Zambia School Shipment and Update

Greetings to everyone,

We are excited to share with you some new updates concerning the school in Zambia. We are so humbled and blessed to play a small part in this project, and we are beyond excited to see how God can use this material to help the children, the people of Mukumba, and surrounding villages. We want to thank you all for joining us in this project as we could have not done this without your prayers and financial support.

On July 15th, 2018 we made our way to Kansas City, MO to drop off the first shipment of barrels. We were able to send 2- 55 gallon barrels completely filled to the brim! AmeZam(shipping company) said the shipping process were take about 8-12 weeks. We are praying that in mid- September the school supplies will arrive to the warehouse in Lusaka(the capital of Zambia) all in one piece. Once notified, the directors of Mission of Love- Jako and Amber Joubert will make the long drive to Lusaka to pick them up and drive them back to their home.

As Nate and I were packing the barrels we found that packing in circle barrels can present a challenge. Many of the materials we were packing were  square or rectangular in shape, so we needed to find a way to fill that empty space. I(Melanie) had high hopes to have all the materials organized  nicely in bins or totes, but I would not have been able to fit everything in by doing this so I had to   take some things out in order to fill up the barrel more evenly. We found ourselves packing and unpacking as the barrels began to filled up. It brought us smiles and laughter as we kept rearranging these materials, but praise the Lord we were able to get all the most important items in the barrel and sent off.

Here are many of the items that are included in the barrels except for the math that you see in this picture. The Math Curriculum will be sent in the second shipment, but I will explain that in more detail soon. 

I was so thankful to come across these books and many other resource books on  physical science topics like: magnets, building of simple machines, light, sound, gravity, force,states of matter, etc. I was also able to find many resource books on types of weather, animals, plants, our senses, and life cycles of many animals/insects. Many of these books I was able to get on garage sales. I believe books are so important and can really help grow children's understanding and develop a greater passion or curiosity for the world around them. 

 Please pardon this mess....but this was the beginning stages of pulling everything out of boxes and putting them in piles to see how were were going to fit into the barrels.

These are some of the books I was able to gather off of an international book website. These books are written by authors from Zambia and surrounding countries. The illustrations and story lines are about their culture and different situations they have to face; this makes the books very relatable to their lives. There are also books on first aid, HIV/AIDS, senses, and specific trades/jobs they can pursue. 

As you can see they barrels are getting filled. It took a lot of in/out of materials before we were able to get it all packed evenly so that the weight would be distributed nicely. I was so thankful for Nate's help in this. 

This is what the barrels looked like before we put the lids on. As you can see we filled them to the brim.

We we able to get them loaded and strapped into the van without much trouble, and we made it safely to Kansas City, MO to drop them off at the location AmeZam provided us. The woman who worked for AmeZam grew up not that far away from the Mission of Love, she currently has family still living in cities closest to where we were located in Zambia, and is planning to visit them in October. She was so kind and helpful and it was neat to hear her share stories of others she has met because of her job at AmeZam, and we look forward to seeing her again once we are able to complete the second shipment.

The Second Shipment
The second shipment is going to mainly consist the math curriculum for grades 1-4, and any items that will support their learning. I also hope to send down some more organization items that I was unable to fit into this last shipment. I have yet to set a date for the second shipment but I am steadily working on it when I am able. The math curriculum I have chosen is simple in structure, but some of the wording I do believe will be tricky for the teachers to understand fully, so I have decided to re-write each lesson myself. The workbook pages that go along with this curriculum are wonderful, but there are some of them I need to change as they do not use the same measure of time, temperature, weight, or length. We also do not use the same money. In the pictures below I am going to show you an example of one that I have changed in order to fit their needs properly.

This is what the workbook sheet
looked like .

This is what I changed it to. The coins they use and items they can purchase there.

As you can understand, this process takes a lot of time, but I believe that is will be wonderful for them when it is completed. I was able to purchase 5 workbooks per grade, so my intention is to laminate each workbook page so that they can be reused. It is my hope that the math instruction will be done mostly in groups. Each group will be actively working on the lesson but they will be doing different things to help support what they are learning in math. The children will rotate to each center/small group activity. This way the teacher can keep a closer eye on the students understanding, and since the math worksheets and workbooks will be laminated they can be erased and reused by the next set of students.

For this next shipment my greatest need is going to be laminating sheets. For one pack of 100 laminating sheets I can spend from $11- $15. Each workbook has about 400 pages in it, and I hope to laminate all of those and all supporting materials and worksheets I create or find. I am going to need to purchase a lot of laminating sheets to make this math curriculum functional for many years of use.

If you feel led to give to this project please follow the instructions below:

Please make checks out to Faith Assembly Church. In the memo line please write Zambia School Project. Faith Assembly of God Church 5112 Lafayette Road, Elk Run Heights, IA 50707  Or you can write a check to Melanie Sweerin  at  439 N. Division St. Cedar Falls, IA 50613

 


Lastly, it is our prayer that these materials will make it to Zambia unharmed and ready to be used by the 125 children they have attending the school. This project would not have been possible without the many giving and willing hands that have helped prepared it through prayer, cutting out and sorting materials, or by giving financially. We are overjoyed by how these little ones will be touched by receiving these gifts. We pray ultimately that through the books, Bible times, and by having a curriculum that includes God and His Son Jesus that the children will begin to understand that God created them and all things in this world, and that God has planned a special purpose for each one. We pray that these children's eyes will be open to the Truth so that they can take a stand against the devil's schemes. We pray that when they hear about the superstitions or the traditional practices  of witchcraft that their families may believe in are not Truth, but instead hold them captive to the darkness. Please continue to pray that this school will be a beacon of light and hope in the community.