living where we are

Who are the best people to reach out to any group of people? Who are the people who will understand them and their culture quickly and correctly? Who will speak their language? Who will stay amongst them without eventually going home?

I grew up in Manchester. As a result of this I find myself easily able to find common ground with people I meet who are also from English cities. But put me in a rural Zambian village and, in all honesty, I'm a bit at sea! I fall at the first hurdle and can't even say hello correctly as I don't speak the right language.

My time travelling around Zambia and Kenya has taught me quite a bit. I have come to underdtand just how little I know about life here in Zambia. I have learnt to see past the typical western view of poverty and how to "solve" it.

I am convinced that those who can make a real and lasting difference in any community are those who live there. When we live alongside people we are ideally placed to reach out to them, to share the good news of Jesus both in word and in action, we are able to be "Jesus" amongst our neighbours.

Using that logic the people best placed to be "missionaries" to rural Zambian villages are in fact Zambian villagers. I believe that God has placed people in communities across rural Zambia to be his people in the very places in which they live. But so few villagers see themselves as God's plan. Many feel as if they have ended up where they are just because their parents happened to live there. They feel forgotten. They spend their lives struggling to make ends meet and hoping that help or aid will come from somewhere else. Their lives follow the pattern of the generations before them. No hope is found.

Amongst these people many go to church. Many say they are Christians and that they believe in Jesus. But, as so many of us do, they limit Jesus by their own experience of life, forgetting that he is an all powerful, sovereign God who is alive and working today.

It is in this situation that Dignity works. We don't profess to have all the answers but we are willing to give ourselves over to helping people in rural African villages see who they are called to be, to understand the purpose God has for them and the work he is placing around them. It's not always easy. Mindsets are engrained, people have habits or addictions that they don't want to give up and turn from, NGOs and outsiders are expected to come with free handouts or money...the list of challenges is long. But we carry on. We teach people what we believe it means to follow Jesus, we teach skills to help people teach others, we provide study materials and Bibles and we challenge people to look to Jesus rather than to money or sources of money.

This way of working is slow. We don't force anyone to do anything, rather we invite people to try something. We know that many people will chose not to do something and they will walk away. But for every 10 people we teach 3 or 4 will go home and do something amazing! They will begin to bring hope to their communtities, hope that can bring relief from poverty in the here and now and hope that can bring eternal life, just as Jesus met peoples physical needs but called them to follow him and have life in all its fullness.

So imagine how encouraging it was last week to meet with 10 people who have all begun to make a difference in their communtities, people who have responded to God calling them to be his children in their villages. We were meeting with potential Impact Team members, area leaders for the work we do across Zambia. Of the 10 people 3 were established Impact Team members and 7 were people who have shown potential and who may become team members. We spent time talking about the practicalities of the work we do, we explored questions around our faith and challenged ourselves to really think through what we believe, we shared our testimonies and we got to know each other more.

So what now? The existing team members have invited the new team members to join them as they visit villages to run training sessions over the next couple of months. They will get an opportunity to try on the role of Impact Team member and see if it fits. We too get a chance to see if they are serious about being involved and are willing to go the extra mile to love God and to love their neighbour. And now we wait. We wait and see what happens. As ever some will step up and do amazing things whilst others will not take up the opportunity. That is okay. Each and everyone of us has to do the work we believe God is calling us to, not the work we think will just please someone else. Hopefully, over the next few months, we will see 3 or 4 people growing in faith and responsibility as they respond to God's call for them and by the end of the year we will see an increase in the number of Impact Team members...Zambian villagers going all out to share Jesus with their fellow country men and women.

it's a long way to mwinilunga

So I always knew that 12 hours on a bus to the far north east of Zambia was going to feel like a long time...but now I really, really know! I can't complain though as Frank, Bernard and I arrived safely in Mwinilunga for the bargain sum of £18 each. Not bad for what I think was a 450 mile journey.

The reason for our journey was to meet the new Impact Team working in and around Mwinilunga and help them run a village training session.

