Dear all,

I have been very negligent in sending out Christian Education Fund newsletters – none since August 2007. Sorry about that; I can assure you that it doesn’t reflect an attitude of thinking the CEF and my recent trip to Zambia don’t need prayer support.

I was in Zambia from 1^st to 17^th April. It was a very encouraging trip, and possibly the most productive of the 7 visits I have made. One of the main reasons for this is that the CEF is in its best state ever. Here’s some news.

The CEF

Marjanne is taking exactly the approach I’ve been advocating for the last couple of years – concentrating on a few local schools and on training teachers. This has meant that the main activities of the CEF recently have been:

1. Weekly visits to Kuunika pre-school to train the teachers. The two teachers there have been very keen, responsive and reliable. It is a great encouragement to see the improvements there. Especially when we consider the great potential there is through pre-schools – the two best schools I have seen in Zambia base their success on pre-school work.
2. Regular visits to three other local schools. This focused approach, building up relationships and giving training that is specific to needs, is much more effective than spreading our resources more thinly. It may sound less impressive than trekking through the bush to give blackboards to 25 schools, but in the long term it is far more fruitful.
3. Conferences to train all the teachers in the 20 schools we support.
4. Visits to all the other schools to assess their needs and maintain contact, but not to distribute materials – this has gone on hold until we have made proper assessments of how the materials are being used and what the greatest needs are. It is all too easy to give materials simply because we see a need, without considering how they will be used; this can even worsen the education being given in the schools.

While I was in Zambia we were able to work together to make progress on a number of fronts:

1. We visited a number of schools to decide what our future relationship with them should be. This included deciding in favour of some we were previously negative about; having to give serious reprimands to three teachers about repeated dishonesty; formally ending our relationship with a few schools – some are no longer suited to the help we are giving, and some are proving unreliable in their use of our help. Although this is disappointing, we hope it acts as a pressure and incentive on other schools to take responsibility and respond rightly to our support.
2. We decided not to set up a school at Covenant College . The main reason for this is that our emphasis, as is stated in our governing document, must be on helping the local community schools and promoting Christian education within them, not providing schooling directly ourselves. While there are advantages to founding and running our own school, we must be helping the locals to provide education for their children, not encouraging the prevalent attitude of looking to the white man to provide for them. We had thought that having our own school would provide a place through which we could train other teachers. However, while this sounds good in theory, it is doubtful that it would be effective in practice. In our current situation, starting a school would distract from the work of regularly visiting schools to provide practical training to teachers, and that is the most effective method for us at present.
3. We interviewed a Christian teacher called Dorica. She has both South African teacher-training, and Zambian mission-training. She is from Eastern Zambia . We need to work out if the time is right to employ another member of staff to train teachers, and if she is the right person. Please pray that we would have wisdom in this matter, and that God would guide Dorica also.
4. We re-wrote the constitution of the CEF and re-structured its management team. This now consists of Marjanne Hendriksen, Mirjam Molenaar, Solomon Lungu and me. With Cammy Macleay being called upon if we have a split vote.
5. We are re-starting distributing materials to schools now that we have reassessed needs. We will continue to provide basic materials such as chalk and stationery to all our schools. We will be providing more to those few schools that have proved themselves particularly reliable and competent. For example, good pre-school materials to Kuunika. Class sets of text-books to Mtumpha where the teachers are both very competent and reliable and are keen to learn from the Bible.
6. A big and urgent need for the CEF is a more suitable vehicle for Marjanne to use (she has been using a rather wrecked car that is not meant for Zambian off-roading). The trustees of Covenant College Zambia Trust agreed that CCZT should buy a vehicle to be used by the college and the schools. CCZT is currently raising funds for this. As the CEF has nearly sufficient funds to buy such a vehicle, we agreed to make them a loan so we can get the vehicle quickly. We expect the vehicle to cost around £12,000.
7. We got a number of other important administrative jobs done, such as re-writing our travelling secretary’s job description to make his work more effective.

Non-CEF news

1. The Covenant College Zambia Trust AGM was long as usual, but that was because there were many important issues to consider. The college is developing rapidly. It was a great encouragement to see the assistant lecturer, Heinrich Zwemstra, and his family settled in and so eminently suitable for the work and situation. The new dormitory for the students is completed, there is now a reliable electricity supply and even internet connection at the college – which transform living conditions. The current students seemed to be a good intake, both in terms of understanding the lectures I gave to them, and their commitment. Some are cycling for 8 hours each way in difficult conditions each week to be at the college.
2. I was very encouraged by the work Phil is doing on the farm to spread good farming techniques to locals, especially current and former students (all pastors are also farmers). The method he is teaching is really a set of principles which puts the protestant work ethic into an African agricultural context. Its seems to have great potential if they have the discipline to put it into practice.
3. I preached at a local village church. Again my visit reminded me what a mixture the Zambian church situation is. There is such a consciousness of God and acknowledgement of him in public life, as well as a hunger to learn. Yet the leadership of the churches is weak and untaught. This emphasises further the importance of the work Covenant College is doing.

