Christmas Greetings

We're in Livingstone this Christmas and it's a balmy, breezy, sunny, 90 degree F. day outside. Though it was extremely hot yesterday, I still think everyone is enjoying being in the apartments this year as opposed to camping out in the bush.

We still have a lot of news from the past couple of months to deliver to you. In fact, three teams have come and gone since our last update. We will post those pics and tell you about those trips. But for now, it seems right to put all other things aside and just talk about Jesus.

We've been reading some excerpts from "God's Gift of Christmas," a little book written by MacArthur, with the kids over the last few weeks. One of the excerpts was on Luke 2:11 which reads - "For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord." In the Greek the title Christos means "the anointed one." That title signified that an ultimate authority was anointing someone and placing him in a very high office. In Jesus' case, the ultimate authority who anointed Him was none other than His own Father, the Sovereign of the universe. God Himself declared Jesus to be The King of kings and The Lord of lords.

In light of what is happening in the Western Province these days this truth is very reassuring. The Lozi royal establishment and the senior chief continue to drag their feet. It has been confirmed from a few sources that our speculation appears to be correct - the Kuta is stalling on purpose to see if we will resort to bribery. In their minds we will be willing to pay "under the table" in order to move the process along. So we are still in a bit of a standoff. We also read recently that the president for the Barotse Patriotic Front, Mutangelwa Imasiku, confirmed in an interview that a group of people from Western Province would soon announce the Limulunga Declaration which states that the Lozi people of Western Province want to declare Barotseland its own country and separate from the rest of Zambia. In response the government warned those trying to cause anarchy in the country that they would not be tolerated.

Interesting, isn't it? So as we sit in our home in Livingstone with all of these little "kings" and "lords" shaking their fists, insisting that they be recognized, Jesus Christ the Lord, "the anointed one," sits on his throne in Heaven and laughs (Psalm 1:4).

May Christ be praised and may all of you enjoy a very, merry Christmas in the Annointed One.

Terry, Cindy, and Sam Visit in July

In July our good friends Terry and Cindy Hammock, and Sam Bonney came to see us and help us out with lots of odds and ends projects. They were a real blessing from the Lord to us. It was Sam's first trip outside the U.S. and he really enjoyed it (at least that's what he said!). Besides all the work projects, both Terry and Sam shared their testimonies of God's grace in their salvation with our Lozi workers. Terry also taught in one of the nearby villages on the historic Five Solas:

1. Scripture alone
2. (By) Grace alone
3. (Through) Faith alone
4. (In) Christ alone
5. (To) The glory of God alone

Terry used this history lesson to survey and explain these five distinctive, foundational doctrines (or teachings) that have been passed down to us from guys like Martin Luther and others from the Protestant Reformation. These doctrines are not taught in the churches in the area and we felt it was important for the Lozi people to see the difference from Scripture. He reviewed these lessons again with our workers during our noon devotion time.

Here are some pics of what we all worked on:



Packing the trucks and getting ready to go.



Nathan building a bench for the shower. Alicia helping. Finished bench looks great!

Cindy, Steph, and Joyce dug trenches and planted trees between fixing meals.










Sam and the crew building and installing a solar hot water heater. There's roughly 150 meters of black 20mm pipe in a coil. For about four hours a day the water is scalding hot.












Mounting the solar water heater.









Working on a compost bin.















Building an adobe oven.


















Preparing square foot garden beds.










Laying in gray water lines that drain from sinks and showers into mulch beds around trees and shrubs.

How True!

"If you think you have come to the mission field because you are a little better than others, or as the cream of your church, or because of your medical degree, or for the service you can render the African church, or even for the souls you may see saved, you will fail. Remember, the Lord has only one purpose ultimately for each one of us, to make us more like Jesus. He is interested in your relationship with Himself. Let Him take you and mould you as He will; all the rest will take its rightful place."

--told to Helen Roseveare, at the start of her missionary days in the Congo

A New Generation?

God is always busy. Jesus said in John 5:19-20, "For the Father loves the son and shows Him all the things that He Himself is doing..." Even when it appears that nothing is happening among the Lozi, God is busy behind the scenes. His Spirit moves like the wind (John 3:8) and He does all that He pleases (Psalm 135:6); no one can predict from where His Spirit has come or where it is going next. With that in mind, we want to share with you a curious list of things that might be indications of how and where God is moving among the Lozi in Mutemwa Area of Barotseland.

1. We've been working with a dear Lozi brother named Enoch from Trinity Baptist Church here in Livingstone. He and his eight year old boy are both extremely gifted by the Lord to sing and play the guitar. This brother has accompanied us several times to the villages in Mutemwa area. The children in the villages are fascinated and drawn to the two of them. How amazing to watch the Lord draw the children to hear the gospel through a father and his child.

2. Over the last year we've attempted to meet with the people in the villages every Sunday afternoon at 2 pm for Bible study. For many months we taught a Creation to Christ study using a modified Bible Story method. Well, the adults have been dwindling over the past couple of months while children attendance seems to be growing; sometimes as many as thirty at one time. Our foreman, Vincent, did his best to review a previous lesson with these kids while we were away. He did this on his own initiative because he felt it was important to meet with the children.

