Commentary by Scott Shepherd
Recently, city employee Scott Shepherd traveled to Zambia as part of a church mission trip. He shares what the group did, what he learned and how traveling to the African continent changed him.
Our church, Noblesville Baptist Church, got a new preacher about four years ago. He’s a younger guy and really pushed us to start doing mission trips to Honduras and Africa. This was the third trip our church had done to Zambia.
There were eight people from our church who went, and we were there for 10 days. Our trip started from Washington, D.C., then to Germany, Ethiopia and finally to Zambia. With layovers and time changes, it was about 17 hours in flight.
We stayed in the bush country basically, five miles from the nearest highway (or what they call the tarmac). At the tarmac, they have a little village set up with shops that sell food, beer and other household goods. They also have a lumber yard in that area, and we actually used the local lumber for our project. They don’t have the same kind of technology we do, so they would do a rough cut of the wood and it was just up to us to make it work. Luckily we had a bench top planer and table saw to help get more precise dimensions.
I was excited about this trip because it was a construction-based trip and my background is in construction. The goal of our time there was to build a classroom for the local community to use – mainly as a mission school. We remodeled an old barn that they had on the property. It wasn’t anything fancy – just a typical shed like we have here, with block construction, stucco and a steel roof. We were able to do a lot, including putting down 900 sq. ft. of tile, constructing a wood ceiling and bringing chairs into the classroom.
Probably the biggest thing I learned is how good we have it here and don’t appreciate what we have. Or maybe vice versa, that some folks there have so little but appreciate what they do have so much more. There were some people that would carry a 12-volt battery six or seven miles into town so they could bring it back to their hut so they could watch TV or listen to the radio. And the roads were not in great shape. We met a preacher and his wife who would ride two hours one way on a four-wheeler through the bush country just so they could get to church where they worked.
It’s pretty neat to know that you’ve built something people are using on the other side of the world. I’d like to go back and see them utilizing the school and also to help with an orphanage site they have. I’d like to see what we did stand up to the test of time and use.
Scott Shepherd is safety and fleet manager for the City of Westfield. He may be reached at [email protected].
