The house already gets used for a whole range of this year. We'd hoped toe have visitors from the UK in particular when we had a full schedule of people coming and going. But because of the virus, we've not been able to host people in the way that we hope so we've been able to do other things. This is a lady's breakfast, which we had for members of our team
They have a number of people working for us on this enables us to get out and about to do some of the other work that we want to get engaged in. Rachel is on the right. She works in our house, and then we have a group of people wait working outside some of them. I just work whenever something comes up. That's the man in the yellow shirt is Mr Webby. He looks after our grounds on. Then the two boys dressed in blue work for us. Full time was gardeners, one of it, one of them at the house and one up of school.
providing the way that people can experience whole healing. So they come and receive clinical help. They also receive prayer and encouragement, pastoral care. But my role has been particularly in creating beautiful spaces in and around the garden so that they this provides a peaceful environment for people who recovery
We've belt curbs and a roundabout, and we've put stone chippings down are now whilst we are in the UK Josiah our gardener on the right is planting grass in all of the areas that still have soil on them so that by the time we get back, the grounds will look much greener
Steph also works at the hospital. Here she is sitting on one of the bales that she's bought. We have a fund for raising money to buy bales. Bales come from the UK or from America, and each bale has about 500 pieces of clothing in it. We use these bales in two ways. A lot of our patients come across the border from the Congo, where conditions are much worse than they are in Zambia.
Some in very raggedy clothes on DSO from these fails were able to give clothes to Congolese families. The other way that we use the clothes is just to sell them on. The money that we get from selling the clothes is also used for helping people. For example, sometimes people travel from up to 100 miles away to reach us. Sometimes they're very sick and they have to walk. We even had a man once had broken his back in a mining accidents who came from many, many miles away in a wheelbarrow. So we're able to raise money, and patients are then able to return home on the back of a motorbike, which may sound very uncomfortable but this gives them a much better return home. Then they would otherwise.
We've also been working this year at the school. It's one of our long term projects. When we first arrived at Sachibondu a few years ago, the school was in a terrible condition. The desks looked a little bit like this, and sometimes two or three Children would try to sit of them. But most classrooms had no desks at all, so the Children sat on the floor for their lessons and the floor was usually not very clean.
So we gathered together all the old pieces of desks on. We sent them to a metal worker and have them repaired. And then gradually we've bean refurbishing the desk so that the Children have somewhere better to learn. Normally, there would be three Children to a desk, but because of social distancing, you can see that there are just two Children sitting to those desks.
We also had a project to rebuild the toilets, and as you can see, we managed to complete one in front of you just in time because the old toilet sank into the pit beneath it. One of the issues we found was that the Children coming to our primary school go up to about 14 or 15 years old. Some of the older girls were not coming to school for two or three days when they were having a period because we had no water in the school. And so there wasn't the necessary hygiene for the girls. Now that we've rebuilt the toilets, we've got water running into some of them on DWI built washrooms so that there is the opportunity for the girls not to this school.
Another project in the school has bean to do with this gate. For many years, the Children who have reached the top end of our primary school have had to travel 10 to 12 miles away to do their exams every year. That's meant that they've had to stay in a different village far away from their families, and unfortunately, the village there has a reputation of violence or abuse. So some of our Children were coming back, abused on and some of them were pregnant. So we have been for the last two years taking the Children to and thro in our own vehicles for their exams, bringing them home every evening to make sure that they are kept safe. But the government told us that if we could build a strong room in the head teacher's office, where exams could be kept safe, then we would be able to register as an exam centre ourselves. So bit by bit, we've been able to comply with the inspectors requirements. It's being a bit of a stretch, but the strong room is finished now. That means that this December, the Children have been able to do their exams at Sachibondi
Those of you who follow what we do and you can for us because we regularly post on Facebook to show the progress of the different projects were involved in those of you who have been doing that well know that we've been trying to help the preschool for many years. One of the problems is lack of space. We have up to 60 Children in our preschool and two very small classrooms, one of which is very dark. So over these last few months we've begun a building project which will mean that the preschool have a big new classroom and here. you can see the guys mixing the concrete to lay the slab for that new classroom. One of our projects for 2021 will be to complete this classroom and to equip it so that the preschool has enough room to operate.
