Young hearts

Last week, Erin and I had our first actual Bible study with six young teen girls that attend the local school. We had been planning this for a few weeks but getting anything set up at an official time each week takes time in Zambia. Erin had thought up the idea of a Bible study with this age range because one of the girl’s fathers helps Jason with ag projects. He is a church leader and had told Erin his hopes for faith in his children. The ages of these girls range from 12-16 years old. I was nervous that they would be extremely shy and would not want to talk very much, but I was pleasantly surprised. We want this Bible study to be an open time for them to share what is on their hearts in a safe community. Erin and I began with introductions. We talked about who we are, our families and why we were in Zambia. Then, was the big step to ask each of them to tell us their name, age, favorite food, favorite animal and if they were from a Christian home or if this was all new to them. Of course, their favorite foods went something like “apple, orange, lemon, cow…” I thought about how drastically different their answers to that question were from an average child in the states. They giggled their way through all of the questions we asked them, but they were surprisingly vocal. None of them have been baptized yet, but each one knows a little bit about God because of their parents or through their schooling. We sang songs in both kikaonde and English, and then Erin and I introduced what we would like our theme to be “God’s love for YOU” over the next few months. The focus will be on Jesus’ life. I could not be more excited about this sweet little group of girls that we will have the opportunity to love on. We asked for these girls to keep this group small for now so we can focus on those who really want to learn, continue getting to know their culture, and then we can build up from there. Here is the list of girls who are studying with us, if you could be in prayer for them by name: Cathreen, Joyce, Mariam, Rwidiness, Mercy and Leah. As we closed out our time together explaining what a prayer request was and how we can pray for each other each week, one of the 12 yr. olds said, “please just pray for us because we want to know more about God during this time.” It was inspiring to hear this good news. These girls know English fairly well, because they have studied it in school for years. Below is a picture of our second study together with all of girls, minus one who was out that day. Thank you for your prayers for the Kaonde people. This study was encouraging to me, and I pray it was for them as well. -Whitney