Well, to be honest, I feel unbelievably inadequate in trying to communicate what we have seen and more importantly experienced and been part of over the last three days in the Zamtan ADP/Kakolo Village community...
On Tuesday, we were able to be in classrooms where learning was taking place...and literally lives are being changed...we presented the headmaster of the school with several bags of school supplies and after not bring able to speak he told us that this will change the face of kakolo...just paper and pens and a few books...we thought we should have brought so much more...they have $50 from the govt budget for supplies for the year to serve 630 children...we also had the chance to do a dental hygeine demonstration from some of our boys and distributed toothbrushes and floss to children who often use their finger and characoal ash to try and clean teeth...
We then played a real game of baseball at the new sports complex...we were living out Greg Steinsdoerfer's dream (WA alum who brought baseball to Zambia last summer) as we beat the Kakolo All Stars 10-9 in the last inning...we gave them WA uniforms and White Sox hats afterward and enough equipment for all the teams in their league...Katie Walser and Lucy West both slid in the dirt as the game heated up!
We also played our final soccer match and lost to the top team in the area...Goalkeeper Ryan Seager has been quite busy in Africa and it is quite a sight to see children in kakolo running around wearing Wheaton College jerseys...we often think of what it would be like to have a boy come and learn and play soccer at WA...one little guy I have been playing against for 4 years named GIFT has been incredible to watch him grow and develop...
We also had a dedication of the 3 rooms that compose the maternity ward in the Zamtan clinic where babies will be born without HIV and moms will be safe and treated with ARV's to stay as their parents...their is a plaque mounted where new life in Zambia will come into the world with a photo of Ryan Souders and and his sponsored child who lives in the area...and we decorated the children's area rooms with stickers from home (which the staff was crazy about!)
But more than anything our visit is about children...it is truly like being a rock star for these students...as our vehicle begins to enter a community, hundreds of children come running from everywhere you look screaming DO IT and there is a love that we receive that is free and unconditional and real and so overwhelming...your kids have exerted tremendous amounts of energy giving rides and playing games, and doing so much dancing with these kids...and there is an intense sense of joy and sorrow and love and hope...we wonder and pray and dream, what will this community be like in 10 years? where will children like Lloyd and Martha and Keith and so many others be? alive, moved elsewhere, having families, being the future leaders of the African church? and as you pikc up so many kids sometimes in tattered old US t shirts and feel their distended stomachs press against your body, you aren't sure about what to think or feel...but we go back to the fact that Jesus does love the little children, all the children of the world and in Africa, and He loves us enough to let us and give and receive love from children in a place we simply could not imagine growing up ourselves...
And Africa is about hope...there is now a place called the FIELD OF HOPE with a stone marker with my name on it in a village in Zambia...four years ago my friend Fortson from WV Zambia and I walked out in Kakolo Village and shared dreams...he said here is where this school will go and here are the next phases...and here will be the water tank and over there will be an amazing futball pitch, where you, Chip, can continue to come with your students and even your children to play one day...and the dream is now there...the schoolhouse is growing and teeming with kids and will soon be bigger in building size...Scott Souders took water from a brand new well and mixed it with water from Mount Ranier he climbed to fund that well...and they will plant seed in November for grass on one of the most beautiful soccer fields I have seen in this country...and God is at work...and yet there is still more work to be done...this team of students has continued the work and the relationship and the dream of God and His people in a beautiful way...and I can't wait to see whom God chooses from this group and so many others to lead the way in the days to come...
As I walked to the bus for the last time yesterday, it is hard to leave these people and these children, as the community head told us, "We feel like this is your second home..." And then I walked over quietly by myself and touched the stone with the field of hope inscription one last time and reaffirmed that these last 5 years have been exactly what God had in mind all along...to care for the poor, to share the love and message of Jesus, to heal the sick, and to bring hope in a most tangible way...and I echo the words of so many teenagers in the past week who will tell you very soon that there is nothing better in this world that doing just that...
After a 90 minute plane ride to Livingstone, we are off to meet some women coming out of prostitution in a WV program (an amazing work) and then will head to Victoria Falls and a safari in Botswana...
We are counting the days till we see you again, and can't wait till tell you the stories of this place...
With our love and prayers,
CHIP
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