, followed by our overall feelings about the trip. This beautiful time of true sharing was closed with worship, led by Austin himself. He has been a tremendous asset to our team, and he will be missed this week as we finish up the ministry work God has for us in Zambia. Thanks, Austin, for being a true servant and a blessing to STS! The Lord has used your humility, quiet strength and knowledge of the Word to uplift our entire team. May the things the Lord did in and through you during your time in Africa settle into your heart!

Highs and lows, joys and sorrows. From dancing in the church yard to saying goodbye to a team-mate, today has been packed full of emotions. And hovering beneath everything is the thought that soon it will be our turn to say farewell to Africa. Please continue praying for all of us – Austin as he travels to meet his family and those of us that remain here. God still has much in store for the team this week, and I are praying for the team to embrace each new day with excitement and joy! Please pray for our hearts, that the emotions bubbling up within us will not overshadow the work that is still to be done. And pray for our ability to process these emotions fully, with Christ’s help. We are physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted. Yet, Jesus promises to bear our burdens and be our strength when we are weak! May He increase, even as we decrease, so that out of Him we can pour ourselves out to the students this week.

Thank you again for constantly joining with our team in prayer! We could not get through each day with your loving support and faithfulness. I also want to thank each one of you for your kind emails and phone calls. I hope you know how much each team member LOVES to hear from “home”! We miss you and appreciate you!!!

Elizabeth

Update from Jami

2008-06-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

A much needed day of rest was used today. The pace of the day was much slower and we all got to sleep in till at least 9:00 hours! Dr. Thinus was up and going at full steam around 5:00 hours trying to fix the water pipes to the bathroom with the shower. By 9:30 hours we went to Murundu to attend to various tasks. A few went to visit Pastor Joseph, who is working with the Orphans in Murundu, to continue assessing that project and STS’s potential involvement. A couple of us went to visit students from Murundu Basic School, students who we’ve met through our time spent at their school doing HIV/AIDS education. Others, including the Church Plant Students, went to visit a student to check on her well being.

I was escorted to the girl (Naomi) from the school whose home I was to visit. I ended up meeting her, her brothers and sisters, all younger, and peeling sweet potatoes with them for their breakfast/lunch, I guess that’d be brunch! It was an amazing time seeing where the students who we’ve been with all week, where they eat and sleep. It’s interesting that I’ve always imagined them in houses like the ones I’ve seen in Mufulira and just assumed they all live in homes that are similar to the ones in town. But that isn’t the case. I found that most of them live in huts that are quite small. I found them all outside playing, washing, and making food. It was such a simple way and day there. The girl who I visited, I had met last year when she was in grade 8. Her mother had just passed away then due to child birth. So now it’s a year later and much has changed for her. She’s doing well in school though and will be moving on to grade 10 with no problems. It was great to see her again this year!
Around 13:00 hours we were all picked up by Dr. Thinus and taken to Kitwe for some fine dinning and shopping, a definite change from a typical day. We had swarmas for lunch and pizza for dinner! It was all delicious and great. We probably consumed more calories today than the trip as a whole! It was especially great for me to get to sit and talk with everyone getting to know each of them even better. Since arriving on Sunday and starting at the schools on Monday, it’s been fast paced, and not a lot of down time to just get to sit and talk with everyone. As an added bonus, the French Open was being shown on one of the TV’s in the pizza restaurant! You can’t beat that!! Between consuming the swarmas and pizza we did a little souvenir shopping at the Kitwe market. Getting a good deal was a lot tougher this year but I think everyone managed to get a lot of great things for a pretty good price. I think all the sales guys were glad to see us go though. After a purchase I had made I thanked the sales guy by saying thank you in Bemba (Twa totella). He then turned to me and said, “Twa totella ponono”, which means thank you just a little. Which I thought was pretty funny.

Our day concludes with emails and watching all the great videos that were generated throughout the week. The dance competition videos are the best! All-in-all it was a beautiful Zambian day which allotted us time for rest and renewal.

Jami W. Ward

From Dan

2008-06-06T19:09:00.000-07:00

This week has been incredible; one I will never forget for the rest of my life. It has been a week so rich with experience. It has been a week of the presence of the Spirit of a Living God, a God that sheds light in the darkest of places. This world is one of unspeakable darkness, a darkness that should cause any sane man to despair. Story upon story flooded the ears of our team this week. We bear stories of immense abuse, of heartache, of hopelessness, of death. But we bear witness not only to darkness, but to light, a light that is sufficient, a light that refuses to let darkness overcome. I want to share a few stories with you…

She is beautiful and very strong. She is smaller than most, humble, and intelligent like you wouldn’t believe. Her father passed on when she was very young. But her mother remained to raise her and married another man. This man was not a good one. He did things to her as a child that no man should ever do to a child. Tears well up and fall on the desk before her as she shares, quietly. The abuse stopped as she grew older, but her memory still haunts her. Her mother passed away a handful of years ago, which allowed her an escape from this man, but a loss of both of her parents. The man still comes and visits her and her siblings at her grandmother’s house; he thinks she has forgotten. She says every time he visits, a deep pain wells up in her; forgiveness is not something that comes easy. These things will take a lifetime to heal. I thought that this was my first time to know of this girl. But the Lord has been at work. She told me the following day that this is the second time that she has spoken of this. The first was two years ago with a girl named Haley. Haley is an incredible person who came with us a couple summers ago. Haley and I became good friends in the time leading up to that trip. She was at Chibote Girls School for the two weeks while I was at another school. Oftentimes, we would come home and share the joys and the sorrows of our days. Haley shared with me about this incredible girl that she had met, she shared with me her story, she wept for her. She told me that she was taking that girl to get tested and shared with me that the girl was HIV negative. I was praying for this girl over two years ago. And I got to spend this whole week with her, loving on her and encouraging her The Lord knows all things; he ordains all things. He makes good out of all things, despite the darkness of their inception. I will continue to pray for this girl, two years later. The Lord sees all her tears and He promises that one day they will cease, and they will.

This story was shared with me by Max on Wednesday, well most of it. Her mother was raped and she was born. But her ‘father’ did not disappear. He hated her. He wanted to commit her soul to Satan, seriously. Then he tried to kill her. He cut off some of her fingers. She lived though. She has another Father now, one that loves her, one who knows what it is like to be hated for nothing, one that has scars on His hands too. Today we were getting ready to start. We were playing some music, singing and keyboard. It lets the girls know that we are about to start. Groups began to walk over as the worship pours out over the schoolyard, echoing through classrooms, over the schools walls and out into the surrounding fields. It breathes life into the crowd and our team. I looked back to see one of the schoolgirls playing the keyboard. I did not know who she was or why she was playing. But as she worshipped and played, I glanced down at the keys and noticed the girl’s hands. They were marred and disfigured, only thumbs and a couple fingers remained. But she played beautifully and gracefully, her hands danced across the keys. This is a girl whose hands will forever be mangled because of the work of Satan himself. Her hands will always be to her a constant reminder of the darkness that resides on this earth. And those very hands are being used to spill light out into the darkness, into the bondage that sex has in these girl’s lives, into a country devastated by poverty and disease. What a picture of redemption, of the grace of a God that will not stop making all things new, all things beautiful again. We are scarred, but we are whole. We are broken, but we are beautiful. Glory be to God!

Thank you for your prayers, they cast light in darkness, they proclaim freedom for the captives, they loose the chains of the oppressed. Your prayers accomplish more than you could ever know. Thank you and continue.

Dan
Team Stop the Spread

Update from Austin

2008-06-05T22:00:00.000-07:00

What a day. You all will have to forgive me if this is short in length, because I am no exception to the general exhaustion that is present in the house. Simply put, we encountered a lot of spiritual warfare today. I was talking with Henry tonight and these were his words: "We are working to change Zambia's next generation, the youth; to encourage them to make better decisions than their parents, to surrender their lives and their choices to the Lord. The devil does not want this to happen, so we should expect there to be a war waging over these lives."

As I'm sure has been previously written, we are at the village school of Murundu in the mornings and then we are driving to Chibote Girls School in Kitwe for the afternoons. Yesterday was a tough day for a lot of us in the morning, just feeling like there were no connections made with the students. Today we decided to break into guys and girls for Dan and Casie's talks on "what if you've made a mistake." I, naturally, was with Dan and I must say that I think today was his best yet. He encouraged them to be men of God that respect and care for women instead of preying on them, doing a great job of emphasizing the grace of God that can make us a new creation regardless of our past decisions. The guys seemed really responsive. After our separate talks, we came back together for a time of prayer for whomever wanted to come forward. We were able to pray for the majority of the students and God really ministered in a mighty and visible way.

Then we were off to Chibote. Yesterday was already a pretty intense time of prayer and sharing there, I know that I personally had girls share with me about an abortion, HIV+ parents, divorce and abuse. Thus, we felt that there was a need today for us just to be available after Casie's talk for the girls to share with us as they felt led. So we did the usual dancing and singing and then went straight into the talk. Casie did such a great job, I was so blessed by the tender way that she spoke the grace, love and forgiveness of Christ into these girls lives. Read John 8:1-12. We all spent the next hour or so talking and praying with different girls about the things they are dealing with. It really is such a humbling and exhausting experience just to listen to their stories. I still feel as if I am in total sensory overload from the day, and I'm trusting that the Lord will give me the grace and faith to trust him with the things that I cannot change. There are so many seemingly impossible situations. There are so many conversations that all we can do is listen, hug and pray. I was continually impressed today that there is nothing of my own strength or merit that could give these girls any form of rescue. But greater is He that is in us than he who is in this world and we know that God has given us the ministry of reconciliation for the hurting and the broken. We are compelled to share the hope that can be found in a relationship with Christ because it does not disappoint or fail. My prayer has been that God will break my heart with the things that break His and I'm pretty sure that has been answered in a big way in the last two days. At least I hope it has been.

As we rode home, it seemed we all were feeling the weight of the world. We all had an intense day in many ways. Like I said, the spiritual warfare was unprecedented, some of us were seeing, hearing and experiencing some things for the first time. I'm sure some of you who are reading this will get many more details from your beloved team member upon your reunion with them. We desperately need your prayers: pray for the hearts of these students, pray that the Lord will keep and protect and teach us as a team, pray that we can be faithful ministers of truth, pray for lives to be changed and protected from destruction. Thank you.

For team STS Zambia,
Austin Crane

Update from Angie

2008-06-04T15:53:00.000-07:00

Murundu Basic School: We started it off with a dance party—which means we danced and the Zambian kids laughed/gaped in horror at our lack of rhythm. While Austin gave his “waiting for marriage” talk, Max and I took the fifty thousand 1st through 5th graders away to try and minimize distraction. The wee girls and I played some half hearted rounds of “sheep sheep come on,” but luckily Casey saved the day and tired them out with the most physically strenuous “follow the leader” I’ve ever witnessed. I told them about Jonah, and eventually about Jesus and how he reached out to the untouchables. When I asked them if it was okay to point and laugh at someone with HIV they answered “yes, unless they’re bleeding”—hopefully I changed their little minds about that.We (the illegally over full van of people) ate PB&J on the road and rested until we arrived at Chibote Girls High School…where the ever dreaded and shameful dance competition was to be held. Jesse made us proud though and brought the Mazungus up to second place. After Austin gave his talk again and as we were getting up to ship off the planned small group, Henry got up and gave a really powerful message. He invited the girls to prayer and relatively everyone came up to be prayed for. The requests ranged from “I need prayer for exams” to “I’m pregnant.” The girls were really open and trusting and I think everyone on the team was given the opportunity to hear a little bit of the reality these girls are struggling with. It just went really well.

THE END.

Angie.

PS from Dan ~ We are going to be spending a lot of tommorrow (Thursday) talking about sin and redemption and there will be a lot of ministry time in the schools. So please pray for the Spirit of G'd to be on the team to preach the GOOD news. And that the Lord would minister through prayer and reconciliation. Thank you for your prayers!

