40/40 Training in Zambia - Part 1 (Lusaka)

We spent the last month in Zambia going through some training to help orient us to the African culture. We will take our next few posts to try and tell you all about our month there. It was a great time to reconnect with some old friends we met at our Field Personnel Orientation in Virginia. We also met many new missionaries that quickly became friends.

Jeff with growing baby Abigail, daughter of friends Chris and Katie from Georgia, both glad to see each other again.

We flew into Lusaka and stayed for 10 days in the dorms on the Baptist Seminary Campus.

This is the dining hall at the seminary where we had our meals as well as our daily classes and debriefing sessions.

As you can see they did a good job of feeding us, to the point that we both gained weight during this month.

After each meal, everyone would wash their own dishes by going through the washing station and then fanning them dry.

Each morning we would get up and walk the track around the campus and watch the sunrise.

Many mornings Jeff would see these parrots fly onto the campus and eat the berries in the tree. They would only stick around for about an hour and then they were gone.

The first thing on our agenda each morning was to meet with our POUCH group. POUCH is an acronym teaching us how to develop new church plants.
Participative discussion characterizes Bible teaching, centers on application
Obedience to Scripture by members and the group is the measure of success
Unpaid, often semi-literate lay people co-lead
Cell groups or small independent churches of 15-30 members are usual
Houses or storefronts, or schools or small local buildings (even under a tree) are typical meeting places

After Pouch, we would head out for our Daily Field Assignment (DFA) in the city. Each day we were given an assignment teaching us how to observe our surroundings and learn to strike up conversations with nationals. Some days our assignments included things such as handling sick visits or funerals, others included sharing our testimony or Creation to Christ Bible stories. We would go on these DFAs with a partner and a Zambian helper. We were required to ride on the city mini bus to a designated area of the city. Each day our teams would return to their designated area so they could build relationships there.

This is a shot of Jeff with his Zambian helper, Pastor Austin and few friends they made in Kalikiliki.


We would return to the seminary for lunch and then the afternoon was spent debriefing our morning assignment and discussing our DFA for the next day. Most of our afternoon classes were led by program director, Zambian missionary Kevin Rodgers, or pastor Ebby Musika.

Kevin Rodgers with the president of the Seminary

Pastor Ebby

With the temperature in the high 90s to 100 in Lusaka, the days were very draining. So the afternoons were usually spent resting and relaxing.