The Seaman Family – A family of five serving the Lord and local community in Zambia

5th February 20255th February 2025

Thank you for having us UK!

It has been a week since we arrived back at our home in Kapiri Mposhi after quite an eventful journey of flight cancellations, car troubles and navigating the traffic out of the capital city. We have spent the past week unpacking, cleaning, home-schooling and reacclimatising as well as helping Hannah who is currently sitting her mock iGCSE’s.

We thought it would be good to send a blog just as a brief update but also as a welcome to all of those who signed up to receive the blogs from various churches we had the pleasure of sharing at in January. Thank you so much for wanting to share in this journey with us.

The whole family had a wonderful time catching up with family and friends over the Christmas period and managed to make up for four years of absence by all the fun and activities we packed in, including ice skating; trips to Scotland and Wales; late night walks; Christmas light shows and theatre; bacon sandwiches; cherry scones and lasagne. I could go on. Micah’s wish was fulfilled by the snow (and pizza from Farmfoods!!!) which gave opportunity for sledging, snowballing, snow angels, and skidding ice across the frozen canal. We were truly spoiled!

Whilst we were away the team at Umweo Church did a sterling job of running the Christmas program and also delivering food hampers to the local community and the hospital. The fund has also provided a bursary to two of our nurses to go and specialise with the one year neonatal diploma; provided good quality stethoscopes for our two clinicians working and training in the neonatal unit, and school shoes for three children from the local children’s home. Please see the photos below. The remaining funds will continue to provide assistance for travel and education, milk for babies in need plus essential supplies and training for the neonatal unit in the year ahead. A big thank you to everyone who contributed to the fund.

We also arrived back to find that the church tent structure we had left was finally complete with sides as well as the roof. It has been well anchored and we were so grateful to Martin who came with the team from Mosaic Church South in September as he used his engineering expertise to help us make the structure safe and storm resistant. The rainy season is here, with some good rains and strong winds but so far so good!

Looking to the year ahead, we have a few major hurdles ahead of us. As we explained a few times when we spoke about our lives here in Zambia, we received the paperwork for ‘Umweo Trust’ here in Zambia just before we flew back to the UK. We also want to set up a trust (CIO) in the UK to link with this in order to organise ourselves and also keep accountability as the different programs we are now involved in are bigger and more ‘long term’ now. The cost for setting up the CIO will be around £1800, after which we will be then looking to buy a plot of land behind the hospital which will be around £3000. The model of sustainability promoted by PDH, the Christian contractors who built the ward is to build accommodation which in turn brings in rental funds which can sustain our projects/ ministry. Especially as the hospital is attracting a lot of students for training and also increasing staff numbers, this would also be an opportunity to provide a service whilst also sustaining the work in the neonatal unit and other projects such as the 5000+. It feels like a huge task ahead but we plan to start taking small steps and see how God leads in this, the vision is always to train yourself out of a job and leave a set-up which is self-sustaining without the need for constant outside funding.

We also value thoughts and prayers for Hannah who will sit her iGCSE’s in May/June time which will involve a move to the capital city for a few weeks whilst she takes the exams at the British embassy. The visa renewal is also due in June/ July. This time around Larry and then the children will have opportunity to apply for residency which may or may not be granted. If granted this would lift a significant financial/ stress burden as they would not have to continually reapply for this every two years. Leah has another two years to do on a work permit before she can also apply for the same.

All in all it promises to be another busy year. As a family we are looking at how we can better balance this going forward, as especially during the building of the neonatal unit and development of the church plot/ tent, things had a tendency to become all consuming. We are also looking forward to having visitors at various points throughout the year which always brings a breath of fresh air as we get to share our lives and the community we are part of with them.

We will end here but suffice to say that we do love to hear updates from our friends and family in the UK so please do check in and say hello from time to time!

Enjoying the shelter of a new church tent

8th November 20248th November 2024

Christmas & New Year Plans 2024

As our time for leaving Zambia and heading back to the UK for a 2 month break (and our first Christmas & New Year in the UK in 8 years!) we just wanted to give a quick update on all that has been happening and also let people know about this years Christmas project.

Zambia has been a challenging place to live this year, with multiple pandemic outbreaks and a drought which has caused food insecurity but has also led to huge deficits in electricity availability. We have known ‘loadshedding’ (turning off power for certain periods of time) in the past but never quite like this.

We have had a packed last few months with multiple visitors including a team from Mosaic Church, Leeds who came and spent just over a week with us. We found an abandoned kitten approx. 1 week old in the gutter in town so have been feeding him round the clock – he’s been named Timothy, or ‘Tiny Tim’ and certainly makes a lot of noise for his small size. Unfortunately, so far the other cats have not been convinced to take him under their wing, although he does keep attempting to make contact/ chase their tails etc!

Things have moved forward at the church plot, with a semi-permanent tent like structure being constructed – we now have a tarpaulin roof, are working on the floors and small ablution, with the sides of the tent ready and waiting to also be fitted. The church members, especially the youth under direction of Jelvis, Davies and Larry, have worked hard with the physical labour that has been required to progress with this project. For some weeks we sat in the hot sun under umbrellas for the church service so there was immense excitement for the first service we were able to hold under cover.

