From Pre-season Training to the Opening Game

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.