The training was held in a village called Kamfumbu, about an hour and a half drive outside of the town. Our transport was a 2 hour late, beaten up, old Canter truck (with an interesting sounding gear box) which we all piled into along with our luggage. Dorothy, the Impact Team member who had organised this training session, had packed everything but the kitchen sink.. quite literary I think. Well, actually as her kitchen sink is a plastic bowl she did take it with her! There were plates, flasks, chickens, maize, bamboo mats for sitting on, tents, blankets... for once I was the one who had packed light!

Once we arrived in the village I understood why Dorothy had come so well prepared...we were really, really deep in the bush. The village we were in was a very spread out area. Four churches and a school formed the centre of the village where we were based and the houses were spread far apart. Those coming to join us were walking or cycling for an hour or two.

Dorothy had arranged for us to met in one of the four churches in the centre of the village. As there is often division between churches she had purposely checked whether people from each of the churches would be happy to meet in this particular place. Despite being assured that this church was agreeable to eveyone it became clear that actually disagreements between the churches meant that a number of people stayed away. That, along with a rummour being spread around the village that the training was satanism due to the involvement of white people,  added up to mean that we didn't quite get off to the start that was hoped for. Just over half of the 40 people invited to join us turned up. As an "outsider" it is hard to understand how village "politics" work but experiences such as this are common here. There is often a fear of anything new. Christianity is mixed with witchcraft or other religons. Many people are not given the opportunity of education beyond infant school and most learning is done by rote. This means that many people are unable to read well, few have Bibles or other books to study and even fewer have had the opportunity to learn critical thinking skills. Therefore word of mouth is powerful. What is spoken is repeated widely and often accepted as fact. This isn't to say that this isn't the case in my own culture, but I was reminded again that cultural understanding and wisdom are so needed wherever we may find ourselves. It was also a very clear example of some of the challenges the Impact Teams regularly face.

Despite the obvious issues we were encouraged to see how well Dorothy, John and Edina, the Mwinilunga Impact Team, had planned for the event. They had invited people, come well prepared, appointed volunteers to prepare the food and even decided who was going to present each of the training sessions. Throughout the training we supported them in delivering some of the sessions they were struggling with, encouraged them to try some of the things they were shying away from and generally helped out in whatever ways we could.

It was great to see the 3 team members speaking confidently for the sessions they had prepared well. Each in their own way could capture and hold the attention of those listening.

Dorothy is a mother of 6 and all but 2 have grown up and left home. You might think her life would be quieter now, but her household currently includes 12 people. Dorothy and her husband have taken in her sisters 5 children as well as some of the spouses of their kids and now their grandchildren. It's no small undertaking to provide for and run a house of this size but you can see that both Dorothy and her husband are entrepreneurial and welcoming.

John also has a large family with 10 of his own kids and 5 grandchildren already. He's a quiet man, not pushing himself forward, but clearly a thinker and he's been designated record keeper by the team. He has been given the task of keeping track of the money spent on food for training sessions and knowing what is left to spend. He enjoys walking and once the plannned sessions for each day were over he would quietly set off for a walk before the daylight went.

Edina, the third member of the team, works as a tailor to support her family of 8. She also volunteers at the local hospital providing advice for pregnant ladies. This has made her a confident speaker and a capable leader. Although nervous at first she did a great job of translating from English (for me), American (for Frank) and Bemba (for Bernard) to Lunda, the language spoken in Mwinilunga.

It was great to watch these 3 people, all very "normal" in Zambian terms, stepping up to do something very unusual for this culture. They have understood that the key to real hope for their communities is for their country men and women to discover a living and active faith in Jesus. They see that through this faith people will be set free from mindsets currently holding them back and will bring real and lasting hope to the people and communities around them...and they are choosing to stand up and be the ones to do something different to everyone else around them.

It was also fantastic to see Bernard, who became an Impact Team member a few years ago, helping this new team with some of the challenges they are facing. It's amazing to see how he has grown and matured in leadership since he began working with us.

And that sort of sums op our trip to Mwinilunga. All that remained was the bus ride home. 4am start,14 hours, £16 each and 1 flat tyre pretty much says it all!