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This past week we have been in a East and North-East India where construction is beginning on a new church. KK plans to move his base of operations here as it is centrally located within a major citry and has easy access to neighboring states. KK plans to construct an orphanage, school, and medical clinic this property. The area feels pretty dark, KK informed us that there are no Christians in the area and there is a large Hindu temple nearby. But the property is nice, it is outside of the city a bit surrounded by fields of rice, mustard, and other vegetables. Unlike the city, the air is good there. We arrived in East and North-East India on Monday afternoon after spending 6 hours in a very bumpy jeep ride, I don’t think that KK’s jeep has any shocks. KK had to be there to coordinate the beginning of the construction project, purchase raw materials, and oversee the beginning of the foundation work.

Construction projects here are significantly different that at home. The holes for the column foundations are dug by hand using a tool that is more like a hoe than a shovel. The dirt is loaded into baskets and tossed out of 4-foot deep hole. A group of ladies have been hauling this dirt to construct an access ramp for the site. By hauling I mean that they load the dirt into baskets and carry it across the site to the ramp location and dump it. The rebar for the foundations is all cut, bent, and bound together with wire by hand. The concrete is mixed by hand on a brick platform. I was asked on multiple occasions if this is how we do ti in the States and could only smile and answer “kind of.”

So on Thursday, they had sufficiently completed the prep work to being the foundation. They have a ceremony for the beginning of a building construction. Village people came out of nowhere, snacks were brought out, we sang a hymn, read Psalm 121, and prayed over the building and the land. The three primary laborers were honored with a small gift and shook everyone’s hands. And everyone was given something to eat, a pastry filled with curry, a Bengali sweet (dough soaked in a cane syrup) and another sweet sugary thing. It was a good little ceremony and was definitely the highlight of our week in East and North-East India. It is pretty cool though to be part of building a church in a place where there are no churches, a place that desperately needs light and hope.

On Friday night we returned back, that drive is not fun, but we were all very excited to come back and see the kids.

Dave just informed me that today was Friday the 13th, so it should go without saying that today was an interesting day.

To kick off the day, we were without running water; vaguely familar to our present situation. We spent the morning in Murundu with the orphans and village children, which once again was exhausting and wonderful. These kids are simply beautiful and each time one of them comes and holds my hand, I swear my heart sinks deeper and deeper into this land. At 1:00 PM we were to be in Kitwe to meet with the STS club at Chibote girls high school (where Dave, Chris, and I spent the majority of our time last year), but a lovely immigration officer at a police checkpoint just outside of Mufulira delayed us with demand after demand for documentation. After turning over our passports, visas, invitation letters and sitting in the sun for a frustrating two hours, we were finally released to go to Kitwe. It was awesome to see some familiar faces at Chibote. Then we were off to the Ndola airport to pick up the elusive missing luggage. We spent about 3 hours sitting in the parking lot (maybe more), while Dave and Dr. T searched for luggage that had arrived, had not yet arrived, was lost, was misplaced, went missing, and then finally was found all within an airport the size of a jumbo jet. In the end we recovered two of the missing bags but we are still missing Dave’s guitar. But happily Michael finally has some clean clothes of his own to wear(and there was much rejoicing).

I’m truly blessed to be back in Zambia. In the run-up to this trip, I had my doubts about what exactly we would be doing and what we might be able to accomplish here. I’ve heard the whispers of these questions here, but I know better from my past experiences in India. I know that more than anything we are able to tell these kids, more than how cool our program might be, the most important thing is simply loving on these beautiful kids. We get to vessels of God’s love and there’s nothing better or more important than that. Please pray that day after day we might be re-energized, re-focused, and re-motivated; so we can continue to be poured out for these kids, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Once again its past midnight here and we get to sleep in to 6:30 before starting all over again, so good night.

Lesa Alumbwe (Praise the Lord)

~ Sam