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October update



Hi Friends!

I was wondering? Which is faster, heat or the cold? Heat... you can catch a cold!😆 Okay, its not a great joke. But, in the spirit of summer, why not share the cringe? It is officially HOT season in western Zambia. But the heat brings long evenings, crisp mornings and summer fruits 🍉🍍. In my mind I associate hot days with South African Decembers (aka holiday time), so I have been enjoying spending my weekends being outside and reading books. Needless to say it is going very well with me. I am content and I am enjoying the good things that God has given us in this season.



Our very first Therapy Workshop

Many of the children I see in our therapy program have a condition called cerebral palsy. While I was delayed in South Africa I did a course with an organisation called Malamulele Onward. I learnt how to best treat children with cerebral palsy, especially in rural areas. It was great!! They have done a lot of research into how to make therapy more efficient and they have found that providing therapy in blocks seems to be best. It is also a great way to provide therapy for children who live far away from our premises. If needed the families can stay here for the two week therapy block. Bo Connie and myself decided to organise our first therapy block in the form of a workshop. We have four children and their caregivers who come everyday from 8:00-16:00 for two weeks. We are focusing the workshop on the caregivers and teaching them crucial skills for looking after their children effectively. This includes an understanding of what CP is, how to safely feed the children, how to communicate with them during the day and how to play with their children. They will 'graduate' this coming Friday 🎉 🌠🎉 and they will go home with a standing frame or positioning chair (which they made themselves from boxes), some handmade toys, and a handmade sandbag to help with positioning the children. We also have two ladies from Hope Church Mongu, volunteering and giving an extra hand during these two weeks. They have been a huge blessing and I hope that they can volunteer regularly during our weekly therapy programme. I am a huge advocate for many people being comfortable with children who have special needs. This enlarges the support network of the caregivers and reduces stigmatisation in the community. Here is a picture of our group.





I think they are a great group! I hope that from this group we can identify caregivers who will be able to train other caregivers in the next workshop. Information is best received when caregivers train caregivers.





My favourite part of this therapy workshop is seeing relationships form. Everyone helps cook and clean...*together*. Here is a picture of a game we played together. The the group had to work together to stack 36 flimsy cups using only one hand per person.


HUGE testimonies about small things.

Mapalo is an eight year old boy attending our therapy workshop. His mother is very concerned about his diet. He can only eat soft pureed foods. She doesn't have a electricity, a fridge or a blender at home, so she was worried about how Mapalo can get enough vegetables into his diet. We showed her a technique to teach Mapalo how to chew. At lunch he managed to eat unpureed sausage, spinach, nshima (maize meal) off her plate for the first time! We were all so very happy for them! Feeding Mapolo nutritious meals should be much easier now. Here is a picture of the two of them.

New Equipment

We received a donation of of medical supplies from an organisation called Project Cure! This included two new standing frames!! We want each child to try stand for an hour when they come to our therapy groups. Now that our number of standing frames have doubled, this goal is much more realistic. Here is a picture of Namangolwa trying out one of the new standing frames. As a bonus I also included a picture of David having fun on some of our other equipment (this swing is not from Project Cure but we are still grateful that we have it.). The picture is blurred because he was swinging too much!




Another Workshop... Bible Translation

A very cool part of the Zambia Project is that we (in partnership with other organisations) are involved in Bible translation of five local languages. They started a workshop at the same time that I started my workshop. During the workshop, local translators meet together to revise their work and meet (virtually) with translation consultants from Wycliffe. All five of the translation teams are very close to being done with the New Testament after 12 years of hard work. In fact, the Kwamashi team recently tested their translation of the entire New Testament in the community for the first time to make sure that the grammer and language used is understood correctly by the people who will be reading it. It won't belong before many people have their own copy of the New Testament in their mother mother tongue for the very first time. Here are pictures of the Kwamashi team sitting with community members.




That brings us to goodbye...for now :)

May you stay cool this October 😎!

With so much love, Tanya

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