fbpx
Category

Zambia

Around Africa

By Malawi, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia

News from Malawi, South Sudan, Rwanda, Zambia and Tanzania.

Malawi

Central Bible School in Malawi was spotlighted here. The college’s library facilities are in need of improvement so a digital tools and training grant has been approved. This grant will equip each of the eight faculty members with a suitable smartphone, allowing them to install and utilise eVitabu as a valuable addition to the college’s physical library. To help the effective use of the platform, Dave or Geoff will be conducting online training for the faculty later this year.

Zambia

Pastor Lawson Limau is spearheading the development of an introductory course in theology and pastoral care, drawing from resources adapted from the eVitabu library. Recognising the potential impact of this initiative, APF has awarded Lawson an Africa Training Partner annual grant. This grant will enable him to deliver the pilot course to rural pastors throughout eastern Zambia during 2024.

Tanzania

Due to the ongoing demand for their teaching ministry, Heavenlight and Kesiah Luoga (pictured above with Victor Imanaturikumwe) have been awarded an African Partner Training grant for 2024. This grant will help them to conduct training workshops throughout the year, both locally and regionally. Recognising Heavenlight’s desire to expand his reach, APF has also approved funding for video recording equipment so Heavenlight can record training videos for social media and eVitabu. This includes a high-quality camera phone, basic lighting equipment, and a tripod.

Rwanda

The Let There Be Light solar project continues to shine brightly in Kigeme Diocese, Rwanda. By providing reliable light to clergy families and parishes, the project offers numerous benefits: brighter living spaces, opportunities for studying after dark, enhanced security, and even income generation opportunities. We recently sent additional funding to ensure the project’s sustainability by replacing batteries for some of the beneficiaries.

Our prayers continue for Rev. Victor Imanaturikumwe, the Legal Representative of Église Évangélique de la Bonne Volonté au Rwanda and a passionate advocate for eVitabu. Victor has a plan for competency-based training that complies with Rwandan government regulations for faith-based leaders. He is seeking funding to deliver this training programme and he is also assisting APF in finding a venue for a conference in September.

We also pray for Victor’s predecessor, Pastor Japhet Matugoma, who faces an urgent need to relocate his family home due to recent flooding and landslides (pictured above).

South Sudan

In recent weeks, APF approved a grant for the Saints Revival Committee in Aweil district to procure and distribute 600 local language Bibles. Also, Alex Sokiri of New Nation Church in Juba writes seeking support for the church school (pictured above). Founded for orphaned and underprivileged children living near the church, the school currently serves children in three classrooms. However, the classroom block front façade remains incomplete. With rainy season approaching, Alex is urgently seeking assistance to complete the front part of the school building to ensure the safety and well-being of the students.

April 4, 2024
Love1

Deepening Bonds Down South

By Environment, eVitabu, Farming, Malawi, Zambia

While the UK roasted at 40°C, our Projects Coordinator escaped Britain’s summer heatwave by traveling to cool southern Africa. Geoff Holder reports on a busy but productive three weeks catching up with APF partners in Malawi and Zambia.

Extreme weather driven by climate change is causing shocks all over the world. As new temperature records were smashed back home, I visited communities supported by Pastor Lloyd Chizenga (pictured above) and Hunta Faeti from New Life Christian Church (NLCC) in Malawi’s Shire River valley.

Earlier in the year, the area was devastated by two huge tropical storms. Flooding washed away crops, homes and livestock. Your gifts helped APF provide replacement seed and training delivered by Lloyd and Hunta which was now ripening into a lifesaving harvest.

Outside of the flood-affected area, we heard how the training given by the church was having a huge impact. Global energy prices have made fertiliser unaffordable. I was told, “Pastor Lloyd is a prophet! He saved us with the message of composting now we can’t buy fertiliser anymore”.

In Liwonde, I met with Pastor Patrick Stephen Mateketa. He runs village discipleship training workshops in rural churches using our library resource app eVitabu as a reference tool. He found APF online and downloaded eVitabu on his phone. “It is good having a library there in my hand when I am teaching untrained pastors in the village” he explained.

Back in Blantyre, I ran workshops for NLCC pastors and leaders helping them also get onto eVitabu. Pastor Sousa travelled all the way from Mozambique to attend.