Please continue to pray for the work in Zambia . If you would like more information, contact me or see www.zambianmissionsupport.org.

Joseph

Update (May 2008)

Dear all,
 
I have just received the following information which I was unable to include in my latest Zambia news:
 
The CEF held another teacher-training conference on Wednesday (30th April).  One of the difficulties with the work of teacher-training in Zambia has been finding the teachers to be very passive and not taking an active role in their training.  Therefore it was an encouragement for Marjanne and the teachers to be together and see the teachers get more and more involved in the programme; answering questions, thinking, suggestions etc. Also to find that they remember things from the other conferences.
We did much about preparing Bible lessons, but also about lesson planning, Farming God's Way* and about teaching Bible songs.
 
* Covenant College farm is promoting in the local area something called "Farming God's Way".  It is not claiming that this is the way God tells us we must farm, but looks at biblical principles of living responsibly and of stewardship and at how vegetation grows naturally in an African context when there is no human intervention, and then uses this to give farming methods which are an African agricultural version of the Protestant work ethic.
 
Please pray that this conference would help teachers to teach effectively and especially to point the children to Christ.  Also that Marjanne would be enabled to follow up this conference with systematic visiting of the schools involved.
 
Joseph

Dear all,

During the last two years as I have been at London Theological Seminary, it has been interesting and encouraging to discover in church history lectures that many church leaders of the past were involved in founding and running schools – often of an elementary kind in areas where few people were literate and in contexts similar to that in Eastern Zambia. They recognised the importance of this for the health of the church. Paulerspury in Northamptonshire in the mid-eighteenth century had a small school for boys with one teacher – a local weaver; it was probably similar to our schools in Zambia in some ways. One pupil there was particularly inspired by the stories of Columbus, prompting an interest in both travel and languages that would remain throughout his life. That boy – William Carey – went on to become the father of the modern missionary movement. What future missionaries and church-leaders may be pupils in our schools in Zambia?

I expect you remember that we have a new worker for the CEF: Marjanne Hendriksen. As is to be expected of someone arriving in Zambia for the first time and facing such a large and important task, there have been encouragements and discouragements.

One difficulty has been that Mirjam Molenaar, the wife of the principal of Covenant College has had some serious health problems which means she has been unable to help with the schools. After persevering with the very poor Zambian hospitals, she has had to return to the Netherlands for five months.

Anyone in Marjanne’s situation would soon realise she faces a daunting task, the sort where it can be hard to see where to begin. So, for example, Marjanne has found that many teachers will just start a lesson when she arrives to visit the school. Often the teachers don’t prepare their lessons before starting a new day at school. They will just copy a lesson from a book onto the board when she asks to observe a lesson. The children spend much time just waiting. Most of the lessons she observed do not ask any use of the child’s mind; they can just copy, without thinking. She often observes teachers making big mistakes in their lessons without any correction. There is also a problem with a high turnover of teachers in some schools. All these problems reinforce that the most important thing we can do for the schools is provide training for the teachers. Yet most teachers if asked what their school needs will ask for materials, not for training. This just goes to reinforce the point further.

Marjanne comments: “It was an overwhelming experience to visit the schools. You see much need. But when you just have in mind that the teachers are all volunteers and untrained then you are very happy when you also see teachers loving children, having good communication with them during a lesson, and I also saw a few good lessons!!!”

So, rather than getting discouraged, we thank God for giving us such an important task, and for putting Marjanne in a position to do so much good. She is able to visit the schools far more regularly and systematically than has been possible before, and to provide better training.

One example of this is the recent conference to train teachers. This was held in August, run by Marjanne, attended by over forty teachers and was the first time we have been able to run a conference without me being present – that is a great encouragement to me and a big step forward for the CEF. Marjanne described it as very enjoyable as the teachers were keen to learn. She is in a better position now than we have been in the past to monitor and help them in putting what they have learnt into practice.

Marjanne’s experiences confirm the suitability of our long term strategy: providing basic support to just over twenty schools but varying this support according to what we see occurring in each school (we have had to warn one school that it has one last chance to respond to our efforts to help it sort itself out, or we will withdraw support); concentrating on a couple of schools; starting our own school on the Covenant College grounds. To start our own school would be a big commitment and requires much prayer and planning. Nevertheless, in many ways it is far easier to do in Zambia than in the UK, and the potential good it could do is far greater there.

