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100,000 Zambian students. 30,000 fish. 50 pigs.
"We knew condoms were an option and we knew masturbation is being encouraged as an alternative, but we never have been told that it is OK to wait until marriage to have sex," said one teen boy from Chifubu High School in Ndola, Zambia. His life was changed as he let go of the pressure to be sexually active in a nation where the average age of first sexual activity is twelve and the life expectancy is 39 due to a 16-22% HIV/AIDS prevalency. Dannah Gresh, one of the America's top best-selling teen authors with works like And the Bride Wore White and Secret Keeper, recently took a team of 29 to Africa under her mentoring to fight HIV/AIDS.
It all started in 2003 when Dannah was asked to write a government school abstinence curriculum to reduce the prevalance of HIV/AIDS in Zambia. Over 100,000 children and teens in this country will be educated using the curriculum. Just one thing was slowing the Zambians down—funding.
"Though the initiative is Zambian based, we saw very quickly that a lack of capital was a problem," says Dannah whose curriculum has been used with 25,000 students to date. "The unemployment rate is eighty percent, making even the money to hire a taxi to get to the schools too much."
Gresh and her husband, Bob, founder of Grace Prep High School, decided to invite students from the school to help. The Greshes explained to the students that "all" they needed to do was raise some individual funds, get some large grants and fly to Africa, but grant requests were quickly rejected. That's when the task became "God-sized." The students hearts were committed by then and over $120,000 was raised within a year mostly in denominations of 10's and $20's and $50's from about two thousand private donors. With the funds collected, twenty-nine team members set out for Zambia to build a piggery/fishery that would fund the educational work there. In addition to starting the farm, the students presented abstinence and secondary virginity as options to over 4,000 Zambian youth in their government schools.
Zambian teens aren't the only ones who learned during the 13 day trip.
"Only 18% of the world lives like we do," recalls 13-year old Amber Devlin after seeing the extreme poverty. The change from the term "third world nation" to "majority world nation" better represents the 82% world poverty.
"Anything you see on TV about children in majority world countries starving, is nothing like seeing them in real life," expresses Meagan Wilkinson, a Grace Prep junior. "I was surprised at what I felt. When I was standing in the compound, I just felt out of place, like a pompous American who thinks I’m making a difference, but they made the difference in me."
Several of the Grace Prep students felt like the difference included receiving a life calling to missions.
"I found my calling," writes Grace Prep senior Briana Ragan to Dannah. "I remember one night you telling us that if we feel the desire to cry, it may not be out of pity or pain, but it's from the Holy Spirit, and every time I think of Zambia and the impact that we made (and I am confident we only saw the surface of it) those tears from the Holy Spirit come flowing. When I speak about the trip, the people, the culture and our impact- I feel that "Burning". I know it's my calling because when I think about the trip I have an emotion that begins in my stomach and crawls up my throat and just come bursting out of my eyes. I finally know that this is where I Am Called to be. I don't know when, or where exactly, or to do what, but it's so amazing to know that you don't have to know the details of all that because God will put you where He wants you to be, as long as you let Him and listen. I am so excited because on one hand I know what I'm called to do, but on the other, it's a complete leap of faith because I have no idea where or when He will call me, but I will go!"
"One of our seniors, Amy Munn, felt like it was her life calling to teach elementary school in Zambia one day," says Bob Gresh. "Another of our seniors, Yuri Ramondelli, hopes to be a successful businessman who infuses capital into projects like the one he saw in Zambia. That's what it's all about. Grace Prep's 40 points of Grace states, 'We believe in God-sized tasks.' This was one of ours."
The Pure Freedom ministry will continue to mentor the Zambian-based abstinence education team and will look for God-sized ways to support them. Our goals include reaching 100,000 Zambian students, completing the farm to add 30,000 bream fingerlings (fish) and breeding our first few piglets to have a capacity of 50 pigs available to sell at a time. The resources of sales will be used to fund abstinence education including expenses of the organization managing the curriculum and payment to our facilitators so they can feed their families. Future projects may include more trips, so watch our website for details. Be sure to buy hand Zambian-made necklace at any of our Pure Freedom events or as an add-on to your order on the web book store. Every penny of your donation of $5 or more goes directly to this work in Zambia. |
