Dear CCZT Partners,
It is about time for us to give you an update about our three ministries. Although many of newsletter receivers also get our monthly prayer letter, it is good to see pictures as well of what is going on in our projects. When you don’t receive our prayer letter and would like to get it, please let us know. We will add you on our mailing list. Prayer is the key to be able to work in God’s Kingdom!

College

We are thankful that we managed to complete a full first semester despite the Covid prevalence and the corresponding health restrictions involved. We couldn’t receive lecturers from abroad, but we managed to share the lessons with the help of Zambian pastors. We did a trial for a week of online teaching as well. Also, our AGM was done virtual this year.

During the midterm break, the last week of May, the principal and his wife travelled to Kasama, in the Northern Province of Zambia, for a mission assignment, hoping for opportunities to receive new students and for the establishment of new CEM pre-schools from this area in the near future.

In June we said goodbye to college administrator Samba, who tendered in a resignation after working for a period of 4 years. This means we have a vacancy for this position. If you are interested or you know someone who could be suitable, please let us know. We are also still looking for full time lecturers. Feel free to share our newsletter with others!

In between, Zambia was hit by the 3rd Covid wave. So, in July the Principal could not travel, but joined an online seminar from Mukhanyo Theological College in South Africa. He and his wife were also attacked by a bad flu which appeared like Covid although they didn’t go for the test. Thankfully both recovered! The opening of the College for the second semester was delayed for more than a month due to the 3^rd Wave of Covid 19. But since the 17th of August the College has been in full swing. We are thankful we can receive lecturers from abroad again: Rev. Nedson Banda (Malawi), Rev. Johannes Aucamp (RSA) and Dr. David Galletta (USA).

We also did a week’s online training again for a course about Christian Education. We hope our students will be good ambassadors in their churches and communities to open schools and Sunday schools to reach out with the gospel to children as well.

Farm

Harvest time is always exciting! This year we had a harvest of 117 bags of maize; 55 bags for selling and the remainder to feed the students. Also, we harvested sunflower. Power outages being experienced in the area hindered sales from the hammer mill and oil expeller, but at the moment we have less outages than before. That gives hope! However, we managed to sell 20 tonnes of maize bran which gave us some income to run the College. With the same purpose we have been selling several butches of 500 birds of broiler chickens per month.

Our vegetable gardens were enlarged in order to produce more varieties and quantities of vegetables. The gardens are doing well and we are thus managing to feed our students and sell the extra to the market.

We found a stable selling point in Lusaka, our capital city, for our bottled products of chilli, Moringa and Artemisia powder. Our Alita strawberries have found their way on the shelf of one of our supermarkets here in Petauke! The Principal’s wife even makes jam from the strawberries that are not sold!

This is quite some good news from the farm side, but we also have some struggles. We don’t have a farm truck any longer. This has negatively affected the maize brain and sunflower cakes production as we are unable to ferry customers bringing in their maize. We also, have a vacancy at the Farm for a Farm manager, please advertise for us.

CEM

In between it is about a year and a half during which CEM could not go out to schools for training or conduct education conferences, due to Covid restrictions. But when “God closes a door, He opens a window”, so goes a saying! In our case it is more like God opened gates!

Martha has used her time to develop all kinds of teaching materials and academic movies for preschools. She also started radio broadcasts, where she taught Bible stories. She continued making Bible movies as well, which are spread through WhatsApp and Facebook. Thus far we shared about 45 Bible movies in the local Chinyanja language.

On a sad note, Martha is having health problems, which made her to go to Lusaka for treatment. This has hindered CEM operations to a great extent.

The worldwide pandemic keeps Marjanne stuck in The Netherlands, but in between she is like a spider in a web, connected to many countries. Several other missionaries and organisations got interested in our Bible movie project. Until now Marjanne has made about 150 English Bible movies, all still from The Old Testament. But she still has quite a number more to do before she finishes the whole Bible. People, working in The Netherlands with refugees from different countries, asked for the same movies in Dutch. About 50 are made and shared in between.

But when people asked for the same movies in Bemba (local Zambian language), in Arabic and in Urdu, you can understand she couldn’t do this herself. With the help of other missionaries, several translators, editors and native speakers, she has already managed to make and share more than 50 Arabic movies, 55 Bemba movies and 30 Urdu movies. If you know of people interested in these movies, please, let us know! We hope to start soon also with an Indonesian team, God willing. You can imagine how exited we are receiving such opportunities to reach out with the gospel to enormous numbers of children and parents in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

While in The Netherlands, Marjanne also does other CCZT related activities, such as making presentations in different churches and schools alike about our ministries, writing for magazines etc. She especially enjoys online teaching sessions with Zambian teachers and twice did a virtual course for our students at Covenant College. Regularly the Principal and Marjanne have video call meetings that make them foster a team work in spite of the huge distance between them. We praise God for the technology that makes this possible! But this technology is solely dependent on having a reliable electricity provision. But this unfortunately is often a problem to secure due to power outages in Zambia. On the other hand, we are delighted to report that the Solar Project that we embarked on from last year is gradually progressing well with a sum of USD 35, 600 so far realised and remaining with a balance of USD 4, 400 to reach a target of USD 40, 000. We will keep you updated!

We end this update on our projects with a plea for your prayers so that we are enabled to continue serving in God’s Kingdom. We glorify God for all the blessings received thus far!

Pastor Emmanuel Sakala
Principal