Another encouragement is that one of the schools which has the most keen and teachable teachers is right on the doorstep of the college (a massive benefit when travel in Zambia can be so difficult). Also it is a pre-school – and all the successful schools I have seen in Zambia have based their success on the quality of their pre-school education.

Please join with us in thanking God for these encouragements, and praying for the issues raised in this newsletter.

Joseph

Dear all,

I wonder where you are sitting at the moment - it is strange to be able to communicate so easily and quickly across continents. I am in a dingy cupboard; when I go outside I will walk through the sand under the blazing sun past people sitting doing nothing, people cycling with bicycles piled with vegetables, people carrying their shopping on their heads and live chickens by their wings. I do not expect to see any other white people. How does that compare with where you are now?

We had 55 teachers at our conference on Monday, which was far more than I expected. They came from 16 of our schools plus from other schools we don't support. I taught them on the attitudes they must have if their schools are to grow. Phil spoke about new methods of farming. We showed them around the farm and they were very impressed with the crops and the animals. On such occasions we must expect that some will listen and respond well, while a large number will go away and forget what they heard. This was illustrated in an annoying way. I had spoken to the teachers about taking care with the resources they have and storing properly what we give them. After this talk they looked through our teacher training library, which was organised into different subject areas. After they had looked through it it resembled a bomb site, with books scattered everywhere carelessly. I gave them a good talking to about this - what is the point of teacher training that is not put into practice? (Remind yourself - what is the point of reading and listening to the Bible if you are not striving every week to put it into practice.)

The last two days I have been lecturing at Covenant College. I have now finished my series of lectures, and it seems to have gone well. We seem to have good quality, committed students at the moment. They have been asking me some testing questions, especially on the Trinity. What advice can any of you give me on this one: at the church of one of the students several women's husbands have become Muslims and are trying to force the women to attend the Mosque and to cut them off from contact with Christians. If the women stand firm, the husbands are likely to marry additional wives (polygamy is common here, especially among Muslims) - in the context of many children per women and abject poverty, such polygamy would be very difficult for the Christian women to cope with. Any suggestions? Tomorrow the students have their exam - I don't think I will make that issue an exam question.

Friday and Saturday we have our trustees' AGM. Please pray that it would be successful, with the right decisions made in a peaceful manner. There are a couple of difficult issues to consider.

After that I'm off to Lusaka. I won't have much to do there - was hoping to go and see the Vic Falls for the 1st time, but it's not possible.

Looking forward to seeing everyone.

Joseph

Dear all,

What strange things flying through the air at hundreds of miles per hour overnight can do. Monday was a beautiful English spring day, but not particularly hot; I travelled to Heathrow in a comfortable coach along a crowded but smooth M25; at Heathrow, as always, I was surrounded by ostentatious wealth in a cosmopolitan setting, in which immorality is open and unashamed, while its consequences are hidden and ignored. When Tuesday arrived I was travelling along a road with virtually no other traffic, but numerous pot-holes and surrounded by much wildlife, including a snake we ran over and whatever inhabits my companions' hair and beard. By early afternoon I was pushing my way through the tall grass of the bush along a dirt track under a blazing sun (it was nearly 40 degrees on Friday), to a stream where some women were washing dishes. This was about the furthest you can get from a wealthy and cosmopolitan society - myself and Phil were the only non-Bantu people here. This also is a society where immorality is not open and unashamed; but its consequences are everywhere and impossible to ignore. You cannot pass through a town without seeing signs reminding you of AIDS. Death is all around us. The last two days I have visited a man in hospital who had refused to be tested a few weeks ago, and is now a skinny wreck. Phil took him into hospital during the night, thinking he was dying, while his drunk family stood around and laughed.

Hopefully that has set something of the scene for you (although you have to experience it to take it in). Here are some matters for prayer:

1. I have completed my lectures on Jehovah's Witnesses and started lectures on Roman Catholicism. Please pray that these would be practically helpful and that they would result in people being rescued from these false beliefs. One difficulty is that RC is so varied across the world, and in the bush of Africa can be little different from the formality and ignorance in the Protestant churches, so I need to know how to respond to this situation.

2. Next I will be lecturing on Islam. The churches have lost many people to Islam, especially to the north of Petauke. When asked what they learn at the Mosque, these people reply, "nothing" - it is all in Arabic, which they don't understand, and they are just in it for the food and blankets they get. In other words, the issue is more serious than giving arguments against Islam - there has been a dryness and formality in the churches and a hidden materialism in the people, which needs to be dealt with. The rise of Islam is the symptom, not the cause of the problem. The solution must be the Spirit of God blessing the preaching of the gospel.

