So, it's good to be home! Great to have our family back together again. Fab to sleep in our own bed. Wonderful to be back at Kerith yesterday - it's home.
We had an amazing trip to Serenje, Zambia. We were away for 11 days, arriving home to the huge contrast in air temperature on Saturday evening! Thank you for your prayers for all manner of aspects of the trip - we so appreciated them and were very thankful to God for safety, health and His enabling as we faced challenging situations. It was encouraging to be thanked yesterday for my blog updates. I hope and pray that they brought some of what we were doing to life for you in the UK. It's funny to remember where and when I sent those texts from - brilliant to have the technology! Thanks to Sarah and to Jacqui who made sense of my ramblings and posted the blogs. I hope too that you got to see the first film from the trip, which we showed yesterday in Church as part of the Serenje Gift days. Every image on that film has a context and is about real people with real stories. Over the next few days, I thought I'd tell you about some of them; and also explain who a few people are.
First up : Farmers
My Dad's cousin Pete was a farmer in Cornwall - his father Percy before him farmed - and now his son Michael runs the family farm. At 46 he is a strong man.
We had an amazing trip to Serenje, Zambia. We were away for 11 days, arriving home to the huge contrast in air temperature on Saturday evening! Thank you for your prayers for all manner of aspects of the trip - we so appreciated them and were very thankful to God for safety, health and His enabling as we faced challenging situations. It was encouraging to be thanked yesterday for my blog updates. I hope and pray that they brought some of what we were doing to life for you in the UK. It's funny to remember where and when I sent those texts from - brilliant to have the technology! Thanks to Sarah and to Jacqui who made sense of my ramblings and posted the blogs. I hope too that you got to see the first film from the trip, which we showed yesterday in Church as part of the Serenje Gift days. Every image on that film has a context and is about real people with real stories. Over the next few days, I thought I'd tell you about some of them; and also explain who a few people are.
First up : Farmers
My Dad's cousin Pete was a farmer in Cornwall - his father Percy before him farmed - and now his son Michael runs the family farm. At 46 he is a strong man.
Mwape is more typical of the farmers in Serenje
She is a widow living positively with HIV. She has 5 children - the project is supporting 3 of them to get to school.Two boys are in Kankoso Basic School (Sandy Lane's link school). Her eldest son Davis is 22 and he had to drop out of school for a while because of lack of money. However, because of your giving, he is now back in school, in grade 12. He has a bicycle, and rides the 7km each way into Ibolelo High School in the Boma (Serenje town) every day.
Mapwe is the farmer. She has received seeds, nuts and goats. As you might imagine, Mapwe doesn't have machinery to help her. Instead she farms manually with a hoe. It is very hard work. Women like Mapwe are amazing - they are strong women and totally prepared to work hard. Through the farming provisions, she is now able to feed her family and to generate some income. This income will help support her greatest goal : her chidren's education.