Baptist Mission House

This is a photo of an add painted on a wall in downtown Lusaka. It caught our attention and caused many smiles - we still giggle when we see the photo. But back to the mission house....

The Baptist Mission House is located in downtown Lusaka next to an international school and behind the fairgrounds. It consists of a fenced, guarded and gated property with several places to stay. There is, what looks like, an apartment building and a large building with several 'homes' connected by halls with a common sitting area and a large meeting room or two. We were able to rent one of the homes - three bedrooms, a bathroom and kitchen. Outside there is a large children's playground, large gravel parking area and places to walk. The parking lot was right outside our place. I'm sure I already mentioned this but since I am writing about the mission house I will go ahead and mention it again - so please bear with me - and thank God again for keeping us safe.

One of the nights we stayed there we were woke up by an extremely loud alarm around 3 A.M.. The alarm lasted about 20 minutes - long enough for us to get up, make sure the door was locked, look out the windows into pitch blackness and wonder what was happening. When the alarm went off we went back to bed. In the morning Rob went to the office and found out what had happened. One of the guards had noticed something by a car in the parking lot (right outside our window) and had approached. The car was in the process of being stolen. One person pulled out a gun, threw a bag over the guards face and threw him into the back of the car while another person got the car going and drove the car out into the night. The other guard must have sounded the alarm. We are so thankful to be able to let you know that the kidnapped guard was released across the city and was returned via police escort. We saw the man and he was very shook up - but safe.

Not only does the Baptist Mission House provide temporary housing to missionaries, it also is the meeting place for a Chinese church and on Sunday nights it is home to a Bible study that is attended by missionaries to Zambia (all different sending agencies are represented - it is a time for them to connect with each other) and their families - there is an adult study and time of fellowship as well as a youth group complete with games and study.

We were thankful to have time as a family to simply be in and experience Zambia together. And we were thankful to have been referred to the mission house by SIM Zambia.