ITMI partners, Johan and Lesley Leach have been called to bring the Gospel to the Luvale people living on an isolated and extremely remote floodplain on both sides of the Zambia-Angola border.

Johan and Lesley's ministry includes visiting the isolated, rural Luvale villages as well as equipping believers for evangelism, discipleship and church planting.

Johan and Pastor Teddy share the Gospel in a remote village on the Luvale floodplain.

Johan sharing the Gospel with a village after providing them access to clean, safe water with a borehole.

Inside one of the village homes.

Children from a Luvale village.

This story from Johan and Lesley takes place in one of the villages on the Angola side of the border.

Every Friday antenatal sessions are hosted at the maternity clinic in Chilombo, Angola. Clients come from the local community and beyond.

The midwives continue to do their best, with minimal medical equipment and supplies. Such a facility is a new and unique service in our area and has the potential to serve and transform our community.

We thank the Lord for this effective tool not only in serving the women but also in the proclamation of the Good News. The midwives begin their work day with the Gospel being preached to the expectant clients.

We are trusting that all women who enter the clinic will experience God.

The clinic creates a conducive atmosphere for educating the women in the community on the nutritional value of different types of food. Complicated cases which in the past were often associated to witchcraft are now being considered from a different perspective.

Below is a testimony on this.

Paving the Way for Truth

One day a lady was brought to our facility in a deplorable state.

The baby was delivered in the village, but the placenta remained and it took the traditional birth attendants in the village several hours with all their best skills to remove it, but all in vein. (Medical practitioners will agree with us that without a doctor and proper medical equipment and supplies, such cases would end on a fatal note).

The lady was extremely weak from a great loss of blood and a lot of pressure applied by the attendants.

This is common at every delivery in the village - the mother is forced by all means to push the baby out and very often they are encouraged to start pushing before the appropriate time, so that by the time of delivery most mothers in labor are terribly exhausted.

Having this lady at the clinic, exhausted and weak with the placenta still inside of her was a huge test for us.

We don’t have the equipment at our facility to do a better job and if the mother died-which in this case was most likely, the relatives were going to fight each other to death as there was already superstition attached to this case.

One of the relatives was suspected of bewitching the mother in labor of which they concluded was the reason behind the complications in the delivery.

The nearest hospital to our place is about 90km [~56 miles] away. There is not a single vehicle in our locality, so to think of referring such a case to the hospital was foolish. The only option that remained was to pray for a miracle.

So we prayed.

And a miracle took place.

After less than thirty minutes, we managed to remove the stubborn placenta without any medical supplies. Of course the mother was in great pain, but that was the limit of our aid.

Given the living conditions in the geographical location of our community i.e. very remote from modern technology, the grace of God saved three souls that day: the mother, the suspected witch and the “orphan” who would have died due to lack of care.

Praise God!

Prayer Requests from the Midwives in Chilombo

1. Pray for improvement of our facility in terms of equipment. We are in need a medical laboratory. We deliver without knowing the HIV status of our patients. A number of specimen from our patients need to be examined for us to serve them effectively.

2. Pray for more skilled volunteers to join the ministry.

3. Pray for our student midwife who is going to start school in September this year - pray that he matures technically and spiritually. He will be in college for three years. He is going to face a number of financial challenges along the way.

Spreading the Gospel

This is the type of outreach that is part of what Johan and Lesley do in Zambia and Angola. ITMI supporters have helped Johan and Lesley with support of the Leach's ministry as well as gifts toward our Clean, Safe Water Project.

Currently, those gifts are being put into action to install a water system near this clinic in Angola! The water system consists of a solar-powered pump, and a pipe to a tower where there is a tank.

The clinic is attached to a church, so the believers in this settlement will also get to use this as an continual outreach, demonstrating God's love and provision and this is thanks to those of you who have supported our Clean, Safe Water Project and Johan and Lesley Leach!