Tuesday, November 8, 2011

What a busy half-term we've just had . . . . !










Firstly Congratulations to Mr & Mrs Cole with the safe arrival of Emily their first daughter.

ISAZ Sport was very much at the front of the senior’s minds with qualifiers and finals of Basketball and Volleyball to play in. The girls qualified for both events at the Olympic Youth Development Centre in Lusaka, the boys managed to get through to the volleyball finals. Christina, Womba and Manasseh were talent spotted and hopefully will be called to take part in the Zambian National Youth Basketball Development squad later this year – well done!

Unfortunately the competition was stiff and none of the teams managed to get beyond the group stages so we journeyed back to Chingola a few hours earlier than we had hoped. However a night in a Lusaka guesthouse and pizza from a restaurant made the weekends exertions worth the while even if the sporting outcome wasn’t what we wanted. A BIG thank you to Steve Studd for stepping in at the last minute to drive us down there – Mission Support at work!!

Primary and Secondary have also been involved in Swimming. Amano competed against Mpelembe, Ndola Trust and Lechwe School in 3 age categories. Jenny was our only race winner but we managed many 2nds and 3rds so we ended up finishing 3rd overall and not too many points behind the others. The other schools all have their own pool to train in and we only use a small one so hats off to our guys and girls for competing so hard and achieving so much. Our own swimming pool fund is slowly building up but we are still a few thousand dollars short of being at a stage when we can start digging the hole! Donations are gladly received.

It is exam time for our senior students; AS levels and IGCSE’s are currently taking place. In the run up to their exams our fantastic PTA organised a Quiz Night along with the Grade 12’s. They were raising money for a night out at a local restaurant to say “well done” for all the hard work that they have been putting in. The PTA cooked the food and the Grade 12’s served on the tables of the guests and ‘entertained’ them with a quiz of general knowledge during the evening. Between 60-70 people came and lots of fun was had, a few minds boggled and everyone’s stomachs were filled with great food! Womba was an excellent quiz master with Henry’s charm not going unnoticed as he waited on tables. Thanks to Josh for providing some ‘lounge music’ in between courses.

We’ve had our usual Family Services during the term too. It has to be noted that the number of visitors is increasing so much that next time we will be going into our new multi-function hall. The students take a real active part too, planning the services and then being involved in various ways on the day as well. They put their musical (Womba, Womba, Hope, Nkumbu, Mannaseh, Dennis, Chigo, Jenny, Charrisse & Chipe) dramatic (Chipe, Chileshe, Christina, Henry & Chigo) and practical (Alex, Andy & Edwin) skills to very effective use as they minister to the congregation each time. We praise our God for the way these young people use their talents to serve Him in this way.

Finally some new people have arrived at Amano.
A new set of volunteers have come from Germany; we now have Tanya, Miriam, Jonathan and Mark in the dorms and Jonas on the building site. These people are a great help to us especially as they commit themselves to us for the whole year.
Jonathan & Kerry Raas are here from the UK – Jonathan to teach in the science department and Kerry to work in the girls dorm. Jarrett Furnish comes to us from the USA and he will be involved with the pastoral side of the school as well as helping out in class every now and again.
With Mrs Cole absent on maternity leave we have Sarah Walls with us for a short time covering Grade 6 & 7 and along with her we have Rachel Deering teaching maths throughout the secondary school. Both of these new friends come from Northern Ireland. Mrs Ilona Lumpa also joined us this term. She is teaching in primary school along with another new teacher Simon Thorogood. We hope that both these two will become long term assets for the school.

With these extra people in place we seem well staffed but some are only here for a few months so please consider coming and helping out, ideally for a year or more. We’d dearly love to expand each primary class to 16 students if only we could find enough long term primary teachers to do that. With the school expanding and becoming more popular we desperately need to do this soon if we are not to disappoint too many parents who are seeking a very strong Christian education for the children. Our waiting list is well over 60!