Dear Dick,

I have finished the first half of the Zambian trip. I was in Livingstone for 6 days. The response to the teaching was very enthusiastic. The people sit there for hours taking in the Word of God. Would that we had such an attitude in our American churches. The Zambians are very open to Bible teaching, but unfortunately there isn’t much available to them.

Kurt Witzig, associate pastor at Duluth Bible Church is with me on this trip, sharing the teaching. His church is considering the possibility of coming to Zambia perhaps several times in a year to teach the Word, and perhaps set up a Bible school. Kurt has just been overwhelmed with the enthusiastic response of the people to the teaching. He has never seen anything like it, and he has been numerous places in the world for Bible conferences.

Now we have travelled up to the capital city Lusaka to do the conference here. We just finished the first day in Lusaka, which was very good. Things were well organized by Gift and the people were enthusiastic about the teaching. We started at 9:00 and went until 4:00, with an hour break for lunch and a couple of other very short breaks. There was a good starting group there today. More will come tomorrow by all reports. Last year we had more than 700 registered, so I am hopeful that this will grow over the next few days. I saw so many familiar faces. Of course, most of the names I don’t remember, but they remember me and gave such a warm welcome..

Several people came in from Chipembe, including Julia, Stewart’s widow. Benjamin, a man I met my first time in the village, and who became the pastor after Stewart, also came. I asked him what had happened to Stewart, and said they really don’t know. Stewart had complained of headaches a few days before he died, but didn’t seem concerned. Benjamin said that Stewart had not been having health problems. When he heard about Jack’s death he was quite depressed. He left the village to go to Jack’s funeral. He didn’t say any good-byes because he expected to be gone only a day. But after the funeral he felt bad, checked into a hospital and died two days later. They don’t know why. I expressed by condolences to Julia. She appreciated that, but she is obviously still very tender about the loss of her husband.

Last night Kurt and I went to Gift’s house for supper with several other people. I asked her about Jack’s passing. She was able to talk about it without undue emotion, but is understandably sad. She has 3 sons, 17, 16, and 7. They are all at home, good boys, and are a great help to her. She has a small business selling parts for Hyundai automobiles. It’s her own business. She buys wholesale from Dubai and then sells them out of a small shop in Lusaka.

The copier we bought to make copies of our doctrinal studies here sits in her living room. It does the job, but it is rather slow, making 18 copies a minute. The booklet is more than 50 pages. So it takes about 3 minutes per book for copying. We printed 1000 booklets, which means it  took 3000 minutes of copy time, which, if  my math is correct, amounts to 50 hours. Then they had to collate all the pages, perforate them and put the plastic binders on them. Gift got several people from the church to help. She said that had stacks of paper from one end of her house to the other end. It was a big job but they got it done.

Blind Gideon came in from the village also. He said he had to sell his rooster to be able to come, but said that he still has several chickens left. You will recall that last year we gave him money to buy 10 chickens and a rooster after I had heard that he sold both of his chickens to be able to afford the bus ticket to come to the conference. He asked about you and your health. We are on his permanent prayer list.

Benjamin said that they have been having Bible school out in the village and have gone through about 3/4s of the course written by Dennis Mock. I am thinking that I might go out there after the conference ends on Saturday. I could spend Saturday night and come back to town on Sunday after church. I don’t know that I will, but am considering it.

So all is well. Continue to pray for the next four days of teaching here.

By grace,

JIM