The Neonatal Unit continues to be busy as ever, with some ongoing challenges with power supply (we need to install solar back up in order to not have our CPAP machines going off as the batteries that were originally installed are not lasting long enough/ not getting full charged) and water (owing to low water levels in the borehole). However, this past one year since commissioning has meant that our mothers are far more comfortable and not needing to be separated from their babies any more. We have increased the amount of skin to skin that we can do (aiming for ‘round-the-clock’ as this is known to increase survival rates) and have seen an increase in survival to discharge which is very encouraging. We have already admitted over 1040 babies since Jan 1^st which is our busiest year on record!

As we will be home this Christmas, we won’t be around to do the usual Christmas hampers. However, we would still like for the program to continue through some of our church friends, especially as it’s been such a hard year for so many. If anyone would like to contribute we intend to do the following

Food hampers for some local families
Look at sustainable gifts that can help people to establish their own income generation project
Gifts for admitted mothers/ babies in the Neonatal Unit over the Christmas and New Year Period
Support for two nurses going to do Neonatal Nurse Speciality Training (a one year intensive course)
Support for extra studies (tertiary level) in practical skills and theological studies
Replacement of consumables in the Neonatal unit – our handheld pulse oximeters (that measure the heart rate and oxygen levels of the baby) get heavy use and the probes are all nearing needing replacing. We also try to support our smallest babies with caffeine which helps to keep them breathing. We are also considering investing in temperature watches and apnoea (where a preterm baby forget to breathe) monitors (Bempu designed for the low resource setting) to further increase our ability to monitor our babies in the ward.
Support with formula milk for babies where breast milk is unavailable (each baby admitted in the Umweo milk fund is supported with formula until they reach 12 months of age and also receives nutritional education and support from our hospital nutritionists).
Ongoing support for travel for patients who need additional medical care at a higher level hospital e.g. children in need of specialist orthopaedic surgery, or adults with conditions like stroke requiring weekly physio

If anyone would like to contribute to this year’s Christmas project please do get in touch.

We are looking forward to catching up with lots of you over the Christmas period, having some rest and making memories. The kids are hoping for snow, especially Micah as he doesn’t remember ever having seen it! We have been showing them photos of when they were tinies in their winter snow suits building snowmen but memories are very distant. But I think the reality of how cold it will be (we are in the high 30s here at the moment, waiting for the rainy season to really get started) will hit us all when we land.

With love,

Larry, Leah, Hannah, Naomi and Micah

21st June 202421st June 2024

From One Building Project to Another

Hi everyone! We have a lot to update you on (owing to the fact we should have written multiple updates over the last six months) but have tried to keep it succinct.

Family Update

Zambia is going through a particularly difficult season – there was a large cholera outbreak at the beginning of the year affecting thousands of people; we have experienced drought this year so a lot of harvests have failed and then the drought has also affected the availability of electricity (85% of power generated here is hydroelectricity) so nationwide there are power cuts to ‘load shed’ for 12 hours every day (officially, some days longer than this). Obviously this has an impact on every area of life and many people are really struggling in light of all of the above.

The children continue to homeschool, with amazing provision this year which has enabled Hannah to take 7 iGCSE courses with an online school. She will sit the examinations in 2025. Naomi has also been able to take 4 subjects with the same online school to get used to this way of studying before she also needs to start exam courses, whilst spending a lot of her free time developing skills in art and painting. Micah has continued with us as his teachers and also is developing his interests in principles of engineering and making things that move, as well as cartoon drawing and animation. They are all now part of the church youth group, with Hannah also singing in the choir. We recently celebrated both Naomi and Micah’s birthdays in the nearest town with a meal out, and Micah had a more traditional birthday party with his friends a few weeks later.

Larry had his first bout of Malaria in January after 9 years of managing to avoid it. It hit hard and we are keen not the repeat the experience!

We also had a visit from Naomi (Leah’s sister) and her two younger boys in February which was a breath of fresh air and flew by way too fast. It was lovely to have them and to see the kids connecting with cousins they hadn’t seen for three and a half years.

Christmas Visit

As a family we haven’t visited home since we left to come back in 2020, and we haven’t spent Christmas in the UK for 8 years! So we decided that we would prepare in advance and have booked flights to return at the end of November and stay until the end of January. This will be a great opportunity for rest after what has been a hectic few years, and also for the kids to experience a UK Christmas/ winter and reconnect with friends and family. Hannah will also be turning 16 whilst we are back, having been just 6 years old when we first left for Zambia. We look forward to catching up with everyone!

Church Events

There are some big changes afoot for Umweo Church, mainly that we will be moving locations again, but this time we will be moving into a larger, semi-permanent tent structure that we are constructing on a borrowed plot around 10 minutes on foot from the current school classrooms that we have been using. This will give us greater flexibility in running our community projects such as the 5000+, as well as accommodating the growing numbers and providing a more permanent base. There are some photos below so that you can see the progress- we are still to add the tarpaulin roof and sides, and then ablutions to the plot.

Christmas Project

This year with the donations we received we were able to:

Provide 25 food hampers for families in need and we are still able to help out in acute situations at the local children’s home and with other local families
Provide Christmas gifts for the local children’s home
Paid final year school fees for a young man who has been supported through this Christmas project for the past 6 years
Purchase school shoes for some children from the local children’s home
Purchase glucometers for 3 children newly diagnosed with diabetes and continues to provide the sticks on the monthly basis to enable them to monitor their blood sugars
Provide some essential medicines, nappies and formula milk for the neonatal unit
Support two men from church to further their theological studies through an international college distance learning
Provide emergency medical costs for patients needing to travel but without the means to do so

Remaining funds are continuing to be used in a similar way with more children being prepared to travel for life changing surgery and families being helped in times of crisis.

