Newsletter (April 20, 2017)

Dear all, Greetings from Lusaka and trust you all are well. It has been long since we last wrote to you and very sorry for the long delay.

We left Hong Kong in early January and spent about three weeks in Vietnam before returning to Zambia. Before we returned we were not sure if the project which we thought we might help with would start or not. After talking to our pastor in Ndola, whom we hoped to partner with, he told us the project would most likely start, but it would not be this year, and perhaps sometime in 2018. We were not surprised to hear this as we know things in Zambia will normally go slowly.

So our time here in 2017 will be quite flexible, which in a way is good as we will not have a full schedule so we can take things easy, and have more rest. We will both be 60 later this year and we are not as energetic as before. Timothy still have some library advisory roles with several institutions. The Reformed Baptist churches in Ndola and Lusaka are getting a huge shipment of donated books for their ministerial colleges, so he will need to help them to start their libraries and show them what to do. We may end up doing some work for the libraries before people can take over. Same for a vocational training institute in Ndola. He is also helping the church library to order some books.

Timothy is also continuing preaching once a month at the Chinese church. In June to August he will preach twice a month as some people will be away. He will also lead several Bible studies when their leaders are away in May and July.

In February and March we visited Ndola for five weeks. We managed to visit some friends and former TCCA graduates. We had lots of rain this year which was very good as we needed it urgently. The hydro lakes’ water levels were very low and that’s why we had lots of power cuts (called ‘load-shedding’ here). The water levels have since improved a lot so load-shedding has stopped mostly and we are enjoying a continuous supply of power which we have not seen since mid-2015. But because of the constant rain, there are lots of mosquitoes and we did have malaria in Ndola just before we returned to Lusaka. The effects of malaria took long to go this time so for a few weeks we were very tired and had headaches. Rain has since more or less stopped, except for today which possibly is the last day of rain in this rainy season.

We attended a Good Friday service with our Rwandan good friends in their church. They are having their annual conference so there are many people attending. It is a typical African service with lots of loud music and singing. Some of the singing is really good. SIM Zambia will also have their annual spiritual life conference next week and we are very pleased to know the speaker is our former TCCA principal Rev Joe Simfukwe. We will be going and we will see many of our friends whom we haven’t met for more than a year.

After the conference we will go to Petauke (a small town in the Eastern Province) and visited a small Bible college. The new principal is a pastor we know well and we would like to visit him and his wife and see the place. The college also has a farm to provide income for running the college and an academy. The farm is running on the “farming God’s way” principle, so we are interested to see it as well. The college is in a very rural area, about 19km further away from Petauke. We have never been to this area before.

We are planning to be in Zambia till mid-September and we will then go back to Hong Kong to spend time with Zara’s parents. This most likely will be our pattern in the near future, nine months or so in Zambia and the rest in Hong Kong. Zara’s mum is recovering slowly from her two falls but her swallowing problem is getting worse. Zara’s dad is quite okay but he still has health problems from time to time.

Please continue to pray for our future as we continue to seek God’s guidance for our ministries in Zambia. Please also pray for Zara’s parents in Hong Kong. Blessings.

Back to Tim and Zara’s home page