Update from Miss Malaria (aka, Elizabeth, Lizzie, Mama Duck, etc.)

2008-06-03T11:38:00.000-07:00

Dearest prayer warriors,

I am finally out of bed long enough to personally write you a HUGE THANK YOU!!!!!!!!! A few folks at home have been keeping me posted with your thoughts, prayers and encouraging words. I cannot thank you enough for standing alongside me, our team, and my family as I have battled malaria! Your words and prayers have been so supportive and uplifting, and the Lord has answered! I am feeling better today (Tuesday), although my body is still weak and tired. I am working hard to regain my strength through plenty of fluids, rest, good food, sleep, oh and did I mention rest! :) It is slow going and I am quite ready to feel 100% again!

What an adventure! Dr. T. says that I now need a t-shirt labeling me a "true African missionary". The sights, sounds, smells and experiences of this past weekend will certainly go down in history. But, through it all, the Lord has been so close. He has reminded me that His community not only means "doing" the active ministry part of why we are here, but also means surrounding each other when we are down. That has included YOU, His global community, through the amazing ways everyone immediately mobilized to pray. I was astounded to learn from my wonderful mother how people all over the world were praying within hours and days of learning about what we were suffering here! It is a vivid reminder that we are not meant to walk this life alone and that we desparately need each other, the community of believers God has given us.

Okay, so much for my sermonizing. Dr. T. has returned and we are off for the afternoon to Kitwe. Continue to pray strength and healing for all of us as we continue to minister!

Love you all!
Elizabeth

Update - Good News from Zambia

2008-06-03T03:27:00.000-07:00

Hello,

Things are better here today. Everyone is slowly getting back on their feet. Max is back with the team... they are leaving soon for Murundu and Elizabeth and I are probably going to join them in the afternoon at Chibote. It will be really good to get out of the house. We have been taking all necessary precautions to make sure the bug that I had does not spread anymore around the house. Elizabeth is sleeping but I think she is doing better today. I talked to her for a few minutes earlier. I guess we'll have to wait and see what today brings. She has finished all of her malaria pills so things should continue to get better. The team has been amazing. They started waiting on all of the sick people as soon as they got home last night. They brought us sprite and food and meds.... I am so very thankful for their generosity. well, I am going to lay down for alittle while... but we love you all and thank you so much for all the prayers.

Casie

Update from Casie

2008-06-01T06:29:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends and Family,

I am not sure when the last blog went out because the power has been down. Here in Africa the water and power come and go... It's a really good day when you have both at the same time!

Friday night, shortly after I wrote the blog, my dear friend Elizabeth began feeling very ill. Before long she began a long night of throwing up and stomach cramps. By morning, she was not any better so Dr.T and I took her to the African Hospital and she was treated for malaria. We brought her home yesterday afternoon and she was able to rest. The throwing up and everything stopped last night and today she is feeling much better. I have no doubts that she will be back to her old self in a few days.

While in the Africa hospital Elizabeth and I decided that we were NEVER going to have children in Africa. I must say that the hospital here was QUITE an experience! I did pretty well with the throwing up and stuff all night. It didn't bother me at all, but friends, I must admit that I almost passed out while they were poking my poor little Elizabeth with needles. (Yes they were sterilized!) When we got there, they had just opened so we were able to go right in. We found a bed and laid Elizabeth down until the Dr. (or Nurse... we're not sure) came. Dr. T told them that it was malaria (He's had it 10 times and knows what he's talking about) so they began the testing and treatment for the malaria. They had to poke her to get some blood for the tests... this was alittle painful for her but not too bad. They brought in a very large needle and stuck her in the butt with it... they said this was to stop the vomitting. THEN they brought in an IV to help replenish the fuilds that she had lost during the night! For some reason they could not find her viens and proceeded to poke her painfully until they found blood. They kept saying 'you have no blood in your viens!'. She had to actually help them find the place where they could get it in! All the while, I am holding her hand and telling her not to look. After the second or third try with this massive needle, I started feeling VERY woosy but managed to just not look and keep my cool!... Poor Elizabeth. She was frustrated with their incompetancy but the meds DID help and she was able to regain some of her strength.

They wanted to keep her for observation, but Dr. T talked them into letting us take her home. Their 'observing' consisted of her laying on a bed with a blanket (who KNOWS where it's been) behind a curtain all day. It was a really good thing that Dr. T made them let us take her home.

We got home around 1pm and she was able to sleep all afternoon. The meds started working and she was also able to sleep through the night! which was AMAZING! Today she is feeling MUCH better. The fever is completely gone and she has the color back in her face. She should be back to normal in a few days when the parasite is completely out of her system! So keep praying that she will feel better. There is no need to be really concerned... She is doing much better!

The rest of the team has gone to Ndola for the day. Dr. T was preaching at a church and took the whole crew with him. They will be spending time with some friends of Dr. T's down there and then will pick up our final member of the team (Jami) from the airport. Max made it Friday night but his personal bag didn't. We're hoping that it will show up at the airport when they are there for Jami tonight! Poor guy... he's been wearing the same outfit since Wed morning! This morning was very humorous, however. Max asked Dr. T if he could borrow a shirt for church and instead of giving him a normal shirt, he gave him a bright orange African shirt. Elizabeth and I found this to be very enterntaining because we could hear the guys laughing about it in the next room when Dan returned with the shirt for Max. AWESOME. What a way to be introduced to Africa! They should all be returning around 9/9:30pm tonight. Elizabeth and I are enjoying our day of rest and quiet! Tomorrow we will start ministering to two new schools. One out in the bush, Murundu, and one in Kitwe, Chibote. Well, that is all for now. I hope everyone is doing well... We will update you soon!

Casie

Update from Casie

2008-05-30T19:33:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends and Family! Muli-Shani! (Zambian Greeting)

Things are going well here in Mufilira. This morning we awoke to the sad departure of half of the team that has become a family. Duane, Beth, Adam, Megan, and Jim left us this morning to move onto their respective locations. Their departure was very bittersweet because we know that they need to go but we were not ready to see them leave. I must admit, many tears were shed by yours truly. :-)This weekend brings two new people to our team! Max should be arriving tonight and Jami will be here on Sunday. We are all very excited about our new additions!

Dr. T dropped us off for our last day at Kalanga. We started with addressing the issue of stigma with the 6th graders. I felt slightly awkward with this group of kids today because yesterday during my talk instead of being from team STS the translator told them that I had STD's. umm yeah. That was def a miscommunication! haha wow.

So anyways...after the 6th grade was the 8th grade. Now this is where things began to get interesting. Before I spoke, the weight of my responsibility really hit me. I have the words of life and I have been given the opportunity to say ANYTHING I want to these kids. I spent time searching scripture and just praying that God would give me the words to say but the responsibility still weighed heavily on my shoulders. I started my talk and just prayed the entire time that God would give me the words that HE wanted me to say. I spoke from heart and about what God has done in my life. I spoke from John 8 and explained to them how Jesus loved the woman who was caught in adultery. I told them that God loved them the same way that he loved that woman. Friends... I did not know that I could preach... haha but let me tell you.. I was preaching. At the end all of the girls crowded around us but didn't really say anything. I couldn't figure out what was going on... a few minutes later one of the girls wanted to know how to accept Jesus as her Savior.. I told her and asked if she wanted me to pray with her... She hesitated and then they were all like..."No, we want you to pray with ALL of us. We ALL want to accept Jesus as our Savior." I was floored. I led them all in a prayer and they all got on their knees and accepted Christ... right there.. in the middle of the school. Praise the Lord! Today heaven in rejoicing over about 100-150 new Zambian girls! Craziness.

So that was the highlight of my day. I was not expecting to lead ALL of the 8th grade girls to the Lord today but Praise God.We then did the stigma talk with the 9th graders and headed off to the Church planting school on foot since Dr. T was out of town picking up Max from the airport. The walk was long and hot but beautiful. After a while... we FINALLY made it to our lunch! It was AWESOME. We had chicken, nshema, and these greens called Rape (almost exactly like spinach). It hit the spot. We then went into town and got water, apples, and chocolate(!) from Shoprite and began our two mile walk home. Needless to say, we were all EXHAUSTED when we made it to our humble abode. When we got here a couple was waiting for us on the front step.. so Elizabeth and Dan couldn't rest. They visited with the couple.

I was very excited to lay down but just as I was falling asleep Dan came to my door and told me that three girls from Pamodzi were here to see me. Even though I was tired... I got up and spent some time with them.

Shortly after the couple and the girls left, we had more visitors show up and everyone is in the living room entertaining our guests. (I snuck away to shower... yay for being clean!)

I am afraid that I am going to smell bad when I get home and not realize it... haha because you get used to it and you don't smell it anymore. I figure that if I DO smell myself... then that means it must be PRETTY bad! I try to shower.... but there are alot of people with only one shower to share. Most of us are pretty grungy most of the time :-) So we should smell AWESOME when we get home! Henry and Pastor Terry did an amazing job teaching the teachers at Kalanga about getting tested. The word from Elizabeth is that they were phenomenal.

All in all we had a very long, good, eventful day! Tomorrow we have a sports competition from 9-12 somewhere.. they haven't told me where yet and then the afternoon is a mystery. No one has told me whether there is something planned for us tomorrow afternoon or not. Knowing this crew... there will be something... it will be a fun surprise!

Well... I love you all. Thank you so much for your prayers. Pray for the unity of our team and the two new members we are getting this weekend.

Nalikutemwa,
Casie

Update from Dan

2008-05-29T16:42:00.000-07:00

Today was another whirlwind day with 4 different presentations between two schools. Our morning at Kalanga was a good one. We talked to three groups of kids, about saving sex for marriage and about what if we have made a mistake. We were able to share the grace of God that is new every morning. We shared some of our own stories and mistakes and sin in our own life and how God has redeemed us and continues to redeem us. Because we presented there three times, we didn't have small groups, which is the main means of reflection. So pray that the Word of God would take root in their hearts. Pray that they would know that we are available to talk with them and that they are not the only ones who are struggling with sex and temptation. We will be returning to Kalanga for our last day tomorrow. Please pray that we would end on the right note, one of empowerment and encouragement.

Today was our last day with the sweet girls from Pomodzi. We had the whole school, so we spent some time dancing and worshipping to start the day off. A couple of the girls from the STS club shared a song and Austin and Casie both played songs. They also both spoke from their hearts about saving sex for marriage and mistakes. Then Henry ended with an empowering message encouraging the girls to Be The Change. It felt like a rally... it was pretty cool. Then we had an impromptu time of dance and worship. Everyone was dancing and the girls were shouting the words to the songs and clapping their hands. It was like a celebration... we were all celebrating life, which I think is so crucial in a culture so marred by death. So pray for the girls at Pomodzi that they would believe they have worth and that they would choose life with the decisions they make.

After leaving Pomodzi we all went to get ice cream downtown. The sun was setting in the distance as we all sat under this lovely African veranda (an old gas station) enjoying our strawberry-vanilla swirls in pink cones. I really love moments like this, moments of stupid pictures, moments of laughter, moments of joy, moments of rest.

Finally, today was the last day with a handful of our team members and friends. Megan, Jim, Duane, Adam, and Beth are all leaving for various places: Megan for California, Jim for Florida, Duane for Kenya, and Adam and Beth for Kenya then Uganda. We had an amazing last evening of sharing in worship, confession, thankgiving, communion (Lord's Supper), and intercession for those departing. There were many tears shed. It is truly amazing how God has knit our group into a family in the short two weeks we had together. We ended our time together singing this hilarious song Doctor Thinus taught us in Bemba, which has an accompanying dance... awkward, yes, but it was a perfect end. Please pray for our co-laborers as they go to where God is leading them next.

To all of you back home, we love you so much and we miss you. Thank you for your prayers!

