Envision

We're flying to Los Angeles today for "Envision" which is Lifewater's annual conference. To give you a feel for it, here are some workshop descriptions. After the conference we are staying for one more training class which will focus on community based teaching strategies.

Global Water & Sanitation Crisis
This fun and interactive workshop will help participants understand the daily struggle of the many people in our world who lack safe water and adequate sanitation. The workshop will feature stories from the front lines of water development, information about Lifewater’s programs, and practical ways to get involved.

Lifewater 101
What does Lifewater do? This workshop presents the basics of Lifewater’s history, mission, and methodology. Lifewater staff and volunteers will explain the various aspects of Lifewater’s work, including the WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) program, community-based project development, advocacy, and funding.

Development: The Fine Line of Sustainable Transformation
Presented by a practitioner with a multi-disciplinary background in international development, this workshop examines the failures and successes of community development initiatives worldwide, placing you in the shoes of the community. The workshop will be foundational for anyone interested in missions or development work as well as those seeking to improve existing programs in their organization.

Merging the Great Commandment and the Great Commission
Why are Christians called to work with the poor? Why should we be concerned with the physical and spiritual needs of strangers when there is so much need close to home? Does Christian development work look any different from other efforts? Have Christian development efforts actually made a difference? This workshop discusses the holistic approach to ministry and the biblical basis for our involvement in international development.

Hearing from Our Partners
Lifewater is committed carrying out its work by partnering with local organizations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. This workshop will feature representatives of several Lifewater partners sharing experiences and perspectives from Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Ecuador. Take advantage of the opportunity to learn from these experienced development practitioners!

Share the Commitment: How to Get Involved
Interested in working with Lifewater to ensure that everyone has access to safe water, adequate sanitation, hygiene education, and knowledge of Jesus’ love? This workshop will offer a meaningful ways for people of all interests, availability, and skills to get involved.

Photojournalism
Enjoy an informal discussion with renowned photographer Gil Garcetti about his experiences in photography. Garcetti has authored Water is Key, a book of photography on the importance of safe water in Africa featuring articles from Jimmy Carter and Kofi Annan. Garcetti will share advice on how to tell a story through pictures and how to respect the people and places in front of the lens.

Appropriate Water Development
There are many ways to get safe water, but not all are suited for rural villages. This workshop will provide an overview of the water development methods that Lifewater has found effective.

Technical Forum on Water Development
Choose water-related questions that interest you, and a panel of Lifewater experts will respond. Topics the panel may discuss include the technical details of well drilling, hand pump repair, biosand filters, water testing, and new technologies that Lifewater is exploring.

I'm the son of a geographer teacher afterall...

My Dad spent his career teaching Afro-Asian geography in Niskayuna, NY which I learned today means "Land of Much Corn". This entry is for Dad and anyone else who is interested in learning some facts about Zambia. Our trip will take us to Ndola where we will teach our sanitation classes.

Zambia:
Zambia is a landlocked country in southern Africa, with a tropical climate and consists mostly of high plateau with some hills and mountains. At 752,614 sq. km (290,566 sq. mi.) it is the 39th-largest country in the world (after Chile) and slightly larger than the US state of Texas. Zambia is drained by two major river basins: the Zambezi River basin, in the south; and the Congo River basin, in the north.

The official language is English (a remnant from British colonization), used to conduct official business and is the medium of instruction in schools. There are seven commonly-spoken indigenous languages including: Chibemba, Chinyanja, Lunda, Chitonga, Kaonde, Silozi and Luvale. These 7 languages are taught in schools and broadcast on national radio and television. There are many more languages spoken by the various tribes in Zambia, in fact a Zambian languages website lists 78 languages.

The country is 44% urban. Most rural Zambians are subsistence farmers. The predominant faith is Christianity which is also the official national religion. Expatriates, mostly British (about 15,000) or South African, live mainly in Lusaka and in the Copperbelt in northern Zambia, where they are employed in mines and related activities. Zambia also has a small but very economically important Asian population, most of whom are Indians. In recent years over three hundred dispossessed white farmers left Zimbabwe at the invitation of the Zambian government and have taken up farming in the southern region.

