Team Zambia 2014 Day Five

THE WORDLESS BOOK SPEAKS VOLUMES

This week at Vacation Bible School the children have been learning a different color a day and that color represents a truth from the bible.

Here's a verse we have written to help them remember what the colors stand for:

Gold is for Heaven where God wants us to Go

Black is for Sin the Darkness in Man's Soul

Red is for the Blood Jesus Shed on Calvary

White is for the New Heart Jesus gives to You and Me

Green is for the Plant Growing Stronger Every Day

Jesus Living Through Me it is the Only Way

We normally make a friendship bracelet for each child with beads that match these colors but because the witch doctors use beads as a way to ward off evil spirits, we could not use beads. Instead we used the wordless book and yarn bracelets with strands of each color.

The wordless book has felt pages of each color and a symbol to remind them of the truth. The bracelets of yarn ended up most often being worn as headbands.

It was so gratifying to our team to see the children at the last session going through the colors and telling the truths they represented. The children were left with with the challenge of going home and sharing their wordless book with their family and friends. In my mind I can see this taking place between parents and these little African evangelists.

JESUS UNDER THE STARS

The Jesus Film is produced by Campus Crusade for Christ and is used in thousands of places around the world in hundreds of languages and dialects. The video we used was in Chichewa.

Our International Mission Board has provided each of their teams with a Jesus film kit worth thousands of dollars consisting of a Jesus Video in the language of their people group, a high lumen video projector, a giant screen with a metal stand, a portable but powerful PA system, all the necessary cables and a generator.

All week we have been praying for Saturday night when the Jesus Film would be shown to the people of the Chamba Valley at their soccer field.

Some of the guys from our team went over and set everything up and the rest of the team followed. It was fun to pull up in the bus and already find swarms of kids on site and their parents soon followed with between 350 and 400 in attendance.

The film which chronicles the Life of Christ according to the book of Luke was shown and at the end the missionary gave a simple gospel presentation. However, there was no altar call given because with the Zambian culture being totally built around community it is too likely that everyone would come to the front. Unlike American culture that values rugged individualism, the African cultures value community above all. This has been a problem at times because a village chief will hear the gospel and simply decide that the entire village is going to become Christians without each person truly understanding what this means.

So, the local pastor was introduced and he invited them to come to Chamba Valley Baptist Church to find out more about how to be a follower of Jesus.

I have to say that I will never forget that night seeing hundreds of villagers huddled together around their lit charcoal cans (the temperature dropped into the low 40's). Some built open fires and roasted corn or peanuts sharing them with friends. Most of our team ended up with babies and kids asleep on their laps and overhead the sky was filled with brilliant stars. Even the Milky Way was clearly visible as many heard the true story of Jesus for the first time. Only our God could arrange such an amazing event.

NOT THAT WE DIDN'T HAVE ENOUGH TO DO, BUT...

One day before we left the Guest house some of us noticed that there were some roof trusses stacked on top of some shipping containers. I asked the Missionary Jeff about this and he stated that their desire for some time had been to build a covering over these containers since they served as their only storage area. As God would have it we had two engineers and a welder with us on our team. So, Wayne, Collis and Jacob stayed behind on Saturday and in one morning were able to set all the trusses, a job that Dwayne, the maintenance man stated would have taken a month or more. Thanks guys for staying adaptable.