3. I have just returned from visiting five community schools. It has been a slightly frustrating experience. All the schools are doing end of term tests. All the tests were of the type which I have tried in the past to move them away from - multiple choice style very easy questions all assessing whether the children have memorised various facts. In most cases there was nothing to assess understanding or whether the children can use what they have memorised, nor their ability to communicate and express what they have learnt. This system eflects the approach to education: memorisation with little understanding and a testing system which is more a normality than a method of assessment and improving teaching.

4. As I visited schools I gave notice of a conference we are planning for Easter Monday. I hope to speak on some basic teaching principles, including addressing the problem I've referred to above. Then Phil will instruct them on a new farming system called "God's way of farming". It includes principles of stewardship and responsibility which are so important but neglected here, and it has resulted in bumper maize crops (no it's not the prosperity gospel). We hope to help the schools make use of this method and teach it to the children.

I hope this e-mail doesn't sound too negative, but there is so much effort by NGOs, charities etc here that is utterly wasted. Until the gospel changes people's hearts and lifestyles the world (and Christians) can throw as much money and time at Africa as it likes without solving the problems.

Tselani Bwino (stay well)

Joseph

Dear all,

Here is some news about the Christian Education Fund and other related matters. Your prayers for these issues would be much appreciated.

I recently received a letter from Solomon Lungu, our travelling secretary, it raised the following issues:

1. A general difficulty for people living in Eastern Province at the moment is the very heavy rainfall. Whereas two years ago people were going hungry due to lack of rain and last year harvests were great due to perfect rain conditions, this year the rain is endangering harvests. It is also washing away homes, bridges and dams. Strangely, the Zambia Society reports that at the same time there is drought in some other parts of Zambia.

2. Kamwankhuku School and Cheuka School have eached expelled a drunkard teacher. I am glad they have done the right thing, which is not always easy to do. Pray for suitable and truly Christian teachers in each school, so the children are provided with godly examples.

3. The Christian and very competent teacher of Chiwizi School, Bornface Zulu is mentally ill. Please pray for his recovery.

4. Teachers are asking for assistance from the CEF with acquiring fertiliser, seed, maize powder etc. We have looked into providing fertiliser and seed in the past, and it is too expensive to manage it on a worthwhile scale for all our teachers. Please pray that they would not be disappointed with this, the schools would pay them properly and we would be able to provide encouragement through gifts of things they cannot purchase for themselves.

I am due to travel to Zambia on Monday 26th March and return on 18th April. Please pray for the following:

1. Preparation of the trip. I am expected to give 20 hours of lectures in my first week there. There are also a number of practicalities to prepare as well as non-Zambia responsibilities such as taking two school assemblies in Hemel on Monday before I fly. Please pray that I would prioritise wisely and get all done.

2. I have been asked to run a 3-4 day conference for the teachers while I am there. I will not be able to do that, and had not expected to run any conference at all. Now I think I may run a small one-day conference. I will have to prepare all this while I am out there. I am thinking of basing it on lessons I learnt while at the Masaiti station of the Foundation for Cross-Cultural Education last year. This will address problems in the teachers' attitudes by considering the topics: "Teachers not buildings", "Children not test results" and "For God not the world". I also hope that Phil Bailey will show the teachers round the farm and talk about improving methods of farming and nutrition.

3. I hope to visit the schools to observe teaching and give advice, as well as to distribute materials, monitor the situations in the schools and give encouragement. Last year not all the schools were accessible at this stage in the seasons, due to rivers etc. So, how many schools we will be able to visit with this years' rains is unclear - please pray that we would be able to visit those most important to visit, and would get neither ourselves or the vehicle stuck in mud or water. Also, please pray that I would be able to watch their normal every-day teaching and give helpful advice - there are cultural difficulties that can get in the way of this.

4. I will be preparing for the arrival of Marjanne Hendriksen, who is due to arrive in Zambia in May to work full time for the CEF. Please pray that I would recognise what are the most important things to prepare for her, and that she would quickly understand the (often confusing) Zambian Community Schools system.

5. I have been asked to lecture at Covenant College on Islam, Jehovah's Witnesses and Roman Catholicism. These are the three biggest threats to the church in terms of other religions. The Christians are particulaly getting alarmed by Islam, which is growing at a surprising rate. Please pray that these lectures will help the pastors to guard their flocks, warn against dangers and bring the gospel powerfully to those deluded by these false beliefs. (Praise God that Solomon tells me a man in his village who left the baptists to join the Muslims has recently returned to Christ.)

6. Covenant College Trust AGM is on 13 and 14 April. Pray that all trustees would arrive at the meeting and we would be given wisdom, especially as we consider who should be the new principal. Please also pray for the Molenaars as they provide hospitality to trustees and other visitors to the college at the time, especially as the building of their house has not yet been completed.

Joseph