Newsletter (July 31, 2020)

Dear all, Greetings from Zambia and we are pleased to know that life is now back to more or less normal in New Zealand. It has been nearly three months since we last wrote to you all. We are OK in Lusaka. Timothy has not been feeling too well recently. There is nothing serious, but feeling tired from time to time. Please pray that he will be well very soon.

We are still staying home most of the time. The government has relaxed most rules regarding Covid-19 at the end of June and things seem to go back to normal. Church has restarted physical meetings with some restrictions, but we still stay at home and participate through online streaming. Most eating places have also reopened. Many people do not take the virus seriously and they think everything is now OK which is actually not so.

Then two weeks ago, confirmed cases have risen exponentially and the past few days we have seen cases increase by more than 400 per day. Most of them are in Lusaka. There are many more deaths as well, and most of them are classified as ‘BID’ (brought in dead). That is a bad sign and means the virus has transmitted within the community. So things are looking bad right now, not only in Zambia, but other neighbouring countries are facing the same exponential growth in confirmed cases, the worst being South Africa.

During this time, Timothy has recorded two sermons for the Chinese church. He should have done another one last week but he didn’t because he was not feeling well, so he possibly will do it next week when he hopefully will feel better.

There are also some shipments of books arriving from different places. So sometimes he was quite busy checking them. Some pastors are still asking him to get books for them, so he also spends some time ordering books.

We are still able to participate in the Dunedin church services which is very good. There are also many online resources which we can spend time watching and we find them very helpful.

That possibly is all that is happening in our lives right now. Thanks for continuing to pray for us. We definitely need your prayers in the midst of the exponential growth of Covid-19 cases, especially as people around us are not taking many precautionary measures. We are thankful that our Lord has kept us safe and we trust that he will still look after us in the coming months and beyond. Blessings.