After a full night of rest, we had breakfast and headed off to one of World Vision's 32 ADP sites (area development programs) that serves a large area of communities about 30 minutes west of Lusaka...
This region is called the Kapaluwe ADP and they like many other ADP's are focused on several key areas, including: responding to the needs of people with HIV/AIDS; food security and agriculture help; water and sanitation; leadership development of community leaders; and Christian commitment where they partner with local churches to care for the needs of people and share the message of hope found in Jesus...
We learned about some wide-reaching work that World Vision supports in doing micro-finance work where individuals and groups in these communities can receive loans of $60-70 to help in starting and developing small entreprenurial business projects...it is an amazing tool where a little bit of money helps to change the life and economic status of a family and often others in a community...there are over 1000 people who have received these loans in this particular region...we had the chance to buy some cokes and visit with one lady who has received money thru this program named Mary...she is a wonderful lady who actually visited Wheaton Academy back in 2005...she has a store and is working to finish putting in a restaurant and conference center in her town...
We also had a chance to see the need for clean water in Zambian communities...we stopped by a local well that was simply a large hole dug out by hand with logs placed over the top of it...people come and dip buckets down into the well to gather the water that they use for drinking and washing their clothes and bodies...as we peered down into the hole, the small pool of dirty water was pretty shocking...we talked to a local village lady who said that she comes at 4 am each morning to make sure she gets some...and then she added that she knows this water can harm them, especially young children...and shared that she believes it is only by the grace of God that she and others don't get sick...it seems to us that it can't be this way...a borehole where fresh and clean watrer is pumped out saves lives and changes everything for people (in fact, diarreha/dehydration from unclean water is the leading killer of children in the world today)
We then got to see first hand what disease and HIV/AIDS does to specific lives in Zambia...we split up into groups and visited individual huts where people who were chronically ill lived...it is here where you are overwhelmed with grief and the reality of this situation...we got to know a story...let me tell you mine from today...we visited Pauline who is a middle aged lady...she is a widow who is taking care of two of her own children and two young children of her daughter's who died shortly after giving birth to her second child...and Pauline is very, very sick herself...she has been bedridden and moved very slowly as we talked to her...she has been able to be taken to a clinic on a bike by a World Vision community caregiver and received some medicines for her sickness...her relatives have seemingly abandoned her and these children/orphans...she stays in a very small one room hut while the four children sleep in a hut next door...she is completely dependant upon the help of local church and community members who provide for her food and material and spiritual needs along with those of here children...as we devlivered some corn meal, salt, sugar, and cooking oil to Pauline, I found myself being overwhelmed by the questions that I was asking God and myself...who will take care of these children when she dies? Are her children sick/HIV positive? Will they ever get to go to school? (they currently don't go) What am I supposed to do to help? Even as we gathered around her and laid our hands on her and prayed for her, we felt the presence of Christ among those who are hurting most...this scenario is being played out all over sub-Saharan Africa and we long to try and help change it for this next generation as these amazing caregivers care for the sick and forgotten in Zambia...they are some of the most heroic people I know in our world...they visit these people a couple times a week, give them food often from their own crops, and are Christ in the flesh to them...
We also had a chance to meet and then deliver some gifts to Dave Underwood's sponsored child Patrick...he has been quite sick and actually received and is receiving the necessary medical treatment because he is a WV sponsored child...he loved getting a little soccer ball and we played with it for a minute in the dirt...he is living with his grandparents and hoping to return to school soon...
Our final activity of the day was to play another soccer match against a club team from the Kapaluwe area...the girls also got their first taste of netball, a game that is sort of a combination of basketball and ultimate frisbee rules, as they played a girls team from the community...the boys played wearing WARREN HS jerseys today and they had a bit of a difficult time adjusting to a fully authentic African soccer field and dropped a 3-1 decision...Coach Huber tallied the lone goal and the team was once again amazed at the things Zambian players can do with bare feet on a dirt field!!
We had dinner back in Lusaka and will spend the night here before packing up and heading north to Kitwe and the Zamtan ADP where all of our work has been focused over the last 5 years of our partnership with World Vision Zambia...we will celebrate the new medical clinic, see children going to school in a schoolhouse for the first time, pump clean water at wells that have been built, and most of all, be in relationship and community with a group of people whom God has chosen to connect us to in such a strange and wonderful way...we will be with hundreds of children, get to see and hear so many stories, and work and serve alongside our Zambian brothers and sisters...in some way, I feel like I am going to a second home of sorts tomorrow, and that is because of the God who loves and cares for all the people of Chicago and Kakolo Village...we will be there till we head south to Livingstone on Wednesday...
Continue to pray for our health and safety as we travel...and pray that we will experience the richness of what God has invited us to do and continues to allow us to do as He brings life change to a community in desperate need on the other side of the world...and pray that God will speak specifically to each of us about what He is inviting us to do in response to what we continue to see and experience in Zambia...
This is also the point where I am uncertain about my internet access...I will blog sometime in the next few days, but maybe not daily or as regularly...
We love you and are thinking of you tonight in Africa after a day where we saw a piece of what is happening in this place,
CHIP
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