3. The schoolmaster at Mutemwa School has asked Stephanie to come and teach Bible classes on Friday afternoons to the children.

4. A sister Church in Greenville, SC felt impressed to write a catechism for children called "There is a True and Living God." According to the gang in Greenville, this undertaking has been a matter of obedience to God's clear directive. The artwork matches the theology; exceptional and beautiful. The same Lozi brother, Enoch, has translated the booklet into Lozi. He is also writing a children's song for each Q&A in the booklet. We are very excited about it.

5. Recently, Sean was in Lusaka preaching at a missions conference at Lusaka Baptist Church. One of the fellow church-planting pastors working in Mungu told Sean (out of the blue), "After five years working among the Lozi, I believe children are really important to this work. I realized that the ten to twelve-year-olds that I teach now will be the new leaders of the church ten years down the road."

6. When our friends Wendell, Mark, and David came in May, they had a conversation in the airport with a lady from a sister Church in Tennessee who goes and build playgrounds for children around the world as part of their missions strategy. The men know this meeting was no accident. Wendell is following up with them. It could be a great relational bridge / gift to the Ilwendo community to open an opportunity to preach and teach the true Gospel freely. We'll see what happens.

7. Stephanie has been impressed for some time now in private prayer that the Lord is going to raise up and build His Church from among the Lozi children; that Satan will have no longer be able to keep this new generation of Christ-besought people in bondage to fear and envy; witchcraft and false religion.

8. I was reminded recently in my daily Bible reading of two passages of scripture, Isaiah 49:24-25 and Isaiah 66:7-14.

Please pray over these things with us. It's absolutely critical that we walk in step with the Spirit of God. Sean and I would never have dreamed of this approach. In fact, we feel completely out of our element with this possibility as this does NOT match our training and/or background. But how like the Lord to place us in a situation where we are hopelessly unqualified so that He alone gets the glory for the amazing work that He will do.

Team from North Carolina

We were blessed to have a team of four from Calvary Fellowship in Asheville, North Carolina, over the last two weeks of May. Wayne, who owns a construction company back in the states, was a tremendous help in getting the bathrooms finished - sinks and stone floors, and beams installed. For a while on the first day he had a whole train of girls following behind him like chicks with a mother hen. Of course we had to tease him a bit. We didn't think he'd ever had that experience in his jobs back home! This was Wayne's first short-term mission trip outside the U.S. and, from what we've heard since they all returned home, the effect was profound. Praise the Lord. Tim and Cathi, former missionaoaries in Ethiopia, seemed to be right at home in Zambia. They were very glad to be back in Africa and a great help and encouragement to us as we talked and prayed through many cultural, spiritual, and logistical issues of living in a foreign country. Tasha, a seasoned missionary and traveller, worked hard with our kids laying the stone floor in both bathrooms and especially blessed our wives by helping Cathi with all the food prep and dish duty. Thank you Cathi and Tasha. Tim, who is a vetrenarian, was able to take a look at many of the cattle in the villages and identify various conditions that could be treated with locally available medication. The Lozi people were very grateful for his expertise. Tim also helped with an expetimental solar hot-water heater using only local materials. We really enjoyed the fellowship and laughter with these new friends. Thank you for all your help!

Toilets & Showers

When the team from Calvary came this month we were still using these toilet and shower tents.

The toilet is just a hole in the ground with a fancy seat over it with a plastic tent around the hole (yellow tent on right). The shower tent has a bag of water tied up in a tree over the tent. (green tent on left)

So you can imagine how excited we were at the prospect of having real toilets and showers. The day after we set up camp the guys began by leveling a foundation for a concrete pad in the pavilion.
Here you see two drain pipes. There will be two toilets, one on each side of the pavilion. The toilet / shower areas are back to back.

Then it was time to pour the concrete.
The guys mixed the concrete by hand in a large pile on the ground just outside this area.
And after it was poured, they smoothed the surface. Hard work! But they did a fantastic job!

When they were finished this is what we had!!! Isn't it beautiful!?

This is a picture of the trench that was dug for the pipe
to the septic tank. This had to be leveled and then filled with dirt.

Work on the showers. The guys built a wooden frame to pour a drain.
They had to be very creative and come up with ways to make things work without a trip to Lowes, Home Depot or WalMart! Great job guys!

The shower area. Again, two showers, one on the left, one on the right. The wall in the center is yet to be built. If you can see it, there are boards mounted in the corners for mounting the shower fixtures. The floors will be smooth, flat river rock from the Zambezi.

To build the shower walls the rocks we used had to be washed so the mortar would stick. So one afternoon we had a "rock washing party."

Thank you Mark, Wendell, and David for coming and working so hard. We are grateful to the Lord for a really practical gift of grace. We are also thankful to all of our family in the body of Christ that supported these guys so they could come. - Stephanie

Here are a few pictures of different critters we saw this last trip out to the bush.

