Lisa and Brian Dalley volunteered with Hands at Work from 2008 to 2022. They started in Canada serving for the Hands Canada office and came to serve long term in Africa in 2015. Brian passed away in 2022.
"We have lived in Zambia for just over two years now. At times it is challenging to combine our cultures and work towards creating a kingdom culture. Coming from Canada, community living is not something we are used to or have ever experienced. We love that people feel open to come by and sit with us and share life with us. Life is quiet sometimes but that gives us time to learn and hear from God. We spend a lot of time reading and sharing what we have learned and right now I am reading about joy. Sometimes it is hard to find joy amongst the messiness of community living and working within our communities. We hear difficult stories, we see many difficult situations but living in community helps us remember who we are and why we do the work we do. So within the struggles there is so much joy in living together. The opportunity to be vulnerable to one another, to be open with our lives and our life experiences, we have learned so much about worthiness, resilience and joy from the people who have courageously shared their struggles with us. We have learned that joy comes from the ordinary moments not the extraordinary. As we share life in the ordinary day-to-day things and not look for the extraordinary, we find joy. We are grateful for what we have and celebrate it. We share our stories and find comfort in knowing others can lean into our lives and help us grow and learn. When we honour what people are willing to be a part of and share, we find ourselves in a place of vulnerability and sometimes that can be scary but it does help us to build resilience and cultivate hope, so when times are tough - and there will be tough times - we are stronger.
We have realised how precious this time has been to us and know that God has called us to this place in a time that is right and we feel honored to share our life, our joy and our hope with the family we have around us."