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Photos courtesy of Kristen Barnard.
“What did you do over Christmas break?” and “How was your break?” are some of the most popular questions asked by friends and professors upon returning to Ouachita. For most students, the weeks between December and January entail eating a plethora of food, hibernating and completely messing up sleep patterns or going on a trip to see relatives. But for junior mass communications and business major Kristen Barnard, Zambia was where she spent most of her vacation.
Barnard, along with two friends, set out for Africa and worked with Chande Baptist Orphanage in Kitwe, Zambia.
“I felt God calling me to Africa since I was in high school, but it was never the right timing,” Barnard said. “While I was at camp last summer, I knew God was calling me to go during Christmas break.”
Barnard said that even though the idea of spending close to three weeks in a place without showers, with questionable food and without air conditioning doesn’t sound too appealing, Zambia was where she wanted to be and being able to share God’s word to children made it well worth it.
While in Zambia, Barnard and her friends got to experience the hectic markets in downtown Kitwe as well as encounter some different native animals. She also mentored and built relationships with young girls.
“In the morning, we woke up and ate breakfast, then met with the girls and taught them from God’s Word for three hours,” she said. “During the afternoons, we went outside the gate and played with the local village children, and taught them songs about Jesus. Everyday, they would wait for us to come outside and the minute we opened the gate, they would run up to us and yell ‘Mzungu, mzungu,’ which means ‘white person’.”
All the girls she got to play and spend time with “stole [her] heart.” But there was one, Prudence, a 6-year-old girl at the Chamboli Baptist Church who was attached to Barnard’s hip for the majority of her trip, she said.
“She sat in my lap during church, held my hand everywhere we went and played with all the bracelets on my wrist,” Barnard said. “Every time [we saw each other] saw her, she ran up to me and gave me the biggest hugs.”
“But what I what I remember most,” she said, “was that on the last day we were in Zambia, she ran up to me, and when I knelt down to her level, she wrapped her little arms around my neck and told me ‘Nkala Mifuluka,’ which means ‘I’ll be missing you.’
“Wow. Though we don’t speak the same language, love is universal,” she said.
“Nowhere on earth could I experience such pure joy and love, such peace and surrender, as when I am surrounded by Christ-lovers such as these,” said Mycah Wagner, who also went on the trip. “They teach me. They show me what it means to have a personal love affair with our one true God. They break my heart and mend it all at once.”
