Dear brethren,
Greetings from Luanshya, Zambia! Our prayers are that you and your family are all doing well in all your endeavors. The students and the staff of the school here are doing okay.
The fourth quarter started on the 13th of April 2016. In this quarter, brother Mwamba is teaching Personal Evangelism and New Testament Worship. I am teaching also two courses: 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and 1 and 2 Peter and Jude. The quarter seems to be very exciting and we look forward to having a very successful one.
At the end of the the quarter, we need to go on gospel campaigns. These campaigns are very important for following reasons:
1. They help to promote and advertise the school for future recruitment.
2. They accord the students with hand on work experience that they need to have before graduating.
3. Campaigns are indeed ways of reaching out to the lost and a means of strengthening the relationship with existing congregations. We believe this is the most important of all the reasons.
We would like to do campaigns in most of the Provinces of Zambia after completing the fourth quarter, but we have obvious constraints on our hands.
At present, we have not put aside any funds for such activities. The funds that are sent each month cover the working budget for the month. Sometimes we run a deficit in the budget. It seems again this month we are running into this because the Zambian Kwacha has really gained against major currencies like the US dollar. This makes it very hard to cover the budget with the same amount of funds we receive each month. And we are truly grateful for the funds sent to the school each month.
We looked at the pros and cons of having our own facilities for the school here. And we concluded that we can do better to have our own facilities than to continue renting. When you look at our school articles of association (constitution) here, it stipulates that all the assets acquired by the Institute must be given back to the Institute should anything happen to cause the school to close down. Though this is not our prayer! If we continue renting, we may not be in favor with the landlord as it seems at present, and hence he/she might come up with conditions that may prove to be very hard for us. And we would be forced to move to another place. And if the same thing happens we would be forced to move again and again and again. The idea of moving the school from place to place may show some instabilities in the operation of the school. We would not want to see this happening here.
We were very saddened to learn of the death of the Director of the school in Zimbabwe. Our prayers go to his family, the school and the church in Zimbabwe, and indeed the Bear Valley Bible Institute family.
Brotherly,
Cephas and Fred