Isn't God creative?

These first three pictures are of a the biggest walking stick any of us had ever seen!

It was feeling threatened and flared out it's WINGS!
It made it look like a stick from a tree with leaves!
Incredible! It was almost a foot long!

A brilliant butterfly.

A very large millipede. We see these a lot.
When they crawl on our tent roof at night they are very loud!

A very large spider in the grass we were unloading for our thatch roof.
Can you see it?

Another very large spider!

Ok, so this one is a little gross.
But we sure are having some great science lessons first hand!
This is a pile of dung left by an elephant.
The first ones to arrive on the scene are butterflies and dung beetles.

A Birthday Tribute

Yesterday, April 19, was Stephanie's birthday (41 - wow, can you believe it?). We had no internet so I'm posting this birthday news a day late. Oh well. Happy Birthday, Honey. I want the world to know that I love you and I think you're a great wife and a great mom. Anyone who knows you well knows that you're a thoughtful and generous servant. One of my friends was right when he said that the primary purpose of marriage is not marital bliss but to conform us into the image of Christ. Even though we have shared many "blissful" moments in our life together, I am most grateful for how the Lord has worked in you to show me more of His selfless love, to expose my sins and flaws (as painful as that has been), and to demonstrate His covenant-keeping power in our marriage. I love you more now than I ever did 17 years (and three months) ago. And by God's grace I can honestly say that I am more committed to you than ever before. May God bless you with every spiritual blessing in all the years He has planned for you here on this earth. He is a remarkable Savior and you are a remarkable woman.

Now for some birthday news for friends and family. The kids fixed mom breakfast in bed (a family tradition) and then I took the kids to the flower shop (down a scary back alley) to get fresh roses and then a vase from Mr. Price (don't know what happened to the vase we had in the states - oh well). We got a dozen roses for 12,000 kwacha - about two dollars and fifty cents US! After opening some cards and gifts we all went to the David Livingstone Lodge for a special treat (one of our favorite places in Livingstone). Joyce and her girls fixed dinner for Steph that evening and secretly invited our friend Lynn and her husband, Vasco for an added birthday surprise. She received lots of birthday wishes by email (thank you) and even some birthday calls from the states on her cell phone! Overall I think it was a good day for Steph.

Thatching Update

Well, we just might be in the homestretch now with the roof of the base camp pavilion. The bad news is that even after gathering 5,500 bundles of grass we still ran out before the job was finished. We didn't realize that our bundles from Kazangula are much fuller and "leafier" compared to the bundles we first gathered near our home site. So that means that all of these newer bundles had to be cleaned and combed and cut even more to match the old original bundles. And that means we lost a lot of grass in the process. Our thatcher, Jackson, has gone back up north to his family at Maziba Bay. He says we need five lines to finish the roof over our kitchen/dining room (Shannon and Steph) and six lines to finish over our bathroom (Shannon and Steph). That translates to about 1,100 bundles of grass (to the best of our estimating ability). The good news is that this year's grass is tall and ready to be harvested. People in the villages nearby have already started gathering for us and one man says he can have 2,000 bundles ready by next week. Jackson has promised to finish the job. Of course he will be paid the remainder of his fee when the job is done. So maybe there really is an end to all this thatching! Haiba Mulena a lata (if the Lord wishes).

Solar Panels

Praise the Lord! The pump is in the river! God sent two brothers from Cape Town, SA to come and help us. It was so obvious that they were sent just for a couple of very specific reasons; one of which was installing the solar pump. For any tech geeks in the midst that might want to know the specs, we bought a Lorentz submersible pump that runs on eight Kyocera KC87 panels and pumps water about 35 meters in elevation and a total distance of 114 meters from the edge of the river to the top of the hill where two 5,000 liter tanks will sit.

My niece, Alicia, was reading in Mark chapter 6 when our two brothers, Pieter-Francois and Frans came to visit. She drew an awesome parallel from that passage that I'd like to share. In verse 45 it says that Jesus "made His disciples get into a boat and go before Him to the other side." It says in verse 48 that "He saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them." So Jesus came to them and spoke to them in verse 50, "Take heart, it is I. Don't be anxious." Then He got in the boat with them (verse 51). It's interesting to note that when John records the same event in his gospel, he says in John 6:21 "Then they were glad to take Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going."

That is exactly how Alicia described our experience with Pieter-Francois and Frans. Christ had sent us on ahead in the work here in Western Province. He was keeping a watchful eye on us and saw that we were making headway painfully, for the wind was against us. And then He came to us through His body in the form of two brothers from the Church in Cape Town and He got in the boat with us. By the way, this made me think of something our Dad (Michael Reece) use to always say - that fellowship meant "all us fellows in the same ship." And immediately we were on the other side of where we needed to go. Frans is lacking just an exam or something for his certification as an electrician. Little did we know that he had those skills when the Lord sent him to us. In just three days the pole was cemented in the ground, the solar array was wired and up, the pump was in the river, and we had water coming out of the pipe at the top of the hill! What an awesome story of the Lord's provision.