Twa Totella,
Dan
Team Stop the Spread

Update from Elizabeth

2008-05-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

Today was a great day! Our two teams (HIV education with the students and Teacher's Training with the adults) worked at Kalanga Basic School in the morning and Pamodzi Girls' School in the afternoon.

The morning sessions finally went exactly as planned. For Zambia, that was an absolute miracle!!!! I wasn't personally in the student sessions, but from the video footage I saw tonight, it seemed like the students absolutely loved it. The HIV education team sang, performed "sketches" (in which "Austina" was introduced!), shared testimonies, and broke into small groups. The afternoon did NOT go as planned, and the students kept getting switched around, so the team worked again with only the STS club girls. Hopefully, tomorrow, they will have the entire school for an assembly. Please pray for that! The teacher's training sessions were also great, and the teachers were very responsive to Duane's seminar! They participated and asked great questions.

After all of this, we crashed when we finally got home - literally. The house was full of sleeping bodies. Casie orchestrated an amazing dinner, and the team that helped definitely deserves honorable mention (Megan, Adam, Angie, Jesse, Dan). We had beef goulash of sorts, garlic-herb mashed potatoes and green beans! Pretty good for a two-burner hot plate, eh??? :) Good job, guys! We finished the night with an impromptu community worship session, singing tons of songs. It was a really neat time of just being together, praising the Lord. I find those times really refreshing to my soul, and I find that it serves to unite and bring our group even closer together after long days.

Trial by Fire - Update from Austin

2008-05-27T17:20:00.000-07:00

Today’s blog is titled “Trial by Fire.” I’m not sure if it is common practice to title these entries, as this is my first, but I feel it is appropriate. This fire got particularly intense about 11:00. Since yesterday was African Freedom Day, a holiday for Zambian schools, today began our second week of ministry. We are going to be presenting at Kalanga Basic School (grades 1-9) in the mornings and then, after our daily ration of nshima, we will be heading to Pomodzi Girls High School to meet with the entire school body for the afternoon. I think we have all learned the meaning of the word flexible more every day. I mean, it’s one thing to be flexible, but it is an entirely different thing to be flexible in Africa.

Today this looked like us arriving at Kalanga around 9:00, thinking that we would start around 9:30 and thus, have approximately 2.5 hours with the students in grades 6-9. We were promptly ushered into the office of the headmaster who informed us that the school was “extremely overenrolled” with over 1000 students and that it would be best if we just spent an hour with grades 6 and 7 and then an hour with the 8th and 9th graders. No problem, we expect things to change. Now for what actually happened…

As we walked across the schoolyard it seemed as if the floodgates were unleashed; hundreds of screaming children came running across the yard after us to see what the white “Muzungo’s” were up to. So, we did our best to get the young one’s corralled to another part of the schoolyard. Angie and Casie were great about taking them off to play games so that we could present to the remaining 300 the skits, songs and talks on Biology, Transmission and Myths that we had prepared. I think it was a taxing time for all of us. Even when we broke into small groups, most of us were trying to have meaningful discussion with about 40-60 children which is not the easiest thing in the world to do. And yet, there are good reports; the Lord is always so faithful to both teach us and stretch us. Megan and Jessie did a great job with their talks and games and the kids seemed to have a really good time with them. Dan also reported an incredibly honest small group with the older guys of the group (including a 19 year-old ninth grader). Tomorrow we will be bringing with us some of the church planters from Dr. Thinus’s school to help with interpretation and crowd control, which should be a huge help because those men and women are incredible.

The afternoon at Pomodzi was a wonderful experience and that is God’s grace on us, because we were all pretty exhausted from the morning. As I’m sure has been said previously on here, we spent last week with the school’s Stop the Spread club, consisting of about 60 girls, trying to empower them to be leaders and women of God. Today we met with much of the student body, giving much more of a theatrical presentation that the week before. We sang some songs and danced and then did a skit called “Doctor’s Office.” Then Megan and Jessie gave their performances, again doing a stellar job. The girls were very responsive and I think we all left excited and encouraged about the rest of the week there.

I want to close this entry with a story, not my own story, but the life of a girl that decided to share with me as we were sitting around while waiting to be picked up. We were making small talk, I was asking her about her family, school, future plans, etc. She told me how much Stop the Spread has meant to her over the last 3 years and I asked her if she had any questions about the things we had covered. She said no at first, but then asked “how would you feel if someone you love very much died, and you didn’t find out until 2 years later that it was from HIV?” I told her that I would be hurt very much, that I couldn’t really imagine how hard that would be and then I asked her if that had happened in her life. She then told me about the death of her father. He moved away when she was 12 and she heard soon after that he had died. She couldn’t even go to the funeral. The hardest part about her story for me was that she found out at age 14 that he had died from AIDS from her younger sister and that aside from her sibling, this now 16 year old high school Junior had not told anyone. She told me that I was the first person she had talked with about his death since she heard. That really blew my mind. I asked her “so you have held this in for 2 years?” She nodded her head and then talked with me for a while about her emotions and the process of grieving. She told me right away that she was a Christian and that her faith had been a source of comfort for her. I felt like I was really able to encourage her in the Lord that she is a daughter of God and that nothing can take that away. I know there are so many more like her all around us. The disciple John says that “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Praise the Lord for that. May Christ be all of our hope and strength and life as we continue this week. Thank everyone that is reading this for your prayers, they are powerful, effective and much needed.

-Austin Crane, Team STS

Update from Casie

2008-05-26T14:48:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends and Family,

This is Casie writing. It's about 11pm here and I am exhausted but I am excited to be able to share some of Africa with you before I head to bed! You probably heard about some of the happenings last week... We spent the mornings at the Church Planting school learning about HIV/AIDS underneath Duane Crumb who has been studying it for about 23 years. In the afternoons, we packed up all of our gear and headed over to the Pomadzi girls school where we worked with the student leaders who are in the STS club.

This week we will be going to Kalanga school where we will be working with primary and secondary school. This will be interesting because we are going to have a much wider range of ages as well as alot more kids. Instead of about 10 to a small group we will probably have about 40 each. We will go back to the Church Planting school for lunch and then go back over to Pamodzi in the afternoons to work with the entire school. Our goal is to involve and empower the student leaders we worked with last week by encouraging them to assist us in our program this week as we work with the entire student body.

Church Sunday morning was my first African church experience. It was interesting... to say the least. It lasted four hours.... that is UNHEARD of in the US! I made it a good three hours before I became ready to walk around. I have found that Zambians really enjoying talking into microphones and being in front of large groups of people. They also feel the need to repeat things such as announcements or instructions about 15 times (no joke) in fifteen different ways before they can move onto another subject... This is where I become VERY American! I really enjoy being efficient with time :-)

Despite some frustrations, I love the people here. They are extremely loving, friendly, joyful, and hospitable. They are simply beautiful. I see a beauty in them, despite their trails or surroundings that is deep, real, and lasting. It breaks my heart to hear the stories of the horrendous things that happen every day here. After I spoke at Pamodzi last week I talked to several girls about their own lives and struggles. One girl pulled me aside and told me about her life long abuse and neglect. She sat there in tears telling me that no one loves her and she has no one to care. These things are real and it tears me apart. I put my arm around her, listened to her story, and cried with her. It's all I had to offer. I want to say thank you to everyone who has supported us in any way. What you are doing, the things you are praying for, and the things that are happening here in Africa are making a difference. So easily the worlds problems can overwhelming and we can feel defeated. It's so easy to assume that nothing we can do will actually make a difference in anyone's life. What I have learned is that it is not true. We can love people and that makes all the difference. We don't have to change the world, we just have to love the people in front of us wether that be in the US or in Africa. The world is not an ambigous blob of problems... it is made up of faces with names, stories, and hurts.

On a light note, I was sitting on my bed last night enjoying some quiet down time. Elizabeth was happily writing in her journal as I was looking through the pictures I had taken that day. As I am intently focused on my beautiful pictures.... this MASSIVE crazy noise sounded like it exploded next to my head near my ear!! I freaked out and fell on the floor... a few seconds later after I had composed myself I returned to my bed only to have it happen and again and startle me just as much! Elizabeth (who had her headphones in and only witnessed the occurance) thought that I was crazy. I told her that something BIG and SCARY had flown by my head. She told me it was probably just a moth and to stop freaking out. About fifteen minutes later, Elizabeth had emerged from her world of ipod and was dicussing the day with me when this MASSIVE locust flew past my head AGAIN and landed on my pillow. I proceed to scream due to the scare and yell for the boys. For some reason they did not believe us when we told them it was a BIG bug... :) It took about an hour of going back and forth between it appearing with us in the room alone and freaking out and then the boys coming to try to rescue us. They did eventually find and kill it... it was about 4-5 inches long! gross...AND eggs went everywhere when they killed it. OH the JOYS of Africa!A few days ago we were at the Church Planting School and shortly before lunch a car pulled up and a few guys got out. They went to the trunk and proceeded to take out about 10 live chickens.....Yum. Lunch. They butcher their own chickens here... I am definitely not in America anymore.

Ok well... I am heading to bed! We have a long day ahead of us.

God Bless,
Casie

P.S. If you have been trying to call and it hasn't been working we have figured out that some people did not get the right number... here it is 011-260212411517

G+G- I have been emailing you!! For some reason it must not be going through... I got your e-mail today and wrote you back. I'm sorry if you thought that I hadn't written. (I've written you every time I've written my mom) So know that I love you and I miss you! and that we will hopefully get the e-mail thing figured out soon!

Update from Jesse

2008-05-25T19:03:00.000-07:00

We need your prayers. It is hard to communicate with the school girls sometimes. I am not sure of how much heart to give away. It hurts to look into their eyes. Today we were at church for about four hours. Mr. Duane gave a dynamic speech concerning HIV and the church. We then had lunch at a friend of Dr. Thinus's house. The group ate in the backyard. It was fully decorated for us. I did not feel as if I was on a mission. We were fed roasted chicken, potato salad, potatoes salad and rice with Fanta or orange juice to drink. It was so delicious; lunch was so good today.

Following lunch we left for an outreach for the rest of the afternoon. We went to an traditional village outside of town. There were huts made of adobe brick and roofs made of straw. Hard to imagine probably, but it was probably the neatest thing I have seen here so far. Not many people experience a true African village. The children flocked to us right as we pulled up. We all jumped out of a big hippie van with the letters "Say yes to Jesus" on the windshield. Our team is so bizarre, yet so unbelievably brilliant. I am in love. We walk over to school while kids are swarming around us. Most of the kids are about 5 to 13 years old and have nothing on their feet as they play on the hard red dirt. Dan asks me while to entertain the smaller children so the older Zambian youth, involved in the local STS club we were visiting, would be less distracted. I agreed and Johnny and I went to round up our troops. First we played Duck, Duck Goose. This did not turn out too well. We moved on to Red Rover. This lasted a good twenty minutes. The 70 kids we were working with had too much fun. They really enjoyed trying to break the bonds of the other team's hands. As this began to get old, we then tried the game London Bridge is Falling Down. This game passed about 10 minutes of time. Not too successful. We needed a simple game that can manage all of the kids, fast! We were losing them. The real time breaker was a game Johnny thought of. We held hands with one other person and instead of the kids running underneath our bridge, they would walk across our forearms. This was such a fun activity. I loved watching the kids try to succeed at walking all of the way down the line. All in all, it was a beautiful day.

After that we came back to the house, made PB and bitter marmalade sandwiches and played card games. About seven of us spent the night refilling our coffee/tea cups between neverending rounds of playing cards. It was a nice way to end Johnny's stay with us. Keep him on your prayers as he travels back to Botswana. Tomorrow is Africa Freedom Day, so we get the day off. A handful of us will stay at the house and rest. And the others will travel to Chimfunzi, the Chimpanzee orphanage... oh the blogs to come! Pray that our day off would be a chance for the Lord to minister and energize us. Thank you for each and every prayer!

