Working with World Renew as International Relief Managers

It was exciting to see the trucks arrive at the warehouse in Mwandi Village throughout the week before the first distribution. In the end, the warehouse was full of enough food to share with 2,000 households. The food came from the northeastern part of Zambia, where unlike the Western Province, the drought is not being experienced. Local men from the village were hired to offload the trucks and carefully stack the food commodities in the warehouse.  The following week these men loaded the food onto the trucks that would drive to the recipient communities. Each truck had the specific quantity designated for that community. The household ration provided in this project, based on what an average family of seven would eat, includes two 25 kg bags of maize meal, 10 kg of beans, 2.5 L of cooking oil, and 500 g of salt each month over a five-month period. This ration equates to approximately 54% of the family's daily energy needs. What a privilege it was to watch food being delivere...

Three weeks ago, we headed into each community for what we called the first community meeting. It was both an exciting and exhausting experience. We are so very grateful for all your prayers that have supported us over these weeks. People in the communities were notified by word of mouth and announcements were made in each of the churches inviting people to come to this meeting. For the most part people walked to the designated meeting places which in some cases took up to three hours. Although people were told that the meeting would begin at 0800 hours, there is a thing here called "African Time," meaning that designated times are much more flexible than we experience in Canada. That being said, we often arrived well after 8 am and waited for enough people to arrive before starting our meeting. At some meetings, the people sang and danced. Hundreds of people attended each meeting. The venue of the meeting was always under the shade of one or more large trees. P...

We have now been in Zambia for just over a month and I thought I would share a quick update. We are so thankful for how God has cared for us and blessed us with new things to experience and learn each day! Although we anticipated that we would be able to spend our first 90 days in Zambia as visitors, we found out that was not the case. When we arrived, we were given a 30-day visa. It was not possible to renew the 30-day visitor’s visa. We were required to get a temporary working permit. After a number of visits to the local immigration office, multiple letters written on our behalf from both World Renew, and the United Church of Zambia, and finally a very long visit to the immigration office at the Namibia border, we were able to get the visas we needed which now allow us to stay until August 2. At that time, we will need to renew once again. We are thankful for the four to one funding that the project finally received on April 25th from the Canadian Foodgrains Bank (CFGB). Al...