Newsletter (July 30, 2009)

Dear all, We have been very busy recently.  TCCA is running a two week short module and two lecturers came from America to teach two courses.  The academic dean is in the States at the moment, so for one lecturer Timothy was the main liaison person and helped him to adjust to life in TCCA quickly.  We also had to pick him up from the airport, bring him to the house where he would stay, and had him come over for a meal. We could have done more for him and the other lecturer, but at the same time we had to host two pastors who are attending the Copperbelt Ministerial College organised by our church.  Coupled with that the men’s fellowship is going to have a meeting in our house on Saturday at 7am.  It is an evangelistic meeting, so they are expecting to have 40 to 50 people coming, and after the meeting breakfast will be served.  We have never hosted so many people before, so it is a big challenge, especially for Zara, and Zambian breakfast is not as easy to prepare as a Western breakfast.

So sometimes we are very busy with TCCA and church activities.  Yet we would also like to make contacts with the Chinese people that we meet.  Recently we saw two Chinese women in a supermarket and overheard them speaking in Cantonese (our dialect!).  So we were very excited to talk to them and they said there are nine of them from Guangdong, and they are all Cantonese speaking.  We asked them whether we could visit them and they said yes, but we are just too busy to do so right now.  Also a new batch of seven Chinese doctors has come and it would be good if we could meet at least some of them.  Please pray that we will not overstretch ourselves and we have the time to do the things God want us to do.

The TCCA library system upgrade project has recently been selected by SIM USA for presentation to the World Advised Fund (one of SIM USA’s largest donors).  Every year WAF requests that summaries of 25+ projects be submitted for their review and prayerful consideration, so that they can best choose how to be good stewards of their funds.  Please pray that there will be favourable outcomes from WAF and that TCCA will receive enough funding for the project to go ahead.

Recently we discovered the neighbour’s dog comes to our place every night.  We saw it on our property from time to time and thought we had blocked all the holes in the fence.  However in recent weeks it has come more or less every night and sometimes barked a lot and woke us up.  We also noticed it has dug new holes in the fence.  When we blocked one it would dig another one.  One night we heard dogs barking and fighting just outside our room and we discovered three dogs had got in through a big hole.  We also noticed the holes were dug from inside and we were puzzled as to how/where the dog could get in.  Eventually we found out that it jumped across the top of a walled fence from an ant hill from the neighbour.  (An ant hill is a termite mound which can be 2–3m high.)  Timothy managed to talk to the neighbour and they quickly built some barriers and so the dog was finally confined to its proper territory.  Its friends are still roaming up and down the street at night fighting and barking but at least they stay out of our property and we are now sleeping much better.  That is also good news for our guests.  With Christian love.