Jesse Barnes
Team Stop the Spread

Update from Megan

2008-05-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

Greetings all. Today’s news is brought to you by Megan (yes, I’m really here, despite Dan forgetting to mention me - I won’t hold it against him for too long). I am so happy that God brought me back to Zambia for a second year. The team is already such a tight family, and we’ve been called to support each other in so many ways that we never could have expected.

In Zambia, our plans never seem to turn out as we intend, and this morning was no exception. We had told the students at the Mufulira Teachers’ College that we would be playing sports with them for a few hours, but since Monday is a holiday (African Freedom Day, or so I’m told) all the students have left town for the three day weekend. Financial restrictions definitely don’t stop people from travelling all over the place. So we showed up to discover that there were no students to play with, but we remained undaunted and set up our volleyball net in one of the nearby fields, to see if anyone would join us. And it turned out really well – lots of local kids turned out to kick their homemade balls around, an official-looking girls’ soccer game started up, and we found plenty of people who wanted to play volleyball. Elizabeth and I also got some of the little kids to play Sheep Sheep Come On, which we learned last year in Murundu.

Then we all piled back in the Jesus van to go to the Zambian Crocodile Hunter’s home where we got to handle all kinds of snakes, including an absolutely enormous boa constrictor. Which started hissing. I stuck to the little ones, and made very good friends with a small albino constrictor. We also held some baby crocodiles and saw a very shy jackal, which looks rather like a large gray fox. The would-be Crocodile Hunter was not there himself, but we were led around by Ringo, one of the local farm workers, who was willing to humor our curiosity. I can’t imagine what we look like to the locals, 13 muzungus in matching t-shirts crammed into the trusty Say Yes To Jesus van, wanting to see snakes…

To crown the day, we went to the house of Dr T’s Italian friends for an authentic Itailian pasta dinner. Delicious food and fascinating conversation – Enrico has been in Zambia since 1951, and his wife Daniella, who is originally South African, pretty much grew up here, so they were in Zambia when the British withdrew and gave Zambians their independence.

We didn’t get back to the house in time for showers – the water still turns off every night at around 10pm. But at least we’re not getting electrocuted in the shower anymore, since the ingenuity of Jim solved that problem… After grounding everything he could find, we were still picking up an 8V potential every time we touched the shower handles, which REALLY stings when you’re standing in a pool of water. But as they say, if you can’t ground it, break the circuit (yeah, no, nobody says that, sorry for being a huge nerd). So our shower handles now have rubber protectors, affectionately named Shower Condoms…you’ll have to see the pictures.

So, life is good, a day of rest and play is always welcome, and we’re looking forward to Duane preaching tomorrow. I’m very curious to see how our Zambian friends respond to a sermon about HIV/AIDS. I think it’s going to blow some minds and cultural barriers. So prayers for a Spirit-filled message tomorrow morning would be appreciated, and just that the ears and hearts of the congregation would be opened to the challenges Duane is going to bring. Thanks for all your support!

Megan Sheridan
Stop the Spread Team

Update from Adam

2008-05-23T21:03:00.001-07:00

This blog post is coming to you from Beth and Adam Hunt. We are joining the STS team for these two weeks as part of HIVHope. We are also the only married couple on the team and have been blessed with the "royal suite" in Dr. T's house, which happens to be a room with two single beds pushed together with a big gap in between the mattresses. We live in Fishers, IN and this is our second time in Africa. It has been an incredible week in Zambia; we have all truly been thrown into the fire together which has developed relationships that are going to last for many years. We feel especially blessed because these friendships are an outcome that we had not prepared for, nor expected. The two teams are one, and we are becoming in tune with each other's spirit.

Today, the Pamodzi Girls' School had another activity, and some of the team needed rest, so we did not visit with them. It was the final day of the Agape Church Plant School seminar, and all of the attendees presented their creative ideas for teaching others. We enjoyed watching several dramas which displayed things like: how to counsel a person who has discovered that they are HIV positive, how to encourage married couples when one is positive and one is negative, etc. Several others sang songs in Bemba, which were beautiful to listen to. I think everyone in attendance was blessed by what they saw and heard. To close, Duane explained that the students could leave and be like the Dead Sea, or like the Sea of Galilee. The Galilee has an outlet, and therefore the water that flows in, flows out the other side. The Dead Sea has no outlet, and therefore it takes in water which becomes still and cannot support life. We should be like the Sea of Galilee. This knowledge and training about HIV education and motivation should not be taken in and held, but it should flow out to others to give life and hope. The students were then presented with their HIVHope "graduation" certificates and they all agreed that they needed to begin sharing their new knowledge with the community right away.

The evening consisted of a few movies, some worship, prayer, and card games. Tomorrow begins our first weekend, and it is filled with several exciting things which you will hear about later.

Thank you for your prayers. God is moving here in ways that are big and new to me, and it is a privilege to be part of it.

Adam Hunt

Update from John (aka, "the peace corp guy")

2008-05-22T19:30:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone, today’s blog is brought to you by Johnny Payne, a new person you have not yet heard of but who is very excited to be a part of the STS-HIVHope program in Mufulira this week and is going to be working to bring it to Botswana. My name is Johnny Payne and I am a Peace Corps Volunteer working in Letlhakane, Botswana. The story of how I came to be involved in this week’s activities in Mufulira is a little complicated, but the short version is that God is working in Africa and has decided to include me in it. Working as a Peace Corps Volunteer means that I am definitely not a missionary but I do have opportunities to work with the faith-based organizations involved with HIV/AIDS in Botswana. Originally, I expected my role this week to be an observer, in order to learn lessons from HIVHope and STS staff on motivational methods for HIV prevention and to share some lessons from my work with a district AIDS coordinator in Botswana. I have been truly blessed and excited to have the opportunity to join STS in visits to Pamodzi Girls’ School. Apart from that, the spiritual encouragement and fellowship have been more than I could have hoped for.

Today was a break-through day both in the Agape Church’s morning seminar and our Abstinence session at Pamodzi. The participants at Agape were once again confronted with a host of questions through which Duane asked them to analyze the role of the church in dealing with abstinence, sexual behavior, condoms, stigma, and other issues which they will face in their efforts as HIV prevention motivators. A couple of questions which challenged participants the most were how to address sex in a church setting but in a culturally appropriate manner and how to relate to church members who are living with HIV/AIDS. Having lived in Botswana for over 1 year now I can tell you that this is a big issue in many cultures and countries in Southern Africa and it must be addressed head on if we are to seize the opportunity that we have to show the world who Jesus is through our response to HIV/AIDS. While most churches in America have learned to stay relevant to the culture by addressing current issues, African Christianity has taken another course in its evolution. Churches in Africa either face the problem of retaining cultural aspects which conflict with the Bible or else they become so far removed from the culture that they cease to be relevant to the people they are trying to reach. HIV/AIDS, with its complex social and ethical dimensions, has only exacerbated this trend. The participants have shown us this week a truly admirable passion both for their churches and for the lost people of their nation. God will use them in a powerful way as they learn more and put it into practice.

The talks given by Austin and Casey at Pamodzi today were life-altering for many of the girls lucky enough to fit in the small classroom that we were crammed into since the hall was being painted. Austin’s message brought many insights for the girls, who I am sure have not and will not hear many 20-year virgins as they grow up in their culture. Austin’s speaking ability, which was clearly supernaturally assisted if you ask me, allowed the girls to comprehend him as they would one of their own and I believe many of them will remember his example as they choose to testify to their school, family and friends in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. Casey’s message which focused on the ability of God to heal pain and restore his children spiritually also seemed to have received some extra unseen power. She spoke with courage, conviction, and compassion in a way that touched the girls deeply. Many girls probably believed God was speaking directly to them through her as many came forward at the end to ask for prayer, and Casey told me that one approached her asking to receive Christ as her Savior, something I don’t think Casey was expecting to result from her talk. I also received a surprise as my small group ballooned from 10 to about 25 girls who I was able to talk with about sex, abstinence, dating, and marriage. I really enjoy the give-and-take with this age group, and in fact, I am doing a similar program with young people in Botswana through a program called GLOW, Girls and Guys Leading Our World. All the things that have happened this week have been so inspiring and we are just getting started! I am sad to have to return to Botswana on Sunday but I wish the STS group the best as they continue on in Zambia and I think you can expect to hear more about me as plans to bring STS to Botswana will be developing before too long.

John Payne.

Update from Dan - first blog from on the ground!

2008-05-21T19:30:00.000-07:00

After days of traveling on planes, cars, minibuses, vans, and by foot, our whole team is now all here and our programs are well underway. The first wave (Jesse, Austin, Casie, Elizabeth, Angie, Megan, and Dan) arrived safely in Mufulira (our Zambian 'Base Camp') on Friday night after lovely stops at the Smith's in Washington and the Jordaan's in South Africa. The second wave (Duane, Adam, and Beth) arrived safely early Sunday morning after being picked up in Lusaka by Dr. Thinus and Jim (a week after their collision with a bull in Botswana). We spent Sunday getting over the post-travel grog and went to a lovely Italian couple's house in a neighoring city. That evening we picked up two other team members, Johnny Payne and Victor Thanke, who were last minute additions. Johnny Payne is an American in the Peace Corps who has been working in Botswana for the past year with the government to develop a HIV education program. He is a really dynamic and inspiring guy who has quickly become one of our team. By the way, he is hilarious! Victor is a Botswanan who works for the UN helping Botswana develop HIV education. He is a humble man who is extremely intelligent and has a real passion for his country and continent. Victor had to leave us on Tuesday for a job interview and Johnny leaves on Saturday. Please pray for their travel. There presence will be very missed! We have been blessed by their being with us.

On Monday we catipulted into our first day of ministry. Our time at Dr. T's Church Planting School in the mornings have been great. Duane has been working with 15 or so church planters and HIV educators. The 'mazungus,' Zambian word for white people, have been silent observers, taking notes and soaking up Duanes strategies and motivational information. He runs his workshop in a very conversational way, so we have been learning so much about Zambian culture as well as HIV and the stigma attached to it. In the mornings this week, all has gone as planned, for the most part.

In the afternoons... well... not so much. The Youth HIV Ed Team (Austin, Casie, Angie, Jesse, Dan, Megan) are at an all-girls' school called Pomodzi, which is our 4th time at that school, and has local Stop the Spread leaders who work with the students year round. We were planning on teaching a seminar to around 15-20 students, and around 75 showed up. Oh flexibility, a missionary's best friend! So we spent Monday and Tuesday with them, breaking them into small groups and getting to know them, while talking about What HIV Is, How Its Spread, and Myths and Truths of HIV. It has been a really good time of sharing with them and encouraging them. One thing that has really struck us is how well they have been taught about the aforementioned topics. It is proof that the STS-Zambia (the local Zambians who have taken ownership of the program) are doing an amazing job. That has been a continual theme in seeing how capable and motivated the local leaders (there names are Henry, Terry, Oswald, John, Jessie) are to stop the spread of HIV and share the good news of the Gospel. Zambians are going to be able to teach these things better than we can because they know the culture, language, motivations, etc. So one of our objectives of this trip in encouraging and empowering STS-Zambia. Praise the Lord! On Wednesday, the girls at Pomodzi had the afternoon off, but Thursday and Friday we are going to be tackling some of the more intimate subjects like Abstinence, What If You've Made a Mistake, Stigma, Getting Tested, and Abortion. Austin, Casie, and Angie are going to be talking. Please pray that the Lord would anoint them in their words, that the hearts of the girls would be open, and that the Gospel of Jesus Christ would take root and be strengthened among them.

Also, to fill you in on the Seminar Team (Duane, Elizabeth, Adam, Beth), they have spent the afternoons at a teacher's college. They were expecting nearly 50-60, and around 400 showed up. This has its benefits, but it is not what they had planned on. So they have continued to be bold and step out in faith and teach about HIV in the Spirit's leading. Today, the college informed us that they were having evaluator's coming in from the capitol to observe the students, so Thursday and Friday are cancelled for HIV Hope Team. So please pray that another door would be opened for them to serve!

