The College Expands
Enrollment is up at TCZ! We’ve taken in a large class of first year students, about 20 students! We are thrilled for this increase of interest and enrollment at the college! We now have about 70 students at the college. The college has been trying to be more self-sufficient than in the past. During the hyper inflation days, we were 91% supported by international donations and 9% self-funded (by students’ school fees and local donations). Now with the financial stabilization in the country, we are now 80% funded by international donations and 20% self-funded. It may not sound like much, but this is a major improvement for which we are thankful for. We are in the brainstorming process of thinking through ways in which we can become more self-sufficient as a college.
Kayle is truly enjoying her discipleship group at the college. In the past years, she has had older women in her group or even a group of men and has never really been able to develop close knit relationships where students can freely and deeply share from their hearts what they are struggling with or what challenges they are facing. But this term she has three women that are in her group who are all younger than her in life and have opened up freely to share about their past experiences and where they are at spiritually. Each week after we meet, she is so encouraged by the faith and courage these women have in the midst of Zimbabwean traditional religious pressures and in the midst of tough life circumstances (sexual abuse, parental abandonment, etc.). Thanks for praying for our students!
Koha is Complete!
Mat is thrilled that Koha is finally finished! It is a free open source software system whereby our college will no longer have to pay the high costs of commercial software that costs a fortune to continually update, expand and maintain. The commericial software we were using was going to require an extra $17,000 for us to have it do what we needed it to do (things such as searching the catalogue online, serial, item types, indexing with other catalogues, etc.)! But with Koha we can do these things without concern for any further licensing costs. Mat is thrilled about this project being finished, which he has been researching and implementing for about a year now. Now he is trying to take Koha to other Zimbabwean theological colleges who have expressed interest in it. Some of these schools don’t have a computerized library system, while others schools have old and out of date library systems. As other schools get on Koha, we can all then join together to form a theological library consortium whereby we can search each others books and pool together our resources.
Mega Vision 2009
Kayle was asked to co-lead a seminar at our church’s annual conference which is held in Harare. All of the New Frontiers churches throughout Zimbabwe get together each year to build up one another and this year, Kayle, together with Mbonisi (nicknamed “Bones”), our pastor, led a seminar on Foundations of Preaching and Teaching. We talked about using “storying” in our preaching and teaching as a powerful communication tool. Telling stories is a common tool the average African daily uses to teach lessons on life or to state a point. How appropriate to use storying in our preaching and teaching as a common and understood teaching mechanism. I gave two examples of storying at the seminar. For the first one, instead of preaching about the story of David and Bathsheba, I pretended to be Bathsheba and told about her experience with David from her firsthand perspective. By telling the story of Bathsheba in this way, the characters come to life and the dilemma that David faced feels more real and relatable. For the second story, I took a parable of Jesus and transformed it by keeping the message of the parable, but changing the details of the story to be common to everyday life here in Zimbabwe 2009. Those who attended the seminar seemed encouraged and empowered to use storying to help their teaching and preaching be more effective in the African context.