The HIV/AIDS epidemic is ravaging Zambia. Nearly one million Zambians are HIV positive or have AIDS. An estimated 100,000 died of the epidemic in 2004. Over a half-million Zambian children have been orphaned. Life expectancy at birth is just under 40 years

Ndola:

Ndola is the second-largest city in Zambia, with a population of 374,757 (2000 census). It is the industrial, commercial, administrative and distribution hub of the Copperbelt, Zambia's copper-mining region, and capital of Copperbelt Province. Ndola was founded in 1904, just six months after Livingstone, making it the second oldest colonial-era town of Zambia. It was started as a boma and trading post, which laid its foundations as an administrative and trading centre today.

Ndola is the industrial center of Zambia and part of the Copperbelt province which is very rich in mineral deposits. It was the backbone of the Northern Rhodesian economy during British colonial rule, but its economic importance was severely damaged by a crash in global copper prices in 1973 and the nationalization of the copper mines by the government of Kenneth Kaunda. There are no mines in Ndola itself but the Bwana Mkubwa open-cast mine is only 10 km south-east of the city centre. Copper and precious metals used to be brought from elsewhere in the Copperbelt for processing at the Ndola Copper and Precious Metals Refinery. Copper exports provide 70–80% of Zambia's export earnings, making the city very important to the country's economy. The Indeni Oil Refinery in Ndola supplies the whole country, and was repaired in 2001 after being severely damaged by fire in 1999. Ndola is home to one of the country's national newspapers, The Times of Zambia.

How's your hygiene?

Last week we were able to get a little more training ourselves. Kirk Schauer, of Seeds of Hope, and Diane Foss, another Lifewater trainer, were in Boise teaching hygiene lessons to the Zambia missions team at our church. Kirk and Diane are both really skilled using paticipatory method to teach the lessons so the training was alot of fun. Hygiene and sanitation have very close ties, so it was great to learn more. Hygiene is about blocking disease pathways; things like the importance of washing hands, keeping flies off food, keeping animals away from water sources, etc... Sanitation deals with how to properly deal with human waste (poop) by using and promoting latrines. Over the past few years Seeds of Hope has done a lot a hygiene education in the communities were they work. As they take on sanitation, it will be built on the hygiene foundation. We were really glad to get exposed to these lessons. Attached is a photo from the hygiene training. It shows a "tippy-tap" which is an inexpensive hand washing station made from a plastic jug. Typically it is hung outside a latrine and the user pulls down on the lower string to pour water on their hands so they can wash. Kirk is pictured on the left in the tippy-tap photo.

Lesson planning done

The lesson plan is finished! Some tweaking will probably occur as we're waiting for feedback from Lifewater and our Zambian partner. The training will be broken into two parts:

Week 1: Our team of three will be leading sanitation lessons for about 20 people. We'll teach about 30 lessons altogether. Our students will be from Seeds of Hope (our Lifewater partner), other NGOs (non-government organizations) and possibly some government people.

Week 2: We will be concentrating on helping Seeds of Hope staff incorporate the sanitation lessons into their existing programs. We will likely be visiting villages or schools and watching Seeds of Hope staff teach the lessons they learned from us the week before. This will give time to help them through questions that develop etc...

Teamwork

Our lack of posts is an indication that we are busy. This week Darcy (whose on summer break from being a speech assistant) is putting together our lesson plan for Zambia. We are also busy going to hygiene training at our church each evening. The training is being taught by a Seeds of Hope staff member and a Lifewater volunteer who just returned from Zambia. In addition to learning the hygiene lessons, its great to hear about Zambia!

Since we don't have time to write anything we outsourced most of this edition to our team member, Lon whose from Colorado. We thought you might be interested in who's going with us to Zambia. Lon is our team leader and as such is taking care of logistics, as well as, team teaching with us. We know Lon well as all of us went through sanitation training together and stayed together in the home of some fabulous Lifewater staff. We asked him to write a bio, so here it is... Thanks Lon!

Lon grew up in the Air Force. Living in many states, Canada, and Japan, he developed an appreciation for other cultures. In his brief career as an officer in the US Army Corps of Engineers, he learned about building latrines among other things. In his career in the oil business, he learned about drilling wells and pumping them as well as managing people.

