Ayla Iris Mapalo Freer arrived at 11.24am on Monday 10th March. Mum did brilliantly through 36 hours of hard work. We are delighted!

Ayla means ‘Oak’ in Hebrew and she is named after Iris, Matt’s Grandma who passed away 2 weeks before Ayla arrived, and also Mapalo the adopted name for one of the communities we worked with in Zambia – which is a Bemba word meaning ‘Blessing’.

The past two months have been hectic, unsettling, rich, beautiful and full. As we arrived back in the UK happy to see family and friends and excited about the future, we were also aware that, with a baby on the way, we needed to settle as quickly as possible. As weeks turned into months, and we became ever more experienced in filling in application forms, we generally kept our heads down, and wondered what was happening.

[We need to celebrate] life as a journey, one which we ‘walk with awe and wonder,’ recognising that there is something about the travelling, as well as the arriving, that should be treasured.

Introduction to Wise Traveller series – wisetraveller.org.uk

We knew that things would be okay… but then there is always that little nagging feeling of doubt. We hung on by our fingertips, trusting that the right thing would come up at the right time. We spent our time pushing every door, being unsure of exactly which direction we were heading in. When not applying for jobs we spent our time walking and watching the changing seasons, and gradually started to see some direction, and find peace that came out of something far deeper than just a need and panic to settle.

Seeking Clarity

If each day falls
inside each night
there exists a well
where clarity is imprisoned

We need to sit on the rim
of the well of darkness
and fish for fallen light
with patience

As we discovered new things about how we want to be living our lives we kept coming back to working with the local church on global issues – and we accepted that we had to let go of our dream to return to Devon for the time being.

As we walk in solitude or in company we discover the power of the journey to prepare us, resource us and change us in ways that enhance our appreciation of the significant ‘arrival’ moments in our lives. Sure, it might be easier to drive straight to the packaged tourist experience, but the journey via the coastal path will have many compensations…

Introduction to Wise Traveller series – wisetraveller.org.uk

Last week Matt was offered, and accepted, a role with CMS as Local/Global Developer, based at their new Oxford headquarters. This is a new role working with churches supporting CMS and developing a process to resource churches to go deeper in their mission, and helping them see the global dimension of their work locally and vice versa. Matt was actually interviewed for this post the week after we got back to the UK – but it took some weeks of reflection for both CMS and us to know that this was the right step for Matt. We are really excited that he will be joining a bunch of creative people at CMS, and looking forward to continuing to work with them, as well as being involved with CMS locally in Oxford.

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever.

Psalm 107: 1-9

Polly, who is keeping really well, won’t be able to work for the time being, but there seems to be a lot of things going on in Oxford that she hopes to be involved with in the future. In the meantime she will be parenting and getting involved in the local community.

We have no doubt that the journey will still be shrouded in the unknown (and that parenthood is probably going to change everything we know about anything!), but we are really excited about these new roles for us both – and all that living in Oxford will hold for us.

Modern day Mary & Joseph

With this news coming two weeks before Christmas, we are appreciating a deeper understanding of what two parents two thousand years ago went through! We are now looking for a 2-3 bed house to rent immediately in the east Oxford area for the next 6 months – if you know of anyone who might be able to help, we would love to hear from you as soon as possible – you can contact us here.

Thank you once again for all your support & encouragement

May you know joy and peace this Christmas

Matt and Polly

As we are back in the UK and settling down we will probably be posting on this blog less regularly than before. We will continue to post our news but not so often.

However, Matt is starting a new blog which he plans to use more regularly – and, just like this one, you can sign up to get updates by email or subscribe to the feed.

Matt’s new blog is at: mattfreer.wordpress.com.

We have just sent out our latest newsletter – which will probably be the last one we do. It looks at what we were doing in our last few months in Zambia and what has been happening at Jubilee Centre recently – as well as our next steps. If you’d like a copy let us know.

Thank you to all of you that have supported us in so many ways over the past two or so years. Your support has meant so much to us, and has meant we could support the work of Jubilee Centre and CMS in the ways that we have.

It’s been a while, but here is another action trick…

Having lived in the Copperbelt in Zambia we know that one of the central questions about Zambia is always: why is this once middle-income country so poor, when it is so rich – £2bn worth extracted from its mines last year – in copper?

