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