Thank you to everyone who contributed!

Hospital Neonatal Unit

And finally, it has been a long time since we put out an official update on the progress of the Neonatal Unit at the District Hospital. It has now been 6 months since we moved into the ward, with around 650 patients already cared for and a significant drop in mortality rates. The demand for neonatal care continues to rise and we have been busier than ever! The hot showers and areas for dining plus the ability to remain with their baby 24/7 has been a real bonus for our mothers. We are still having teething challenges with the power back up duration especially in light of the national situation and will be looking to upgrade the system with the addition of extra capacity, battery hours and solar feed to improve the sustainability of what we are trying to establish. Demand has also meant that we need to add more equipment (which will also mean higher power needs!) and we are trying to work with various local partners on this. The unit has been identified by UNICEF as a centre of excellence for Zambia which means we will also be receiving their support particularly in the area of funding for staff training going forward. We still have need to increase staffing.

With some of the donations made towards the building project we have been able to fund for the last 6 months an early years teacher who is part of the Umweo congregation to work as a ward assistant on a week day, providing practical (feeding, helping with skin to skin and infant care) and emotional support to the mothers/ care givers and also as an extra pair of hands for the nursing staff. We hope to be able to continue this role going forward as her presence has made such a difference to the day to day running of the ward. We are in the process of setting up a charitable trust within Zambia which, as one of the goals, is improving the sustainability of the ward. One way we hope to do this is by developing accommodation in a plot adjacent to the hospital which would be rentable by staff and also by visiting students which we are receiving in greater numbers including those doing neonatal specialist training. Funds raised could then be fed back into the ward needs and other community projects that Umweo is undertaking.

This project has been a long journey towards providing a level of care which can help our local new-born babies to survive and thrive. It felt like a distant dream at the beginning but we are so grateful to everyone who got behind the vision, fundraised, spread the word and helped to make this a reality. We still have work to do going forward, there are always ways to improve on what we are doing but the opening of this (very beautiful!) building has been a landmark in the journey.

Apologies that this update has been so long in coming, we didn’t actually realise how long it had been since we wrote a blog post, maybe because of the more frequent Facebook posts! Looking forward to properly catching up with people in person towards the end of year, but we are likely to put out a post in October to leave things in place for Christmas here before we travel.

With love, Larry, Leah, Hannah, Naomi and Micah

Umweo Church

Visit of family from the UK to Zambia

Opening of the New Baby Ward

Birthdays!

10th August 202319th June 2024

Building Project is almost done!

Another long overdue update as projects have been progressing fast over here. We have been meaning to update everyone for some time, so apologies!

Thank you to all who supported the Christmas Project last December, we really appreciate you and your continued partnership. The Christmas Project donations once again were a tremendous blessing to so many individuals and groups here in Kapiri. They were used to fund the following:

Formula milk for babies in need (where mum has died or is unable to feed for various reasons) – an ongoing project, currently feeding around 20 babies per month.
Vitamins, iron and other support for premature babies in the neonatal unit
Christmas gifts at the local children’s home
Nutritional support hampers for children under follow-up for malnutrition at the hospital/ local clinics
Gifts for inpatient mothers and babies for Christmas, Easter, International Women’s Day and Mother’s Day
Support for a nurse to study neonatology for a year before returning to our new ward – we hope to be able to repeat this with more staff going forward to increase knowledge and skill set
Some support with school fees/ school uniforms
Assistance for traveling for medical treatment
Parts for fixing and maintenance of our CPAP (breathing) machines and pulse oximeters (for patient monitoring).

Once again a huge thank you to everyone who supported and contributed to allow us to do these things.

As a family we have enjoyed a steady stream of visitors this year, such a welcome change after some years of lockdowns, red lists and crazy flight prices. We have hosted 3 students for hospital placements (Rosie, Laetitia and Abbie), and then a team from Mosaic church Leeds who joined us for church activities, visited some potential church plots, the hospital and the new building, and ran a youth conference where we had around 60 young people attend with the theme ” It’s who I am”. We had baptisms for seven church members including Hannah at the local dam on the Sunday afternoon. The trip was rounded off with a night to relax and reflect at Nsobe game reserve.

Then in June/July Leah’s parents, Jean and Mick, came. Joyful reunion after years would be an understatement! We introduced them to our current lives here in Kapiri, they joined us for church services, visited the hospital and witnessed some formal agreements being made regarding the Neonatal Unit building on behalf of the donors. We also had opportunity to take a trip to Livingstone to see the Victoria Falls, where we stayed at Fawlty Towers (yes honestly!) which was incredible. Time flew but many memories were made.

