Maryland, and Delaware

For any of you who may be reading this, who live in Maryland or
Delaware, we invite you to come to Mt. Zion United Methodist Church in
BelAir, MD on Sunday evening September 6, and 6:00pm. Benedict and I
will be sharing about what is going on at the Village of Hope and I
will be leading worship. We would love to have you come and worship
the Lord with us for what he is doing in Zambia.

A Church at Work

On Sunday we went to Grace Evangelical Free church in Newark,
Delaware. This is the home church of Kimberly and Kamau. They had
just had a team with us in Zambia and during the service they gave a
report of their time with us. We were asked to share at the end.

This is not a large congregation, but their heart for orphans, and
their commitment to pray and support our Village of Hope and the
Kamaus is huge. What a blessing to see how a group of Christians in
the US can be changed and challenged by a group of Christians halfway
around the world. Distance does not matter to God or to His body.

Awesome God

Our family (the Schwartz family) is back in the US for a couple of
months. Our 3rd daughter will be getting married on September 19 and
we are making preparations for that. One of the things that Sena, our
daughter who is with us in Africa, had requested, was a trip to the
beach. So on Saturday we took some of her friends, and some of our
grandchildren as well, to the beach in Delaware. At the same time
Hurricane Bill was off in the Atlantic and as a result the water was
very high and the waves were large and crashing on the beach. On the
horizon you could see the water rise up and look black as big waves
were crashing further out. I was struck, once again, by how awesome
our God is. The power of those waves is just a tiny, tiny fraction of
the power of God. It really can't even be compared. And it is the
power of God at work in Zambia, bringing together people to serve
others, providing amazing examples of His provision and direction and
care for the orphans. We serve a mighty, and powerful, and awesome
God.

Teacher to Teacher

We are working with the head of the Liteta School Zone to plan a 2-day
teacher training event for December 3-4 for 150 teachers from the 9
schools in our zone. The country is divided up into Provinces, then
Districts and then Zones. Our school is one of the nine schools in
the zone. Most of these schools have nothing: no books for the
children to be reading, no encyclopedias, no supplies, no curriculum
resources, etc. The training for teachers in the country is very
little. So we are excited about this. It will be a way to touch
children even in the very rural area. If you are a teacher, or know a
teacher, we are asking help from teachers in the US. If every teacher
that knows about us, along with the teachers in his/her school gave $5
to help (some McDonald's meals cost more than that) we will be able to
raise the money we need ($4000) for food, transportation, supplies,
etc. for a 2 day training program for 150 teachers. We hope that this
will become an annual event. If you want more information, write to
villagesofhope@gmail.com. We need your help.

End of Term 2

For those who regularly check this blog, I apologize for not writing
sooner. So I'm going to write a couple entries today to catch up on
things. Our school ended Term 2 at the beginning of August. School
for the year starts in January and has 3 month terms followed by a
month break. So April, August, and December are all break months.

As we had the previous Term, we ended with a special program for the
mothers, aunties, a few workers, and volunteers. The children sang
songs and shared some of the things they had learned during the term.
The teachers presented "awards" to each child, which highlighted some
way in which each child excelled.

We ended with a luncheon made by the Patty household, which at the
time included their 5 family members and 5 volunteers from the states.
The menu consisted of lentil soup (We had learned about Jacob and
Esau and the fact that Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of lentil
soup.), biscuits, and honey (We had learned about bees in our study of
insects.). It was a wonderful day.

We even had the District Commissioner present for part of the program.
This position is like a governor in our country. It is an important
position and he is over a lot of people. He had come for a tour of
everything, so we invited him, as well as his military aide, to be
there for part of the presentation.

The day was a lovely ending for Term 2 of this year.