From The Kitchen Table.

From The Kitchen Table
~ The Desk of Lynne Schaefer ~
August/September

“God’s call to a task includes His strength to complete it.”

Dear Family and Friends

I am sometimes overwhelmed by the amount of tasks we have to get done in a day. The above quote is really what gives me strength to continue in our work here for the Lord. He has called us here and knowing that gives us the strength to continue in what he has called us to do – that is what keeps us going.

We have had a month full of wonderful visitors. John and Nikki Bowmer from Cape Town came and spent the month of August with us. John’s days were full of ministry while Nikki spent her days washing dishes, doing pre-school with Olivia, helping the girls with their music and making bread etc. She was a huge help to me and great fellowship. Although I am sure our noisy family was a huge adjustment for her. We are so grateful they made the effort to come visit us.

(Note the snake Joel is holding in the picture on the left- don’t worry - it was dead – it was killed on the college land near the kitchen)

At the moment, we have Greg Phillips here from Cape Town. He will be the guest speaker at our college graduation on Saturday and will also be preaching at our local Baptist Church. We are really privileged to have him here with us.

New Friends – Great Fellowship!

A new Southern Baptist Missionary family has also moved into Mbala. They are a truly wonderful family and it is so great for our children to have new friends. The Schwarz’s have four children, three boys and a girl. The bonds of friendship have already been tied. Steve and Rita are wonderful fellowship for both Grant and I. They have come with many talents that we do not have, and we can already see that they are going to do a great work here in Mbala.

Steve, Rita and kids joined us at the Baptist Convention Conference. It is held out in the bush where they set up a temporary camp and have days full of fellowship and meetings. John and Grant preached at the conference, while we all went out just for the Sunday service. We all sat on a grass mat and ate the food that they had prepared for us for lunch. It was a long day for the kids as we only ate around 3pm – but a good time was had by all.

It is great seeing our lives through the eyes of others. We often find ourselves with a live pig or chicken in our car. We no longer find the roads bad or are disturbed by things that happen around us. We are so used to the way of life here now. So when others come and laugh at things we do or have to go through it is always funny to take a fresh view of our lives here.

Dog Bites, Raw Ankles and a Stuck Calf

I was so blessed to have Nikki here when we had some medical emergencies to deal with. Our neighbour’s little boy got his ankle stuck in a bicycle’s spokes which left it with a large, raw gash. It was bleeding heavily and as usual we were called upon to help. Thankfully Nikki is unfazed by such things and helped me to deal with it. While Joseph was being nursed, our dog bit a young lady, Ruth, who is helping me by “plucking” our broiler chickens that we grew and are selling for the college fund. She got bitten right on her shin and did not want to go to the hospital, so she got in the cue for doctoring! Nikki took the little boy down to our hospital and got to spend some time there as they helped fix him up. Both Joseph and Ruth are doing fine.

Our prize cow, Lucy, went into Labour and did not seem to get anywhere. The calf’s hoofs stuck out for hours and she never got any further. We soon realised that we had a challenge on our hands. Steve Schwartz has quite a bit of vet training so he came out and delivered the calf. He had to get his whole arm inside the cow to turn the calf’s head into the correct position. Grant helped “catch” the calf as she came out. We praise the Lord for Steve’s talents and for bringing such a humble, gentle man of God to work for Him right here in Mbala. Both cow and calf are doing well. We named the calf “Miracle”. If not for Steve’s expertise we might have lost both mom and baby!

The Kids

The kids are all doing great. While most in Zambia are on School Holidays, we are still doing school. They are always busy with lots of activities. The girls have made an “outside” kitchen behind the pagoda in my garden. They cook and clean and play there for hours. Luke also enjoys it out there, playing in the mud with all their bottles and stuff! He is definitely going to be an over-stimulated kid with all the attention he gets from his siblings. He is usually in the thick of things and is chuffed to now be able to sit by himself on the bench at the kitchen table and eat his food with the “big kids”!

While Dad’s Away...

While Grant went down to Lusaka to take John and Nikki back to the airport and fetch Greg – it all began to happen here! It always does when Grant is not around. I got very sick and had 7 kids to look after as I also had another missionary family’s boy here for the weekend and Friday! Fortunately, our kids took over and cooked and did the necessary and basically had a free reign of the house!! (Scary actually) Joel, who had just sharpened his penknife, had to cut something he was making and the knife slipped and he slit his wrist in the process. He came in my room with it all cleaned and bandaged up. I told him to show me the wound so he unravelled the bandage and I saw a gaping wound that needed stitches. I was so grateful that he had not cut a main vein! We closed it with “Aunty Di’s” supply of stitch plaster (I did have the super glue close by...) and it has healed well.