One of the biggest updates we need to share is the progress of the Neonatal Unit building project. We are almost nearing completion and anticipate being able to move in within the next 1-2 months. We are in the process of finalising all of the interior furniture that we need, are about to have local artists help us with some wall art, and have signed an M.O.U. with the local health board agreeing to safeguard the building for the purpose it has been designed for. We are looking at whether we can additionally support the sustainability of the Neonatal Unit by providing a wage for a support worker to be in the ward helping families to use the facilities well and supporting the nursing staff with maintaining the environment. As the Neonatal Unit has increased again this year in the number of admissions (we anticipate around 1000 admissions this year) the move is very much needed and the improvement in conditions for our babies and their mothers who remain in the hospital for the whole duration of the baby’s admission will be almost incomparable. We will be aiming for as near to continuous skin to skin (kangaroo mother care) from birth for our low birth weight and preterm babies as this has been shown internationally to dramatically reduce death and infection rates. The nursing staff, many who have now worked for some years in our tiny hot room are also very excited about the move, and we have also included a large staff room with library and area for training, which will also be used by visiting students from outside institutions. We have included a lot of photos of the building process below, hopefully you can get a feel for the size and feel of the building. Thank you so very much to everyone who has contributed to this project, we could not have done this without you! It has been incredible to have so many people get behind the vision and make individual sacrifices in order to help improve what care we can provide for our local community. Really, saying thank you isn’t quite enough! And to all of those who knit hats and cardigans, send pots of sudocrem, support our milk fund both individual baby on a regular basis/ general gifts, or other consumable needs within the ward, it all is very gratefully received and does not go unnoticed. We hope that it will also bring joy to you to see the end result. We will update again around the time of the opening ceremony and when the ward is in use but for now enjoy looking through the photos!

Finally, if you know of anyone who might be interested in receiving the blog, please do let us know!

12th October 202219th June 2024

November 2022

Hello!

A lot has happened since our last update. We held another community Craft Market in May; the Neonatal Unit building project is underway at the hospital with all necessary documents in place and life continues to be full every day, with long work days, new animals added to our household and busy church programs. Larry has been involved in running a teacher training course for a week every few months in Kitwe with the organisation that his visa is under. The kids continue to learn from home and just this week we had an incident where our car was very broken, but so grateful it was something that could be fixed! We have included some photos below of some of the above. In August we had a visitor from the UK – Natalie. Our first visitor for 2 years. We had such a lovely time with her around, and although things were a bit different to anticipated (she’s studying Civil Engineering and had hoped to see the building project in action), we hoped she enjoyed herself anyway! Then more recently there was a medical team from the USA in Kapiri doing a fantastic maternal and neonatal resuscitation training course for the rural health centres in our district. They had chance to visit us after the course one day which was lovely. It’s great to finally be able to receive visitors again!

As a Church we have been putting time into developing our choir and music ministry. We have included a short video below of this past Sunday when the choir were presenting some of their newer songs. We will be holding another Craft Market at the beginning of December and intend to fit in another 5000+ training before the year ends. Larry has been joining a group of local pastors on our local radio station each Friday morning where they discuss issues of faith, doctrine and theology then have a phone in session for people to ask questions which has been lots of fun, an opportunity to really get to know some other pastors locally and look at the Bible together.

The Neonatal Unit Building Project has been a major focus for 2022. We have learned a lot along the way about construction, design, planning permission, and the general challenges of paperwork. There have been many hurdles during this process which we won’t go into in detail but it was incredible to see spades finally going into the ground recently. Water for the building site has proved to be a much greater challenge than originally anticipated and we are currently having to buy it and have it delivered by the truck load in order to keep the foundations damp, even harder in the hot season! The final design is incredible and will allow our mothers to stay in the ward alongside their babies, with a place to eat and shower, and the ability to do constant kangaroo care. Working at night you realise just how much these ladies put themselves through in order that their baby might survive, with inadequate space for sleeping, eating and bathing often for weeks or even months. Staff build strong relationships with many of them and we celebrate with them when they come back for their reviews with growing babies.

Through so many generous donors, and a couple of charities who have applied for grants on our behalf, we have managed to raise the 80% needed to get the building work started. In total we have raised around 92% of the total required to complete the building including:

The cost of some extra CPAP (breathing machines- we sometimes have to choose who gets the ones we currently have, or remove a baby a bit sooner than planned to allow someone else to benefit)
A battery back-up system (we had a couple of power cuts recently where our generator was also not functioning which leads to significant challenges in keeping our babies breathing so we (the neonatal staff) cannot wait for this new facility to be ready!)
An oxygen system which will enable us to fill low pressure cylinders ourselves for use during power cuts and in the ambulance

It’s a bit tricky owing to the instability in currencies but we estimate that we will need to raise another £9-10,000 in order to fully fund the project to completion. Thank you to everyone who has contributed so far! We are also looking to send a nurse for a formal Neonatal Training qualification which is a new course to Zambia last year. This will be a fabulous asset to our unit and will add to our ability to continue to train others in neonatal care.

Another project which continues to grow is the milk fund. We are currently supporting on average 20-25 babies per month, many of these go on to need long term support for the first year of life (e.g. in the case of maternal death or severe malnutrition- we have had some cases where breastfeeding hasn’t worked out and the baby has come in with greater than 30% weight loss for example). So far we have been longer term supporting at least 60 babies in total since we started in June 2019, with many more supported short term e.g. during maternal illness or with prematurity when expressed milk was not enough. It currently costs around £20 to feed each baby fully per month. Some families are able to contribute something, some with multiple pregnancies such as twins or triplets can supplement the breastmilk with the formula while others need full support. Without this, babies often receive watered down formula, cow’s milk or maize/sugar drinks all of which are not meeting their nutritional needs. Premature babies treated in our neonatal unit (who are usually being breastfed) also receive multivitamins and iron to supplement their needs until six months of age, at an average cost of £15 for the full 6 months. Some families can manage this and others would miss out without the support provided. Once in the milk fund we have the joy of seeing babies thriving and at one year old we send them through to our nutritionist for support on how to feed the child going forward. If anyone is interested in supporting an individual baby, or making a donation towards this project we would be very grateful. As we usually do, a large chunk of this years’ Christmas project will go towards these nutritional needs.

