June 15

This post is being written out of order, and I apologize in advance, however
the last few days have been a whirwind of busy events. I fell back into
school mode again. Before the first 3 or 4 weeks, it seemed like we would
have three to four events a day of meetings and then finish the day with
bible study.

The last week has been about 7 to 8 events a day of discipleship meetings,
water filter construction, spreadsheet working, basketball lessons, and much
more. Zambia normally operates on Zambian time, what I mean by that is
that if you tell somebody to come to a meeting at 11 in the morning they
will show up at 1 in the afternoon. While it's most frustrating, it's
something that we had to deal with the first few weeks.

At times during the weekend I feel like I'm a interim pastor, although I
have no idea what that actually feels like, and I really haven't given
sermons longer than maybe 10 minutes at Exodus before, I find myself giving
upwards of 3 to 4 maybe even 5 sermons to large groups of people from Friday
afternoon until Sunday evening. It's been incredibly draining, but the Lord
is showing fruit from it. Just this past week about another 5 soccer
players, ones who had accepted Jesus as their savior, came to bible Study.
In addition, many of them are showing much more interest in working for LOH,
and the desire to help us out(although a lot of this comes from the Aqua
Clara Filter deal that I made with the soccer team).

Light of Hope Gospel Church as nearly doubled its congregations size.  It
seems as many individuals from the nutrition group from Saturdays have
started coming the services. Many of the caregivers also have started to
show up as well.  Preaching to these groups have been a huge blessing to not
only have the opportunity to lead many to the lord afterwards, but also a
great blessing with a translator. It's great I may add as it gives me time
to also think more about what i'm going to say next as well as process the
information to a much fuller extent.

However somehow the last week or so, what we have seen is that the
productivity as well as the willingness to work has changed. Bianca and I
have hired the soccer team that in exchange for paying for transport for
them to travel and play soccer in some of the local areas they will help us
wash sand and rocks for 6 to 7 different Aqua Clara Water filters. These
filters will be placed in local buildings such as schools and health clinics
to provide clean water to many of the local residents, many of which refuse
to drink chlorinated water because of the taste.

This past weekend another 5 individuals came to the Lord after the Lord
allowed me to preach a message on Solomon, on Saturday Night. This week the
Lord has also given me the opportunity to go around the compound visiting
many families and praying for them. The majority of these families are
individuals that accepted Jesus Christ as their saviror recently at one of
the Nutrition Classes. Hearing them profess their faith in the Lord was
something that really was a blessing to me and a reassurance. As I learn the
local vernacular and many of the key words such as Love (Chikondi) or God
(Mulungu) has also been a huge blessing as they truly understand what it
means to commit their lives to Jesus Christ and what it means to accept
Jesus as their Lord and Savior, as this was something that was always
difficult for me to accept as a child.

The locals here have also inspired myself and the LOH to Lord willing,
look into a children's program here at LOH in the near future. While some
church's have sunday schools, most of these children can't go to school, and
many of them have working single mothers, who are taking care of 7 to 8 of
them. If LOH could provide perhaps some daily care and also perhaps bible
classes, I feel it would make a huge impact on the children's lives here.
While these ideas are still in the making, the LOH staff has expressed a
large interest in starting such a program. Please pray that the Lord would
guide us on how to proceed.

In the next few weeks also we also have the grand opening of out internet
cafe as well as LOH open house. The open house will attract much of the
community as it will hold eating competitions, dancing competitions, quiz
competitions, and also sell very cheap used clothing and give out free
chlorine and display our AQ water filters.

Please pray for our safety as well as good decision making led by the
spirit.

-Sam