Inward Renewal

For the past month or so I’ve been trying to think ahead about Sunday meal preparations.  I want the day to be as relaxing as possible.  Getting home at 12:30 and scrambling for something to eat hasn’t been the most “relaxing” thing I can think of; so, time for a new resolution – plan ahead.

The crock pot is a wonderful invention as it allows you to think ahead about meals and get preparation out of the way.  The crock pot however, has one fatal flaw…it requires electricity!  This past Sunday morning after making coffee cake and placing it in the oven, I prepared Orange Chicken with Sweet Potatos to go in the crock pot.  I was busy mixing spices, juicing and grating an orange when the electricity went out.  The crockpot meal was ready to cook and my coffee cake was half baked.  We had cold cereal.  I left the crockpot plugged in and turned on in hopes that the electricity would come on while we were at church.

After church I phoned a neighbor who let me know the electricity had just come on in the last 30min.  No crockpot lunch.  We had sandwiches.  By dinner time it was over cooked. booo!

The electricity saga continued…Monday morning the power went out 5 different times for 15min to 1hr 30min each time.  I was trying to do laundry, grrrr.  Tuesday it went out 4 times in the morning for almost an hour each time and then went out again at 4pm and didn’t come back until 9:30pm.  This morning…it went about 5 times.  BUT, I have a wonderful husband who persuaded the powers that be to send an electrician.  It is fixed…for now anyway.

This past Thursday we had a board member and his family over for dinner.  Tim thought it would be nice to purchase some “softies” (soda pop) for everyone.  In order to get them cool for dinner, Tim placed them in the freezer and reminded me, “We can’t leave these in there for more than 45min”.  For dinner I chose a selection of softies and left the rest in there assuming we’d get them as soon as people had decided which drinks they wanted.

The evening was wonderful and we really enjoyed our company.  The next day was my day in the office.  After spending the morning in the office, I went grocery shopping and got home around 3pm.  As I was putting away the groceries I looked in the freezer and this is what I saw.  No need to waste a good thing though, Ireen and I enjoyed eating frozen coke out of an upside down glass coke bottle.

A group of us from Action Zambia visited Chieftainess Mwenda who resides on the outskirts of Chikankata, Zambia.  Her people are the Tonga people.  There are approximately 98,000 people in her kingdom.  Over the course of our 4 hour plus meeting with the Chieftainess she expressed: her commitment to Christ, the challenges that she faces, the need for the headman in her chiefdom (approx 300) to come to Christ, the need for more missionaries who will learn about and live with her people, the complications surrounding ancestral shrines, the need for education.

For me it was my first time to see the Chieftainess’ chiefdom area on a map. Showing us a map of her kingdom, she pointed out the most remote and unreached areas.  She said that some in her land hadn’t seen a white man before while others rarely see a motor vehicle (every 4-5 years).  Some of the areas can only be reached on foot.  With an open invitation from the Chieftainess and what seems to be a still apparent need for Gospel proclamation, I feel like we have an unprecedented opportunity before us.

The above picture of me was taken with Her Royal Highness E. M. Kalichi Chieftainess Mwenda at the Bansanje Royal Establishment (a.k.a. her palace).  You can also view a video of her pointing out areas of her kingdom that are unreached for Christ.

Ian is growing fast out of his baby stage and into a little boy!  A few of the fun things he has started doing to prove this are: helping to set the table, taking things to the trash for mama (although sometimes he takes his dishes to the trash instead of the sink), helping big sis to pick up toys in the room, and “helping” with the dishes (he just plays in the water ).  His vocabulary is also increasing as he surprises us almost daily with a new word he’s picked up.  Just recently he started calling Ireen’s name; it sounds like “Iweeee”.  He’s also quite a climber and not much is out of his reach any longer.  Just this past weekend, Ian learned a new trick.  Swinging by himself in a normal swing (i.e. not a baby swing).  He was extremely proud of himself as these pictures will show.

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One of the many adventures in adopting Ireen has been learning how to take care of her hair.  Honestly, I’ve really enjoyed it!  I’ve learned so much and am always eager to learn more or better ways of doing things. Recently, I decided it was high time I learned how to relax Ireen’s hair by myself.  I’d seen Zambians do it a number of times and had asked a lot of questions.  It seemed straight forward enough.

