CEF Newsletter - August 2007

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