Today is mine and my husband’s 20 year wedding anniversary! I have been thinking today about how we started, and where God has brought us. Always candid about how Ben and I have, “made it this far”. I think about what plans have gone by the wayside and what plans God has brought to replace those. Plans that we could have never, I mean never, in a million years conjured up in our minds, a plan like moving to Zambia to minister to vulnerable women and men there. I like this saying about marriage that says-marriage is so we can do ministry better together than we ever could have alone. That does not happen overnight though!

There have been many dark places that we have walked but God brought us out into the light through His never ending love. His desire to not leave us how He found us but make us more like Him is amazing. See, He loves us too much to let us stay stagnate.  The time when God led both of us to His surgery table was one of the darkest moments for us. It was such a tough time but we knew God was removing, cutting out and sewing up all the cancerous, tumorous and open wounds that needed His touch. We stayed there and allowed God to finish surgery and lay still while He healed us. 

Whether you like the analogy of a surgeon, or a carpenter with a hammer and chisel chipping away all the excess that is not needed in order to reveal the true masterpiece, I beg of you this-Give Him permission to either grasp His loving scalpel or hold His hammer and chisel so He can began that wonderful process. Bruce Wilkinson has a great quote that goes something like this, “The bigger the vision God gives you, the bigger the cleansing that you will go through to be prepared for it.” I am giving Him permission to get out that scalpel again and continue the process of making me all He wants me to be for His glory and His honor.  

Philippians 1:6-“being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Ben and I in Zambia together for the first time in 2012! 

This Little Piggy Goes to Market.....

February was a busy month and the beginning of March as well!  We had business training for 15 former sex workers who desire to get off the street and live in the new life they see for themselves earlier in February. We also got the piggery training set up and that happened last week! Wow! Now, I know this does not seem like a huge accomplishment but working on these kind of things from across the ocean when Internet access is sketchy, funds have to be wired, and all scheduling and timing has to work between us and our partner on the ground, CHD,  is quite a feat! This takes much time during meetings, endless emails back and forth (when there is Internet service) and A LOT of prayer as we are fighting against much spiritual attack to bring these things to fruition. We have been trying to get these two things going since the fall after we returned from our trip last summer and it has been a challenge! No one sees all the behind the scenes work that goes into something that seems so simple. BUT we know we fight not against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities....See, through all these things, God's love is being shown.

At the business training, all 15 women came to know Christ! This is an amazing and humbling outcome to this gathering of women who want to be freed from the bondage and darkness of the streets! Please pray for them as they are now working on business plans and seeking out micro-loans. They are very vulnerable and need our prayer over them. 

We are also looking forward to the outcome of the piggery training and how God will show up in this as He works in the lives of those who need to know they are loved. Thanks to CHD and Felix who went out to Mumbwa ahead of time to get all this figured out! That was an adventure by itself! We are very grateful though, to God who postponed us buying pigs last summer! It was frustrating at the time as we did not fully understand  but to then find out in October that Swine fever was sweeping through Zambia and pigs were being euthanized...well, all we can say, is God's timing is perfect! Now that they women are trained we can buy pigs after this long lesson in patience and faith in God. 

In all of this, God is stretching my husband and I and our family as we move forward in this journey to be a light in the darkness. It is not easy work, but we accept our calling in this as we know that this world is not our home and God is our enoughness, our everything. Please pray for us as we continue to journey on in this crazy life as we now work on getting our personal funding together to move to Zambia full time next year. It is going to go fast!

The vet from the Ag office 

Some of the women of the co-op learning from the vet

One of the CHD workers training the former sex workers

Susan, a good friend of CHD, encouraging the former sex workers in the Word of God