Admittedly, I was nervous.  I’ve heard horror stories of damaging the hair and scalp.  I was careful not to get the cream solution on her scalp and left it in for the minimum amount of time.  As I was washing the relaxing cream out of her hair I noticed my fingernails were yellow.  Gross yellow, too.  Just think fungal nail yellow.  I also had a small cut on my thumb that was throbbing!

Since Tim and I were going on a double date that night, I clipped my nails as far down as I could and then painted over them to cover the yellow.  Later that night I asked my Zambian friend about it and she said rather incredulously, “You didn’t wear gloves?”

Yeah…that would have been smart.  Ireen’s hair was fine at least.

Every year a local private school, Baobab College, puts on a fire works display in early November.  We’ve never gone to it and had no idea what to expect.  Tim stayed home with Ian while Andrea and Ireen went with Karen and Tracy Singleton.

I noticed there was a “Fancy Dress” competition to be held open to all children.  Ireen and I worked in the afternoon to create her costume, a black-eyed susan in a flower pot.  Her petals were made of construction paper and covered with yellow crepe paper (aka kreepy paper) and her flower pot was a paint can with the bottom cut out.

We arrived and were amazed and the magnitude of the event, it could rival many county fairs in the States.  After gaining our bearings, Ireen and I stood in line for “candy floss” (aka cotton candy).  After that we got chicken lollypops for dinner.  In no time the costume competition was ready to start.  There were quite a number of children but only about 10-15 in Ireen’s age group.

After her group walked across the stage, the lights went out.  I budged through the crowd, found Ireen’s hand and pulled her out.  She was crying.  She’d never seen children dressed up as witches, mummies, gruesome creatures etc.  I was done with the competition and regretting that I’d pushed her into it.  After another 45 min – 1 hr once they had gotten lights back on and completed all the other age groups, the winners were announced for each group.

Ireen won…well, the “weed in the flower pot” is what she was called J . She received a gift and a fizzer (kinda like laffy taffy).  Then we saw fire dancers and finally the fireworks display.  The display was amazing and midway through Ireen exclaimed, “Probably the fireworks are for all the children who won!”  Tracy, Karen and I got a good laugh out of that.

Every so often as you’re driving down one of the main streets in Lusaka traffic slows and as you’re looking for the reason, you see people marching down the middle of the road with a banner out front announcing what it is they’re raising money for.  The idea is that you slow down and throw some money into their buckets…a little like firemen do in the States, except their in the middle of the road.

Today as we were headed into town for an inter-church social, we came upon one of these parades.  The cause – raising money for a pre-school.  To our shock, the people walking down the middle of Independence Ave were the pre-schoolers!!  Ireen, my daugher, is 5 – the same age as many of the children walking in between the lanes of traffic.  It horrified me to think of her risking her life in traffic to raise money for her education.

We just wanted to acknowledge Mt. Morris Evangelical Free Church for their constant support of our ministry in Zambia.  There are so many dear and precious people there who have been such an encouragement to us these past 4 years.  Here are recent pics that we took over our home assignment in August.

Each day clouds gather and mount promising rain.  The humidity is oppressive like a nagging headache.  Some days I think I can smell the rain and can’t wait for the first good rainfall.  Below is an excerpt from one of the kid’s books, Bringing the Rain to Kapiti Plain by Verna Aardema.

This was the shot
that pierced the cloud
And loosed the rain
with thunder LOUD!                                                                      
A shot from the bow,
so long and strong,
And strung with a string,
a leather thong;
A bow for the arrow
Ki-pat put together,
With a slender stick
and an eagle feather;
From the eagle who happened
to drop a feather,
A feather that helped
to change the weather.
It fell near Ki-pat,
who watched his herd
As he stood on one leg,
like a big stork bird;
Ki-pat, whose cows
were so hungry and dry,
They mooed for the rain
to fall from the sky;
To green-up the grass,
all brown and dead,
That needed the rain
from the cloud overhead -
The big, black cloud,
all heavy with rain,
That shadowed the ground
on Kapiti Plain.