MISSION ZAMBIA JANUARY 2012

Since undergoing training in Marriage and Family at the Seminar, we resolved to start having similar sessions for couples at our church. We have been having marriage enrichment sessions every Sunday, from June to the end of August, this year. We have begun to see in attendance, even couples who are not members of our church.* Pastor Sostern Banda

I can confess that I didn’t have a proper or effective ministry to the Couples. However, after attending the Seminar, we decided to re-organize our couples’ fellowship in our church. Subsequently, we first gathered thirty married couples. Presently, we are now holding monthly couples’ fellowships. Consequently, we have had three couples added to our church, through the ministry to the couples.* Pastor Gideon Mvula

*quotes from a follow up meeting at the end of August after our June conference

These two pastors express why we continue to go back and train more pastors.

After our last mission trip (June 2011), God spoke to our hearts about doing more work in that area. Our Zambian partner there is very efficient, effective, godly, and influential among the pastors. We had our most fruitful mission trip ever. We believe that the Lord is leading us to return there in January of 2012. We have two goals: 1) to minister more to the ones that we taught last June, and 2) to further investigate other ministry opportunities for a team in June 2012.

Our ministry time will include meeting again with the pastor couples that we taught. We will also do some teaching to men and women separately. We will speak at a Bible college nearby and speak in churches on marriage.

Our time to investigate and prepare for next summer will focus on discerning the best place to conduct our next marriage seminar for pastors, exploring how we can help with a school and children located in a slum in Ndola, opportunities for leadership training, and possible men/women’s conferences.

Since we are not sponsoring a weeklong conference on this mission in January 2012, we are able to keep the costs lower than the usual summer mission. We will meet in churches (at no charge) and will not give away Bibles. Our costs will include transportation (airfare is the largest cost), lodging, food, visas, translators, and teaching materials. Our budget is $7500 for the 13 day trip. We will leave January 5 and return January 18, 2012.

Please pray with us for this upcoming mission. God has ordained this work and called us to it. His mission effort will succeed through the generous support of His people. Please join us as we obey the call and allow Him to work through us in touching many in His Name.

Blessings,
Ed and Donna Edwards

To donate, click here. [All contributions are fully tax-deductible and you will receive a receipt.] For more information about past missions to Zambia, enter "Zambia" into the search box on this page.

JUNE 2011 LIVING WELL Letter

Are you ready to go? Are you packed yet?

The questions come out first when we see someone. Yes, we are ready to go ….. And we just finished packing.

We are always ready to go to Africa, whether we are packed or not! God prepared our hearts many years ago. If someone had called a week ago and said, “we need you to go early, can you leave tomorrow?” without a doubt, our answer is yes, we can go.

How do we prepare for a trip to Africa? We have spent the last 12 years preparing. First, God touched our hearts. Then, He began to teach us about the people of east Africa, what their particular needs are—their spiritual needs and their physical needs. He taught us even more about our own spiritual needs through them. He taught us about worshipping Him, about being gracious, about how much we need Him. Teaching a dramatically different culture is something that we can’t do with our own resources; we must depend on Him to lead, guide, and speak through us. We learn to eat food that we have never eaten before. We have learned that we can even get malaria and live through it. 

God did a great work since our last letter—He provided all of the funds we needed! We have never had our funding completed this early. The study Bibles and the notebooks, which we shipped, have all arrived in Zambia! We are praying still that the team on the ground in Ndola will be able to work out all the details of the conference and that God will draw the pastor/couples to the conference.  

In preparing for a mission trip, besides preparing notebooks, we have many other items we take besides our clothes. Some of the things we assemble to take with us for the conference:

• visual aids (vases, colored sand, marbles, wood balls, boxes, artificial roses, paper hearts, photo chemicals, iodine, clear plastic glasses, construction paper, alka selzer),
• gifts for participants (writing pens with flashlights, rubber bracelets with “perfect gift” embossed),
• gifts for longest/shortest marriages and translators (audio Bibles),
• gifts for hosts and African teams (Bible study aids, and other items).

We also have personal items that we take, which we don’t usually take on a teaching trip, such as toilet paper, small packets of tissue, bug spray, lotion with bug repellent in it, rain suit, luggage scales, malaria medicine (and many other meds for special situations), snacks, electrical convertors, long skirts, lots of SD cards and DV tapes, three cameras, and every airplane comfort accessory we can find!   

We have a set curriculum and a similar procedure that we go through for each mission. However, each trip, each area, has it’s own uniqueness.

This trip is different in these ways:

• We are returning to the same city we ministered in 2006
• Ed will teach a one-day men’s seminar after our week of teaching (he will teach or preach 7 days in a row)
• we will stay at the same venue as the one where we will be teaching
• we are flying through Brussels (a new airport for us)
• and no one else is going with us.

The area has these characteristics:

• very high rate of HIV/AIDS
• much focus on the sexual relationship in marriage
• many men involved with pornography
• good English language skills
• and more educated people

Please see our prayer request and itinerary card here. We value and appreciate your prayers. We are always concerned about the couples that we see at our office here. We pray that they will all stay on their paths of reconciliation while we are gone. God has done some amazing work over the last few months in several couples’ lives. We ask for prayers for ongoing support while we are gone.  

We love and appreciate you and your support of the work God is doing through Living Well!

May the Lord bless you in your relationship to Him.

 

Our love in Christ,
Donna and Ed Edwards

LIVING WELL - Monthly Quote and Prayer Requests, February 2010

The little unremembered acts of kindness and love are the best parts of a person's life. 
William Wordsworth

Love never gives up.

Love cares more for others than for self.

Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.

Love doesn't strut,

Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,

Doesn't revel when others grovel,

Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,

Puts up with anything,

Trusts God always,

Always looks for the best,

Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.
1 Corinthians 13:4-7 (Message)

Praises: 
Marriage retreat in Chickasha

Prayer Requests for February, 2010:

1. Donations to fill the gap of our budget shortfall, so Ed and Donna will be able to continue Living Well ministry activities
2. Donna’s stamina
3. Preparing for Marriage class, Mondays, 7-8:30.
4. Living Well in Marriage class, Sundays, 6-7:30, starting February 14
5. Marriage conference in Ponca City, February 20-22
6. Marriage Week, February 7-14, that marriage will be honored
7. Wisdom in marriage and financial guidance appointments
8. Good health and protection for our family.