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.