It's about that time again. Time to let you all know where I am, and what I’m doing. To be perfectly honest, I don’t always feel like I have the answers to those questions. Not in a way that I know how to verbalize, or explain to people so far removed from where I currently find myself. People who have faithfully supported me, prayed for me and loved me through every season.

So I made it safely to Zambia. I’m living on a beautiful property, near Luanshya, with a handful of other international volunteers and some incredible local Zambian leaders. I have the privilege of doing life with a wonderful group of people who I’m constantly learning from.

Because I’ve only been here for just over a week, I’m still getting a grasp on what my role is going to be within the Zambia RST. I could tell you about the five Service Centres we support; three in Zambia, one in DRC and one in Malawi. But that wouldn’t really get closer to what I’m doing or why any of us are here with Hands.

Instead, if you’ll let me, I want to draw your focus closer. Closer to the rust-coloured earth of the Copperbelt. I want to transport you to a small community tucked away behind Kitwe, a bustling market town. A community whose name in Bemba means ‘Welcome’. The first community I visited in Zambia.

I want to introduce you to a small community school meeting in the Community Hall. A school filled with the most vulnerable children of the community; children who but for the work of the CBO wouldn’t receive any kind of education. I want you to sit on the dusty floor, and listen to the teachers as they help prepare these children to try and enter the government school programme. To comfort those who cry because they’re ashamed they can’t read and write like some of their peers. But most of all, I want to introduce you to the little boy called Jack* who sidled up next to me and put his head on my lap because he missed his mother.  Because I don’t have the words to explain the depths of heartache, or the devastating brokenness that surrounds our children.

But I also want you to understand the incredible difference that our Care Workers are making. Without them, children like Jack wouldn’t be known by name or have someone to share their challenges and celebrate when they get a good score on a test in class. These Care Workers provide a parental figure, a point of stability and safety; something that so many of us take for granted.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what my title is here, or what my 9-5 schedule looks like. Those aren’t the things that are important in the grand scheme of why I’m here in Zambia. Because as far as I can see, I’m here to serve. In whatever capacity, and however I can. Whether that means helping to take minutes in a meeting, drafting agreements or getting to know the people I live with so I can better support them, it’s all worthwhile. And in this beautiful, Kingdom-cultured community, it’s about who I am, as a child of God, and not about what I can do.

*Names have been changed

P.S. This is where I live now; how incredible is that?