Every Sunday the kids and staff at the Tree of Life Children’s Village hold their own church service in one of the unfinished houses. The older kids have organized a choir and Pastor Erick lets all the younger kids participate too by saying Bible verses or leading in a song of their choosing. There are also skits and Pastor Erick teaches a lesson. Each kid is even given some kwacha to put in the offering plate.
This week we learned about Jeremiah 18 and how God is a potter molds us like clay. We of course followed it up with lunch and some time on the trampoline.
I arrived in Lusaka yesterday to find the country in the middle of a fuel shortage. Gilbert, one of our drivers, sat in line literally all day waiting in line to get gas (or petrol as it’s referred to here). He wasn’t waiting for others to fill up, but instead was waiting on a fuel truck to arrive so the station would even have gas.
In years past, this would have a been a huge problem because no fuel meant that we couldn’t get our discipleship leaders to the kids. That is why I am so thankful for the Community Resource Centers (CRCs). Since we already have CRCs where the kids are, with discipleship leaders who live there 24 hours a day, we are not as affected by this fuel shortage. The CRCs are located within a short walking distance to the schools and homes where our kids are every day.
As many of you know, we ship huge containers over each winter filled with supplies for Camp LIFE and supplies for our staff to continue their work there the rest of the year. Throughout the year we also get donated clothes, furniture, books, school supplies, toys and other things get shipped along with the Camp LIFE supplies. We keep all of this stuff stored in Zambia so that when a child comes to us in an emergency, we can go to our containers and pick out some clothes and toys for them so they can stay with us at the CRC. We can also use the donations to provide for our kids at the Tree of Life and Lifeway. If you have any donated items contact Andrew and he can make sure that they get shipped over in our next container.
Last week we let our Lifeway kids, CRC kids and Tree of Life kids all go to the container to pick out a few items for themselves. It was like Christmas for them.
We have been enjoying some older Camp LIFE videos the past few weeks and thought we should share with you. They come from a time when video editing wasn’t quite as advanced, but the lives of the children were being changed the same as today.
This video from 2002 is the first time we sang Every Move I Make. We still sing it at Camp LIFE every year, even though camp has gotten a little bit bigger
