"The Enormity of The Issue ..."

A "God Bless you", and gentle pat in the head just doesn't cut it.

ANESU is grateful for Alliance church partners who, in step with our Zimbabwean network have caught the vision and are rising to the challenge of addressing the incredible needs of disenfranchised and marginalized children in Africa.

This letter, written by a Zimbabwean pastor's wife, articulates the challenge they are facing head-on, underlines the good that former ANESU team members accomplished educationally, and points to the need that looms large on their horizon.

The letter also hi-lights in our minds the strategic importance of the literacy program recently launched in step with our Zimbabwean partner, "Happy Readers". A bridging school in Rugare has been engaging in this outstanding literacy program for just under a month now and, already, we are seeing significant improvement.

I share this Zimbabwean pastor's letter with you with a request that you join us in focused prayer on behalf of these friends, and many others, who are doing what they can to rise to the challenge with what they have.

The pastoral couple who write this letter are needing to find alternative accommodation to their presently rental situation. The fact that they presently have eight young adult orphans living with them is adding to the sense of urgency in this regard.

Thank you for your interest and care,

Bud Jackson
Project Director
ANESU, Zimbabwe

Dear baba Jackson

"ANESU Bids Farewell to Julie VanZevern"

What do you get when you have a highly qualified nurse with years of experience, living and responding to the issues of health and wellness in Africa with a desire to not contribute anything that cannot be indigenized, replicated and sustained ; who is intent of making use of whatever resources are appropriate, available, affordable, adaptable, achievable; whose single driving ambition is to make an eternally relevant difference in people’s spiritual and physical lives, and who is committed to being able to leave Africa one day in a way that everything she has accomplished will remain and succeed on its own, driven by and meeting the needs of Africans?

You get Julie VanZevern.

You get an extensive herbal garden, with people in place to tend it who understand what the herbs are and how they can be used for the good of weak, sick and malnourished people.

You get an herbal clinic with a proven track record of success under the direct management of Africans who have been equipped to run and maintain it for the good of the people who fill it on a daily basis.

You get individual orphan homes and remote villages who have something sustainable at their disposal that will contribute in an on-going way to their health and well-being.

You get an ethnic mix of people whose lives have been blessed spiritually, who know in their heart of hearts that they have been impacted by a person who came to serve God in any and every way appropriate.

You get Julie VanZevern It isn’t easy to turn a blind eye to quick fixes when dealing with hurting and helpless people. It’s hard not to reach for what the West has to offer, but is relatively unavailable in Africa when people look to you with pleading eyes.

It’s hard, but it’s necessary when driven by principles Julie has steadfastly embraced.

It’s hard, it’s right, and it’s worth it at the other end, when needs have been met and met well in a way that not only met those needs but left a way whereby the same needs could be met again and again whenever they arise by the people taught to avail themselves of the solutions they’ve learned to embrace.

Many people in Africa, and in Zimbabwe in particular, are better off for Julie’s having come to live and work among them.

Julie is not a stereo-typical ugly American. She’s a woman of outer and internal beauty who gave herself to the task presented to her for as long as it was entrusted to her, with genuine grace and compassion, and in a way that will register well both now and in eternity.

How will I remember Julie's time with ANESU? I'll remember her as a medical missionary who saw patients as people ... not the other way around ... and who genuinely and sincerely met their needs head on and left them with something they could use themselves,using what she could ... and what she could leave behind.

Bud Jackson
Project Director
ANESU, Zimbabwe

“What The New Face of Missions Looks Like”

The last few days have brought to mind the essence of what God has actually accomplished through ANESU of recent months.

It came hot on the heels of three amazing team visits (in the first six months of this year), where we saw at different levels, just what kind of an impact this strategy can have if rightly done.

Then Mandy met with Nyasha, a young courageous woman we’ve been building a relationship with and whom we’ve introduced to our Alliance church partners over time.

Nyasha’s parents were murdered when she was a young girl. She found herself in an arranged marriage at the age of fifteen to a man twenty-two years older than she.

That marriage was an abusive one that eventually ended some years later at a time when the murderer of Nyasha’s parents came back into Nyasha’s life, asking forgiveness for having murdered her parents.