In June/ July Leah made a very brief trip back to sit an exam – it was so lovely, albeit brief, to meet with friends and family in the 4 days following the exam, to meet new babies and even see the seaside. The kids felt it keenly though and do miss our family and friends back home. They loved receiving letters written especially to them when I returned, as well as the bags of UK sweeties that were sent for them! We have had the addition of 5 kittens (almost grown enough to be rehomed) and countless baby bunnies to the menagerie that is our home. Hannah, Naomi and Micah have really stepped up and started taking responsibility for their daily care/ cleaning which adds an extra something to their day. They call the kittens their ‘study buddies’, own having them sleeping nearby whilst they are doing their lessons. We are anticipating some resistance to the very necessary rehoming! Hannah continues to be serious about her studies and to have a passion and skill for bracelet making; Naomi for craft, painting and baking ever increasingly tall cakes, and Micah for building intricate Lego machines that do all kinds of unexpected things through rubber band propulsion. Although home-schooling certainly does have some downsides, we do love that they also have time to pursue in depth their own interests and skills. As a family we watched the Queen’s funeral, which brought up a lot of questions about our trip to London in 2020 and indeed London History itself. So they are now working on a collective history project looking at the same.

Unbelievably Christmas is fast approaching. For the Christmas project this year we would like to focus on keeping the nutritional programs we have been doing going, the nurse training and possibly sourcing a good quality prosthetic leg for a young man in our church congregation who lost his leg after an accident. School fees are now free in Zambia, but we still receive lots of requests for help with books etc. and like to give each child in the local children’s home an individual gift (usually along the lines of a school bag etc.). It also allows us the resource to help individuals who are struggling with medical needs such as travel or buying medications.

We would love to hear news from yourselves if you have the time to send it. Enjoy the pictures!

Umweo Church choir

6th March 20225th November 2022

Neonatal Unit Project and Christmas Update

Dear Family and friends,

We hope that you are all keeping well. We love to hear your news as well so please do get in touch from time to time and let us know how you are doing!
Firstly an update on the Christmas project this year, then an update on the Neonatal Unit building project.
This year around the Christmas period we did the following the donations we received:

Provided 30 mothers who were in hospital with their sick or premature new-borns on Christmas Day with a small parcel which contained some food treats, soap/ toothpaste/ toothbrush, baby care products and a washable nappy.
Provided 25 food hampers for families who have young children being followed up for malnutrition in our community. It included foods with high protein which is what these children need but families often struggle to regularly provide.
Planted 60 Pawpaw (papaya) trees and one Moringa tree so far at the hospital.
Provided a Christmas gift for all children at the local children’s home – school bags and equipment for the younger school-going children, and a gift voucher for a local clothes shop plus toiletries for the teenagers.
Provided a Christmas gift bag for 60 children who came to our Christmas service and got involved in our nativity play – this included some food, toiletries, sweet treats and some school books/ stationary.
Provided a new electric kettle for the SCBU unit for making up formula milk.
Provided formula milk for the babies we are supporting with the milk fund (around 18 babies in the past few months!)
Helped a few children with the costs associated with school including school shoes etc.

Remaining funds will be used for supporting the neonatal unit needs and more formula milk! A Big thank you to everyone who gave this Christmas, we, as always, enjoyed the task of playing postman for all of these gifts!

Many of you will be aware of our current plans to build a dedicated neonatal unit at the local hospital where Leah has now been volunteering for 4 and a half years. Admissions of sick and premature neonates have increased 3-4 fold over that time, with improved survival and outcomes for the babies being cared for. In keeping so many babies at the hospital (we have had 119 admissions so far this year between 1^st Jan and 3rd March.) our room is congested, can’t support the electrical needs of the equipment we need to run and means we are unable to keep mothers and babies together. The mothers stay in the hospital for the duration of their baby’s admission which can be for up to 2 months!

We are needing to do some additional fundraising in order to meet the projected costs of the project which are over double what we had originally been told to fundraise. Please see below the video update link below which explains things in more detail. We have also attached some information about the charity contractor PDH that we will be working with in constructing the facility. Again we want to reiterate we are aware that so many people have given very sacrificially and we are so grateful for everyone who has helped us so far!

We are also applying to other medical charities for donations of medical equipment and it’s been such a blessing to see different people from around the world getting behind our project and donating in that way as well.

Please do contact us with any questions you may have about any of the above. We look forward to updating you with the progress in the very near future!

Larry & Leah

Sunday School dressed for the Nativity service

1st December 20211st December 2021

Christmas 2021

Hi friends and family,

The Christmas season is upon us and as we consider some of the needs in our community we wanted to invite anyone who wants to contribute to a gift to help someone this year. Apologies about being last minute with this, especially to those of you who started to ask about this some weeks ago, it has been a hectic month.

