CCAP Eastern Province
The past four days I traveled to CCAP (Church Central Africa Presbyterian) Chasefu Theological College. I traveled with two notable persons. The first is Nancy Collins, the Regional Liaison to South East Central Africa foe PC(USA). The second was Rev. Maleka Rabson Kabandama, the General Secretary for the Zambian Synod of the CCAP. I met Rev. Kabandama about two months ago when Rev. Chizason Chunda brought him to our house and introduced him.
Chasefu is about 40 km North of Lundazi. It is not on my map. Lundazi is 174 km North of Chipata. Chipata is near the Zambian border with Malawi. Chipata it 540 km east of Lusaka. It took 11 hours to drive from Lusaka to Chipata and 5 hours to drive North to Lundazi. The last 80 Km on the ride was horrible. The paved road has pot hole over 9 inches deep. Much of the travel is done on the sides of the roads using and making the shoulder. The President has been saying since 2002 the money is there to repair the road but nothing has happened. I’m sure the people will be promised again the road repair is coming with the Presidential Elections in early 2011.
I had a great time with Rev. Chizason Chunda. Currently he has the CCAP Lundazi Congregation. And my, do they love him. He has a great sense of humor and is very hard working. He is the Dean of Students for the Chasefu Theological College. He also is in charge of the library.
The college has four lecturers. Chizason has a Master’s Degree. The other three are enrolled in a Master’s program at Justo Mwale in association with Free State University in South Africa. I’m sure Chizason will pursue a PH D via distance learning.
CCAP desperately needs pastors for their congregations and preaching points all over Zambia. Last year Chasefu Theological graduated their first class of 16 students. The currently have 12 students.
Their Library has 2000 volumes with more coming in all the time. He does have a bit of a problem in that a publisher in the US is sending books to Zimbabwe instead of Zambia. It slows up the shipment. There is a donor in Australia who has asked Chizason if he has room for about 20,000 more volumes? That would be a wonderful gift.
It is a wonderful blessing we were able to sponsor Chizason at Justo Mwale. I don’t know if it is possible to do better. I’m sure his career will have many more wonderful memorable achievements.
Here’s a picture of his family; Wife Mary, daughter Sylvia, and himself. Also a picture of Him, the General Secretary, and myself at a program in his church, Thursday evening.
My final note for this day’s blog is about our trip back. Nancy had the suggestion to purchase charcoal for her housekeeper and gardener. I thought that was a good idea and told her I would also like to purchase some. We didn’t know what we were getting into. After leaving the Eastern Province we stopped to purchase the charcoal along the road were the vendor had four bags. Little did we know each bag was 50 kg or about 110 pounds. We purchased it from a young lady and asked if she get some help to load the charcoal on the top of the vehicle. The help in the photo is her friend carrying the baby.
We got it loaded and off we went. We had a serious problem. The road was rough and the charcoal was being bounced off the top of the vehicle. We still had 240 km travel to Lusaka. At the rate we were losing charcoal, the bags would be empty on arrival home. We saw another charcoal vendor and stopped to ask for assistance (six young men). They informed us we had packed it all wrong. The young men jumped on the Toyota and corrected our problem. They were quite proud of themselves. With as heavy as the bags of charcoal were, and it is very dirty I don’t think we’ll do this again soon. They do sell smaller bags. We’ve still got to get the charcoal to the housekeepers. They are sisters and live next door to each other in the compound. The gardeners can make do, although I’ll probably need their help to load the bags into the back of the truck.
I had a wonderful experience with CCAP over the past few days. They’ve given me a lot of opportunities to pursue. I’ve got more blog stories from this trip. Keep in touch.
Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment
Gordy: I am not sure that I traveled across the same road you did in this article but the roads that I traveled were the same. Potholes everywhere. Don’t know how the shocks and tires stand the strain.
Great blog with lots of good pictures. Keep up the good work.
Paul