I just wanted to give a little background about the Hope Children’s Center. Cornerstone Church is a non denominational church in Ames, IA, with about 1800 members, but the church partners with the Baptist Church for their overseas missions. Through an organization called Gospel Link they send people all over the world to do missions. In 2006, a group of people from the church came to Zambia on a two week mission trip and one guy was my friend, Zack. He felt like there was opportunity to do more so he came back over with Gospel Link to help with a build a seminary in Kazemba for 8 months in 2007. Another man from the trip, Mark Meyer, was also very impacted by the conditions of the Zambian Church and thought there was a further calling to help the ministry here. In 2007, Pastor Jeff Dodge at Cornerstone and Mark came over to evaluate the need of the church and through interviewing numerous pastors sponsored through Gospel Link they met a man named Pastor Navice Kalunga. Pastor Navice had planted over 200 churches throughout the Serenje area and he thought the two biggest needs of the church in his area were providing the ample training for the pastors in these congregations and helping the church support the orphans, because the needs of these children were draining the church finances.
So to make a very long story a little short, Cornerstone decided to partner with Pastor Navice and the Baptist church to build an orphanage to support the children and send leaders over a few times a year to help train the pastors more on the word of the Bible. The orphanage is not a place for children to stay, because the Zambian government believes in the foster care system, so it is a building where the children will be feed one meal a day and a place for them to come during the day if they are not in school.
Cornerstone also has a sister church in Omaha, Nebraska, called Brookside, that together has to raised about $300,000 to support this project that was started last spring. They call the project the Hope Children’s Center. The church realized that they really needed someone over here full time to manage the project and since Zack is a contractor at home and had been dissolved in the Zambian culture before he would be a good person to oversee the building. Another man, Randy, who owns his own construction company from the church had also volunteered to spend about 4 months help. Also, there have been numerous people who have been helping for a couple week stints including an agricultural professor from Iowa State, a group of doctors from Omaha, and a couple college kids.
So to make a very long story a little short, Cornerstone decided to partner with Pastor Navice and the Baptist church to build an orphanage to support the children and send leaders over a few times a year to help train the pastors more on the word of the Bible. The orphanage is not a place for children to stay, because the Zambian government believes in the foster care system, so it is a building where the children will be feed one meal a day and a place for them to come during the day if they are not in school.
Cornerstone also has a sister church in Omaha, Nebraska, called Brookside, that together has to raised about $300,000 to support this project that was started last spring. They call the project the Hope Children’s Center. The church realized that they really needed someone over here full time to manage the project and since Zack is a contractor at home and had been dissolved in the Zambian culture before he would be a good person to oversee the building. Another man, Randy, who owns his own construction company from the church had also volunteered to spend about 4 months help. Also, there have been numerous people who have been helping for a couple week stints including an agricultural professor from Iowa State, a group of doctors from Omaha, and a couple college kids.
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