That began a long journey that resulted, by the grace of God, in a ministry of forgiveness, healing and reconciliation to victims and victimized alike.

Over a cup of coffee at an outdoor café, Mandy heard the details of a ministry Nyasha has to troubled young women that includes opportunity for those young women to find haven from time to time from their regularly abusive situations.

They meet in a church sanctuary near where Nyasha lives. They have opportunity in this context to be validated and affirmed. They are finding a glimmer of hope set against a background of otherwise hopeless circumstances and helpless situations.

One girl of fifteen wept as Nyasha led the group in games. When asked why she was weeping, she told of how, since the age of five years, she’d been responsible for the care and well being of a father sick with HIV and AIDS. She’d never had opportunity to live the life of a child. She had never been able to play games.

Nyasha is working with different groups that number in excess of eighty individuals.

In one group of twenty-two young women, seventeen of them have revealed that they are presently in situations where they are being sexually abused. Nyasha told Mandy of how she had followed up on one situation and discovered that the mother of the girl being abused by her step-father was fully aware of what was going on, but who was powerless to end it. To do so would imprison the abuser, leaving the mother and three dependents without food, shelter or school fees.

Situations like those make the message of sexual abstinence redundant. It makes people like us dig deep for answers. It makes people like us … and like Nyasha … realize just how significant a haven the heart of God really is. It highlights the significance of the in-dwelling ministry of the Holy Spirit and outward ministry of genuine, authentic people of faith, and of the impact such a ministry can have in a person’s otherwise helpless and hopeless life.

Mandy gave Nyasha a crash course of the Reach4Life curriculum, and provided Nyasha with eighty Reach4Life Bibles.

In a follow-up visit a few days later, Mandy discovered Nyasha gathered with a group of girls whom Nyasha was leading with the aid of the Reach4Life curriculum.

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The next thing that happened was a visit from the wife of one of Zimbabwe’s national pastors.

This woman spoke of what ANESU’s ministry had meant in months gone by that is working its way out at present in the context of the Sunday School program at the church she and her husband serve.

She spoke of where she and her husband find themselves in terms of an orphan home they are responsible for, under the over-sight of Hands of Hope.

She also shared a burden she has for ministry to orphans in four carefully selected areas in the tribal northeast of Zimbabwe.

She had come to ask for second hand items she might add to a jumbo sale her church was hosting to raise money for school fees for these children.

She also came to request guidance and direction in how best to respond to the needs of the orphans represented by these four areas.

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Hot on the heels of that visit, I went out to Rugare with the founding director of the Happy Reader program.

The purpose of the visit was by way of follow-up to the strategic launch of the Happy Reader literacy program initiated at the beginning of June by ANESU Alliance partner, South Ridge Community Church in Clinton, New Jersey.

We went out to deliver the results of the reading level testing the team had done with twenty-nine marginalized children enrolled in the bridging school under the care of one of ANESU’s partnering pastors.

We went, geared up to suggest that before we’d be able to see any meaningful progress in the children's reading ability, the teachers were going to need some coaching.

On the way there, Conor (the director of the Happy Reader program) asked me if check-lists were being used as an assessment tool. I told him he'd have to ask Henry (the pastor) and Liza (the director of the bridging school), as I didn't know myself. The check-list idea was something he had asked the South Ridge team to follow through on, as a means of assessing the progress of the students.

We began with Conor presenting the PowerPoint that revealed the dismal results of the testing. Both Henry and Lisa followed and understood the various graphs and statistics. Then, we spoke about setting up a time when Conor could meet with the volunteer teachers for a training seminar at the ANESU base.

They enthusiastically agreed, and expressed excitement about doing so.

Toward the end of our visit, Henry mentioned that there had been significant improvement in the short time that the Happy Readers had been in place.

It was at that stage that I asked about the check-lists. Liza excused herself for a few minutes and returned with the master lay-out of the check-lists, then gave Conor a computer generated report dated that day!

Conor was very impressed, not only over the fact that check lists were in place, but that they had been kept so well. They hadn't been inflated in any way, and were a true reflection across the board. They also indicated significant progress!