Then one day in 2004 while coming out of a church where he had been unable to plug into a ministry, he saw a Lifewater display about drilling water wells. He thought "If God has ever spoken to me, it is now. This relates to my entire background.” He attended Lifewater's annual conference and committed to becoming a volunteer. The next year, he took hygiene training and participated in a trip that Rod Thompson led to Tibet where they taught drilling at a school on a 12,000' plateau.

In June 2006, he attended pump repair training and went to Ethiopia on a trip led by Terry Steinhoff (who first introduced him to Lifewater). They taught pump repair to about 18 students. Half were with Kale Heywet Church, and half were Ethiopian government employees. In February, 2007 he went on another trip led by Rod Thompson to Uganda to teach pump repair. Students were from Divine Waters and JOY drilling.

Having taken Sanitation training with Darcy & Jeff, he is now headed for Zambia with them. His passion of trying to get the oil industry involved in supporting safe water efforts is meeting some level of success – please pray for that support to grow!

Pray with us

There are some items we know we need prayer to help us complete. If you find some time, please pray with us about the following things....

• This week we are preparing our lesson plan for the training. Pray that we would be wise about which lessons to include.

We have another few issues that we would appreciate you ongoing prayer for:

• The ability to teach sometimes awkward material across cultural barriers.
• Health & safety while traveling so we can get the job done.
• Building strong relationships with the Zambians Christians we will be teaching.

Sewing pockets

Zambia here we come. This is Darcy writing. Jeff is the usual blogger. I wanted to update everyone on the task I have been working on. I am currently making a pocket chart. That is a large piece of material that I am sewing pockets onto. It looks like a grid of pockets. This is used to find out a community's current sanitation practices. It allows you to ask a variety of questions across the top and have a variety of answers to choose from along the side. Then, in private, people can go and put a pebble in the pockets of their choosing, like voting. It is great too because you can use pictures to convey the meaning for people who don't read or speak your language.

Thank you to everyone who is keeping track of what we're doing. It definitely makes us feel loved to realize all those who are interested. We're excited to serve and consider it a privilege.

Ta Ta for now.

-Darcy

"Coincidences"

Over the last year we have seen some pretty incredible coincidences. A friend of ours says, “when you pray more coincidences occur.” We started praying about getting involved in Africa for a few years ago. We started the application process with Lifewater before leaving Truckee. After arriving in Boise we eventually found a church home at the Boise Vineyard. Step for step as we got more involved with Lifewater we saw our church becoming more and more committed to the same issues. Sunday messages started to talk about Africa and how our church could impact the world by addressing water related needs and other issues. To learn more watch this: Call to Action (20 min video) featuring our pastor Tri Robinson. As time went on the church made a connection to an organization called Seeds of Hope (who incidently is a long time Lifewater partner) in Zambia. Without knowledge of this Lifewater called to ask if we’d be interested in going to Zambia! To train Seeds of Hope staff!! It gets better… as it turns out our Lifewater trip to Zambia overlaps with our church’s first missions trip to the same city. Darcy and I will be teaching our sanitation class while the folks from our church will be helping build a new training center for Seeds of Hope. Our church's team has welcomed us to attend their team meeting every Sunday afternoon. Each week we pray about what we'll do together in Zambia and for the friends we'll meet there. We are learning about cultural differences and practicing Bemba phrases. These “coincidences” shout that God is doing something in Africa and we're getting to be part of it! It makes us view our move to Idaho in a new way and it shows us again that God is so good. Here's a Bible passage that summarizes how we feel like blocks being used to build something much bigger than ourselves.

“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.” Ephesians 2:19-22

Generosity!

5 minutes - that is how long it took between sending out a bulk email about our blog and for a couple of friends to send in $800 and pay for the remainder of our trip costs!

That is amazing! That is what God's love is like!!! He loves to gives us really good gifts. His gifts are all around us, we just need to pause long enough to appreciate them.

The total cost of our 3 week trip is $8800. Plane tickets alone were $2800 each! And its 100% paid for!!! Take a second. Be joyful with us.

