ZAMBIA
Just outside Livingstone, Zambia, Overland's main logistical base is perched on the Zambezi River gorge fourteen rapids down from Victoria Falls. Rapid 14 is home to many full-time staff as well as housing Advanced Missions Training (AMT) students for six months each year and running expeditions each May through August. So much goes on at Rapid 14 that has a huge impact on Overland missionaries all over the world. For a lot of us, it feels like a second home, and returning there is always exciting. For a really cool Rapid 14 base tour, check out the video on the right!
We lived in Zambia for six months before we got married, then returned there in March of 2018 and stayed until September of 2019. We lived on a property in Mboole village in the Southern Province of the country. It's a beautiful location where we helped our team establish a training center that will allow people from all over the country (and hopefully soon other countries as well) to learn and see for themselves the fullness of what God has done for us through agriculture. In August of 2019 the training center held the third annual Overland Leaders Conference. More than 200 people from all over Zambia came together to to worship, to learn, and encourage each other!
OMT
In November of 2019 we took on a more active role at the training center teaching our first Overland Missions Training class. In seven months, our five students completed a ministry school certificate from Global Ministries Bible Institute in Florida, worked their own fields from planting to harvest using Farming God's Way, taught their own FGW conferences, learned how to plan their own kid's ministries, and went through a number of other intensive ministry courses like champions! They are all ministering full-time with Overland in various places in Zambia. We couldn't be prouder.
Sustain
We were so privileged to work with the very most amazing team in Zambia. They are everything you could want and more in a group of people who are in love with the Lord and know that He has given them everything they need for every good work! One of the main reasons we were able to take on a new assignment in Angola (and the number one reason that made it hardest to leave Zambia) is because the people we worked with, and Reuben in particular, were more than capable of taking on the ministry we were doing and more.
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They are constantly traveling, preaching, teaching, equipping, encouraging, glorifying God, and you can see it all here on the OM Sustain page.
Farming God's Way
In Zambia we were part of Sustain's traveling team, whose normal, day-to-day ministry is to travel to villages to teach Farming God's Way conferences, and to visit our leaders (men and women who faithfully put into practice what they learned at FGW conferences) to encourage and help them.
Farming God's Way is a program first developed in Zimbabwe and it's a huge part of the Sustain department's ministry. It looks at both scripture and creation to see how God views agriculture, and how we can cultivate fields and gardens that best honor Him. Many of the techniques used in FGW are similar to conservation agriculture, but FGW seeks to restore the land and see it reconciled back to the avenue of provision it was meant to be! So many of God's promises to Israel throughout the Old Testament include healing the land, restoring desolate places to look like the Garden of Eden (Ezekiel 36:35)
2 Peter 1:3 says, "His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence." The Lord says that He has provided for us everything we need, but we don't always see this in the lives of believers! So often we try to do things our own way, and we wonder why we don't see the results for which we were hoping. God designed and spoke our world to work a certain way! It's when we seek His will and His way in every aspect of our lives that we see the fulfillment of His many and beautiful promises.
If you are interested in more information on Farming God's Way, all of their resources are free at www.farming-gods-way.org, or you can talk with us about it!