In Zambia, I joined Pastor Lawson Limao (pictured below) in Shibuyij, a village several hours’ drive outside Lusaka, to see him teach in a tiny mud and straw church using resources on eVitabu. The training was fantastic! He’d gathered leaders from local churches and the community to learn about agroforestry and faith, meeting the community’s physical and spiritual needs. It was inspiring to see the power of eVitabu in the dedicated hands of a brilliant young leader. In Lusaka, Lawson and I were interviewed about eVitabu on a Zambian Christian radio station with an audience from across the country.

Finally, in Luanshya, a town in Copperbelt Region, Revd Charles Mwape and I ran a workshop helping Baptist pastors use eVitabu. It was especially useful seeing how the pastors used their phones in different and sometimes unexpected ways, lessons that will help us improve the app and make it easier for African users in the future.

September 27, 2022
Love1

Fostering fellowship across Africa

By Rwanda, Zambia

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a very challenging time for many of our partners right across Africa. But tough situations inspire creativity and new ways of working. For example, instead of travelling to meet with the pastors and church leaders we work alongside, we set up monthly gatherings on Zoom. Now travel is possible again, our online meetings are continuing especially because they are creating a greater sense of fellowship between our African partners, something that was lacking before.  It’s great to listen to church leaders from Malawi, Kenya, Uganda, Liberia, Mali and DRC discussing and learning from each other’s experience. Recently, one of our partners from Rwanda spent several months in Zambia to study English. While he was there, he sought out a familiar face from the APF online meetings. Emmanuel explains…

My name is Revd Emmanuel Gatera from Kamembe in Rwanda, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. I lead a network of churches called Word of Life Church.

I would like to share with you something about the connection I made while I was in Lusaka, Zambia.

Since March and up to June 2022, I was in Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia at English language school. During the time I spent there, I had the privilege of creating friendships with pastors and organisations.

Through the connection with the APF Zoom meetings, I had already met Pastor Charles Mwampe from Zambia Youth Ministries online so we met in-person while I was in Lusaka.

Pastor Charles then invited me to attend the Zambia Youth Ministries conference. It was wonderful to speak at this conference on the theme “Why is it wise to trust in God not in men?” using Psalm 146:1-10 and Psalm 125:1-2. Many of the youth responded to the message and decided to put their trust in God.

There are many benefits of networking with pastors and organisations pan-Africa. It is so important for African pastors to grow in friendship and work together in growing the Kingdom of God by sharing the opportunities they have.

During the three months I spent in Lusaka, I was hosted in the home of a ‘bishop’ of a young Pentecostal church group. He is the Chairman of 100 different churches in this network and these churches showed me love as I ministered with them.

It was good to learn about their unity as churches. They meet each Monday between 4pm and 6pm for praying, sharing God’s word and helping each other so that each one can have a business of doing.

My prayer is that this fellowship can grow up.

Thank you!
Emmanuel Gatera

June 23, 2022
Love1

Growing Greener in Zambia

By eVitabu, Farming, Zambia

It’s the early hours of the morning. The rumble of distant thunder and close-by chirp of crickets is suddenly drowned out by the first drops of rain on the tin roofs. Soon the whole community in Zambia’s Mumbwa district are awake to the comforting sound of rainfall. Planting will start at first light.

After a prolonged dry spell the heavy rain is very welcome. Not everyone is optimistic, however. “The rainfall pattern has not been consistent. We could be headed for a repeat of last season” complains one farmer.

Southern Africa has experienced normal rainfall in just one of the last five growing seasons.  Persistent drought, cyclones and flooding have wreaked havoc on harvests in a region dependent on rain-fed, smallholder agriculture.

Zambia is experiencing both climate extremes at the same time. Farmers in the south-western parts of the country are anxious about erratic and unpredictable rainfall patterns. In the north-east, they are battling flash floods.

It is unanimously agreed that the changes in Zambia’s weather patterns are caused by human-induced climate change, over-exploitation of natural resources and deforestation.

The group most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and environmental degradation are the poorest as they rely on natural resources for their livelihoods. The scale of the challenge facing poor rural communities feels overwhelming, but one pastor still has hope. Lawson Limao oversees a small network of Zambian churches called Word of God Ministries. “Where God is there is hope” he says.

