Newsletter (January 7, 2010)

Dear all, Happy New Year to all of you!  We were still quite busy during the holiday period, with some last-minute applications to process.  Unfortunately, for all the time and effort spent, the prospective students were eventually not able to come this year for one reason or another.  It is quite frustrating as we thought they had a very good chance to make it to TCCA.  The new students have arrived this week and orientation starts today.  Altogether TCCA has five new first-year students, one returning for second year and three diploma students returning to do the degree programme at year 3.  Please continue to pray for new students as the student number is still very low.  The new school year begins on Monday 11 January.

Last January we mentioned that somehow providentially we met a group of Chinese pastors and Christians who would like to begin some charity work around Ndola.  The organisation is based in Canada and since then they have registered as a NGO (non governmental organisation) in Zambia.  Last month three of them returned to Zambia.  The leader came from Vancouver and two Chinese pastors came up from Botswana and Pretoria, South Africa.  They arranged to meet with us several times and we came to know that they have signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Education and their organisation will partner with the Ministry to run a basic school in a rural area just outside Ndola.  They are also very keen to explore the opportunities of starting some work among the Chinese people here.  The Botswana pastor may be asked to come up to Ndola to start this work and this will be very good if he can manage to come.

Our Director asked us to go to Lusaka in two weeks’ time to meet with some people from OMF.  Traditionally OMF does not work in Africa but now they could see that many Chinese people are now working and living in this continent.  They will be in Lusaka for three days and exploring how OMF can minister to the Chinese diaspora in Africa and will be coming here to see opportunities in Zambia in particular.

There were quite a number of SIM missionaries passing through last month.  Some of them bought a large number of Christmas cards, books and Bibles from us which was very good for our fundraising project.  Throughout December people kept on coming to us to buy books and, especially, Bibles.  So at this point in time (a phrase Zambians love to use) we have raised about K8.4 million (NZ$2,550) for TCCA.

We also notice many people ask us if we have large print Bibles.  Possibly a lot of people do not have money to get glasses.  Even if they have glasses, they may not have money to get new ones.  We know many people just go to a shop and get some readymade glasses.  They may not fit them well but this is the best that they can have.  So a lot of people who are younger than us need large-print Bibles.  We do have a few giant print or even super giant print Bibles and they are very popular and we sold them quickly.  With Christian love.