What’s the Latest you ask???

Sorry no posts the last week or so-another funny thing about Africa is you pay for your Internet month by month and it is just from your cell phone.  When you run out of data, that is it!  So, we waited till we needed to go to Lusaka so we could “top up” as they say here. The other major hiccup was I had my first ever case of food poisoning.  Enough said.  It was wicked and knocked me down for a few days-praise be to God for healing me of that, will be more careful next time!  But we are back online, healthy, and ready to share all the craziness happening here in Chongwe, Zambia.

As I write this, the power is out again-seems to be out more than it is on here.  They say they are working on power lines and this should stop happening sometime in November when they are finished, but we shall see about that.  I am learning African time is much different than an American timeline.  Anyways…

What have we been up to this past week?  Moving into our house!!!  So nice to finally have a space to call our own after living in the RV all summer and traveling this past month.  The bad part about it is all the work it requires-lots of fix ups to do and the need to buy and install all the appliances. This is the major load Mickey has been carrying this past week.  We are going as fast as we can but NOTHING IS SIMPLE HERE! But, I am happy to say our home is really taking shape.  We have a decent sized fridge, a nice 5 burner gas stove, and our washing machine just got put in today!  Hallelujah! You should see our pile of laundry right now-the last time we did laundry was in Livingstone almost 2 weeks ago now…and things just get filthy here.  I have my work cut out for me in the next few days since we don’t have a dryer and we have to hang dry our clothes, then iron them to kill any fleas or other bugs who may have implanted themselves into the clothes.  Fun, huh?  Praising the Lord though I will have help with this monumental task each week in the form of our newly hired housekeeper, Felista.  It is customary in Zambia for Americans to employ Zambians while living here and we are happy to provide someone with a job as well as receive some help with the household tasks.  She will be working for us Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9 am to 2 pm.  Her jobs will be to help with laundry, sweeping/mopping, and other simple household tasks.  She came on Monday and we actually had to leave for Lusaka, so I gave her a list and man oh man, she went way above the call of duty.  Our house was spotless when we arrived home and she did things I didn’t even think to ask her to do.  I think she really wanted to impress us and she did!  We are so thankful, Josephine, Stephen and Aby’s housekeeper recommended her since we had no idea where to even begin looking for one!  Mickey and I still think it is really weird to have someone cleaning up after us, but we are hoping and praying to really make her part of our family this year and to help her feel loved and appreciated. 

Little bit more about what Mick has been up to besides trying to make our home livable-he has been playing basketball with a local youth team.  He really enjoys this as he gets exercise and he is getting to know these kids, which will hopefully lead to some open doors to disciple them to either first know Jesus as their Savior or to second deepen their walk with Him.  You should see his shiner he got this week though, whooweee!  He was also able to start our garden at our house with our gardener, Watson.  We hired him to work for us to take care of all the fruit trees (mango, lemon, pineapple, etc.!), grass, landscaping, garden, etc.  We have a HUGE yard that we share with the teamhouse and there is lots to do to keep it all growing and producing.  Can’t wait for some of those mangoes-the kids keep wanting to grab them, but they aren’t quite ready yet! He even built me my clothesline today! He is a hard worker and knows what he is doing so that is very helpful. The two guys who live in the team house right next to ours, James and Moses (recent graduates from Gospelink Bible College), also helped with the garden.  They are really interested in working with Mickey to take Farming God’s Way to nearby villages so our garden is a great opportunity to learn the method.  Mick is also doing a wonderful job helping me get acclimated, as well as spend good, quality time with the kiddos.  The kids (and I) absolutely love seeing him more and seeing him when he is not bone tired from being up all night at the fire station!

As for me, I have been homeschooling the kiddos every morning.  Working with Alea on counting (1 to 1 correspondence), the girl can count but won’t point at each object and count!  My goal for the next week is to really help her realize what she is counting. J  She is also working on coloring-yes, coloring.  I think coloring is so important and I can tell that she has improved her fine motor skills even in the last week of doing it every day. Ev is doing awesome.  He has such a creative mind.  In our writing workbook, he has to answer a question about what might happen in the picture with drawing his own picture and writing a sentence-love his sentences he comes up with.  Reading is going slow-he wants to learn, but it is hard so we are working on staying focused the WHOLE lesson.  Math comes super easy for him and for science, he gets to watch Sid the Science Kid.  Love that show.  Now don’t think that is all he does, but we are still getting set up here so haven’t really had the means or time to set up any experiments!  But today, after Sid, I put Alea down for a nap and I came out and he had made his own lever just like Sid, with his daddy’s shoes, a long piece of Styrofoam and he was launching stuff in the air when I came out!  Ha!  The rest of my day consists of making food and cleaning up food-I miss my dishwasher and garbage disposal-sigh…I know, I will survive, most of the world does, but things do take a lot longer this way!  I also get a workout in during naptime most days, then we have been heading over to the Nelms to play most afternoons.  Our yard isn’t really set up for kids yet, but the Nelms backyard is perfect for it and the kiddos just love playing all together, all though they are starting to fight like brother and sister since we have been spending so much time together!  After a little playtime, we head back to our house to make supper and have some family time.  I haven’t been able to do too much at the school yet, but hoping after we get settled a little bit more, Mickey and I can work out a routine where I can go a few days a week and meet with the teacher one night a week.  I was able to go with Aby and two other girls who are working with GiveLife to the preschool to do some major reorganization and decorating.  It was so fun-brought me right back to my setting up class days.  With money raised from a Zumbathon, GiveLife purchased some storage shelves, a fun rug, and other supplies.  I guess the teacher was just in shock when she got there the next morning-so glad we could make her smile and hopefully make going to work every day a little more cheerful.  There was one boy too who just didn’t move at first, he was just taking it all in.  LOVE IT.  I can’t wait to see when we are all done with the little renovation what they will do! 

What else?  Many people have asked about the adoption and I wish I could say we have gotten started, but we haven’t.  As you might have gathered from this post and the previous post, things are challenging here and our house needs a lot of work.  At this time, we just don’t feel ready to add another child to the mix.  We feel it is best to get a lot of this stuff squared away, like having a washing machine hooked up to do laundry, and having consistent running water, and our belongings from our container so we aren’t moving in as we are moving a new child in.  Oh yea, the container STILL ISN’T HERE.  This is like the ultimate challenge in patience for this thing.  We got an email last week that says it is coming this week for sure, but I know now, in Africa, you must see it, to believe it.  Please continue to pray it arrives soon-we can get house set up-and move on to the things that are really on our heart here.  Like the adoption. Like Farming God’s Way. Like the preschool.  We are trusting in God that He will use us here and we are continually checking ourselves to wait on Him.  You would think we would have learned by now that His timing is always best!  So, while it is frustrating to have to spend so much time on our house instead of doing the things we think we should be doing, we know that Romans 8:28 says, “And we know that in ALL things God works for the good of those who Love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” We do love Him and we know we have been called and we know we need to look for the good in ALL things.  Continue to refine us Lord and make us into who you need us to be. 

Hope that helped answer any questions you may have about what life is like here, will try and post more about that soon too.  There is never a dull moment that is for sure!  Oh, and power is back on now, and our air conditioning feels glorious!!! J 

 

Typical Zambian home

The kids love watching these ladies carry things on their heads-it is truly impressive.

Kid playing with cattle! ha!