How was your day?

 

At dinner tonight Benedict shared about a very wise thing that Mr. Phiri said today.  At the end of the day Benedict asked Mr. Phiri, "How was your day?"  He answered, "Good.  Every day is good with God.  When he gives us a day it always starts as good. Then our choices make it either good or bad.  But God gives us a good day."

 

May you know and experience that today is a good day!

 

 

 

Hope "Bed and Breakfast" gearing up for the summer season

 

Well, it isn't summer here, but we will be experiencing the effects of the American summer season.  Tomorrow we begin with a mini-conference of 6-7 individuals over the weekend. Then for the next 3 months we will have volunteers from Maryland, Delaware, Michigan, Wisconsin, Colorado, and Texas coming.  We will have folks helping with our school, the construction going on, accounting, land planning, and much, much more.

 

These folks will be a blessing to us and we know that they will be blessed as they develop relationships with the children, mothers, aunties, and other workers.  They will worship with us, share around campfires, read to the children in the evenings, play soccer, and more.

 

So please be praying for all of these folks:  for safe travel, health while they are here, changed lives as we work and live together, and strength for the staff here in Zambia.

 

 

A Neighborhood of Children

 

How would you like to live in a neighborhood of 56 children and teenagers, more children than teenagers?  Well that is my neighborhood.  At almost any time from 6:30am to 7:30 pm you can hear the sound of children playing, the squeak of the swings on the swing set.  You can see children riding bicycles and playing with old car tires – running beside them as they are pushed along.  You can hear children singing, mostly laughter but an occasional cry.

 

In front of our house, on the other side of our circular drive is a pile of old road tar that we hope to use at some point.  Right now the children refer to it as the black hill.  It is a favorite place to sit and do things, or to ride up and down on the bikes.  The other day Joshua, our youngest, brought the little tricycle we have.  The older kids helped him up the black hill, and then it went rushing down.  I thought he was going to tip over. 

 

Kamau has taken a few bikes out of the containers for the children.  These bikes rotate from one house to another.  The children do a wonderful job of sharing and also helping new kids learn how to ride.  We limit the number of bikes we have for a couple of reasons.  One is that it is important for the children to learn to share.  Secondly, if we had too many we would have a great number of crashes and the roads would look like the LA freeway!

 

 

The "Walking Walmart"

 

Today I took Sena, Isha, and Esther (our housekeeper) to Lusaka.  Once again I was struck by all the "bargains" being offered by the "Walking Walmart."  This is the name Benedict coined to refer to the people who walk between the waiting cars at traffic lights at busy intersections selling a variety of things.  So these are some of the things on sale today:

Toilet plungers

Chess games

Scrabble games

Dog collars for very large dogs

Trousers for very large men

Maps for the wall – Africa and the world

Towels that look like the Zambian flag

Long neck scarves with the Zambian colors

Lots of very cute puppies of two or three breeds

Two cute white bunnies (yes, they were alive and wiggling)

Sunglasses

Small wooden carvings

Car chargers for phones

Movies (probably not the legal ones) and music CDs

Phone cards to recharge time in the cellular phones

Fresh red and green grapes

Papayas

Pencil bags

Shoes

Shirts

Hats

An exerciser that you use to strengthen your arm muscles

 

This is just the kind of variety you expect from any Walmart store! 

 

Shema, Cows, and Lunchtime

 

Last week I was called to a meeting of the housemothers.  They wanted to express their concern about how difficult it is to stir the shema in the huge pot to serve 45 people at lunch time at the school.  They said that it is exhausting and then to have to go back and take care of the house and children is just too much.  One of the solutions for help that we came up with was to ask Mr. Luka to come each day at 10am to stir the shema.  He used to make the lunch shema for the workers, so we know he can do it. 

 

Today was his first day.  Mr. Luka's other job is to take the cattle around eating grass during the day.  So each day he will bring the cows to the school area where they will eat while he stirs.  Today while he was stirring 3 of the 7 cows wandered off.  The ones there started mooing for their friends.  When the children had their break for lunch, they went running in a couple of directions looking for the cows.  It is so African to see the children running around barefoot, eagerly looking for the animals.

 

When something like this happens, I always laugh inside thinking about how different it is than schools in the states.  I'm sure there is not a school in the US that has children running after missing animals because the herdsman has been stirring a big pot of lunch food!

 

 

A Documentary Coming Soon

This week a foundation in the US is sending a videographer to film for
the creation of a videotape about all that is going on here. They
will be following 2 of the children through their day. Interviews
will take place with some of the workers and some of the folks who
have been impacted by what we are doing here.

The plan is to have about an hour long video that also has stand alone
segments. This is a great opportunity to have this made in order to
tell others about what is going on here. It might be something that
you would want to have to show at your churches or with other groups.

An End to the Holidays

On Monday the teachers reported in. This was the first Term that all
of the teachers were able to make it on the appointed day. We met
together. Then the day was spent beginning to prepare the rooms.
Although the next double classroom is not quite done, we have decided
to move in anyway. Half of the room will be for Erna's class of the
older students. The other half will be our meeting area. That means
that Caroline and Bruce will use the other double classroom. This
will be the first term that they won't be sharing with Erna and all
the office stuff.

It is looking so nice. Some of the children came on Monday to help us
polish the floors and yesterday they were washing the big carpet (very
thin one – kind of indoor/outdoor variety) out on one of the house
verandahs. I had brought it back to the village since the children
said that they could wash it. The mothers say that the children are
so excited to be going back to school.

The office is still somewhat a mess, but our library and our leveled
library for literacy instruction is set up. We have wonderful
resources thanks to the folks who have put things on the containers
for us.