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Kamfinsa
Kamfinsa is a satellite church (or church plant) birthed out of El-Shaddai Church, Kaniki. The church's pastor, Albert Ngosa, was formerly a gardener within the Kaniki Bible College grounds but living in that environment allowed him to clearly hear God's call on his life. While he found it very difficult to leave his stable job at the college, he knew that God would provide for him. He first did a year's training at GLO Bible School before being asked to become Pastor at Kamfinsa church. The Church at that time was a very new and met in a mud brick building about 7km from the nearest main road. Even getting to the church was a challenge, especially in the rainy season when the dirt tracks leading to it would become impassible even in a 4x4 vehicle! In 2005 Pastor Albert asked the AQ team for assistance with the church building and amazingly the money was raised very quickly for a new brick built structure. As part of that AQ team I was pleased to see how the community all got involved with the project. The women walked quite a distance over and over again in order to carry enough water for us to mix and pour the concrete slab for the building. The men from the community also came to help mix by hand the huge amount of concrete needed for the slab and in a matter of weeks the whole church was completed. The congregation started to grow as people noticed the only brick built building in the area (complete with metal (instead of grass) roof but of course that was only the beginning. On the day the slab was completed, a box of 20+ Bemba Bibles was donated to the church giving them an equally important foundation for the church's future. In the year's since then support for Kamfinsa church and village has continued and the village has steadily grown. It now has a new school with houses for 2 teachers, a bore-hole to supply water that is cleaner and more easily available than that taken from the local(ish) stream, and this year a new house for the pastor is being built. Pastor Albert had been reluctant to move out to Kamfinsa village because of his concern for his children's education but this year he decided to take that step believing that God would provide and of course He has.
Teaching
Apart from helping to build the church, school and pastor's house, the AQ teams since 2005 have continued to do weekly evangelism in the area, known as Hut-to-hut. This year the team decided to step it up and do hut-to-hut twice a week, this saw dramatic results - the congregation doubled in size! Over the last 5 weeks I, Tim, have been teaching the elders of the church from the Freedom In Christ course material and addressing some of their questions about evangelism and deliverance. It is going well and they seem keen to go out on hut-to-hut themselves now to share some of the scriptures we have studying with others. Providing them with English New Testament's has also been beneficial as most of the elders have a reasonable amount of English which they surprisingly sometimes understand more clearly than in their traditional Bemba version. As well as all this and finishing to build Pastor Albert's new house, we are also raising money for a hammer-mill to help bring in a more regular income for the church. We need £2700 and have £600 pledged so far...
James Turner (SAQ 2011) is one of the guys determined to help Kamfinsa raise the money for their hammer-mill! He is pictured below running a marathon for that cause. We still need more funds!! If you think you can help raise support too, please do it soon. We want to have the hammer-mill in place for the next harvest and the rains will be here in the next few weeks if not before. Once the hammer-mill is in place, it should help motivate more people to grow food on their land all year round. It is a big step and big steps need support. Thanks again James!
Hammer Mill update
January 2012
We now have raised £1683 of the £2700 for the hammer mill project with other money pledged but not yet received. The community, since Pastor Albert moved into the village, has been given more land and is growing lots of maize. There are also sweet potatoes, groundnuts, banana trees, tomatoes and other vegetables being grown. Today, the church congregation agreed to continue weeding and working the land towards the next harvest - they seem incredibly motivated. Work on the Pastor's house will be completed before the hammer-mill so that each project is seen through to the end before starting another one. Follow our blog for further updates...
We now have raised £1683 of the £2700 for the hammer mill project with other money pledged but not yet received. The community, since Pastor Albert moved into the village, has been given more land and is growing lots of maize. There are also sweet potatoes, groundnuts, banana trees, tomatoes and other vegetables being grown. Today, the church congregation agreed to continue weeding and working the land towards the next harvest - they seem incredibly motivated. Work on the Pastor's house will be completed before the hammer-mill so that each project is seen through to the end before starting another one. Follow our blog for further updates...