Just a few parting reflections...

First of all, I have been overwhelmed with the amazing people who are on the team this year. Everyone has been so engaged and encouraging. I don't know if I have ever seen a group of people bond so fast. There is a sense of realness in this house, in these people. Pray that the Spirit would continue to work in this way, through our community with each other.

Secondly, there has been alot of laughter, which I think is absolutely neccesary. There are alot of harsh realities here with which we come face to face. It is devestating at times, and it should be. Life is devestating, at times. But The Lord has blessed us with humour and laughter and pray that the Lord would continue to minister to us in this way!

Lastly, thank you. Thank you for your phone calls. Thank you for your emails. Thank you for your concerns. Thank you for your trust. Thank you for your faith in this mission. Thank you for your reliance on the Lord. Most of all, thank you for your prayers... they keep us afloat.

Glory be to God.
Dan
Team Stop the Spread

Update for Tues, May 20

2008-05-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

The phone / internet was finally working tonight, but then the power went out before the team had a chance to send any updates. TIA, right? When I called they were eating PB&Js in the dark and discussing tomorrow program.

On the traveling side, the portion of the team coming up from SA had some action, but managed to come out unscathed. They avioded an elephant on the road in Botswana, dealt with the Zambia border patrol wanting to compound their trailer full of supplies, and skidded to a halt in time to miss a herd of 20 cows in the middle of the night in Zambia. They heard some rattling noises just before picking up Duane Crumb, Adam and Beth at the Lusaka airport...it turned out to be due to lots of missing or stripped lug nuts leaving rear wheels that were about to fall off. A borrowed lug wrench and some slow driving got them and the newcomers the rest of the way to the house in Mufulira by 5 am on Monday.

On their way to Muflira they stopped at an orphanage called Villages of Hope for about 6 hours. On the agriculture side, Jim V gave out pods with Moringa tree sprouts, explained about this "Miracle Tree", and distributed information. The people were very welcoming and seemed very excited about the tree and its amazing health benefits. The team members who were there also attended an evening concert run by Villages of Hope.

While part of the team was traveling up to Mufulira by road, the majority of the team had flown into Ndola, Zambia (the same province as Mufulira). Friends picked them up and took them to the house, so I think they had a little time to rest and re-group before the programs started bright and early Monday morning.

All of the programs appear to be running smoothly. Henry (our STS-Zambia Coordinator) has done a great job with the prep work in Zambia for the HIV Ed teams - both for the programs in the high schools as well as the logistics for training for the teachers and church planting students. There are two HIV Ed teams running programs simultaneously this year for these first two weeks. One team is focusing on one-week teaching/training programs and the other is primarily running 2-week programs at nearby high schools where there are STS clubs in operation year-round. This week, the teaching/training program is at Dr Thinus' Church Planting School in the morning (which everyone is attending) and at the Teacher's Training Institute in the afternoon. The other team is at Pamodzi high school in the afternoon, a school that we have worked with for the past 3 years. This week at Pamodzi is focusing on working with a small number of students who are more active in the club, and next week will be the main program with the entire high school.

Hopefully the power will turn back on soon and the team members will be able to update you first-hand, but until then I'll do my best to keep everyone in the loop.

Tannen

from Elizabeth

2008-05-18T10:09:00.000-07:00

Hi, family and friends!

We are safely in Zambia at long last! Actually, most of us (Dan,Elizabeth, Austin, Casie, Jesse, Megan, Angie) have been here for a few days, but we are having trouble with our phone lines, which is why we've been unable to communicate with you! Hopefully, we will be able to fix that problem tomorrow morning and be able to use both telephone and email at the house by tomorrow evening (Lord willing!). This is Africa! :)

Thankfully, everything else has been smooth and easy, as far as travel and luggage is concerned. Dr. T., Jim, Duane, Adam and Beth made it in this morning, and I am typing on behalf on the team from a friend's house in Kitwe. We will start our various programs bright and early tomorrow morning.

Please continue lifting us up in prayer and know that we are also praying for you! We cannot wait to share more in detail about the awesome things that the Lord is already doing in our team and in Zambia!

Happy and safe,
Elizabeth on behalf of the STS team

P.S. Thanks to all who have written...we cannot read your emails, because of our spotty internet connection. We promise to read and respond as soon as we are able!

STS Team arrived safely in Zambia!

2008-05-17T16:30:00.000-07:00

The STS Team that departed on May 14th has arrived safely in Zambia. I don't think that they have internet and phone access at the house yet, but they should have it soon.

Dr. Thinus, Jim (my dad) and Duane Crumb are on their way from Lusaka last I heard. They may have even arrived in Mufulira by now.

~Tannen

Update from South Africa

2008-05-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

Just talked to my husband in South Africa. Joseph and Jim plan to have a mass Moringa Tree planting at Joseph's place. They have been discussing things at length and are both excited about their plans. They started 200 moringa seeds. Some are for Joseph and some are for the Village of Hope, an orphanage near Lusaka, Zambia. They scheduled a four hour workshop to teach about the Moringa Tree at the Village of Hope on Saturday morning. It is on the way to pick up Duane Crumb, so that will work out well.

Joseph and his wife have three children, pay for the education of 20 orphans and feed about 100 orphans that do not stay with him. Joseph has been studying Jim's Moringa Tree information during this time down time when they are stuck in SA. To obtain necessary funds for his projects, Joseph raises 600 chickens from two days old to 3 months and then takes them across the border to the Congo to sell. It is tougher now that the price of corn is heading up because mashed corn is the staple that the orphans and chickens eat every day. They will be adding the nutritious Moringa leaves to it. If a nice percent of the trees survive maybe Joseph can start selling Moringa!

Dr T has a friend who runs a Johannesburg airport shuttle service. He will take the larger STS team to Dawid Jordaan's house when they arrive in South Africa for the night. Some of the team knows Dawid and his wife. They are awesome.

The Chevy isn't fixed yet, but several solutions are in progress. Nothing to worry about for you all who will be arriving.

Karen VZ

Cows in Botswana

2008-05-11T13:00:00.000-07:00

Dr. Thinus, Joseph, and Jim (my dad) are back in Centurion, South Africa. Yes, they did leave on Friday morning and crossed over into Botswana by late Friday afternoon. It became dark and they were about 20 miles into Botswana when they hit a cow. The Land Rover is a wreck, but they walked away without a scratch. Dr Thinus hitch hiked back to South Africa to get help while Jim and Joseph stayed to guard the supplies. They used a flashlight to wave people around the injured cow.

Some of Dr T’s “spiritual sons” returned to Botswana with him to tow the Rover back across the border. It is now at a workshop in SA. Dr Thinus’ other vehicle is also at the workshop and they said that they hope to have it ready by Wednesday so that they can start driving again for Zambia in time to meet the rest of the team in Ndola on Friday.

Tannen

6/11 Tannen's Last African Journal Entry

2007-06-11T01:55:00.000-07:00

I left Zambia yesterday and I'm headed to Tokyo, Japan. I had layovers in Jo-berg and Hong Kong and I'm now in the final leg (Hong Kong, China --> Tokyo, Japan). Experiencing some turbulence at the moment, which isn't helping my handwriting that is only marginal to begin with.

I woke up yesterday with a heavy heart since it was immediately on my mind that I had to head to the airport and leave the beautiful, peaceful, lazy, trauma stricken, impoverished, happy, simple people of Zambia (sounds like a contradiction, but I'm not sure that it is). Some parts of Zambia I love and other parts drive me crazy, and the same goes to the people. I love Medryn, her music, and her heart. I love the orphans in Murundu who are so starved for love and attention that they follow me around like I'm the pied piper and shyly hold up their hands for me to take. I love the girls at Pamodzi and Chibote High Schools who have lost parents, aunts, siblings, etc to HIV and Malaria, who have suffered from severe physical, sexual and emotional abuse for most of their lives... yet they still find reason to smile, forgive, and to love G'd and "random" muzungus who find their way to these schools. I love dancing at church and not worrying about what anyone is thinking... I hate the men who molest their own family members, rape babies, and openly cheat on their wives. I hate the greed over money and the corruption that results from it. I hate watching funeral processions and driving by piles of fresh graves. I hate the witchcraft, demon possession, and of course the devil and his cronies... I love Dr Thinus for looking Africa and all its problems squarely in the eyes and continuing to have the courage and hope to do his part -- day after day and year after year -- to bring transformation. I'm proud of my fellow STSers for "being the change that they want to see in the world." I'm also both humbled and blessed to be able to do my part.

Africa has taught me a lot. It hurts to care, and the more I care the more I hurt. I think that lots of people don't want to see or hear about the harder things in life -- because if they know then they might have to care... and if they care the might have to do something about it. And doing something about it might disrupt our cushy, comfortable lives. I think that I prefer to have my life diverge away from "normal" as long as that is what G'd has in mind for me.

Dan was sitting in the van driving home from Kitwe last week and watching the African landscape go by out the window. While he was contemplating some of the heavy issues we have dealt with and the people we have been working with, it occurred him to give it up to G'd. Otherwise the burden is too much. So I think that we need to walk the line -- to care and do our part, but leave the end result to G'd.

I'm curious to see where the next few years will take us. I'm excited about the prospect of starting a small orphanage... I wish so much that Debbie was alive to see it happen because I know she would fall for those kids. I long to see her and to do life alongside her the way we used to. But I'm slowly learning to quit constantly asking "Why?", to seek God's face for the sake of finding HIM instead of to get something in return, and to conform my will to His instead of hoping that the reverse will happen. I have a loooonnnngg way to go.

To all of the prayer warriors: twa totella sana, sana. Lesa amupaule. (If you don't know what that means then you should come to Zambia sometime... or just send me an email and I'll give you the translation :-) ). Keep up the good work!!!!

6/10 Final Blog from Kristen

2007-06-10T13:00:00.000-07:00

"And then there were two," Jess says to me as we walk out of the Ndola airport. Two. Two muzungos, two days left, too many times to the airport having to say goodbye, too much on our minds. Too.

We climb back in the van and start in the general direction of Mufulira, bouncing along with the great enthusiasm that a 1982, eight-passenger Chevy without front shocks affords. Images of mud-brick huts painted yellows and reds, with their thatched roofs and dirt floors, bob along beside us, out behind us. Women walk with water on their heads and babies on their backs, half-naked children play in the dust that will become mud in four months time. Scrawny goats scatter the road in front of us. Dr. Thinus talks of African history. It's almost here.

I've already said farewell to most of us - we've been trickling out since last Wednesday - and I've felt it in pieces, building brick-by-brick like one of those thousands of mud huts. Goodbye. Yesterday was Jeremy and George and Dan and Abbie and Carol and Elizabeth. Old and new friendship, partnership, put on pause. Brick, brick, brick. Today, Tannen, my best friend in the entire world, (I can say that definitively) leaving for yet another continent. I already feel the emptiness left by her absence. I already miss her sensible advice, loyal companionship, and the witty comments that she whispers too quietly for most people to hear. Brick, brick. This is the process. Only a few more bricks to go, and then I'll be up and gone, weightless and away from this beloved, sprawling spread of yellow-dry grassland, scattered lakes, tangled jungle, and tortured wasteland.

Goodbyes are a strange thing. You leave something, or something leaves you, and we call this a goodbye. In these moments I always find myself wondering who will do the most missing... the one who leaves or the one who is left. At the many junctures in my life when I've had to change schools, or churches, states, or countries, I've always had the feeling that I was doing the majority of the missing. That the place I left behind, the people, would go on. I would be remembered perhaps, but remembered is entirely different from missed.

This time, though, the goodbye does not seem that way. Maybe it's that I'm doing the sending off before being sent off. Maybe it's because I've been here before and I know I'll return again. Or it could simply be that I'm too sentimental and indulging of my own silly feelings. But it seems to me, that life will not go on here as it always has - that our presence made enough of an impact that our absence will be mourned when we are gone. And likewise, we will not go on as we always have - something has been planted by this time in Zambia, something within us that will take root and become more than a memory.