One source of hope is the farming guides Lawson found APF’s eVitabu app. He uses eVitabu on his old Android smart phone. Using the guides on eVitabu and some funding from APF, Lawson trained around a hundred farmers last year. Despite Covid and lockdowns, the training went well, and more funding is heading to the church network so he can continue his training and reach many more farmers this year.

“The training I do I found on eVitabu” he explained. “On the app there are resources from Foundations for Farming and other experts which can help rural pastors and leaders do farming in new ways that are less sensitive to drought and look after the soil.

“God’s way is to preserve nature whilst making farming a profitable venture to undertake. This is what I love to talk about with pastors and their wives. The content of the training includes faithfulness and fruitfulness, farming for a profit, crop management techniques, composting, crop rotation and cover cropping.

“The programme I am doing with APF’s support in Mumbwa District is among the Ila people. This people group are mainly subsistence farmers and they have for some time been practicing conventional farming methods like ploughing. That has led to the poor soil structure and outright poverty despite God blessing them with adequate rainfall and land.

“It is my view that the training will benefit the community through the church to adapt to the new farming techniques. This will help improve their yields thus providing sustainable food security for their families and for church purposes whatever the changing weather brings.”

September 20, 2021
Love1

Zoom + eVitabu = Growing Greener Zambia

By eVitabu, Zambia

In March 2018, we received an email from Pastor Lawson Limao in Zambia. We replied, thanking him for getting in touch but explained we were not looking for new partner church networks at that time. eVitabu and our lockdown Zoom meetings changed all that.

Pastor Lawson leads the small Zambian church network called The Word of God Ministries International. During 2020, he joined us every month online for our Zoom meetings. During one meeting, other pastors talked about how they were using eVitabu, our mobile library app full of resources for African church leaders. Lawson downloaded and installed eVitabu on his own Android smart phone that evening. He was immediately drawn to training from Foundations for Farming about sustainable agriculture. “Rural pastors and leaders need training to do farming God’s way in which nature is preserved whilst making farming a profitable venture to undertake” he explained in his APF project application. Last summer, we agreed to fund his farming project which reached hundreds of farmer pastors from Ila communities in rural parts of Central Province.

This is a great example of how eVitabu can work. Dedicated pastors like Lawson, downloading the app and accessing training materials on their own phones, need very little to make a huge difference in their churches and communities. Access to the library of training resources on eVitabu, and a little APF funding to help with the cost of sharing that training with others, means hundreds of families are now able to feed themselves better, farm more sustainably and know more of the hope they have in Christ Jesus.
eVitabu development continues…

We’re working hard to improve eVitabu and make it easier for African leaders to access resources on it. In recent months, our eVitabu developer Jonathan Haddock has been working hard to add new features our partners in Africa have requested. These include:

  • SD card support so more resources can be saved offline by users
  • Simplifying app registration
  • Bug fixes
  • Making it easier for us to add new resources on the app

All this is costly but you can help…

Sponsor an eVitabu user

  1. On your phone, tablet or laptop, go online and visit: www.africanpastors.org/evitabu
  2. Scroll down to find the ‘Sponsor an eVitabu user’ section.
  3. Complete the secure online payment form to set up your sponsorship direct debit. Just £5 per month, less than the price of a paperback book, will give an African church leader access to an entire library of books and training resources.
  4. You will be allocated an African church leader already using eVitabu to sponsor.
  5. You’ll receive an email telling you a little about who you are sponsoring including their name, where they live and their ministry background.
  6. Your monthly sponsorship will be used by APF to make eVitabu better for the person you are sponsoring and hundreds of other users all over the continent of Africa.

Please pray

Pray that the eVitabu user sponsorship campaign would be successful in its vision to see 400 sponsors added during this 40th anniversary year.

Pray for the APF staff team as they continue to develop eVitabu, adding new features and making the app work better for African users.

Pray for Dave Stedman and Geoff Holder as they work with partners in Africa to grow the network of people eVitabu, for Jonathan Haddock as he develops the app and for Rossalynne Wanjiru who is helping us upload new content from Nairobi.

December 22, 2020
Love0