We are also very aware that so many people have already supported the Special Care Baby Unit Building Fund this year which is amazing!

We want to keep it fairly simple again this year. Due to Covid reducing the number of 5000+ courses we have run, we still have some stoves remaining from the last batch which will hopefully be given out in the next 2 weeks as we just ran the course for the first time in ages on Friday. So instead we are thinking of doing the following:

Food hampers for some of the children who have been admitted to the malnutrition ward at the hospital in recent months. Many of these are children with disabilities who struggle to eat a standard diet, others come from families who struggle to feed them adequately. So we will look to do as we did last year and provide a food hamper which will contain foods high in protein and essential vitamins etc., along with an invite to attend the 5000+. The cost of these hampers would be around £15.
Last week we planted around 60 trees at the hospital (mainly papaya which Larry grew himself from seed, plus Moringa). We would love to supplement these with some more varieties of grafted fruit trees plus fertiliser (chicken manure!). The cost of a tree is around £5-6.
The milk fund continues to take on babies at a faster rate than we have ever known. We are currently buying around 40-48 tins of milk per month. The cost varies a little depending on where we can find the milk and also the size/ age of the baby, but is approximately £15 per month to feed one baby.
We would love to bless the children at the local children’s home with an individual gift each (possibly a new school bag with books each but to be discussed with Mary who runs the home). We would look to spend £10 per child.
Finally we would also do some food hampers or a small business start-up for members of the community who are struggling, along with an invite to attend 5000+. We would look to spend around £15 on this.

Any remaining funds would be put towards the hospital project, specifically the oxygen back up system we need to ensure there is no disruption is oxygen supply to the babies and to have standby oxygen for use when moving the patients from one facility to another.

If you would like to be part of any of the above please do get in touch.

We wish you all a lovely Christmas and New Year!

Larry, Leah and the family

12th October 202113th October 2021

2021 has flown by….

In finally sitting down to try to write quick update I realise just how long it has been since the last one – although it’s not the format of blog style posts, it almost demands a ‘face covered with hands’ emoji……

Where to start? A lot has happened since Christmas time. We had a lovely response as always to the Christmas appeal and managed to do many things including the following:

Making some food parcels for members of the community who were struggling – this year identified by some of our IMPACT course members who know the needs within their communities
Helping some children with school fees
Starting a co-operative group where people can use a central fund to take out a small loan to invest in starting/boosting their own business
Funded anti-rabies jabs for a boy who had been bitten by a wild dog – the course was going to cost around 1.5 months wage for the father
Helped various people with travel expenses linked to health needs
Healthcare- bought, amongst other things, baby weighing scales for some rural clinics plus our malnutrition ward
Boosted the funds in the ‘Milk fund’ where we support babies who are unable to have mum’s milk for various reasons with formula until their first birthday, so far supported around 20 babies over a longer term, and many others in the short term during admissions etc.

Our ability to run the usual 5000+ courses has been hampered by Covid, but we did manage one program over 3 days including distributing some of the remaining charcoal free stoves, between the various restrictions lifting and being put back in place again. As a family we had Covid in July, not a pleasant experience or one we are anxious to repeat but grateful for restored health and the help of good friends during that difficult time.

Churches were still allowed to meet twice weekly for one hour, and as a church we have recently moved location to a place closer to where we live and less congested than the previous school. This seems to be working well, although we were being very cautious still, Sunday School has just reopened and the services as of last Sunday are back to the usual length. We had two baptisms in April around Easter time. The IMPACT course is much reduced in time spent together and we are missing having the young people around, especially on those times when they would cook together twice a week under our mango tree.

Our children have remained at home for schooling since our return, they were quite settled into the UK curriculum and given the uncertainty of schooling locally going forward with Covid it didn’t seem to make sense to change everything again, only to have to change back. This has been on the whole a good decision for us as a family, we have such busy weekends with church things and many long days at the hospital but we now have the freedom to move things around a bit and take a family day during the week. Of course, the kids do miss the social side of school but our garden seems to be filled daily with lots of children coming to play football, netball or ride the swing which goes some way to compensating. As a family we bit the bullet and made the long journey down to Livingstone in the very south of Zambia, bordering Zimbabwe to experience for the first time one of the Seven Wonders of the World – the Victoria Falls. It was an incredible experience, the falls were full as it was the end of a long, plentiful rainy season and the place was also quiet due to Covid impact on tourism.

We are just in the process of renewing work permits, with Larry and the kids two year renewal already agreed but Leah’s is proving a little more tricky this time and requiring some paperwork from the head office for Ministry of Health in Lusaka. We are really hoping this process won’t drag on too much longer then we can focus again on what we are doing for the next two years rather than chasing papers. But am sure that in all of it there is a purpose and trust God’s faithfulness in all these situations, even when it doesn’t seem to work out quite as we hoped! We’ve included some photos of the kids and the animal menagerie that is our home, with the latest addition of a kitten who was named Joy owing to the fact that she brought them joy on a day a lot of their pet rabbits were stolen.