It's too early to assess the progress of the non-readers, but of the readers, there has been a marked improvement.

Conor had indicated that he felt the 29 children needed to be divided up into three "reading level" groups. It turned out Liza had already done that ... with three groups huddled, each under the direction of a teacher ... in the SAME ROOM!

They've done a great job with what they have.

Also, Henry mentioned he had arranged for the guardians of the students (from the community) to attend and observe the procedure, in the hope that they might embrace the vision and add their encouragement to the children both in terms of in-class diligence, as well as after hours application to homework.

We went there feeling that there was a long, hard road stretched out before us. We returned, very encouraged ... and impressed by the united efforts of Henry, his teaching team and the children themselves.

Clearly they have taken this opportunity seriously and are applying themselves with diligence.

Henry has arranged for the Happy Reader book covers to be protected with plastic, the books are kept in his office when not in use. The books show enough wear and tear to indicate that they're being used enthusiastically and consistently.

A boy by the name of Ian has been recognized as student of the month. There is enthusiasm, commitment and great expectation on the part of everyone involved.

Once we concluded our meeting, Henry was excited to show me something outside. There, in all it's glory, stood a brand new water tank, new pump and piping that South Ridge was responsible for!

The new pump is an improvement on the broken old one in that it has a pressure switch that turns the pump off when the tank is full and kicks in to top the tank up when water is being used.

I had noticed Henry taking particular interest in the vegy garden at ANESU, the last time he was at the ANESU base. A large area immediately next to the water tank has now been turned into a "farming God's way" vegetable garden ... complete with carefully laid out straight rows and a blanket of mulch.

Henry's duplicating a lot of what we have growing at ANESU; covo (muriwo), lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, onion, beet root, radish, cauliflower, peas, carrots ... and a few more.

Then, Henry led us to the ground beyond the chicken project building to reveal two more similar gardens that are flourishing in the area he's been given for the development of his extra homes and skills training building.

Henry's attitude was, "We've been given the ground, we may as well make good use of it until we're able to build"!

The broiler chicks have reached seven weeks now, and are being slaughtered and sold for $7 apiece. I didn’t realize the extent of the impact what we were seeing was having on Conor until we drove away from the site.

It was then that Conor expressed how impressed he had been to have witnessed the beautiful way in which so many components had come together for the real benefit of the children represented; sustainable literacy education, life skills training, food production and income generation all wrapped up in a network of partnership facilitated by the carefully directed involvement of a correctly engaged church from ten thousand miles away.

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Then, tonight, Rob and Lisa Chifokoyo, from Dare2Serve had dinner with us and shared what ANESU had meant to them on a purely personal level, and what a blessing it had been for Rob to recently travel to North America where he was able to take the relationship with Alliance churches, whose representatives he’d met here in Zimbabwe, to the next level with meaningful relational traction and strategic planning for the next step of on-going engagement.

Rob shared how God was leading in the planning of a youth event ("9941 The Event") that will pull young people together from Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Southern Africa.

It’s an event that God ordained and accomplished last year with nothing more than a heart commitment and ready available participation by young Zimbabwean followers of Christ.

A professional Christian band from South Africa will feature in an evening concert, with gifted young Zimbabwean artists involved at a number of levels in music, worship, sharing of God’s truth and witnessing to the saving grace of Christ in three evening sessions.

For two days, there will be various life-building sessions available for young people to attend, with the final day set aside for random acts of kindness in the immediate vicinity of the event.

ANESU team member, Ryan Burleson has been asked to speak at the event.

We shared Nyasha’s story with Rob, and Mandy and Lisa will be meeting with Nyasha next week to explore the role Nyasha might have in the youth event, speaking to the issues of forgiveness and restoration, relational healing and over coming of tragic circumstances and experiences by the grace of God.

What do the collective heart cries from pastors’ wives, literacy proponents, abuse survivors and heart-driven young people have in common?

God’s grace and God’s united purpose … and ANESU; an initiative intentionally designed to facilitate what God is ordaining as a fresh new response to global missional involvement.

And this isn’t even scratching the surface.

Bud Jackson
Project Director
ANESU, Zimbabwe