Kalomo and out

My lasting memories of Kalomo will be noisy nights and not much sleep! All three nights we spent there had a soundtrack of pubs with crazy loud music and drunk people, cars, trucks, trains, a chorus of dogs and, on one night, an all night worship session at top volume at a local church. It was a real insight to what it is like to live in a Zambian town!! We normally end up in pretty rural areas with no electricity, or "no Zesco" as they say here (Zesco being the electricity provider). But apparently, where there is Zesco, there is music!

Despite the lack of sleep though, Kalomo was also a great week. We were a little nervous to start off with. What we do often works best in rural areas and sometimes it doesn't take root as well in towns and cities.

Pastor Julius had agreed to host and organise the training. He had managed to gather 36 people from different churches in both the town and surrounding villages.  We spent time sharing the vision of Dignity and inviting people to begin on a small scale. We asked people to gather a group of people in their village to start praying together. Once they are up and running the local Dignity team will return and run further training.

In all honesty, we don't know what will happen. We sew the seeds and we wait. We were working with Bernard, an Impact Team member who has run loads of these events. His feeling was that the vision was well received and that people will go away and start getting people in their places together. He felt that people were really interested and seemed to be responding well. I was really encouraged by his feedback as he has lots more experience than me!
One of the most the eye-opening moments was the question time towards the end of the training. We were expecting questions around what we had been talking about. These are the questions we got:

• Why are there so many different types of churches?

• What should we say to a man with many wives who becomes a Christian?

• There is a verse in the Bible that says..."that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth." So, are there people living under the earth?!

• My Grandma is a witch doctor. Is it okay for me to pray for her to be punished?

Well, these questions kept us on our toes for sure!! Frank did a grand job of taking in the answers with a bit of help from Bernard, Alan and I. As we sat there discussing these questions I realised again just how important it is to make ways for people to learn and study together and grow in the ability to apply to Bible to their everyday situations. It reminded me that although the work of Dignity isn't typical "aid" work it's more important. By helping people grow in their relationship with God we can equip and empower people to be the ones who change their own communities in a way I will never be able to do.