Here are some of the Children that already attend. This is the baby class. The Children here are aged 3 to 5 on board. The government have not provided us with teachers for this age group, so we've been able to partly fund Sandra who you can see standing on the right, and Wales, who can see in the blue T shirt so that they can run the baby's group in preschool. It's because of the generosity of people in the UK that we're able to sponsor them. And please let us know if you want to help. But it's also down to these two lovely people because they're being paid about one third of a teacher's wage and are happy to do that so that we can run a class for these little ones.
Working at such a bond dues like working at many other missions. You have to turn your hand to whatever comes your way, and it's difficult to describe to people what you do in just a sentence, because there are so many different things from time to time, we respond to emergencies and have to take patients to the bigger hospital some miles away. One of the things that I've learned to do over the last three or four years, his woodwork here I'm fitting a kitchen for one of our medical team so that they have a kitchen in their house.
Every Wednesday. The clinic takes a mobile team out to a remote village in our area, and so sometimes we're called upon to use our vehicle and to drive the clinic team out to one of these remote villages. You can see the baby clinic is in progress, and the moms are bringing their babies to be weighed.
On Sunday afternoons, we take our Sachibondu football team out to whichever venue that they're required to travel to so that they can play against the local teams in the Little League. They get very excited about this, but it's also an opportunity for us to talk to them about their lives, to pray with them and spend time answering the many questions they have about God and about the Bible.
We've also been help trying to help me. Mimi, She has travelled to us from the Copper Belt, and has trained with a professional football team. She's very passionate about the game and in a culture amongst the Lunder people, which is very male dominated and where women don't get to do much in the way of recreation. We want to stand with her in her dream toe have ah ladies team from Sachibondu that can also play in a little league. So we've been supplying some footballs for her and encouraging her to round up the local girls, which she has done very successfully. Our dream is that we'll be able to find or purchase football strip for the girls. We managed to get, players kit for the boys a few years ago, but it would be great for the girls to have kept to so that they feel that they're valued as much as the voice team.
You can see the boys looking happy here, but many of them have huge problems in their lives. Their families are dysfunctional, they've been abused in the past in one way or another, so we're just so thankful that we can spend time sitting with them praying with them and encouraging them on. What we found increasingly is that the boys want to pray for us. They're concerned about our lives and our problems and want to ask the father to intervene in those situations. So it's become a real privilege to spend time with these guys. I mentioned the guy with the white shirt on. he asked for prayer a little while ago for his father, who is an alcoholic. and his problem is so bad that most days end up with him lying in the ditch, sometimes unconscious. On one occasion he got so drunk, and when the Villagers found him, they thought he was probably dead. So they got boiling water and plunged his hands into them to see if hey was alive. This resulted in terrible burns. So Christopher, who concede there in the white shirt, came and asked us if we would go to his village and pray for his father. When Steph went on and went out there with another girl, they spent time talking with Christopher's father, And although he said that he had known God long ago, he recognize that he'd come far away from God, so he gave his life back to the Lord and Steph and Anne were able to pray with him that he would be set free from the alcoholism now, six months later, when we were talking to Christopher the other day, he said that he hadn't touched alcohol and that his life was improving, his hands had mended up and he was able to work again. So those are the sorts of situations that we thank God for every day.
And lastly, I want to mention a project that we have a dream for for this next year. For 2021 below our dam there is this bridge. . We call it the 'Rickety Bridge', and we love it dearly. But every year it gets washed away, and when it does get washed away, the community on the other side of the river from Sachibondu is cut off, and it's an area of about 100 square kilometres with perhaps 15 villages. . When they get cut off, it means that none of them could get medical care. It means that their Children can't come to school, and it means that nobody can get across the river to reach markets in the local towns to sell their tomatoes and other crops, so it's a big problem for them. We've been talking with the local headmen to see if we could do anything to help. They don't want a road bridge across the river because they're worried about the implications of people taking their land. But they have asked if we can do anything to help them to build a bridge which will be suitable for pedestrians or bicycles and even for a motorbike to be pushed across. So we're hoping to raise the funds in 2021. to build a new flat bridge across here. We've already taken advice from another local mission where there is a civil engineer who's built bridges in the past. So that a lot remains to be done is to raise the funds to collect together materials we need so that when the dry season comes in, May will be ready to start building a new bridge, which we hope will be much more permanent on will provide a permanent way for people to come and cross and get theme the resources and help that they need. Thank you so much!!