Later that evening, Hope also had an accident and managed to get a wood board fling up and smack her in the face (like as “punch” as Joel put it!) She ran into my room screaming; with blood pouring out everywhere! Well, just another day in the Schaefer house while dad was away...

Praise God For:
· John and Nikki Bowmer and the work they were able to do while up here
· For the various conferences and Bible school Grant and John were able to teach at this past month
· For God’s continuous provision
· For protecting Joel from what could have be a very bad accident
· For the Schwarz family

Please Pray for:
· Grant as we prepare for another graduation of students on the 5th of September.
· For Greg Phillips from Cape Town who is with us and will travel to Zimbabwe from here to do further teaching
· For the protection of our children and ourselves from disease etc.
· For the Swartz family as they adjust to life here in Mbala (they are from America)

Thanks for your encouragement, your prayers and support of our ministry here.

God bless.

Lynne Schaefer and Family
Grant, Joel, Hope, Charley, Olivia, Luke
PO Box, 420032, Mbala, Zambia

From The Kitchen Table.

From The Kitchen Table
~ The Desk of Lynne Schaefer ~
June/July 2009

“The closer you are to God, the more you will have a heart for people.”

Dear Family and Friends

Although the past 12 months have been a fantastic year of ministry, one of the busiest and best we have had, it has also been a very stressful time for us. We have had a lot of added emotional stress and pressure, which has left us both drained and quite stressed out. I can tell that it has affected our relationship with our children and we both felt that we need to stick our heads out up above the water! For me, it is hard not having time-out as a mother where I can just sit and catch my breath for a time. So, I headed down to Cape Town with my Austrian Friend Uli and little Luke, to have a little time out. We were there only 6 days, but it was a break that I really needed and it gave me time to reflect on life a bit and have a change of pace.

Grant took the kids camping and was also able to have a lot of fun with the kids and have a much needed time-out from life!

One great thing that has happened this month is that the terrible road to our house has been graded by the road works company that is re-doing the Mbala/Kasama road. They asked us if they could store some of their diesel tanks on our farm and would grade the road for us. We now have a wonderful road to our house!
Lorna, who has been down in Cape Town for the past 3 and half months will not be coming back to Mbala. She has decided to go study at Bible College for one year. So, we are looking for someone who would be interested in starting the resource centre and possibly helping us with the kids Math.

More “Charley” Stories

For those of you who enjoyed the Charley and the chicken giblet story, here is another one for you. She was outside helping to milk our very feisty cow “Mother Lucy”. But she was pulling a little too hard on the cow’s teat so the cow got very cross and kicked her. She landed slap bang in the middle of cow poop and mud. She was covered with it. She started to shout and tell the cow that she was a “very naughty cow” and then ran off to the nearest tap, washed the mud and poop off and headed straight back for the milking stall and carried on milking. Charley is one of those little girls that’s always making us laugh and she truly is a real character! That same cow once chased me around our yard. I had to dive into a flower bed to hide and get away from her. The only time I will go near her is if there is a fence between us. She is not a “real” milking cow that is placid and will just stand quietly waiting to be milked. She is a feisty mama, but she does give us a lot of creamy milk!

Schaefer Coffee…

Grant loves his one cup of good “real” coffee per day. We have got quite a few coffee trees that we have planted here on our little farm. One of the trees is a magnificent tree. It is just by our front door and is producing a very nice crop this year. Grant recons that the lavender growing next to the tree has protected it from disease etc. The kids and my jobs are to pick the ripe cherries and take the process up until roasting. Then Grant roasts the beans himself just the way he likes it. It is quite fun to pick the cherries and squeeze out the raw bean. I hardly drink coffee anymore, so we are making plans to crow some tea. A friend of ours has organized us some tea bushes from Malawi, so now I plan to make my own green tea.

Always “Hope” for the best

For some time now Hope has wanted her own little space. Sharing a room with two little sisters, one of whom is a real junk collector, can be a challenge for her. She has been asking for a long time if we could make her an “attic in their room where she could have her bed and her things. Part of her school language lessons one day was to write a story of how she would like to redecorate her room. I told her to just pretend that she had her own room and then write about how she would like it to look. After she finished, she ended the story with “dream on Hope”! So we decided to make her a loft like she has always dreamed of having. We get off cuts of wood here for real cheap, so we have finally been able to give her a little space of her own. It has also made the girls room have a lot more space with only 2 beds being on the “ground level” instead of three!

Hope has been doing great in Grant’s Wednesday evening Bible classes. In a recent test she beat Joel and Friday by getting 100% for the test! The boys are now out to try and beat her or get 100% on their next test!