We leave for Lusaka tomorrow morning: Dr. Thinus, Jess and I. Tuesday these Americans will leave the African soil, and the South African Zambian will return to life as usual, without us. But I feel assurance. Ties will not be broken, new truths will not be forgotten, partnerships will remain - despite economic, racial, and geographical distance.

And that feeling - the knowing that neither side will be the same, that there has been an equal exchange of learning and gratitude, and that until rejoined, both will regard the other - that is a good bye. It is the positive parting that assures us all: This hole created with your leaving will remain waiting for your return.

Kristen

6/8 Update from Kristen - Trauma Program

2007-06-08T00:15:00.000-07:00

Victory Over Trauma by Rebecca K.

Oh yes I am a child without a mother,
My mother died and my father got married to another woman.
Oh yes I am a child without a mother.

When I tell her mum, mum give me money for school
She says No! No! No!
Go to the grave and dig up your mother
And she will give you money.
Oh yes I am a child without a mother.

This was a poem submitted to us by a girl from Chibote Girl's High School.

Today. Thursday. Our last day of real work at Chibote. Carol spoke about forgiveness. Her testimony was truly amazing to witness - she connected in a very real way with everyone who as there. Our entire STS team has been watching God working in Carol's life for the last four weeks, and this was the culmination. First, let me tell you a few things about Carol. Carol is a sit-curled-up-on-the-couch-write-in-her-journal-for-hours kind of girl. She's beautiful, blunt, wildly creative, and fabulously funny. She has pink toenails and a very real handle on what it means to reach out to the unreachable. To love like Jesus. Her life and her character are a testament to the grace of God. Her journey has been long, and what an amazing gift to have been there to see her stand and speak today. Today she has broken her silence at last. And her voice is beautiful.

Kristen

6/7 Update from Megan - HIV Education Program

2007-06-07T16:57:00.000-07:00

Hey all, it's Megan. As one of the resident STS engineers, I haven't blogged much, since we are not generally known for our textual finesse. But since I'm departing tomorrow, I've been honored with this grand opportunity to communicate with you all. So here goes. I'm leaving a day earlier than everyone else and staying overnight in Johannesburg with a friend of a friend of Dr T's. Because this is Africa, I was informed this morning by Dr T that I will be speaking to a group of South African women on Saturday morning - never miss an opportunity to recruit for the cause (though sleeping in would have been nice!). After that announcement, Carol, Abbie, and I headed over to the recording studio where Medrin (sp?) has been singing her heart out to create a CD for us. I never thought I would visit my first recording studio in Zambia. Wacky. It's out in the refurbished servant quarters behind a very nice house about 10 minutes from Dr T's. Zambia is such a strange mix of the old (crumbling roads and dilapidated buildings) and new (cell phones everywhere - though they're sold from streetside shacks). So why not a recording studio too?

We had a delicious lunch at the church planting school again today. It's funny, but after less than two weeks, I have stopped paying attention to the peeling paint and cracked walls, and can just appreciate the fact that I'm in the shade and enjoying delightful company.

The HIV team was back in Kitwe this afternoon for Dan's talk about Getting Tested and George followed with a talk about Abstinence. George's ability to keep the attention of a bunch of wild kids never ceases to amaze me. I'm glad we were able to visit both Murundu and Kitwe these two weeks that I've been here, because they are such a contrast. In Murundu, we had to have a translator for everything, but you felt like you were bringing information that the kids had genuinely never heard before. You're in a little village out on the border of the Congo, and your presence really is an event. In Kitwe, there is so much more affluence (if you can call it that) and they have a much better grasp of English. There is much more of an urban feel and the kids seem more savvy. One girl was actually willing to share her story about getting tested for HIV in my small group on Tuesday. I can't imagine any of the girls in Murundu being brave enough to face the stigma and share her story even if any of them had been tested before. The girls in Kitwe seem much more empowered.

I'm so grateful for this experience, especially for Dr T (regardless of whatever those crazy Irish people have to say), and for Oscar and Henry (our fantastic Zambian church planting team members). Even though things often go awry, and never happen like we plan them, there are a lot of people here who really do want to change the course of Zambia for the better. I have loved working with everyone here and have great hopes for the future.

Peace,
Megan

6/6 Update from Carol - Trauma Program

2007-06-07T11:33:00.001-07:00

Hey y'all,

It's Carol checking in.

Been a while huh. Well, today the trauma team went to Chibote yet again. Kristen and I combined small groups because the kids in my group are pretty mean, so it's easier to put them together. Today PJ (Pastor Jeremy) preached on eyes... You know the blind leading the blind and all that jazz. And we did this crazy skit where I was the blind person leading the blind person. So the funny part that I was the crazy partier, and I tried convincing everyone to come with me and have sex with my friend Henry (who's one of the Church Planting School students). Now if you know me you know how goofy I am, and you also know how obviously opposite that is for my lifestyle. So it ended up being really funny. I just kept interrupting Tannen and Kristen while they were praying, acting like a drunk person, and stumbling around trying to get them to come party. It was so much fun... not even kidding man!

Disclaimer to parents, fellow Christians, and anyone else reading these stupid blogs: I do not in any way condone drinking, drugs, or premarital sex. Thank you very much! :) Our STS team doesn't either, in case you didn't get that memo by now! :)

Moving on... Meydren couldn't come sing today because she's working on the praise and worship cd for STS, so we took Henry. Gotta love that Henry. I hope he and Meydren get married, and make some beautiful Zambian babies! So, while Henry was leading worship he told the girls to dance, and whoa dang. It's a WORSHIP song to GOD! And they're all out there shakin' their butts faster than the girls in a Puff Daddy video... Excuse me, " P.Diddy" is his new name I guess. So I crip walked and they all laughed. It's like they never knew a white girl could do not so white things. Hahaha.

Then the whole Murundo Orphanage deal came to a close this fine evening in June. The Irish people are in town and we met them today. Apparently our beloved Dr. T is as corrupt as they come, and we were given the shaft, the boot, the cane, they practically said "Hey don't let the door kick you on the way out!" Needless to say the Irish-folk are going to continue to pour God's money into the hands of corrupt Zambians, and there's nothing we can do about it... except PRAY! A LOT! Because at the end of the day, no matter how corrupt it is, the orphans are still not getting fed. They're still burying a kid every week or two. SAD.

I've come to a place where I now hate and love Africa. I hate the corruption, poverty and body odor that surrounds you. But some of the people are genuine. I had a talk with Dr T about taking Aziza (Shotty's daughter, she's three guys, and the cutest little Zambian ever), and Meydren home to the USA with me. Dr T pretty much sat me down and asked me how taking Zambian's best and brightest to America isn't going to help Zambia as a nation, or their economy. After that I got pretty convicted about talking about it. Being here for me is a big deal, but I get to go home, this IS their home.

Take of this what you will, I feel I've written too much already.

P.S. Tomorrow I am giving the talk on Forgiveness for our team. And I'll be sharing my testimony for the first time in full. PLEASE KEEP ME, AND ALL OF STS IN YOUR PRAYERS. I'm excited but insanely nervous. God's definitely going to be talking through me tomorrow.

Alright that's all for now.

This is Carol signing off... back to the Future! :)

6/6 Update from Elizabeth - HIV Education Program

2007-06-06T11:33:00.000-07:00

Hi, folks!

Please allow me to tell you a little bit about what our team did on Wednesday. Unfortunately, Georgina/George stayed home all day with the Sea Monster. I think that the rest did him well, though, because he is up and in full swing today! The rest of us (Dan, Megan and myself) did not need to go to our high school in Kitwe (Mindolo High) because it was a teacher planning day. So, instead, we prayed about it and decided to spend the afternoon in Murundu just hanging out with the students and orphans. It was definitely the right decision....

God started working as soon as we stepped foot on the rickety minibus that was our public transportation. A young man sat across from us (a.k.a. on top of us!) and started up a conversation with us. Dan had been reading his Bible, and the guy (named Mark) started asking questions about our t-shirt motto "Be the change". The Holy Spirit stepped in and the conversation quickly turned spiritual. Dan forged ahead (in Dr. T. style!) and eventually led Mark in a prayer of salvation/rededication!!!! It was awesome to witness. Mark asked if we happened to have a Bible (although it was neat - he didn't ask for Dan's), and Dan rummaged around in his bag and found a Gideon New Testament that he had haphazardly thrown in there. God is so COOL!!!!

Our afternoon in Murundu was really fun. Dan rounded up a rather large baseball game that lasted around 3 hours, while Megan and I sat conversing with the girls. Sports are a universal language and it was great to again see the children running and laughing and getting along! For Megan and me, it was really neat to be able to successfully leap the communication barrier and share quality time with the girls. We answered and asked questions about our different cultures and then began to sing. Some of the orphan children remembered "Deep and Wide" (which we had taught the VBS kids the previous week) and they started to sing it to us! We had three high school girls with phenomenal voices (Naomi, Jacquelyn, Cynthia) who led out in some beautiful Gospel tunes - it was absolutely gorgeous!!! I am so glad that we received the opportunity to just relax and continue building relationships with the students and orphans of Murundu!

I've got to run now to teach at the pastor's college (please pray!), but I am thankful I got the chance to share about our day. God is awesome and it is so much fun for us to see His hand at work every single day. Lives are being changed because of your prayers, so please keep lifting us up. We are now feeling the "homestretch"... just a few more days until we all leave Zambia. For me, there is so much to do and so little time left. Please pray for peace and that we accomplish only that which is God's will. He will take care of the rest!

Have a great day!

Elizabeth

6/5 Update from Jami - HIV Education Program

2007-06-05T16:41:00.000-07:00

Today is my last day in Zambia for this year's trip. The day started off with a few of us walking into town to get chitenge dresses made for ourselves and our family. We ate lunch at the Church Planting School where Annie made the best nshima with chicken I've eaten!! We arrived in Kitwe at the Mindolo High School around 13:00 and unloaded our equipment and started to set-up for our presentation. We have a nice big hall that holds close to 1000 students. The energy in the hall was amazing. We started out with a funny skit to let the students know that we're crazy muzungus (white people). The Doctors Office skit was a hit and Georgina made her debut at the school. Georgina is going to be famous all over Zambia! The dance competition was outrageous. The student who won the competition was an amazing dancer. George and Elizabeth joined in the dance competition, the students got a kick out of it! I presented the material on Biology/ Transmission and the students seemed to be very interested and attentive for the most part. The highlight of the day was the small groups. The students (8th-12th grade) were asking lots of questions and talking freely about a lot of topics. It is exciting to see the students really thinking about the information, thinking about things they have heard and questioning the logic of myths about HIV/AIDS. My message for this year's trip was to get the students to know more than just facts, they need to have a deep understanding of the things we're telling them. They need to think about things and decide for themselves what choice they want to make with their lives. I hope that this was a mission accomplished. The only bad news of the day was that the school is letting out all the students tomorrow (Wednesday) since there is a teaching meeting all day. I think we've all become accustomed to plans changing with the wind, so our program will start-up again on Thursday. I have no doubts that the rest of this weeks program is going to great!

As we drove home, all packed into the back of the van, I looked out the window and saw the most beautiful sunset. The colors in the African sky at sunset can't be matched anywhere else in the world. I feel privileged to have been a part of this HIV/AIDS team. I can't say enough about all the people on the team, they are amazing. It's always sad to say goodbye to this place and all the people I've met here. Mufuliria, Zambia is really home! I've seen children grow and friends change into these amazing people. I look forward to seeing what happens next year.

6/4 Update from George - HIV Education Program

2007-06-04T16:50:00.000-07:00

Dear Bloggers,

I, George, will be bringing your blog to you this evening or morning or whenever you're reading this. We just got through with our planning meeting for this week's program. We are moving to a new school (in Kitwe!) and we are very excited about how the program looks. We learned a lot from last week and really feel that we can improve. We have also been focusing a lot more time on prayer and I know that will help.

