Zambia Update - Celebrate Recovery in Zambia!!

Excited to bring you an update on our Zambia initiative begun last year. As you may remember, part of the initiative was to develop the faith based community to become a delivery infrastructure for support for gender based violence, substance abuse and suicide issues.

Zambia is a country of 15 million people with only one mental health facility for the country and (at the time of our visit) 8 mental health professionals of which we were able to bring the first safeTALK and Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training to the nation and train 6 of the 8 mental health professionals.  We additionally were able to train a number of chaplains and community individuals in crisis intervention. You can see more on some of our other blog post videos on this site.

In order to make this effective and while working with the Ministry of Health for the nation, Celebrate Revovery was chosen as a delivery model to develop support groups to reach out to the commmunity. Here is a quick update from our Celebrate Recovery Director in Zambia, Benjamin Samusiko.

"I want to take this opportunity to make known to everyone who had invested their resources, time, prayers and words of encouragement that through my Leadership as Celebrate Recovery Program Director in Zambia, I am more than humbled by the works of Journey Community Churches through the Leadership of a humble of servant of God Pastor Chris Rader for helping us achieve a cause God had planned for Zambia, Celebrate Recovery is now an active Ministry in Zambia.

During my visit to the USA in August 2016, I and the CR team from Zambia had a rare chance of presenting our idea of starting Celebrate Recovery in Zambia. During our presentation we had mentioned that we had a target of starting CR in 10 churches.

I want to thank God , the CR team in Zambia and the visiting CR team form Journey Community Church from USA who worked tirelessly during the past 5 months that has just made Zambia join a group of Celebrate recovery International and everyone who supported our cause. We could not have this without your generous support in what whatever way you help us.

Apart from launching CR in 10 churches, more than 50 Pastors had attended our training; this has resulted in more churches expressing interest in starting CR in their churches and join in the spreading of the good news of God through the ministry of CR.

Despite being joyful with what we have achieved, our journey has just started and we are still in need of your continued support to sustain CR in the 10 churches. Kindly feel free and ask how you can get involved by contacting me or Pastor Chris Rader  from Journey Community and join us to sustain what we have started."

Thank you all and stay blessed
Benjamin Samusiko
Celebrate Recovery Zambia Programs Director