If you didn't get a chance to contribute this time don't fret, we hope to do more trips with Lifewater in future years. In the meantime, if you have some money burning a hole in your pocket and you want to give it away before Starbucks or Bill Gates take it from you, you can still make a tax-deductible contribution towards the sanitation project we will be working on. Please indicate that you a giving to support the Zambia Project that Jeff and Darcy Anderson are involved with (Project: ZM-SHP-052007/06). There are 3 ways to donate:

• Calling Lifewater and making a credit card donation: 1-888-543-3426
  
• Writing a check payable to Lifewater International and mailing it to:
  
  Lifewater International
  
  PO Box 3131
  
  San Luis Obispo, CA 93403

• Or online by clicking here
  
  For online donations be sure to check the volunteer trainer box and then add our names. See example below
  
  

Any funds in excess of the cost of our travel will remain in the Lifewater project account for ongoing project expenses. This will help overseas teams with ongoing project efforts.

Thanks for your generosity!!!

That's the ticket

We've got our tickets! Its a long journey to get to Africa (well not as long as sailing around the horn) but 3 days is a long time to be on an airplane - that's three days without a bed and that only gets us to Lusaka not Ndola which is where we will be teaching. Ndola is another 6 hours or something by bus.

To Africa
SW1667 04JUL Boise to Salt Lake City 1205P - 0105P
SW1846 04JUL Salt Lake City to Denver 0345P - 0510 P
BA 218 04JUL Denver to London 815P - 1210P
BA 055 05JUL London to Johannesburg 705P 650A
SA 062 06JUL Johannesburg to Lusaka 1050A 1250P
Total travel time: 41 hours! not including bus to Ndola

To USA
BA6292 01AUG Livingstone to Johannesburg 120P 300P
BA 056 01AUG Johannesburg to London 815P 620A
BA 049 03AUG London to Seattle 305P 435P
SW 1378 03AUG Seattle/Tacoma to Boise 745 P 1000 P

With a keen eye and a little geographic knowledge you might have realized that we are departing from a different city than we fly into. Livingston is the town closest to Victoria Falls (photo or facts). We are tacking on a week personal vacation on the end of the Lifewater trip so we can experience some tourism highlights. We're hoping to go rafting! and on safari in Kafue National Park! And as an added bonus we have 1.5 days in London on the return journey. Look kids Big Ben, Parliament...

Who is Lifewater?

We love Lifewater and are really looking forward to volunteering with them in Zambia this summer as sanitation trainers. They have a great staff of knowledgeable people who believe all people have a right to safe water, effective sanitation, and improved health. Lifewater is a Christian training organization that feels that solutions to the global water and sanitation crisis come from within local communities as people take the responsibility for their own water sources in an effort to improve community health. The missing link is education. To close the gap Lifewater has trained about 250 North American volunteers (like us) who travel to other countries to train national partners. The national partners take their new skills and education to those who most need them, helping to break the cycle of disease and poverty. These partners are Christians who also share the gospel message of living water with the communities where they work. Partners are most often churches that are demonstrating God’s compassion while meeting both spiritual and physical needs in their communities. Since 1979, Lifewater and their partners have brought safe water to an estimated 1.4 million people. Lifewater trainers generally focus on one of three areas:
• Water – drilling wells, repairing hand pumps, and filtering water
• Hygiene – education on hand washing, food preparation, disease transmission
• Sanitation – proper disposal of human waste
Of these programs sanitation is the newest; we are part Lifewater’s first class of sanitation trainers.

Incidently, if you are interested in learning more about Lifewater, they are holding their annual conference in Orange, CA later this month between June 22-24th and we'd love to see you there.

Why teach about sanitation?

Proper disposal of human waste is essential in curbing water-related diseases. The Bible gave sage advice to the Jewish nation, it taught them to “designate a place outside the camp where you can go to relieve yourself. As part of your equipment have something to dig with, and when you relieve yourself, dig a hole and cover up your excrement” Deuteronomy 23:12-13. These same steps can still protect people from illness, but there are 2.6 billion people (about 4 out of 10 people worldwide) that lack access to adequate sanitation. This results in water sources above and below ground that become contaminated and unsafe. Basic sanitation, such as using a latrine (outhouse), helps stop the spread of disease. Lifewater's newly established sanitation emphasis will compliment Lifewater’s existing programs by providing a well-rounded approach to community health. It will assist needy communities through education on disease transmission, latrine construction, repair and maintenance, and social attitudes and behaviors about proper waste disposal. Since sanitation is a new direction there is a need for trained volunteers to teach; while Lifewater has lots of volunteers to cover water and hygiene training, but we are two of their first nine sanitation trainers.