Saturday, February 23, 2008

3 months of Guest House Ministry

We have been very busy since we began our work here in Zambia. Before we got here we didn’t know what we would find with the guest house. As it stood, it was in fine operating condition. The guest house is its on entity though. It is not connected to funding from the International Mission Board. So it is like its own little business. It is also a non-profit organization so we should not be making a large amount of money. Over the past several years it has built up some extra money so we started looking at what improvements we could do. First, we talked to the leadership in the country and they gave us some of their ideas, and then we wrote all the Southern Baptist Missionaries that use the facilities to see what they would like to see improved. That made our list that we would tackle. We have been able to make some drastic improvements over the first three months. It’s hard to believe it has only been three months since we started our work in Lusaka. We have done everything from ceramic tile to paint, replace a few ceilings, new water filters, landscape, new mosquito nets, new curtains, new bedding, and new mattresses. On top of all that we have had more business than the guest house has seen in a few years. So because of the volume of business we have seen we have replenished the money we have spent. We believed God was preparing us for this work the last couple of years. In the year and a half before we became missionaries we remodeled a hundred year old house with Niki’s dad and then went on to remodel five Subway stores.
Now, what we trained for in Virginia and in Africa for nearly four months is spreading God's Word. With all the work around the guest house it has been hard to have an intentional ministry. It is our ministry to support our missionaries on the front lines out in the bush by having a comfortable and fun place for them to relax when they come in to get supplies. But we also can do ministry when we have time. Now that we have a lot of the construction out of the way we look forward to doing more in the community. Niki has already started going to the orphanages, and I will be going out in the bush to help deliver food to the hungry and witness to these people in the next few weeks. Please pray for us as we start this process. We will tell you more about these ministries as we go through them.

Women's Missionary Union provided all new water filters for our 8 guest rooms. Thanks WMU!

Landscaping the entrance to the compound really made a beautiful difference.

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