Queen Esther in the Bible was called by God to help bring relief and deliverance to the Jewish people who faced annihilation. In a similar way, I believe God has raised up Breath of Heaven Children’s Ministry to bring relief and deliverance to the orphans of Zambia.
We have made progress with the construction of our first home now completed, a caretakers home and the director’s home which will be completed by the end of November.
I praise God for what we have been able to accomplish. However, every time I have gone to witness our progress, my heart is further broken because the orphans do not have the luxury of time. They need care, shelter, and protection immediately. Read full Article...
The Father's Heart, a short video taken from photos of the July 2007 mission trip to Lusaka, Zambia
My trip to Zambia - Jennifer Cho Salaff
Friday, July 20, 2007
Our team began the day with a visit to Jorazu Christian School in the Kanyama province of Lusaka. Kanyama is a shantytown-- hundreds of homes made from concrete slabs with aluminum siding for roofs and dirt floors.
The striking thing—besides the obvious poverty—is the number of children you see living in these communities. I saw toddlers with bare bottoms and only a shirt on their backs running around the alleyways, often by themselves. Women were washing laundry in plastic buckets. Men, most of whom are unemployed (Zambia struggles with an 80 percent unemployment rate) sat on steps to the front of their shacks; some smoking, some engaging in conversation with one another, many just watching life pass them by.
The team from Mosaic spent a day at the Avila Orphanage (supported by Breath of Heaven donors), interviewing and photographing the children to learn their stories. They took the next day to follow-up with some of them by going to the neighborhoods where they had lived before. One member of that team wrote the following article as she reflected on that experience.
Her eyes were not on me but on her daughter who played in the small dusty yard, which extended from the winding dirt road in front of the home. Loveness held a small orange ball in her hand and threw it high into the air.
“Wouldn’t you be sad to see your daughters leave?” I asked the mother.
“Sad?” She said the word as if it were foreign to her, continuing to watch her daughter. “There is no such thing as sadness,” she simply responded.
"For such a time as this... " Esther 4:14
My trip to Zambia - Jennifer Cho Salaff