Some of you might remember both of us completed AMT in 2016 before joining Overland full time; Advance Missions Training (AMT) is a three-month training program that everyone who is joining staff with Overland has to go through.  But it’s not just for people who want to spend their lives overseas on the mission field or even join Overland, it is for anyone who is passionate about ministry.  There are 19 students in this year’s May AMT class and they are amazing! This past month we had the opportunity to teach the students' Sustain class for one week as well as take three students out with us for a week to experience what ministry is like in a sector as part of the Sustain team.  The Sustain class focuses on how we approach relief and aid efforts. A lot of AMT were shocked seeing how our way of thinking towards poverty is sometimes very damaging. Often, especially in a western culture, we look at poverty as a lack of material items. Then we look and see people without “things” and come to give them all the things we think they need, when really we need to think of poverty as broken relationships. God has created us and all of creation to be in relationship. With Him, with others, with ourselves, with his creation, if there is brokenness in any of these then we aren’t living in the fullness of Christ's restoration.  Anyone who is not living in the abundance of what God has promised is living in poverty, which is all of us before we came to know Jesus, and many of us even after we accepted Christ! It changes the view of “us helping them” to all of us walking in relationship together, restoring all things to what God intended it to be.  Poverty cannot be fixed from a distance. It is hands on, messy, and personal. 

We took the students who were with us to do a Farming God's Way training in Siachitema chiefdom (Reuben above left is one of those students). We had visited a village there a few months ago and they asked us to come back to do a training, so we figured this was a great time for the students to be a part of a conference. The community there was extremely excited, we had a night meeting with over 100 people there ready to hear the word and worship together. This past year was hard for most of Southern Province in Zambia because of the drought. Every time we do a training I’m imagining the area being transformed, people no longer worried about where their food is going to come from, and having complete understanding that God will provide all they need. I can't wait to hear and share testimonies from this year's growing season!!

Just another reminder that we will be returning to the states in September for a few months in preparation for our new assignment in Angola!  If you would like to meet up with us, we would love to see everyone so please message us. We are planning to have a few gatherings to get all of our supporters together while we are back as well, so stay tuned for dates!

So much thanks and love to you all,

Branden and Lauren