From Pre-season Training to the Opening Game
1 Timothy 4:8
“For while bodily training is of some value, godliness is of value in
every way, as it holds promise for the present life and also for the life to
come.”
My (Jamie’s) favorite sport is American Football. Thankfully, Mandy likes it too even though
she prefers Zambian futball (aka soccer).
Although I never got to play on an organized team growing up I’ve had
the privilege over the years of becoming acquaintances and friends with several
NFL players. These men are men of
character end dedication. Although the
NFL season is less than half of a year, these men train mentally and physically
throughout the year. Yes, part of that
training involves rest (at least comparative to the active season). Yet during the off season when their bodies
get to recover and rejuvenate, they are hard at work preparing for the next
season in order to have a winning season and hopefully a championship
year. Most of us only get to see these
men for a couple of hours each week when they are on the field, yet countless
hours go into preparation for that relatively short game. I love hearing the behind the scenes
stories: stories of planning strategy,
recognizing their role on the team, preparing for the obstacles, contingent
plans for recovery when the inevitable obstacles and injuries come, and then
watching them execute their plan on the field.
Of course, it makes me sad when their story involves these players getting
injured or having an unfair play called against them that takes them out of the
game for a while.
Well, in the last five months, being a missionary in Zambia
has been a lot like that. The rainy
season gives us a slightly slower pace of ministry because it cuts us off from
traveling to Nambaaza. So, during those
months our ministry activities are limited to the Choma area. However, that does not mean that we put
Nambaaza on hold. On the contrary, it
gives us the necessary time to acquire ministry materials, do essential
planning for ministry events, and develop more teaching materials specially
made for the needs of the people in that village. In short, we used the rainy
season (December-March) to get prepared for our busy ministry season of
April-November. Here are the things that
we did specifically for Nambaaza:
- · Acquired most of the building supplies needed to complete the projects in Nambaaza
- · Attended the Central Africa Baptist College In-service to get more training for the classes we will teach this year.
- · Chose the CABC classes and had all the student notes translated into the Tonga language
- · Recruited and short-term teams from local churches in Choma to help during the weeks we teach CABC classes in Nambaaza
- · Planned a two day camp program for Nambaaza to take place when a team of students from Maranatha Baptist Bible College come in June
- · Developed discipleship materials for the leaders in training
- · Developed a lesson series to address current issues the Nambaaza people are facing regarding worldview and spiritual warfare
- · Developed a sermon series on 1 John
- · Fine tuned our family philosophy of ministry and goals for our time in Nambaaza
Of course, there was still plenty of ministry activity
happening here in Choma during those same months.
- · Board Meetings for the Baptist Bible College and Institute of Choma that have been very productive as we look to the future.
- · Guest speaking at Calvary and Grace Baptist Churches
- · Training meetings for two of the local pastors who are preparing for their ordination councils in June
- · Walking the local church leadership through the process of their first ordinations of pastors
- · Taught the Hermeneutics class in Choma
- · Taught a series on stewardship at Salvation Baptist church at the request of Pastor Arthur Munkombwe that resulted in the church developing its first ministry budget. Jamie facilitated the questions, but they did all the work and made all the decisions. What a huge step toward being truly indigenous!
Well, we felt like we had a very profitable
“off-season.” We looked forward to our
first “game of the season” with great anticipation. It went great! On April 1-5 Jamie and Arthur headed off to
Nambaaza and found things in much better shape than expected…physically
speaking.
The roads were already easily passable. The grass was not as
thick as last year after rainy season. The local believers had started building
a better thatch roof over the little kitchen area at the campsite. All of our
construction from the previous year had weathered the hard rains and strong
winds of the rainy season. The well was
producing a great water flow.
Everything was right on track.
During those 5 days we were able to start laying blocks for
the walls of our boma (shelter) where our safari tent will be put up, cut grass
to create a driveway, mark out the fence line that will be around the boma,
hire local crews to make bricks, hire local crews to make cement blocks, and
look into what it will take to get the grass roof put on the boma, get a crew
started on building a cement pad for the large generator, and a crew started on
putting in the septic system. Not bad for 5 days! The projects were off to a great start.
Spiritually, we found things in a much worse condition. There were marital problems, division amongst
believers, and as a result of those two problems a few of the professing
believers had lapsed back into their animistic worldview as demonstrated. They had gone to the “witch finder” in an
attempt to find the cause of these problems.
Now you know why we have been putting together lessons on worldview and
1 John. So, at the end of game 1, we
found ourselves on the winning side, but recognizing the tough season that lay
ahead. Still, we returned to Choma
rejoicing and optimistic because we serve the King of Kings and we felt we had
used our off-season to prepare a great strategy.
Upon arrival to Choma we found that game 2 had already
begun. Jamie discovered that Mandy, who
had just had another bout of malaria, was now having pain on the right side of
her abdomen and light-headedness. Well,
by now you all know the rest of that story.
Instead of returning to Nambaaza as a family that week we traveled up to
Lusaka for Mandy’s emergency surgery. Thankfully
we came out of “game 2” on the winning side as well, but we sure have taken a beating. Mandy, one of our key players was taken out
of the game by illness for 3 months.
Just like any team, that meant some serious re-strategizing.
So, over the last four weeks we have been implementing our
strategy changes with great success.
Jamie and Pastor Arthur have switched positions. Arthur has taken the lead in Nambaaza while
Jamie has kept things moving along in Choma.
This has allowed Jamie the time at home to take care of Mandy. The kids have been doing an awesome job at
helping out in every way possible. As
usual, the difficult circumstances draw us closer together and we are thankful
for that. As for the ministry, we are
actually still right on track with our projected goals and timeline despite the
major alterations to our plans.
So, now you know how to pray for us. We are still early on in this season and
things sure are different from how we had anticipated them being. By this point we had expected to have spent
three solid weeks in Nambaaza as a family.
Now it looks like we won’t be out there as a family until July. Jamie will make several trips out there between
now and then, but it will be quite some time before Mandy is able to tolerate
traveling on the rough roads.
Here are some specific things you can be praying for:
· * Mandy’s continued recovery
· * Jamie & Warrick will be traveling to
Nambaaza May 16-18
· * The Women of Salvation Baptist Church are
hosting a Women’s Conference this same weekend (May 17). The ladies have done all the planning and
will be leading this conference without missionary involvement for the first
time. This is very exciting!!!
· * Jamie, Lorelei, Pastor Arthur (Salvation
Baptist), and Pastor Banda (Calvary Baptist) will be going to Nambaaza May
26-31 to teach our first CABC class of the year. It is Old Testament Survey.
So, that is what is happening over here. Thank you all for your part in all that is
happening on the field over here. You
play a bigger part in the events in Zambia than you probably think.