Now it's time for a story. "The Sea Monster"

We are not exactly sure of the origins of the Sea Monster, but we now know that this monster is not a mythical creature. It is real and it has attacked us. We believe that it may have come from the kettle (coffee maker). But the origin is not important. What is important is that it is here.

The Sea Monster is an ugly creature. It loves to live in the stomach and the digestive system of missionaries living in Zambia. The Monster first appeared before I even arrived in Zambia but it has wrought its vengeance this week. It has jumped from person to person.

It loves to create a tossing, turning ocean in your stomach that eventually turns into a hurricane. It pounds against your intestines.

It churns. It creates gale force winds. Then it breaks over the flood walls and... well, let's just say that it's not good.

We believe the Monster is green but no one has actually seen it. We do know that it speaks through bubbling churning noises from your stomach, but before you children get too afraid, I must let you know that Sea Monster does not win. He comes and attacks, but then prayer and medicine meets him and destroys him. Health wins the battle! :)

The End

Seriously - Some of us (George, Kristen, Carol [?], Dan, Jess) have had a run in with this Sea Monster (that is really just the a.k.a. someone came up with). But I want you to know that most of the people on that list feel much better. Please continue to pray that the Monster does not attack anyone else. Pray for continued healing. Pray for power as we step out into a new school this week. Pray for strength as our days are often very tiring. Pray for this country. Pray for their people and their churches. I have seen God moving in amazing ways since I have been here. I am so blessed to be a part of this group and this ministry.

One more thing, please pray for the church plant school. This school was started by Dr. Thinus Van Dyk. This week Jeremy Swanson and myself, George, will be conducting a pastoral training at the school. Please pray for wisdom as we will be training 10 future pastors of Zambia.

Thanks!
George

6/2 Update from Dan - HIV Education Program

2007-06-02T14:17:00.000-07:00

This week at Mirundu Basic has continued to go very well... with a few hiccups along the way. We have pretty much decided there is no point in planning out an agenda because as soon as we get there... everything changes. This morning as we were about to leave, we got a phone call from the headmaster telling us that they were having a school wide mathematics exam this morning and we would not have them until 11:00... Oh Africa! So we enjoyed the morning at our own leisure... a variety of sipping instant coffee, reading, journaling, going over talks, sleeping in, or just being quiet reflecting on the weeks past.

Our plan was to take kids to get tested today... and with the late start we were just going to divide up the girls and boys and give them a quick talk about the importance of getting tested and the fears that come along with it. We told this to the headmaster and he was fine with it. As they gave the Getting Tested briefing, Jami and I took all the little 1-5th graders and played an African game similar to Sharks and Minnows without the water and substituting in Lions and Sheeps (its called Sheep, Sheep come on). It has been a staple when entertaining the little kids who wander into our talks to the older kids and distract everyone. So we take them out into the field to play this classic game. Unfortunately, it gets a bit violent as one must not only tag the sheep, but they must grab them and contain them. Well lets just say that when Mazungus (white people) are playing, we are pretty much the sole target. Well I forget that I am not in the best shape of my life, and by the end I was about ready to throw up all over the kids as I dodged and sprinted. As I was able to get away from them at the expense of my body and lungs, Jami was mauled time and time again by thirty to forty little Zambian girls with sharp fingernails... lets just say her arms look like they have been pawed by a pack of angry wildcats.

Meanwhile, the others are talking with the kids. To our surprise, we had about 50 kids who wanted to get tested... which was great. Also to out surprise, the headmaster pulls aside George and Henry and tells them that the kids need to talk to their parents before they get tested... which is not so great. So we have 50 kids ready to go find out the truth about their status, and we have to tell them to go back to their parents (if they even have parents) and come back on Monday. Lets just say that the news and my intense nausea formed the perfect formula for frustration... but such is working with people... especially those in Africa. Anyways, it will be better in the long run because we will have the work at this school carried on by a few of the church planters and we don't want to muddy the reputation of STS in the eyes of the parents... God continues to work all things out for the good... just not on our rigid Western timeline. Please pray that the delay and having to tell their parents will not deter the brave 50 who were willing to step up and take responsibility for the mistakes they have made. Pray that the extra time will allow for those on the fence (about getting tested) to see that it is a scary, but vital procedure. Pray that we may comfort them and point them to Christ. Pray that we will have enough tests. The testing could be an absolute disaster if God is not in it. Cover it in prayer.

The rest of the day went well, I regained consciousness and Jami dressed her wounds at lunch. We worked with the 5th and 6th graders in the afternoon. It was the last day with them, seeing as we are going to the Teacher's College tomorrow after lunch. From the small groups it seemed they have not quite hit the period where they are starting to experience sex, but over the next 2-3 years they are going to come into a time when they will have to make some serious choices... choices that at 15 and 16 will shape how their life turns out. The nurse believes that nearly 70% of the Mirundu village is HIV+... there are nearly 16,000 people living in mudhuts with no personal toilets (merely a hole in the ground covered by thatch walls), electricity, or running water. For many of the villagers, it is too late. But for these kids there is still hope. Please pray for them, especially for the next 2 - 5 years.

Finally, I just want to tell you a story. Dr. Thinus was driving today in Kitwe (a neighboring city). The street was blocked by a huge crowd of people walking down the road. The only time that you really see a group of this size walking in the streets are for funeral processions. I hate to say it, but funerals are a commonplace thing to see here in Zambia due to HIV/AIDS. As you drive out of town there is nearly a mile stretch of graves that line the road... ones that did not exist fifteen years ago. The grave markers merely state the name of the person and the dates of their birth and death... they read 10/5/97 or 5/17/01 or 2/23/05... the further you get from the town, the fresher the mounds of dirt until you can see a line of those which the dirt is still damp... coffin sales are big business in Africa. So Dr. Thinus, who has been working here for over a decade, was not surprised to see the procession of wandering men and weeping woman. As he drove through the crowd they parted for his vehicle until he nearly reached the front. There was no hearse, no special vehicle... merely a lone bicycle. On the bicycle laid a coffin not much larger than a shoebox... Oh my God... he could not finish the story as tears overcame him. When I heard this I left the kitchen and went to my room... I just wept for this place. I wept for the tragedy... for the pain that this continent bears. I hate this place...I hate Africa... I hate the death... I hate the tragedy... I hate the way it breaks me... I hate the way it empties me... I hate how it strips me and leaves me feeling so naked...

but...

...I love Africa... I love Africa because I know that God's heart breaks for it... I know God's heart burns for it... He refuses to forsake this place when the rest of the world turns their head... to spare themselves the pain or guilt or whatever... God continues to dirty his hands and, when death is constantly in your face, salvation becomes real... as I lay on my bed and wept, I prayed, begged, pleaded that salvation was real... that the innocence that was buried today would not decompose in a field outside of town, but that he would be set free... he would be spared the suffering of life lived on this earth...

As I lay there, through the window floated the sound of the laughter of children outside... it perfectly represented the paradox of Africa ... even in the midst of the sorrow... there is so much joy... so much beauty... so much life... maybe they have figured out something that we with our comfortable lives have overlooked... that maybe this world is not about living long, wealthy, painless lives, but that what is contained in this life is merely a shred of the joy that we will one day know... thank you for your prayers... please continue...

From Africa,
Dan

6/1 Update from Carol - Trauma Program

2007-06-01T14:01:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all...

It's Carol again. It's been a long day so far, and it's only six thirty at night here.

This is Africa I am about to talk about. In case you don't know how things work here... I'll learn yah something real quick. Africa, Zambia especially, has no sense of time. We walk into Chibote girls school every day not knowing if we'll have PA, not knowing if we'll even have kids to talk to when we get there.

With that in mind, I'll fill you in on how today went. It was hard. Especially for me.

God has broken me on this trip. Everything that could have been taken away has been. Tennessee Williams once said that "Surrender is like being in a burning building, no fire station to call, no ambulance, just the upstairs window to look out of while the house crumbles around you." That's how I feel right now at the end of this day, this week especially. I've given up everything, but it seems like it's still not enough. God always wants more. And I don't have more. There's nothing left. I'm spent.

We got to Chibote today and I set up the illustration. Some of the effects of trauma are written on these balls, and I put them in abucket, and when Tannen was talking about giving things up to God she posed the question, "How can you give this stuff up to God if it's still in your bucket?" She brilliantly used the illustration of Jeremy with explosive diarrhea sprinting towards the nearest toilet. She related it to when our hearts are like explosive diarrhea, and instead of sprinting to God we think it will just go away.

We split up into small groups, and my group of girls were almost completely unresponsive to everything I said. Nothing I did was right. I tried to open up first about a time when I was scared, and one or two people followed my example, but not one of the older kids would talk. They kept interrupting, then they all just picked me apart. I don't pray enough, I don't read the Bible enough, I don't open up enough, I don't talk enough, I'm not nice enough... Then that turned into them telling me that "The Bible says to give in order to receive, so I think you should give me your bag so I can remember you." Then it went from my bag to my necklace, to my bracelet, my watch, the shirt off my back. Everytime I said no they said I wasn't a good Christian because I'm not willing to share. That was like a huge punch in the face. Then they were all playing with my hair and they kept trying to tell me that I should shave it off, and leave it with them so that they can remember me. That really upset me, even though it's just hair, nothing would be enough for these girls. They got mean after that.

I got home tonight and was looking for my drawing pencils and I realized that I had them in the outermost pocket in my backpack... and they were missing. Not missing, but stolen. It's not about the stupid pencils, it's the principle of the matter... They don't respect me at all! It's the first time I've ever lead a group that just walked all over me with no emotion. I've lead a bunch of groups before, and I've always been able to find the right balance of letting it flow, and when to be stern. DANG....God this kind of sucks. Today was so amazing though, because one of the younger girls asked me to pray for her, and she told me about her home life, which made the whole day worth it in the end!

I don't know what tomorrow holds. I'm banking on God for that information. When God really talks to me, I always end up drawing. I am kind of attached to those pencils... but apparently they need them more than I do. I drew a picture today that shows the paradoxical differences between home life and Zambian life. Whenever God is involved it's paradoxical. I miss the ocean, and praying while I'm surfing. I don't like surfing with other people, mainly because surfing is when I feel the closest to God. And, it's so nice to be uninterrupted when you go alone. Maybe it is time to include others though.

That's enough deepness for one night.

This is Carol... signing off!

5/31 Update from Tannen - Trauma Program

2007-05-31T15:23:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was interesting. It started with the morning training session -- the women we were supposed to train never showed up. The men wanted us to purchase them an office and a minibus to "empower" them to do ministry. Needless to say, we weren't quite buying into this plan. Have you ever heard of a "sitting allowance"? Well, I hadn't until yesterday, but apparently in order to do Stop The Spread work we were told that it is necessary to provide the people who you are helping with free food, transport money and a SITTING ALLOWANCE (i.e., you pay each person attending the meeting to sit on their butts during the meeting). Not exactly the heart we were looking for... the focus was on getting the title associate with chairing an STS. Time for new leadership on the Zambian side.

We arrived at Chibote high school after our morning "training session". Our PA system didn't work (again). Then after Dr T left we were notified that the water was out in the school and they had released all the kids early. So our afternoon session was completely scrapped. We twiddled with the PA system to try to get it working and waited at the school for ~3.5 hours to for Dr T to finish his things and make it back to Kitwe to pick us up (he's doing the work that should probably be allotted to 3-4 qualified people)... we didn't want to take public transport because we had to take the PA system home with us to get it fixed. So from there we went to a meeting about the Murundu Orphanage Foundation (MOF), so of course it was only appropriate that the person we had scheduled to meet was in Kitwe.

