Wow wow wow wow wow. It has been a crazy, exciting, hectic few months!! So many good things have happened. The Lord has been faithful, as He always is, and we’ve seen His goodness in new ways in our lives over and over again this year.

As you may have seen on Facebook, the students we’ve been discipling for the last few months are no longer students! They graduated on Wednesday with a ministry school certificate from Global Ministries Bible Institute in Florida and one from Overland’s first “Overland Mission Training” course, surrounded by so many ecstatic, supportive friends and coworkers, and with hearts bursting full of love for the Lord and His people and the lost. We’re beyond proud of their hard work and faithfulness throughout their seven months with us. The week leading up to graduation we had revival week, where members of our team poured into, challenged, built up, and celebrated the students. We were so blessed with realizing anew that we’re part of a team that’s willing to drop everything they're doing to be a part of what we’re doing. That sees that what we’re all doing is just part of what God is doing, and doing it together is so much better than doing our own thing. We couldn’t have graduated these sweet people without the amazing team we’re surrounded by, both within Overland and without! The graduates next steps in ministry vary, please keep them in your prayers as they continue walking out lives devoted to the call of God!

So now what are we going to do? We’ve gotten this question so many times in the last few days haha. For the next few months we’ll be back to our normal job, checking in with our leaders who practice Farming God’s Way and teaching FGW in new communities. This year marked the worst drought the Southern Province of Zambia has seen in 64 years. Most people can’t remember a time when they received so little rain for such a long period of time. Only a few madalas and machimbeles (old men and women) remember when they were young and Zambia faced a similar drought. For a nation that relies on farming, lack of rain means lack of maize means lack of food. But the Lord is faithful is He not? He has not changed, His promises have not changed, His goodness has not changed, and His power has not changed. We know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Lord will provide for His people. He is not bound by circumstances, or the weather, or the laws of nature that He wrote and designed intricately for our benefit. Psalm 37:25-26 says, “I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his children begging for bread. He is ever lending generously, and his children become a blessing.” The Word of the Lord is true in every generation, every situation, and every nation. When we teach Farming God’s Way, we aren’t just teaching conservation agriculture with a side of Jesus thrown in. We’re not trying to trick people into farming the way we want them to by telling them it’s God’s will. We’re pointing people to the One who created them to need Him, who spoke the earth into existence so we could experience His nature in so many ways, and who wants to be a part of their livelihood because He formed their very lives. As we teach these next few months, those are the truths we’ll be reminding them of. That each of our lives is sustained by the Lord because He delights in us. That He is our daily bread and our living water and that He knows everything we need and loves to give it to us. Throughout the next few months (and beyond), we’ll be speaking faith filled words over the nation of Zambia, and we can’t wait to see how the Lord provides.

We have a busy schedule over the next four months! Expeditions season is about to kick off, and while we’re not leading any trips this year there is one coming to the chiefdom we live in! We’ll be there a few days, traveling to do new conferences, following up with our leaders, and we’re making another trip to Angola in August. By the first week of September, we’ll be back in America! We don’t have our schedule quite planned out, but we’ll be in Pennsylvania and Texas and a few other places, and we’d love to see every one of you! As the time gets closer we’ll be able to give more details about where we’ll be when.

Speaking of being back in Angola, we officially joined the Angola team!! We loved our time there in October, and the team asked us to join them in pioneering a new area of the country when we were at the staff retreat in Mozambique in February. So, after our time in America this year we will spend 6-9 months in Portugal learning Portuguese so we can communicate in Angola! We’re hoping to be through language school, visas in hand, and in Angola by the last couple months of 2020. Our time in Zambia has been so amazing and we’re so thankful for it. It’s going to be difficult to say goodbye for a time, but we know the Lord has plans for us just a few days and borders away in a new place!