The 2007 team of LGPC travelers to Sinazongwe, Zambia, spent 10 days in southern Africa and returned safely July 11. The team will make a public report here at the church on Sunday evening, September 23. For now, here are some highlights:

Orientation in Lusaka - After a long journey to Zambia’s capital, Lusaka, via Seattle, London, and Johannesburg, the team settled in and began their in-country orientation by visiting the World Vision Zambia office. They also visited the International Justice Mission office, and the Mother Teresa AIDS Home and School. The following day they drove south to Sinazongwe, accompanied by Sinazongwe manager Lutangu Lubasi and his wife, Foster. (Photo - International Justice Mission Staff)

A Week in the Sinazongwe
Area Development Program (ADP)

Interdenominational Worship
Our first full day in Sinazongwe was a Sunday. We worshiped with representatives of multiple churches in the open square of the Guest House next to the World Vision offices. Several local church leaders were joined by the Lake Grove team in leading worship. Pastor Graig and Pastor Morgan Silwenga of the local United Church of Zambia (formerly Methodist) offered messages. An Interdenominational Praise Team led most of the music, although Lake Grove offered a couple traditional hymns, too. At least 6 denominations were represented, and our unity in Christ was obvious. Afterward, the church leaders joined ADP staff and the GoTeam for lunch.

World Vision Staff
On Monday, introductions and orientation occurred at the ADP office. A devotional time was led by Lutangu and Pastor Alfred Zulu, who chairs the interdenominational team of pastors. The singing was rich and worshipful. The staff has remained virtually unchanged since last year; its stability is one of the keys to the good progress we experienced.

Chief Sinazongwe
This year we finally met Chief Sinazongwe. The ADP straddles two chiefdoms: Sinazongwe and Mweemba. We have met Chief Mweemba previously. Chief Sinazongwe is a strong and well-regarded traditional leader, who bears the burdens of his people as he tries to lead them into the 21st century. He is active in the fight against HIV-AIDS, and is interested in getting his area connected to the Internet.

Makonkoto School Update
Our visit to the Makonkoto School was a little ill-timed, as the students were enjoying a 2-day holiday. This meant that not many students were present. But we were able to see the nearly completed classroom building that had just been started last year, along with the slab for its twin structure which will be started very soon. In addition, we were shown the renovation work being done on dormitories and the sites of additional faculty housing. The project manager John Marluta believes the project will be completed by early 2008.

A brief ceremony was concluded with a new request for a science laboratory. This is a component Makonkoto must have if they want to be upgraded to high school status, which would allow older students to attend high school closer to home. A number of local villages have demonstrated their commitment to this upgrade by participating in brick-building and volunteer work, even though they will not reap the benefits unless Makonkoto achieves high school status. The number of participating villages has risen from 6 last year to over 20 this year. Progress on the school has not been as rapid as was hoped, however, because of two mitigating factors: 1) the bureaucracy of public permits has been very slow, and 2) there is a shortage of building cement as much of Zambia’s cement is being exported to South Africa for the construction of soccer stadiums for the 2010 World Cup.

Sponsor Children
The team visited about almost 40 children sponsored by Lake Grove members. Joy was spread through gifts, photographs, and sharing of messages and family information. We were told by the World Vision staff that although the children appear timid, this is a big event for them, “like their birthday, Christmas, and all the other holidays wrapped up into one”. Experiences ran the gamut: from hearing the good news of newborn siblings to the grief of losing a parent to AIDS, from drawing pictures together to playing ball games, from hearing stories about the substandard harvest to praying for their families’ future. Lake Grove sponsored children (about 250 in number) are spread throughout the Sinazongwe region. As the region prospers, the lives of our sponsored kids improve.

Water Sites
The initial success of the Kanchindu Water Project led to an expansion of the project throughout the rest of the ADP. Several of our team members visited prospective borehole sites, met local people there, prayed over the sites and for the villagers impacted, and took photos for donors. Safe drinking water will remain a key component of our efforts in Sinazongwe for several years yet. It is an important factor in reducing the likelihood of HIV infection.

