West Nile Virus
A little over a month ago my brother was put in the hospital for nearly a week. He had apparently contracted the west nile virus and was in pretty bad shape. But thankfully the doctors caught it quickly and were able to treat him accordingly. He is now more or less back to 100%. I talked to him a couple of days ago and he said he is fine as ever. I must say that I find it ironic that I am the one in Africa with thousands of illnesses waiting around every corner and he is the one who comes down with a super-serious sickness while living in the US.
Chronological Bible Storying @ State Lodge
Since April I have been teaching at a rural church named State Lodge Baptist. It takes about 20 minutes to get there and is very similar to a bush church. The building itself is made up of nothing more than 4 cement walls. The pews are also made of cement and are connect to the walls and floor. So you can imagine how much fun it is to sit on a backless cement block that is less than a foot wide crammed shoulder to shoulder with other people for over two hours (lucky me got this experience yesterday when I went to church there). Good thing it is not summertime here in Zambia!
A little over two weeks ago I completed my series of stories with the children at State Lodge. It was a bit sad because I have really enjoyed being out there with them. The kids there are too precious and always full of smiles. During my time at State Lodge I have become friends with my translator, Veniya. She is a very quiet, mild-mannered gal. She is so kind and really does have a heart for the Lord’s work. Veniya lives several miles away from the church and would walk an hour and a half one way to help me teach the children. In late August/ early September I will start CBS at another location. This time I will be going past State Lodge out near Veniya’s house. She again will help me by translating for me. Veniya is very excited about us teaching out there because there are many children there and they have been taught very little in regards to the Bible stories we will be telling.
Some of the adults at State Lodge (Veniya is on the left).
Bethany Place Volunteers
Towards the end of June, Stephanie had a volunteer team come over from her home church in America. There were 12 total. They were split up into 3 teams of 4. One team was an evangelism team that stayed in a certain area of town and basically walked around meeting the people. Another team was a True Love Waits team. They went into the schools with Stephanie and taught the youth the importance of staying sexually pure. In case you did not know, HIV/AIDS is a huge problem in Africa. TLW is a program that is helping to decrease the number of those infected with HIV by teaching youth what God has said to us in the Bible. The other team was the deaf ministry team. I got to help with this team the most. These guys would go to the deaf school here in Lusaka and interact with and teach the students. Everyone on the team had some knowledge of sign language. Unfortunately, the most I knew was how to finger spell.
Holly and Naomi (members of the BP team) playing with the kids at State Lodge.
Every evening there was a revival-type service held at a church here. On different nights different students from the deaf school were able to attend. I thought the services were very cool because the message was being told in three different languages at the same time….Nyanja, English, and Sign. During the ten days that the team was here, we were able to see 132 people come to Christ! I think that is amazing! I guess it goes to show you that Zambia truly is a harvest field!
Victoria Falls
While the Bethany Place team was here we took them down to Livingstone to see Victoria Falls. Now for those of you who don’t know, Vic Falls is one of the 7 natural wonders of the world. Vic Falls is also called Mosi-o-tunya , which means “the smoke that thunders.” I do not have any pictures of me actually standing near the falls because it would have destroyed my camera. This time of year there is so much water and mist that it feels as if it is raining. We almost rented some rainjacket-poncho things but decided against it…we wanted the full experience! We got super-soaked! The sight of the falls is so breathtaking and unbelievable. The whole time I was there I could not help thinking about what must have gone through David Livingstone (first non-african to see mosi-o-tunya) mind when he first came upon the awesome sight. Our God is truly one of beauty that is for sure!
the Zambezi River.
Oh, also while in vic falls we went on a game drive. That was a lot of fun! We saw so many animals just freely roaming around. Although there were no elephants around to be seen…they must have been off hiding somewhere. But I must say that we got to see the rhinos and that was cool.
Johannesburg, South Africa
On July 3rd I flew down to Johannesburg with my supervisor, Cindy. She needed to go down for medical reasons and asked if I wanted to tag along. So of course I jumped at the chance. It was nice trip and I really enjoyed getting away! I think the thing I liked about it the most was that I did not stand out down there. I was able to blend in and no one really gave me a second look…..except for maybe a waiter at a coffee shop but that is a funny story for another time.
While in Jo’burg me and Cindy got a reputation for our movie-watching ability. My fearless and wise supervisor was clever enough to look up the movie schedules at the different malls and print out for our convenience. Now when some people heard of this they laughed at us, but it did not phase us at all. I will confess though that we scheduled our daily activities around the “movie of the day”. Now yes, we do have a movie theater in Lusaka, but it is not anything like in the states or South Africa. Ours has one screen and you just never know what will be showing. And it usually takes us at least 3 months to get the “new releases”…..we just got the new matrix last week.
Being in Jo’burg was a little weird. I kinda had a bit of culture shock. It was almost like being in America again, except that we were driving on the other side of the road. But I thoroughly enjoyed being there. I ate McDonald’s to my heart’s content and drank all the vanilla coke and slush puppies that my bladder could hold. Unfortunately I do not have any pictures from SA because I would forget to bring my camera along. Although we did take 3 while in the airport on the way home.
While in Jo’burg I was able to meet up with some friends I met while in Virginia at training. It was very nice to see them and to catch up on their life and ministry in Jo’burg.
Mallory’s Birthday
awaiting the arrival of mallory.
A couple of weeks ago Mallory’s mom sent me and Stephanie some items for a birthday party for Mallory. She sent a cake pan, two cake mixes, two icings, birthday candles, balloons, a banner, confetti, and party favors! She really did think of everything. So we organized a little surprise party for him.
the birthday boy
This past week
This week has been a relaxing one. Since I have finished up CBS, I have little to do. This week I got to hang out with fun gal, Paige. Paige is 15 and her parents work in the office here. She came over 3 or 4 days in a row and we were semi-bums together. One day me, Paige, and Stephanie went to House of Moses. That was great as usual. There are some itty-bitty babies there now. And I think you would all like to know that one day me, Paige, and Mallory played Risk and yours truly succeeded in global domination.
And, I also succeeded in totally procrastinating and not cleaning my room, yippee!!
Zimbabwe
In about 8 hours I will be in a car on my way down to Zimbabwe. Our mission in Zambia will be having our Annual Missionary Training Meeting. This is a week-long meeting where we all meet together and discuss the vision and direction the Lord has given us. It will be a great time of fellowship with all of our other missionaries and seeing what the Lord is doing in other parts of Zambia. There are 97 (including children) of us who will be traveling to Zimbabwe, so if you could please pray for safe travel during the week, it would be most appreciated.
Well looks like I have rambled on enough and I should probably retire now and go pack for this week. You might like to know that some things never change and I still wait till the last minute to do everything!
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