The Bible in Psalm 116:15 says, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” We all felt that way last month when the Lord suddenly took from our midst our sister, Pamela Hassan.

We did not even have time to say our farewell to her. One moment she was full of joy and life, and the next moment she was gone.

 Pamela Hassan (r) with Jennifer Sakwiya

Fifteen people have been welcomed into membership since the end of February 2010 which brings our number to 392. We had a baptismal service on Sunday 2^nd May, with a total of 15 individuals being baptised. We put it on record that this is the highest number of baptismal candidates ever baptised at once in the history of KBC. Almost all of them were youths who got converted during our previous two December youth camps. We certainly should thank God for this. We are now processing all those who were recently baptised, plus a few others, into membership and so expect to cross the 400-members benchmark soon.

MEETINGS

We continue to have a very good turnover of visitors every Sunday and are still trying to follow them up in the week. We came up with some measures which we immediately implemented, whereby we discourage our members having dealings with one another until they have talked with one or two non-members. We are still monitoring this new measure.

Under our calendar activities, the ushers and song leaders retreat took place as planned. The Easter evangelistic week also went well, with most home groups having some evangelistic activity. We sent 49 youths to the National Reformed Youth Conference, including 3 from Botswana.

Ladies Ministry: The first quarter was busy, with full participation of most ladies. The ministry has continued with evangelistic endeavours such as street evangelism (where they reach out to prostitutes) on the last Fridays of February and March. They had evangelism at Chimbokaila Prison every third Saturday, and at the YWCA hostels every third Wednesday. Seven ladies travelled to Eastern province to share the word of God at a ladies conference. Back home, this ministry also helped to teach new brides and mothers with first born babies. They also did preparations for purchasing sewing and knitting machines for training ladies, especially ex-prostitutes, in income generating activities.

Library Ministry: The Library ministry has received 90 boxes of books from a church in the USA. It is currently in the process of setting up a public library room in the ministry centre. A team has been constituted to revive the ministry.
They are visiting a number of established libraries in Lusaka in order to learn the systems used in running these libraries.

 MISSIONS

The Missions Team: Miss Pamela Hassan was a member of this team, and so we are looking for a replacement. James Williamson as our new part-time missions coordinator—until we look for someone on a more permanent basis. One of the most important roles he will be playing, together with the missions team, is that of coordinating preachers for our six weekly preaching points.

Mazabuka (Raphael Banda): The church constituted its first membership on 1^st January. Seven people were baptized and thirteen received into membership. Maureen, the lady who had attempted suicide in November last year, died on 23^rd January. The women’s monthly meetings are drawing more women from the society who are indicating that they want the gospel explained to them. More labourers are needed to help with the follow up work. A training seminar for ministry leaders was held on 5^th April. The following ministries are now functioning: Children’s, Youth, Women’s, Couples, and Ushers.

John Laing (Collins Dube): Membership remains at 18. They did not have any evangelistic activities this quarter due to heavy rains which resulted into floods in the area. Most activities came to a standstill. However, the remnant continued to be faithful in terms of attending church programs despite the heavy rains and floods. The only major evangelistic event was the vernacular Reformed Family Conference from 1st to 5th April. The pulpit ministry continued undisrupted with the series that began in January entitled “The Grace of God”. The men’s group continued studying spiritual gifts. One major challenge is the lack of men in the leadership.

 INTER-CHURCH PROJECTS

Lusaka Inter-Church Projects: We co-sponsored the launch of the Zambia Baptist Historical Society. We will soon be bringing a proposal to the church for KBC to join this Society. And more recently the elders in our Lusaka churches met to discuss the whole question of marriage, divorce and remarriage. This is in order for us to have a more united understanding of this issue.

African Christian University & the Sovereign Grace Theological Seminary: The African Christian University has finally been registered here in Zambia. Plans are to open the first classes in 2012. The Sovereign Grace Theological Seminary has also been registered in Zambia and reopened its doors in March. The number of students continues to increase. James Williamson has also started a part-time preachers college under the joint oversight of Chisomo and Faith Baptist Churches. It is meant for training pastors in the densely populated compounds of Lusaka.

OFFICERS AND STAFF

Pulpit Ministry: Pastor Mbewe will be unavailable for ALL work except preaching on some Sundays from 31^st May to 20^th June, and from 30^th August to 19^th September. This is in order to provide more time for him to do his doctoral studies. Please pray for him that he will complete these studies on schedule. He has commenced a new series on the cross in the morning service, and for the evening took a break from his series in Romans and commenced a new but brief series on Christian hospitality.

Kwenda (l), Chipita (c) and Manasseh (r)

 Interns: Chipita Sibale continues to work well and will soon be completing one year as a pastoral intern.  Manasseh Kaonga and Kwenda Kwenda joined us earlier this year, and we expect a fourth intern, Adamson Shamfuti, to join us in August. Andrew Matoke bade farewell recently and has gone back to Kenya.

Thank you for reading through all this!