MED (Micro-Economic Development)
Micro-loans are changing the prosperity level of Sinazongwe. Higher incomes will lead to the self-sufficiency that is necessary for the time when World Vision’s development program ends in 2013. We visited with several entrepreneurs who are successfully upgrading their businesses with the help of small loans. Most of them start by borrowing about $100 which is guaranteed by a support group of others who are also borrowing. They become not only co-guarantors, but supporters of each other professionally, emotionally, and spiritually. After paying off the initial loan (which most of them do ahead of schedule), they can apply for a higher loan, eventually without co-signers. We talked with shop-owners, poultry owners, and seamstresses who are succeeding with the help of a monetary jumpstart, training in skills and business acumen, and encouragement. (Photo—hammer mill in Siabaswi Village in operation! The proceeds from this mill will be used to help orphans and vulnerable children.)

Community Partnerships: Siabaswi & Simumpande
Lake Grove’s initial focal point in Sinazongwe was its community partnership with Siabaswi Village. The partnership entailed supporting the village financially (with at least $10,000 per year), and with prayer and encouragement for 5 years. This summer, that 5-year program comes to an end. A similar relationship, between an individual Lake Grove family and a different village (Simumpande), also came to an end. In both villages, there were closing celebrations, thanking God for the benefits of the partnership and asking God to continue to guide the villages.

In Siabaswi, the pastors of the local churches have played a key role in the partnership. Before the final celebration, we visited all the Siabaswi churches and prayed for each congregation. We left a gift at each church to remind them of our time together, a small table cross. The closing ceremony in Siabaswi was full of music and dance. Two Siabaswi choirs – the women’s choir we have always experienced and the new Interdenominational Praise Team made up of young people – set the tone for a joyous celebration. Lake Grove also offered songs, but closed with words of encouragement and challenge from each GoTeam member. Finally, as it grew dark, a screen was hung from a tree and a DVD was shown with the help of a rented projector and a power generator. The DVD showed photos and video clips from all 5 years of the partnership, with special emphasis on the people of Siabaswi. We tried to show as many of their faces as possible. Sheri Brown had put the 50-minute DVD together, adding music from our Sanctuary Choir and from previous visits to Siabaswi. The villagers loved it. They “oohed and ahhed” as they saw some special effects, and laughed when they saw people they knew. It was a very special event, closed by many hugs in the dark before we got into our vehicles and headed back to our lodging.

Future Steps
So those community partnerships are over, but not our friendship with those villages. We will visit them again, but our church financial support will shift from a village focus to the entire ADP. We will continue to encourage the WV staff as they bring their development work to a successful conclusion over the next 5-6 years. Our influence will be felt throughout the ADP with its almost 60,000 residents, among whom are our 250 sponsor children and their families. As the ADP action plan for the coming fiscal year is finalized, our ZaP (Zambia Partnership) team will prayerfully decide how the church should participate in it. God is not finished in Sinazongwe yet, and neither are we.

• We want to see the HIV infection rate drop down into the single digit range (currently around 16%).
• We want to see a united church in Sinazongwe, with all the many congregations teaming under the lordship of Christ to live out the gospel in a way that enhances the development of the region.
• We want to see clean water available throughout the region.
• We want to see as many kids in school as possible.
• We want to see the economic development in the region reach a level of sustainable self-sufficiency of the population.
• We want to see WV successfully close down its operations in Sinazongwe, leaving behind a sustainable structure of local community leadership that will continue the progress of development.

These kinds of goals have become a bigger part of our conversations with the WV team in Sinazongwe. They have a clear plan and they are doing great work. We tried to convey our appreciation for their work to them, and our confidence in their success, when we hosted a farewell banquet of encouragement on our final evening there. It was a sweet time that ended in song, dancing, and prayer. We aimed to honor these remarkable people and celebrate their faithfulness to God and God’s people. I hope we did that. But we left feeling their encouragement, feeling stronger because of our time with them, thinking that perhaps we had received far more from them than we could possibly have given to them. That’s the precious mystery of God’s love: In Jesus Christ we have an inexhaustible wellspring of Love, and the more we give away, the more it seems that we receive.

There was little that was new, programmatically, during the 2007 trip. But the deepening of the relationships and the celebration of the successful
5-year community partnerships were very rich experiences, indeed. The GoTeam was unusually skilled in engaging our Zambian friends and in articulating their appreciation of what they experienced within the context of the love of Christ. We thank God for the progress of the past year, and look forward to the progress of the coming year.

In all of it, may God be glorified!

Pastor Graig for the Team