Speaking of plans for the next two years, things at the hospital have continued to move forward, with increased numbers of nurses for the special care baby unit and opportunities for training. As a staff team, and the hospital in general, we were hard hit by the third wave of Covid and it’s only in the last few weeks that we are seeing things return to near normal. We made a video earlier this year to start fundraising for the new building that we desperately need now owing to ever increasing numbers of infants coming for treatment/ care. This was shown in a few church settings but in the end not widely distributed as Zambia was coming up to an election which is a sensitive time. Anyone who has not seen it please do contact us as we’ll send you a link. We have been overwhelmed with the response, including a group of children/ young people from Church on the Way doing a sponsored cycle and raising over £1000! We have also had support from a charity called ‘CRY’(cry.org.uk) in helping us to realise this vision. We are hoping to start the foundations in the next couple of weeks……

Thank you to everyone who has supported us and these projects over the past years, we are continually astounded by the generosity and support from friends, family, and friends of friends back home. We have had some children send us their pocket money to use, people holding competitions within extended family and donating the funds raised, and others looking out for donated equipment or charities that might be interested in helping with the projects. It really does make a difference. A special shout out to Gideon who raised some money very recently for the ‘sick babies in Zambia’ – this money is providing feeding equipment for premature and sick babies, plus new tubings for our CPAP machines (helping babies breathe better). With everything that has been going on we’ve not yet made plans for a Christmas project this year yet, but with ongoing projects such as the milk fund (currently buying around 30-40 tins of formula per month) and hopefully increasing numbers of programs again, now that covid restrictions are allowing, there are plenty of needs to meet.

We hope you enjoy the photo galleries of the last 8 months or so. With love, Larry, Leah, Hannah, Naomi and Micah.

A family of rare and protected white rhinos.

Mosi Oa Tunya (Victoria Falls) displaying its full force.

8th December 202010th December 2020

Christmas Update 2020

We just wanted to write a quick update, having been back in Kapiri for the past 3 weeks. It was quite a journey to get back, involving multiple cancellations and rearranging of flights, it was such a relief to finally get our feet on the ground in Ndola, where we were met by a good friend Osward and some men from Mechanics for Africa (MFA) who had been looking after our vehicle.

Home quarantine provided us with opportunity to unpack, organise and regroup a little bit before this past week where we have been back doing a significant proportion of what we would usually have done in a normal week. Catching up with friends and the IMPACT discipleship team, seeing how the SCBU unit at the hospital has been running and getting stuck back in. Corona is here in the background, at low levels, but a fair amount of life is just continuing as normal. It has brought hardships particularly in an economic sense with the highest decrease in the value of the kwacha we have known in the past 5.5 years. As we usually meet in a school classroom which remains prohibited, we are unable to do church in the usual way and are looking to more creative solutions to remaining connected. Just prior to leaving the UK we put together a large shipment of items mainly for the hospital which we are expecting will arrive in the next week – there will be great excitement to unpack. Thank you to everyone who contributed/knitted!

As such, just having arrived back and getting to grips with life here again, we are planning on a smaller Christmas project this year. We are still remaining with some cooking stoves from last year given that the programs we would usually run throughout the year with these being received by those who complete, have not been running – we are unsure yet when it will be possible to recommence them. We are continuing to support some babies with formula milk and some young people with insulin, and also to support the SCBU unit; some secondary school students and IMPACTers with ‘life’ bursaries to allow them to eat and provide daily necessities whilst they study; support some families with school fees especially given the difficult economic climate; and this year to put together some food hampers for Christmas/ New Year for families (£15 each) who have been particularly hard hit by the current economic hardships. If you would like to contribute in any way to this please do get in touch.

Wishing you all a blessed Christmas! It was a lovely opportunity to see people in the UK, albeit at a social distance and infrequently! I was personally very grateful to have opportunity to return to the NHS for a little bit and work with an awesome team at the BRI Neonatal Unit. Jessy and Mikey (my sister and brother-in-law) went beyond hospitality and allowed us to live ‘at home’ with them for the whole period, a time which none of us will forget.

17th June 202010th December 2020

2020 Update

We wanted to write to update you all on the ‘Christmas’ project but also on various big decisions that we made recently.

We are currently back in the UK, having, made a last minute decision to fly as we saw the airports closing. We had been told just a few weeks earlier that Larry’s father, David, was very ill and we knew that airport closures might mean months of not having the option to come back. Even the day we flew it was uncertain if we would be allowed through the many airports we needed to pass but praise God we managed and arrived only an hour later than our scheduled time! In a time when so many are finding things so difficult, families are separated and many things are uncertain, we can see how God’s grace extended to us. We were blessed to have some good weeks with David before he passed away peacefully in early May are feeling very grateful to have this precious family time even amongst the many restrictions on that at the moment. He was a wonderful, loving and gentle man who was devoted to his family, had a crazy sense of humour and has left a large space in our lives. We do take comfort in his strong faith in Jesus and his readiness to ‘go home’. Thank you to everyone who checked in on us and prayed for us during this time.

March was quite a significant month for us in the work we’ve been involved in in Zambia. It saw the first fully staffed neonatal rota for nurses and has had a large impact on the quality of care we are able to offer. I (Leah) am so grateful for the team to work with, but also the friendships that have formed over the past few years with my colleagues. March also saw our young friend with the cardiac problem (who I know many have prayed for and contributed to financially over the years) finally get the surgery he needed. Again this required international flights and it was amazing how everything worked out to get him there and back before Covid-19 reached and impacted movement in that region of Africa.

