Beginning of Zambia!

My first week in Zambia has come and gone and I must say that I’m glad to be here and I have a full time ahead of me. I live at the Nehemiah Boy’s Ranch, a home for former street boys run by the Sarah Rose Children’s Foundation, a Zambian non-profit strongly connected with the local church here, Church on the Rock. I sleep in the dorm with the boys, on the bottom bunk underneath Matthews, a middle schooler who has a chain and likes to wear sunglasses.
Most of the kids at the boy’s ranch seem like normal kids, and I’m frequently surprised when I hear pieces of their stories. You honestly wouldn’t know that they used to live on the streets just by seeing them or even talking with them at school or something. But oh man, their stories. One boy, who came to the Ranch last June, told me that he’d spent the five years leading up to his time here drunk. He’s 20 years old.
Its pretty peaceful there, and I don’t mind that. I go to bed by 9:30 most nights, and get to spend the early mornings by myself while the boys work on the garden beds that each of them are tending. Tomatoes, spinach, Chinese cabbage, whatever it is that they’re growing they get to sell and keep the profits, and I think that’s great! It helps them learn responsibility and money management, as well as providing a helpful ethic of work to be built into them. This is one of the main things that the boy’s need help with, learning to do honest work for a fair wage.
There is a “chapel” every morning, with a different leader at the Ranch doing a short (20 min?) time of teaching. Right now we’re going through 1st and 2nd Samuel, and it’s cool to hear the different perspectives that the Zambian Christians bring to these passages. At night I do the “devotion”, which is just me commenting on the passage from chapel. It’s pretty chill, and done through translation, and I enjoy having a time of being able to speak to all the boys,
Different boys have different schedules, but most of them are supposed to have a half day of school. However, the teachers in the gov’t schools here in Zambia have been on strike for the last 3 weeks, so the kids are just hanging out at the Ranch (Ironically, the students in Zambia have recently organized strikes against the teachers, who are themselves striking against their low pay from the gov’t… and justifiably so. Zambian Ministers of Parliament get paid more than American Senators!).
My time thus far has been a mixture of being at the Boy’s Ranch and hanging out at the Walker’s, which is also where Karen Hartman lives (she’s my girlfriend). I’ve been trying to learn the schedule and routine at the Ranch so I can get a good idea of when to be there and when I should go to do other things. I’ve struggled some with feeling guilty about hanging out with Karen, and would appreciate prayer for wisdom to know when that is okay. I don’t want to be the lame boyfriend who shrugs off his responsibilities to hang out with his girlfriend, but I know that spending time with Karen is important to having a healthy relationship. It’s also compounded by the pressure of us not having lived in the same place for more than 3.5 years.
On Saturdays and Sundays I’m free, so I’m not sure yet what those will look like. This week I went to a nearby town to visit one of Karen’s Zambian friends and get to know more about her life there. Two of the leaders at the Ranch (who are themselves former street boys and are a fantastic testimony to the fact that kids CAN successfully come off of the streets) play on a local men’s soccer team, so I’ll probably go to their home games most Sundays. It’s cool to watch, and makes me miss the cartilage in my right knee.

That’s all for now! Please pray for Kellys (19), Chishala (23), and Felix (20). They are going to be leaving the Ranch soon after I leave and my main responsibility is trying to help them get ready to live outside of the Ranch. They’ve still got relapse problems from their days on the streets, even though they’ve been at the Ranch for over a year now, and we’re not sure right now if they won’t go back to the streets when they’re on their own.

Please also continue to pray for AMCC! I’ll post Nick’s most recent post just above this one. The avocado business has officially begun and it is bringing in about $75 a week of profit! PRAISE GOD! The needs there are much more than $75 a week, though, so they’re still in financial straits, plus the fact that avocado season ends at the end of July, so after that they’ll again be without income. Oh God, help AMCC!