Thursday, August 20, 2009

Makua Invasion






This summer we have been very blessed by several teams that have come for 2 weeks at a time to help out. One team in particular, from Calvary United Methodist in Mt. Airy, MD, held a sort of blanket drive before coming over. Many women from within the church and surrounding community pitched in to hand-make at least 40 blankets for orphans here in the Caprivi. When they were seeking out how to distribute them, Rebecca mentioned Chetto, a village community about 2 hours from here in the center of the Caprivi. There are several reasons this particular village came to mind. For one, the need is very great as several of our kids are from that area. This is actually where Rebecca hopes to facilitate the beginning of a small children’s home in the near future when she returns to the Caprivi part-time. In addition, Disco, the oldest boy here, has become a strong man of God over his time here at COZV and has many deep convictions. This past summer he felt called by God to build a church there among his people to seat 200. Upon a visit just a couple months ago to gather more information about beginning this smaller home, God used Disco to lead his cousin, Steven, and his wife, to Christ and another man rededicated his life to Christ. Then upon being there again just this past weekend I found out that this same cousin is now in the rotation of teachers that are leading the services of this future church that Disco plans to build. Praise God!!! They are currently meeting under a tree, but Disco has full confidence that with this new building more and more will come.

So anyway, back to the blankets. With the whole team (8), plus my mom and sister, plus Disco, Annia, and Kado as translators, we all piled into the Quantum and went for a long Sunday afternoon drive. When we arrived we met with the Induna (chief), who conveniently happens to be Annia’s uncle, and he was thrilled with the presented gifts. He agreed that the orphans should be the ones to get the blankets first. Although everyone had already gathered at the visiting mob of Makuas (white people) with gifts, he quickly brought peace and order and called each of the orphans up one by one to choose one. Then the remaining blankets were handed out to each family and himself also of course. Pictured above is Disco (with the hat) standing between his cousin Steven and his wife as they gathered some basic information for prayer cards.

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