Stressed? Do you or your school face significant challenges? If so, the following letter from Rev. Hingley will put our stresses into perspective. It also calls us to pray for our brothers and sisters and to count our many many blessings.
LETTER FROM ZIMBABWE
Christopher Hingley is a church Pastor and the Rector of the Petra Schools, Christian Primary and High Schools in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. These schools are facing unparalleled issues because of the economic and political chaos in the country.
“Abundantly blessed”
We have had some visitors from England here this week. It is interesting to see what they notice about life here, since we are so used to the strangeness of the situation that we are hardly aware any longer of things that strike visitors as unusual.
One thing they noticed was the level of stress. In church on Sunday it is not unusual for many people to be in tears during the service or as they talk together afterwards. Another indicator of 
stress is sleeplessness. I was at a conference for school Heads last week, and everyone I spoke to described the same experience: we are all tossing and turning in the small hours of the night.
But one of our visitors also asked a Christian leader here what it has been like for Christians in Zimbabwe over the last few weeks. He thought for a moment and said simply, ”We have been abundantly blessed.” A few minutes reflection on those words made me realize how true they are.
Never in my life have I been more aware of the little signs of God’s grace that are there every day, but can easily be missed.
Personally, I was very worried that I had to drive back to Zimbabwe from Botswana the day after Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the Presidential run-off election, and security was intense with roadblocks everywhere. In a beautiful, ironic answer to prayer, some policemen asked me for a lift all the way from the border to Bulawayo.
When the soldiers and police manning the roadblocks saw who my passengers were, they did not trouble me in any way, or even wave me down, and I was able to drive through all through all blocks without even stopping.
Our church at Whitestone Chapel was fuller this Sunday than it has ever been in the last ten years. It was packed in the morning service, and there were four times as many people in the evening service than there were two moths ago.
In the school, the issues we have faced this term have been:
Hyper inflation
Inflation has now reached well over 5 million per cent a year. Prices double every day or two. There is very little in the shops that anyone can afford. Yesterday one banana cost 20 billion dollars. Salaries are virtually valueless within a day or two of being received. But support we have received has enabled us to do something to address the crisis and help our staff to provide for their families. We are doing our best to pay all staff weekly, and to be creative in thinking of practical ways to help them. The problem is still huge, and this week we have simply not been able to pay staff because we cannot find the cash: banknotes are very scarce, and cheques are no longer accepted. Having said that, we are grateful that no staff members have absconded or resigned this term, and they are just about managing to hang on in there.
Morale
After the election was 
once again stolen in June, there was a collapse of morale. Most people were in despair, and you could see the signs of depression everywhere. Two of our very best members of staff came to me to say that they could no longer carry on, and were going to resign. Amazingly they came back a week or two later, and said that they had changed their minds – one because of a providential meeting she had had at Petra just before she was going to accept a job in another school, and the other because he had heard God speak to him very clearly in a Bible study challenging him about his commitment to stay. Keeping and encouraging our staff is the highest priority that we have.
Transport
We have had huge problems with school transport this term. One Saturday, our sports teams were waiting for a fleet of buses we had hired to take them to matches in two cities about three hours away. The buses never arrived, and our teams were stranded; the buses had been commandeered by the Government for a pre-election rally. Two weeks later, a bus that we had hired to take teams to Harare broke down at dusk about 100 kilometres from Bulawayo, and parents had to go by car to rescue the children. We are so grateful for some gifts we have received from friends overseas that now make it possible for us to buy two 29-seater second-hand buses. We are actively looking for buses to bring in from Japan, which seems to be the best value we can find.
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God (2 Corinthians 1:3 - 4)
Christopher Hingley
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