The Christmas project looked a little different again this year. We now have 3 young people of secondary school age receiving a regular living costs bursary to enable them to focus on their studies without worrying about what they are going to eat. We trialled just a few solar lights (long story but the original ones we wanted became unavailable so we bought a different brand to trail with just a couple of families and are waiting for their feedback). Another Peko Pe stove session ran in December. We bought new school bags for all of the school age children at the local children’s home and were able to help some of these children plus various families with school fee costs. We are also continuing to support, and add to the numbers of babies who have a need for formula milk for various reasons. It’s wonderful to see them thrive with their families.

As the corona virus has caused some additional challenges for local families we released the remaining funds from the Christmas appeal to buy some sacks of mealie meal (ground maize- the staple food) to help them in a small way. The young men and women who have committed to the IMPACT discipleship course are the ones overseeing this and it has been a joy to see them rise to challenge to running with a project without us being physically present.

The money was also used to finish a workshop and almost finish a physiotherapy room at the large clinic in the town centre. Once the lockdown finishes, these rooms will be used for children with disabilities to come for assessment and physio, with the workshop being the satellite location for the Zambian Association for Children with Disabilites (ZACD) who will start building mobility aids specifically measured to the individual children we are working with. This will be a great blessing to parents who would usually need to travel a huge distance to access such services and will hopefully help to raise awareness of disability in our area.

The Special Care Baby Unit is continuing to be slowly developed. Money went into buying some small essential items such as a kettle, plus feeding tubes and medicines. This year, now that we have a fully staffed rota we would like to develop the project by extending the building that we are currently working in. We are often very short of space to care for the babies coming to us so we would like to extend both the patient care area, the kangaroo mother care area and the lodgings for the mothers as they currently take up space, sometimes for weeks at a time, on the postnatal ward. I have had some amazing privileges to get involved in some national neonatal projects (writing guidelines and helping to run training sessions) and have made some amazing colleagues and friends through this. It’s wonderful to work under people such as Dr Kapembwa (National Neonatal Co-ordinator) and Dr Manoj (National Co-ordinator for Paediatrics) with such a passion for the babies and children in Zambia and also to be involved in a project with further reach than our local babies. I also got to visit an area of Zambia that I had not visited before – I’ve included some photos of the Samfya River in Luapula Province, which is even more breath-taking in real life than in the photos. My soul felt well for seeing vast areas of water, not a common sight in the area where we live.

In April we had some baptisms for some ladies who have recently joined the church. We said goodbye to Alex and Charlotte who have been serving in Zambia for the past year and had joined and supported us in church life, taking some of the responsibility for teachings and Sunday school. They have become great friends who we will miss dearly when we return to Zambia, especially during our Friday night pizza and movie nights in our home. We ended up flying together on the last flight out of Ndola!

The car has been keeping Larry pretty busy with repairs, and despite it’s 20 years is still going! We had some serious welding of the chassis done by Darren and the team at Mechanics for Africa (a charity that trains people in good quality car/ vehicle repairs as well as other life skills) – we were so grateful and relieved that they were able to achieve what was needed!

I had some extra time on my hands whilst waiting for my medical licence renewal paperwork to come through, some of which I used to pass out most of the remaining pairs of shoes that had been donated – this is such a fun job. In the New Year we also had some days away to Mkushi, around 2 hours North East of us where we stayed with some dear friends Cath and Phil Wallis, and enjoyed kayaking on the dam, and climbing a local hill and were thoroughly spoiled by good company, and Cath’s cooking and baking.

In October we had a great time with a whistle-stop visit from Cameron (brother-in-law), Samuel (nephew) and Tom (longstanding friend) – it’s always such fun to show people we love the place we now call home and help them to experience some of the amazing things that Zambia has to offer. They got involved in church and the boys Bible study, Samuel went to school for a few days with the kids, and then we took a trip to Nsobe game camp to see some animals. We know that trips like this will prove tricky, at least in the near future owing to the changes in world travel due to corona virus, but they have been a real source of encouragement to us in the past.

In February we buried a dear colleague from the hospital – Sister Beatrice was acting Nursing Officer when I first started working at the hospital and was a very patient listening ear as I learned to navigate the system which was so different to anything I was used to.

Since arriving in the UK, along with lock-down home-school, our kids also set out to fund-raise for some PPE for Kapiri district health personnel. There are photos below of the challenges that they undertook, the money being sent across there to procure the necessary items locally. We would like to thank Wendy Spink and Grant Ellis, two of Larry’s former work colleagues who made and donated some fabulous reusable visors which are on their way to Kapiri as we speak! For now we are here in the UK, flights back cancelled and no alternative offered as of yet so we are unsure when it will be possible and practical for us to head back to Zambia. We are being hosted by Jessy and Mikey (Leah’s sister and brother-in-law) and their kids and are extremely grateful for their hospitality and patience as we invade their space for a prolonged period of time. Hopefully this will prove to be a chance for refreshment, thinking and praying about vision and plans for our next season as well as reflecting on the last five year since we first moved long term to Kapiri. It’s been quite a journey so far!

Medical Matters

World Prematurity Day, Kapiri Mposhi, 2019

*World Prematurity Day 2019 in Kapiri Mposhi. Organised by Leah.*

Back in the UK

Fund Raising money sent to Zambia for P.P.E.

Purchasing P.P.E. and cleaning products with donation money

Pics from Zambia

Christmas service at Umweo Church, Kapiri Mposhi