Newsletter (March 27, 2009)

Dear all, Four meetings were held by SIM Canada this week to promote the TCCA Library upgrade project.  We don’t know how much money has been raised but we thank you for your prayers.  We trust that God will provide the necessary funds for the project to go ahead.  Please continue to pray for this project.

Unfortunately Dr John Chizelu, lecturer of TCCA, was unable to go to these meetings.  The Canadian Embassy in Lusaka has stopped issuing visas for visitors and people have to go to South Africa to lodge their applications.  It would be have been too late when he got his visa, so he had to cancel the trip. Amazingly, SIM Canada managed to find two replacements within eight hours of receiving this news.

We would imagine this type of things happens very commonly in Africa, at least in Zambia.  In TCCA or in church, we have seen more than once that speakers or guests of honour of important functions could not come at the last minute because of (mostly) funerals that they have to attend.  The organisers then have to quickly find a replacement speaker and amazingly someone has always been available.  In Africa, we learn that it is quite difficult to plan ahead.  No matter how well you think you have planned, there are always unexpected things that crop up.  We are still trying to come to terms with this.  Most likely because of this reason, we learn that some pastors or academics always prepare something in advance and keep one or two sets of sermons with them, just in case they need to use them at the last minute.

TCCA is planning to build a two storey residential block of 10 flats to rent out in order to generate some income.  It is hoped that the income generated will allow the College to lower its fees so that more students will be able to come to study.  As TCCA is situated in a very good residential area, it will have no difficulty to rent the flats out at quite a high rate.  Recently we obtained some donations from organisations abroad and that would enable us to build the ground floor (five flats) initially.

Words came out that construction work might be able to start in March.  In order to save money, the TCCA community would all help to dig up the ground for the professionals to lay the foundation.  Some people are excited as work could finally begin.  Some people are worried as this means they may not be able to harvest the maize before the ground is cleared.  Yet some others think that in Africa things won’t go according to plan and of course work wouldn’t start in March.  In the end these people are right and we don’t think work will start this month and those people growing maize should be very happy as they have plenty of time to harvest it.  Now it looks like the project will finally start in May but by that time the ground will become dry and it will be more difficult to dig.  Please pray that God will really help us so that everything will now go smoothly and that the project will be completed in December and the flats can be rented out in 2010.

After mentioning that we were getting less rain, we had a week of very heavy rainfall, with thunder and lightning, which people said was quite unusual for March but very common in January.  However by this time (end of March) rain is becoming scarce and then it will stop altogether sometime in April.  We are coming to the dry and cool season very soon.  Blessings.