Namwianga Youth Meeting

A guest post by Roy Merritt, long-time missionary at Namwianga.

Good Friday through Easter Monday this year Namwianga is hosting the national youth meeting for churches of Christ in Zambia.

Zambians call unmarried people “youths”. Here you are a boy or a girl till you marry. I married at 49, and a youngster grinned congratulations at me, “Sir, at last you are a man!”

Namwianga youths worked hard to prepare for the crowd, digging pit latrines, hauling firewood, hanging lights, moving benches and desks into the quadrangle, and hauling this enormous tarp over Georgia Hobby’s sturdy flambouyant trees.

I hear there are about 1,500 people in this picture.

Lots of sermons, songs, drama, group discussions -- communion service lasted two hours . . .

One of the youths came over to visit me this afternoon.

Kathi and I sort of adopted Dennis Zuze and his twin after their parents died. They were sharp little rascals, and we popped them into grade 8 here at Namwianga when they were only eleven years old. Now they work in the copper mines at Chililabombwe, near the border with Congo.

Dennis came along with the Copperbelt youth, and told us he plans to sponsor one of the orphans in the Haven.