As things are the lucrative trade in copper is not helping address Zambia’s poverty. SCIAF, Christian Aid and Action for Southern Africa, with the support of Zambian civil society, have just published a major report – Undermining Development? – on why Zambia fails to derive the benefits that it should from its enormous copper reserves.

Read the background in the Observer – Zambia’s new bid to cash in on copper.

Read the report – Undermining Development? – or the Executive Summary

Christian Aid and SCIAF are calling for the companies involved not to undermine Zambia’s efforts to tackle poverty and renegotiate their contracts – find out more and take action.

We are now safely back in the UK, after a wonderful journey by train from Zambia to Tanzania. It was a great way to see more of both countries – and it is amazing how fast time goes when you can just sit and watch the world go by! We’ve uploaded a few photo’s to our flickr pages – which are also inserted as a slide show below. Looking forward to settling into UK life once our heads and bodies recover from the journey!

See the photo’s in full on our flickr pages.

Last week we launched Jubilee Centre’s new website – www.jubileecentre.org – which I have been working on over the past year. We’ve developed the new site so that it easily provides the latest news and Monday Issue from JC – you can subscribe to receive both of these by email, just click here.

During last week I also trained all the staff at JC on how to maintain the site – yet again it uses WordPress – which was interesting during the week when we had the worst internet connection ever! We got there in the end though – and are now even changing internet provider as well.

As a result there are personal blog sites springing up from JC staff and associates… so far we have the following:

Bread of Life Church Mapalo – this is the new website from the church we have worked with the most in Mapalo, including home of the HBC women’s group Polly has worked with.

Dan Daka’s blog – Dan is a volunteer at JC

Pukuta Mwanza’s blog – Pukuta, a good friend of ours from before we came to Zambia, just last week joined the JC staff to spearhead the Church Mobilisation Programme.

Micah Challenge Zambia – this is the home of Micah Challenge in Zambia, which is housed at JC.

* Update *  The past year has seen JC have major internet connection problems – despite much complaining and telephone calls we’ve never had the problems resolved. Last week’s problems forced JC to look into getting a new provider… and by Monday night this week the new provider had connected us up and all the problems of old are now left to yesterday… what can I say… a week before we leave Zambia JC not only gets a reliable fast internet connection but also a wireless connection!

Last Saturday our friends in Mapalo orgnanised a farewell party for us. We have both worked closely with the community in Mapalo – Polly has been working with the Home Based Care women’s group visiting the long term sick every week and helping to develop this into a sustainable funded programme, whilst Matt has worked with the church leaders there in advocacy, including helping them to develop their memorandum of understanding during the elections last year.

So a party with the locally elected councillor and the women’s home based care group in attendance was a great way to say farewell. They put us on the high table with the councillor and showered us with ‘confetti’! We’ve uploaded some photo’s on Flickr – which you should also be able to see in a nifty little show below!

Micah Challenge Zambia is now embarking on a series of provincial launches across the country, and this week saw the Copperbelt provincial launch take place in Kitwe. We were joined by Joel Edwards of the EA UK and Andy Clasper of Micah Challenge UK, as well as the District Commissioner for Kitwe representing the Minister for the Copperbelt. The national media covered the story, but dwelt more on what the Minister ’said’ even though he wasn’t even there in person… but any coverage is better than none!

We’ve uploaded a few photo’s that you can see on our flickr pages.

Now we don’t own a TV – but plenty of people (especially in urban areas) do, and so Zambia has just as many TV-addicts as elsewhere in the world. So in a spirit of cultural exchange I thought that you may be wondering what most Zambians like watching? We’ve talked about the perils of ‘exporting the empire’ a few times on this blog and TV schedules in Zambia are far from immune, but even bearing that in mind it may still be a bit of a surprise to know that some of the most popular TV programmes in Zambia are from World Wrestling Entertainment (what used to be known as WWF). We are pretty sure that the afternoon service at the church we go to was rescheduled so it wouldn’t interfere with the Sunday afternoon wrestling programme… if you have broadband and want to get a glimpse of what you may or may not be missing out on click here.