Operation Mobilisation (OM) is currently working in ten African countries, one of which is Zambia.
Zambia is a beautiful country filled with wonderful people and is well known for its copper mineral wealth and the mighty Victoria Falls. It is bordered by eight other countries, is politically stable and has declared itself a Christian country.
To send 5,000 missionaries
These factors mean that Zambia is in a unique strategic position in terms of world missions. Within OM’s work in Africa, the training centre in Zambia is the most significant strategic component of the overall vision to equip and send 5,000 first-generation indigenous African missionaries to engage 150 completely unreached people groups. The numbers are huge, but so is our God, and biblical training is the key. The centre is not a theological training college (this is important here), but a missions training college.
Led to Zambia
As a family we moved to Zambia in 2011, after being sent by our home church, Cornerstone in Nottingham. We received the call of the Father into missions and were guided wisely by our church leaders into using our practical skills to serve overseas. I am a trained civil engineer and Ruth, my wife, is an occupational therapist.
After much prayer and advice, God clearly led and guided us to serve in Zambia. I have been working on building the new training centre for nearly two years now. The buildings themselves are not that exciting but what they are being used for is! We have built a bookshop, which is being run by OM Books, accommodation and one very large building for skills training. As we have so far only completed the one large building most of the organisation’s activities are run out of here, including training.
We are now up to the point where we are already bursting at the seams and are desperately praying to continue on to the next stage, which is a dormitory block. We have had to turn away many couples and families this year for training because we simply do not have the space to accommodate them — we are currently limited to around 50 individuals. The new dormitory block will allow us to train many more students — 100 people, including families — every term in discipleship and missions.
Filling the container
When we were back in the UK last year God put it on our hearts to send a container filled with building supplies primarily for the dormitory block. The whole process is an amazing testament to the goodness, provision and generosity of our Lord.
We hardly had any money to start off with, but in the space of a few months the Lord had supplied all the finance, materials and other goods we needed to fill and send the container. There was two months of serious ebay auction action, buying up job lots of leftovers from UK construction sites. Many churches also helped by donating good books, furniture, tools and lots more. It was very exciting filling the container and receiving gifts from so many supportive churches.
There is a big emphasis on being self-funding in the African context of missions, so we wanted to try and raise some money ourselves. We bought a car in the UK and exported it to Zambia and, after quite a lot of paperwork, managed to sell it making enough profit to pay for most of the shipping costs.
When it arrived
The joy of the other missionaries here when the container arrived was so evident. We have since emptied the container and started to use the materials and other items which were inside. There is a real need for a pre-school here at the training base, especially as we move to accommodate families. We have started to convert the empty container into a classroom where this can take place — we’ve been working on this for a couple of weeks now and, as you can see from the photos, it is starting to take shape.
After about a year of very low income in terms of cash to build, we have recently had exciting news that enough money to get to the roof level of the dormitory block has come in. We are so excited by this and want to give God the glory. Building anywhere can be frustrating at times, but when I see the building here filled with people being filled with good teaching and lives changing, it is so encouraging.
We currently need more funds to complete the dormitory block and are also in real need of more people to be involved in training as we expand. Please pray for us as we move forward to reach of vision of sending out 5,000 African missionaries to reach the least reached people groups. Daniel Bullock
