Derrick and Cherry's Trip to Western Zambia April 2015 -- Amazing Story!

Posted April 13, 2015

Related stories

• Mufumbwe home
• An incredible history of the Western Zambian;'s persevering faith (posted May 11, 2014)
• LifeNets Home

I post this amazing letter and report from our elder Derrick Pringle or Kitwe, Zambia who write about his recent trip to Western Zambia. He is our elder and representative of LifeNets humanitarian initiatives in this area. Last spring of 2014 Beverly and I travelled with them to these same regions that can can be seen our Travelpod blog at http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog/victorkubik/14/tpod.html

We will be posting more details of our LifeNets projects in this region soon. We thank all who have contributed to help thewe people .

-- Victor Kubik

Greetings,

We trust that you all had a wonderful Passover and Unleavened Bread as we did in the back end of Zambia.

We travelled up to Mufumbwe on the Thursday 2nd April to conduct the Passover there that evening.

As the sun was going down we gathered in a chicken house for the ceremony. It had been cleaned out and we wondered where else could people gather in such humble dwellings. Seven of us partook of the Passover with three adult observers. A sobering evening.

On the Sabbath, First Day of Unleavend Bread, the plan was to go to Mufumbwe, pick up members there and then travel to Manyinga a further 80 kilometers for the service. When we got to Mufumbwe we found our deacon Christopher very badly down with malaria. We took him to the hospital but as it was a holiday the doctor had taken off for a few days and no one could attend to him! One sort of expects this type of thing to happen here but it still is a frustrating shock to the system.

After going from one place to another we eventually found a medical orderly who admitted him to the hospital with a dose of four Panadol pills. Prior to this I had anointed Christopher and the shivering that one gets with malaria had now subsided but I was still concerned about him having the proper drugs. We had these at camp which was one hour away so we bounced our way back there to get them for him. This all delayed us by two hours but when we got to Manyinga we found 25 people waiting patiently for us.

I had a sermon on Unleavened Bread nicely prepared but after five minutes of delivery realized that they did not fully understand what I was talking about so had to change to then explain the very basics of how Unleavened Bread came about and its meaning. I later asked Christopher, who goes there once a month, to teach them this church doctrine. They are studying the Bible Study Course when they gather on the Sabbath. Afterwards there was a question and answer session so we only got back to camp late that night. On the Sunday of April 5 we went back to Mufumbwe for a meeting on various projects and a Bible study.

On Friday April 10, Last Day of Unleavened Bread we travelled to Solwezi to meet with the brethren with 28 in attendance. With money that had been kindly donated by LifeNets, the hall had great improvements done to it by the inside wall been plastered as well as a concrete floor laid. The gap between the wall and the roof had also been closed in. This week in Kitwe we will arrange for the timber for benches, window and door frames to be sent up. These people are very enthusiastic and would all like to be immediately baptized. Besides answering a number of questions I explained how a person has to know the doctrine of the church and be personally repentive before baptism can take place. Next time we visit them, possibly August, I would like to go with Major Talama, the pastor of United Churches of God in Lusaka, Mapoko, Mumbwa and others areas of Zambia. In the meantime they are visited once a month by either Mr. Litaba or Christopher from Mufumbwe.

After a lengthy service and a tasty meal that thefolks had prepared for us, we left later than planned. The Solwezi road is the worst that I have ever known it and about 100kms from home the front steering arm snapped. Fortunately I was going slow at the time or else we would have had a terrible accident. Also Mack was coming back from the mine and was 10 minutes behind us to give assistance. He had to go to the farm to get spares which we had and by solar lights replaced the broken parts. We were thankful to get home by 0200 am the next morning.

An eventful trip all round but spiritually, greatly profitable.

Regards,

Derrick & Cherry