So the day seemed to basically be a blowout, but I wasn't bothered by it... maybe since it was out of our control. And we gained a few things from the day: (1) A decision was made to put new leadership in place with the STS Zambia team in Kitwe (2) While we were waiting for Dr T to come some of the Chibote girls stayed to hang out with us... we had fun getting to know them, playing games, singing songs, and getting Medryn to teach us a dance she made up. Good stuff. (3) we left the MOF meeting with a green light as far as taking over the orphanage (4) The van didn't break down on the way home from Kitwe and we survived another day of Dr T's crazy driving. :)

About the Murundu Orphanage Foundation, we were shown a lot of paperwork regarding the history of the orphanage and some of the squabbles that we had been hearing about that cleared things up for us. Also, they are prepared to give us complete control over the orphanage and all of the property, buildings, etc for us to improve the situation for the orphans in that area. There are more than 300 orphans in the city and I have heard that the HIV infection rate is around 75%, although I don't know where that statistic comes from.

Jeremy spoke today (Thursday) on our condition after trauma and gave several stories to illustrate his point... I know that a lot of girls were touched by what he was saying, but one girl stood out to me and my eyes kept sticking on her during the message. So as I divided up the small groups I hoped and prayed that she was in mine and she got my number so I was stoked. There were about 12 or so girls in my small group and this girl sat directly to my right. Since this was our first small group (we were planning to have them every day, but various things prevented them from happening) and we were running short on time I just asked everyone to introduce themselves... their name, grade, and something about themselves. Well, that girl on my right started us off and just busted out with her story... parents dead of HIV, current living situation, etc, and then just started crying... I'm used to facing a brick wall on the first day and getting some of the kids to say ANYTHING can be like pulling teeth, then gradually moving towards a place where some of the girls can confide in my by the end of our 2 week sessions. So I couldn't believe that she was willing to trust me and the rest group with her story. With my arm around her, the rest of the girls in the circle began to introduce themselves by saying their names, grade, and then how old they were when their parents died and what their current living situation is. Afterwards I got some time to be one-on-one with the girls and I was again surprised by their honesty about the trauma in their own lives and pleased to have the opportunity to cut to the heart of the issues and start counseling them and praying with them.

Tannen

5/30 Update from Elizabeth - VBS Team

2007-05-30T17:16:00.000-07:00

Hi, everyone! I thought I would take a minute to write much more in depth about the VBS project that we are doing in Murundu village with the orphans there. The other blog I wrote was a bit rushed and written WAY too early in the morning for it to truly convey what I'm feeling about this project. Allow me to elaborate, please....

Jess, Abbie and I are really enjoying this new project. Today, I was struck by the feeling of going back to Bible times - smelling food cooked over open fires, seeing children running through the streets half-dressed, all the while walking with Pastor Joseph down a very dusty road - and realizing the heartbeat of God as a child unnoticeably walked quietly beside me and then slipped a tiny, dirty hand into mine. How much more does our Father in heaven love us and long for us to trust Him enough to slip our tiny, torn hearts and lives into His capable hands?

Every time I walk into that village, my heart is tugged and pulled. Pastor Joseph shared some things with me that made it all real. I mentioned earlier that we are singing, dancing, playing games, doing crafts and teaching Bible stories to the orphans this entire week in a make-shift VBS. While we were showing the children relay races and watching them tear down the one dusty road with HUGE grins on their faces, Pastor Joseph came up to me and thanked me for allowing the children to run. He said that for many that was probably the very first time in their lives that they were encouraged to run as fast as they could - for the simple reason of having fun. Shocking, huh? In a village where it is commonly thought that 75% of the population is probably HIV+, exercise is vital for maintaining good health for as long as possible. How simple to just teach these children to run, and yet I know it is critical that they play these types of games long after we leave the village.

We also have had a blast teaching them Bible stories. We are using some fun puppets to help tell the stories, as well as encouraging the children to get involved. Yesterday, I told the story of Noah and the ark. It's amazing how simple these familiar stories must become as they are being translated to children who cannot fathom that much water (Pastor Joseph has been a life-saver!). We had the children participate and they imitated various animals walking into the ark. They laughed and laughed and really got into their parts... monkeys, elephants, lions, etc. Try to envision 50-70 orphans crowded under the shade of a single smallish tree, hanging on every word that we shared, large brown eyes sparkling at the idea of all the animals of the world in one single boat. Can you see it? Pastor Joseph told us that most of these children had never heard that story, as churches do not have the resources to design children-specific programs. He does a tremendous job - feeding, clothing and ministering to these orphans as he is able! Daily, Pastor Joseph, Abbie, Jess and I simply cannot keep silly, sloppy smiles from covering our own faces when we see their little eyes light up with joy! :)

I've got to sign off for the night, but please continue to pray for the Murundu village orphans and the work that Pastor Joseph and his family have already begun. It has been an amazing opportunity for us to reach out and touch the "real Africa" with the compassionate love of Jesus Christ. I am so grateful to have had a chance to spend every day being the hands and feet of Christ in such a real and tangible way. Please continue to pray for all the different projects and teams! We are all a bit sun-burned and weary from long days in the quite-hot African "winter" sun! :)

Love in Jesus,
Elizabeth

5/29 Update from George - HIV Education Program

2007-05-29T16:02:00.001-07:00

Hello to all,

This is George, a.k.a. Georgina (long story about me, a guy, having to dress up as a girl in a skit and the kids loved it so much that Georgina had to make a return appearance!), and one of the new team members that flew in the past weekend. But you haven't come to this blog site to hear all about me, so here goes some news about the team.

WOW, we just had a really great worship and testimony session. As we returned this evening, we were greeted by two of the girls cooking grilled cheese sandwiches. They were a big hit. Then we followed that with a bit of worship music. It started a bit slow and then it just started happening. The Spirit enter the room and peace came at the same time. By the time we got to "Here I am to Worship", I had chills. Then we went around the room to share testimonies and it was nothing short of moving and amazing.

Today at Murundu Basic School: Well, we were at the Basic School in Murundu again today. Today was the last of Jami's talk on Transmission of AIDS which was followed by Dan bringing a great message about Truth and the reasons why the students should get tested (this was all for the morning session!). The afternoon session was started with Dan's talk and then followed up with a message about Abstinence and Sex, as it relates to biblical truth, by Henry (a Zambian church planting student) and myself. The most powerful moment for me was during Henry's testimony. I sat and watched the student's faces. They had the look that said, "I'm connecting with you." I just know that some of them were encouraged and inspired.

Of course we did have a few bumps along the road, but overall, today was really great. Our team is working very well together, praying for each other, and helping out wherever is needed.

Now let me share one personal story before I leave. I arrived on Saturday and was told, within my first hour of being in Zambia, that I would be preaching the next morning. Talk about on the spot! :) As I sat in the Kitwe church worship service, singing and dancing (they dance a lot), it hit me. I hate this overwhelming feeling of "these people really know how to worship. Who am I to bring God's message to them? They are such a beautiful people." I felt so unworthy. Of course, I brought the message and it was received really well. (God can work miracles even when you don't feel worthy.) The point I want to get across, however, is this. These people are truly a beautiful people. They are worthy of our prayers. They are worthy of the small help we can give to them and I am even worthy of them. A few of the Zambians have taught me so much about love, about caring and about so much more.

Peace,
George

5/29 Update from Carol - Trauma Program

2007-05-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

Hey y'all,

It's Carol reporting live from Zambia! Woot woot! Today the Trauma team went into Kitwe to the all girls Chibote High School. We had some technical difficulties at first with the black amps in the hot sun, then decided to just raise our voices... not yell because you know we're not bringing the heat just yet! We started out with some songs and WHOA DANG can this Zambian girl Meydren sing! God has definitely blessed her!!! After that we had the doctors skit, which just so you all know... PJ (Pastor Jeremy Swanson) did an impression of explosive diarrhea that would make his Swanson kids proud... ESPECIALLY Israel! HECK YES MAN! And how it went was... I went in for an annual physical checkup, and every time someone sat down next to me I caught whatever they had. First it was coughing, then fiercely itching, then EXPLOSIVE POO, then Tannen walked in acting like she was pregnato, and I realized what was going on and I flipped out and ran "off stage" exit stage left!

Then Kristen started giving a brief overview of Trauma, and I put on this sweater thing, and was the "Hairy scary monster" and I kept trying to get Kristen's attention. It went on for a while like this: OH EH AHA HA AH AH OH EH OH UH OHUH OHUH OHUH (various monkey calls), rolling around on the ground yelling randomly, making funny noises, just to try and get Kristen's attention. She never looked til Tannen came running up yelling at her for not acknowledging (I think that's the wrong spelling... whatever DUDE!) the hairy scary sweaty... haha monster. Finally she recognizes it, and the point is that Trauma is the hairy scary stuff that no one wants to talk about or deal with.

These kids... AMAZING! This place, God's land... I think Tannen and I decided today that someday we're going to go live in a mud hut in the bush for a month or two... YEP that's right folks I said it. On the way home we got onto the people transporter, aka the bus, and about 17.3 miles away from Mufulira (rough estimate of course) it broke down. And these crazy munto's (Zambian's) were pulling out "spare parts". So I sat on the ground ate some nerds (I don't like candy, but had nothing to eat, and if you know me you know I am ALWAYS hungry!) And I very quietly left my mark on Africa. No I didn't pee you sickos, I just wrote my name and took a picture. So there I am sitting on the ground finished with my nerds staring at our non-working people transporter and wondering how we're going to get home.

WE HITCH HIKED! Parents, significant others, friends, family, and anyone who randomly cares... Zambia is a friendly country. Zambia is safe. There were no sketchy situations involved and we returned home safely to a new GEIZER! Installed by an old geizer... but don't tell Dr. Yodis I said that! ;) ;)

One thing I would like to mention that will make someone proud... A Zambian guy came up to me today and asked "How much are you?" I said "I am not for sale buddy!" He says "How much, women don't choose." I say "You can't afford me! :)" Then I shook my fist with an incredibly stern expression.

Okay, blogging out.

Sendamenapo (Goodnight!)...Even though it's only 1:30 in the afternoon for y'all.

P.S, How is living in the past? Get it, since y'all are 6 hours behind us!!!:)

Monday/Tuesday Update from Kristen - Trauma Program

2007-05-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we started the second two-week session of our Trauma Program. We're working in Kitwe, about a half-hour from Mufulira, in the heart of the copper belt. Kitwe, in the local language, literally means "head," and is named as such because it is nearly the largest city in Zambia, second only to Lusaka. It is a relatively wealthy area due to the copper-mining industry. About 40 km from Kitwe is a copper mine that claims to be the largest open-pit mine in the world - think Grand Canyon without the pretty sunrises. Every morning we'll be working with the Stop The Spread team that was formed last year. It consists of four women and three men. They have been working with Wiseman (a local pastor) and a teacher at Chabote High School to keep a STS club running throughout the school year. Tannen, Jeremy, Carol (she's joining us this session) and I will split up the women and men on the team and do training with each group separately. Because of gender issues, we thought it best to have Jeremy train the men and Tannen, Carol, and I train the women. Today will be day one of training for them in this format. In the afternoon, we'll all head over to Chabote High School and start our program there. We'll be there from 1300 hours to about 1430. This is, of course, all subject to change - at any moment. TIA.

The team as a whole seems to be doing well, we're excited to have some new faces in the house - Jami, Megan, Abbie, and George (pardon if I butchered the spellings). Dan is especially excited to have some additional testosterone around to combat the estrogen ocean. And I have a friend visiting, Annie, who has been serving in the peace corp for the last year in the southern province. She lives in a village - mud hut, no running water or electricity - so there has been a lot to learn from her time here as well.

Oh, and one last event of note: thanks to the skills of Dr. T, we now have a brand-new Geyzer! (Anyone not familiar with the situation - the Geyzer is a British term for water heater.) It is now possible to take a shower all by yourself...meaning no one has to stand by to turn the hot water on and off. The house will be much quieter. And we don't have to worry about the thing exploding, which is also a plus.

Well, we're off to start another day...

Kristen