May 2008 Update

Greetings!!!



May has been an exciting month! On the 2nd of May, six children arrived at the village of hope. Most of the children who arrived already had siblings living at the Village. The children moved in together in one house. So we now have a house with eight children from three sets of different siblings.

After picking up the children, I was looking forward to witness a happy reunion as brothers and sisters finally met each other after being separated for some time. Upon arrival, I called Francis Kaleya out of the house to come welcome his 6yr old sister, Natasha Kaleya. I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe it was a little selfish of me but I thought that a brother meets sister, hugs, smiles all around, we are together again sort of happy story book ending would take place! Oh, what a wonderful photo op! What I saw though was rather heart wrenching; here I was excitedly calling out to Francis, “Your sister, Natasha, is here! Come welcome her, take her around the house!” Francis just stood there, kind of unsure of himself and sort of wondering what he was supposed to do.

At my prompting, he starts walking awkwardly towards his sister limply stretches his hand in greeting and you won’t believe this, she turns away from him saying, “he is not my brother!” Now as you can imagine, it is getting to be very uncomfortable and complicated for all of us. Natasha refuses to come into the house with Francis, it takes awhile for the housemother to coax her in and I am wondering, ‘what in world is going through their little minds.’ It’s not until later on that we find out that after their parents died, they were taken to live with different relatives. Francis was with his paternal grandfather, and Natasha with her maternal great grandfather. They hardly ever saw each other, which explains the strange reaction when they finally met. Upon observing the scenario above, one of the housemothers commented that not only are we rescuing these children, but also helping reunite families and siblings together. After what I had witnessed, I could not agree more!

Then there was the case of Roman Mweemba, a seven old boy. Earlier that morning when we went to pick him up, it turned out to be shear chaos and pandemonium when his guardian handed him over to us. He started screaming, kicking and thrashing in an attempt to keep from getting into the vehicle and we finally had to forcefully restrain him and put him in the vehicle. Now all of this was happening at a busy bus stop and shopping area and due to the commotion, Roman had succeeded in drawing quite a crowd. I was starting to became a bit nervous lest we be mistaken for child traffickers, a term which has became rather too common in the media here, or worse still kidnappers which could get us in big trouble. I could almost see the headlines, “Three Lynched While Trying to Kidnap a Child!” When we finally got him situated and locked the doors so that he would not jump out of the car, I had to resist a strong urge to hit the gas pedal and speed away from the area as fast as possible. On the way to the village, he calmed down after some time but Miriam and I noticed that he was very angry and hostile and this continued for several days after his arrival at the village. Roman was also having problems fitting in due to bullying the other children and using very offensive curse words. A week later, Roman’s auntie on the maternal side of the family came to visit and to see how her nephew was settling in, Miriam, the head house mother used the occasion to inquire about his background in an effort to hopefully understand him better. The Auntie informed Miriam that Roman was living with his step- grandfather and that he was the one taking of the cattle and the goats instead of going to school. He was also the one doing all the work that nobody else wanted to do although the grandfather has older children of his own. When the step- grandfather found out that Roman’s auntie was planning to bring him to the children’s home, he started telling Roman things which created fear and dread in his heart, things such as, “These are bad people, they are Satanists, they will take you to a bad place and sacrifice you.” When Miriam told me of what she had learned, I could now understand why Roman was so hostile when we first met him. Now three weeks later, his countenance has brightened, I also noticed he did not insist on returning with his auntie when she visited, I guess he has finally decided that we don’t eat little kids after all!


…From Kimberly

In our last update I shared about the time I had been spending with the Chimwemwe Ladies group and some of the discouragement I had been feeling. A couple of weeks ago after a meeting, a few ladies stayed behind to finish up some things they had been working on. During our Bible study times we had been learning about women in the Bible and the lessons that we could learn from their lives and the choices they made. One of the ladies wanted me to fill her in on what had happened in the life of Rachel because she had missed one of the meetings. This led to a discussion about what we could learn from Rachel’s life and then the women shared that they really enjoyed learning about the women in the Bible because they also have been facing some of the same challenges. They were glad that the gospel was been presented at the meetings because at the churches that many of them attend, it is not being preached. They also said that they were sharing the lessons that they were learning with others when they went home to their villages. This really encouraged my heart greatly and I was very grateful to the Lord for uplifting my spirit in this way.

Other happenings…

Well, our community center building is up!!! In just two short weeks, a team from the US called Faith in Action came to build our center along with four men from Kenya and our local workers. How exciting it was to see how quickly the building went up! We have already had two events there that drew over 300 people! One of the Faith in Action team members is a professional trumpet player and travels to many countries as part of his ministry. We had a concert one evening and invited the surrounding communities to attend. At this concert one of the Kenyan team members who is a pastor gave a clear presentation of the gospel and many people indicated their desire to receive Christ.

The second event was the actual dedication of the community center. Both the children of the Village of Hope and the Chimwemwe Ladies Club sang songs. Benedict gave a brief history of the vision of Harriet Nyrienda’s father, Richard Nyrienda, (Harriet and her sisters sold us the property) who was a missionary that came to Zambia from Malawi with Robert Moffat, the father in-law to David Livingstone. It was Richard’s desire that the land that he obtained in Zambia would be used for spreading the Word of God. Now, over a hundred years later, it was our joy to celebrate the fulfillment of that vision. It is also our hope and prayer that this center will be a lighthouse in the community and a place where people can come and be nurtured in God’s Word and enrich their lives through learning and fellowship.

In June we will welcome nine members of our church who will be coming to the Village of Hope. We have been following with great interest the activities that are taking place at our church to help the team get ready for Zambia, what a wonderful way to see God’s people united together for a purpose! Please pray for their safe travel and God blessing on their time in Zambia.