Praise the Lord for:
· Our new road
· Bringing Grant back safely
· For all the ministry opportunities Grant has
· For the time I was able to have in Cape Town


Please Pray for:
· Strength for Grant to continue with the on-going ministry
· For wisdom and strength to deal with some personal issues and stresses
· For the various Bible School weeks that are coming up
· For patience and wisdom in home-schooling

Thanks for your encouragement, your prayers and support of our ministry here.

God bless.

Lynne Schaefer and Family
Grant, Joel, Hope, Charley, Olivia, Luke (and Friday)
PO Box, 420032, Mbala, Zambia

From The Kitchen Table.

From The Kitchen Table
~ The Desk of Lynne Schaefer ~
May 2009

“But now, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay
And thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.” Is 64:8

Dear Family and Friends

Math, Chicken Giblets and Beans

Life with Children truly means there is never a dull moment. It is harvest time here in Zambia. The rains have ended and it is now the time for the tiring, yet very rewarding, harvest. Grant has been busy all week training rural pastors and leaders, while the kids have been shelling beans! Math was not done until late in the afternoon, when Grant had time to teach each one their lessons. Charley was outside in the thick of things. Shelling beans and getting real dirty while she was at it. Grant called her in for math, but on her way through the kitchen she discovered a pot of “Chicken Giblets” freshly cooked on the stove. What a treat! She grabbed a chicken foot, a chicken heart and a piece of liver, and headed down the passage for math. Grant nearly roared with laughter as she sat down and neatly placed her “treats” next to her on the table. She then pulled out of her pocket a handful of beans – to help her with her math!

Snakes Alive!

Grant, Joel and Friday (Joel’s best friend and our “Sixth Child”) went to Chisanza village to teach and show the Jesus Film. You have to go by boat to get there. Grant had been teaching for a while and decided that they would have a little break before carrying on. The villages started to sing a song and as they began a snake came right up out of the ground right where he and his interpreter were standing. It was quite a large snake, but sticking its head out was the biggest mistake of its life. In a matter of seconds the villagers chopped it in half, one half went back down the hole! Then, when they were eating in one of the small village huts, Joel looked up and saw another snake slithering through a small hole in the wall. It wove its way in and out through various holes in the mud bricks. There were hundreds of people who came and watched the “Jesus Film” and many were reported to be saved that weekend. Chisanza is a village where witchcraft is heavily practiced. So we praise the Lord for the work he is starting to do there.

Luse Community Orphanage and the Mbala for Mbala Project.

Now that we have been on the mission field for over 10 years, we have observed how often people come to start a project and then some years later they abandon it. Most missions started in the past have not been able to be self sufficient or run by the locals when the missionary leaves, hence, all the mission station ruins that scatter Africa. One such abandoned project is an orphanage here in Mbala that was started by a well meaning foreigner. Only now a few years later, the funds have dried up! Who suffers in the end – the orphans! So, after giving it loads of thought, I came up with a plan to start the “Mbala for Mbala” project. This will involve the local business men, churches and people of Mbala to look after the Luse Community Orphanage. I have approached some of the prominent business men asking if they would be willing to give something every month to the orphanage. They suggested that we get together and hold a meeting and discuss the project. We plan to do this when Grant gets back from a trip to Lusaka in a few weeks time.

The ladies group in our local church went to visit the orphanage last Tuesday. They all took what food they were able to spare. On my way there I stopped and asked a few shops if they would be willing to give something. I was given Maize Meal, sugar and cooking oil. It was a very encouraging start. There are, however, many obstacles that we will need to cross in order to get such a project up and running effectively. But, our prayer is that the community will embrace the orphanage and start to look after the orphans without outside support from the West.
Yummy, Yum!
Just in case there are some of you out there that feel sorry for us living up here – DON’T! Guess what we ate the other day. Fresh (Organic) strawberries from our garden, waffles and whipped cream with Hope’s home- made maple syrup! Yum! Eat your heart out - or come visit us!

Praise the Lord for:
· The showing of the Jesus film in Chisanza village and also Kawama village
· Those that accepted Christ on those occasions
· His protection from snakes and those things we do not see
· The discipleship course Grant is holding this week on the college land

Please Pray for:
· Grant as he travels to Lusaka next week
· For the Mbala for Mbala project
· For the Luse Community Orphanage and its orphans
· That God will guide us as we try to find a solution for the orphanage
· For our protection each day as we serve him here

Thanks for your encouragement, your prayers and support of our ministry here.

God bless.
Lynne Schaefer and Family
Grant, Joel, Hope, Charley, Olivia, Luke (and Friday)
PO Box, 420032, Mbala, Zambia