June Update

Mwapona buti? (How are you) Tuli kabotu. (I am fine.) The
months fly by. It is already the middle of June. I hope you are all
well. Thank you for your continued support. It is greatly appreciated.

Tonga school is finished finally. The second part of the
class was at the end of May thru mid of June. School was good, but it was
very difficult. The words are getting longer. Did you know that the
Chitonga language has 108 ways to say 'that' and 108 ways to say 'this' depending
on what you are talking about? It gets complicated fast. Now I just need
to use what little I know and to speak. Most days I feel like a three or
four year old just learning how to speak and put sentences together. Small
three word sentences are my specialty, but I am trying and it will come
slowly. School has kept me quite busy.

Also the seasons are changing. It is getting cold. My
blood has thinned out and I feel cold. A few days ago it was in the upper
40's for lows and 70's for highs. The rains have stopped so everything is
getting dry and dusty.

Next week I start again at the hospital. There are many
projects started and hopefully, Lord willing, I will be able to get them
finished. The Out Patient Department(OPD) Building is coming along. The
foundation and slab are almost finished. The water project is ready for it's next phase, which is
digging in new water lines to all the existing staff houses. The new doctor's
house is almost done as well. Now that the rains have stopped hopefully
progress will be seen.

An interesting story: There are a lot of cattle in this
part of Zambia. How many cows one has determines how wealthy one is. That is
just the way the culture is and how wealth is viewed. The Batonga people
keep them and very rarely if ever will they sell them or kill them eat. With
that in mind, there are no fences here. The cattle for the most part
just run free with a couple of boys watching them. Along the roadside, a lot
of cattle can be seen. They eat right alongside the road; they cross the
road; they walk right down the road. Coming back from Tonga school, we saw a
semi truck that had just hit a cow. The cow was dead on the side of the road
like a deer would be in Wisconsin. The truck was also on the side of
the road with a smashed front end. It is always an adventure driving here.

Moon-bow at Victoria Falls

Here are some pictures of a "moon-bow." These pictures were taken at night. The light from the moon and the mist from Victoria Falls were the right ingredients for this moon-bow.

April and May Update

Things are very busy here nowadays. The teams are coming very regularly now. We have had people here almost without a break since February. Lots of different groups have been here; from medical students, to residents, to a missions work team from North Carolina, a missions pastor from Memphis, TN, and some national Church officials. It has been an interesting time meeting and interacting with all these different people.
The beginning of April we had our annual African missionary retreat. It was held in Livingstone, our back yard. The retreat was a good refreshing time. It was good to meet and get to know my fellow missionaries from all over Africa. They were from Sierra Leone, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zambia.
The team from North Carolina came and worked on one of the theatre rooms. It needed to be redone. They put up new ceiling boards, painted and fixed some windows. They did a nice job.
Right now we have eight nursing students from IWU. They will be here for the rest of May. The students will be learning and working at the hospital.
As far as projects at the hospital go, a new bore hole has been dug and the water tank and stand have been installed. A company out of Lusaka came and did it. Also the out patient building project has been started. They are clearing the location and digging the foundations right now. Materials have been brought to the site. There are a few piles of stones and sand just waiting to be used.
Here is one crazy story for you. The fridge in the mortuary broke down a couple of weeks ago. We needed to look at it to see if we could get it running because there were four bodies in there that needed to stay cold. Us three maintenance guys were called in. Before we could start the bodies needed to be removed. They were placed right outside of the fridge, right next to where we were working. We had to work around them. It was interesting to say the least. The fan inside the fridge was burned out; we found that out after crawling into the fridge to do some testing. I have never had to climb into a mortuary fridge before.
Thank you for your continued support. I do appreciate it very much. Also I do appreciate your prayers. So much here can only be accomplished through prayer.

Training to run

In August there is a marathon in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. Dr. Jones and I have decided to try and run it. He has run a couple if marathons in the states so he knows how to train. I have never run one and a few days ago we started training. So far we are running 3 miles a day and feeling a lot of pain. We have three months to prepare; I will keep you posted.

Missionary Retreat

The missionary retreat is coming up next weekend. The retreat is for all the Global Partners missionaries in Africa, and this year it is held in Livingstone, Zambia. Right now the mission house is full of people coming in for next week's retreat. I think all together there is about 25 or 30 people coming. It will be a good time for me to meet everyone. I have not met most of the other missionaries in Africa. There will be services held each day with a special speaker; some down time to mingle and relax, and some business time. We are supposed to go to the game park in Livingstone and also a boat ride on the Zambezi River. The retreat is a yearly thing held for missionaries to relax and get away from the stresses of their work for a while, but also to be fed spiritually. It is much needed. I will let you know how it goes.

Robbed

A couple of weeks ago, a number of people robbed a store down in Livingstone, and they killed a police officer before getting away. So, the police have been hunting them down. They captured one and shot two others, but a few more are still at large. The last Sunday that the other missionary and I traveled to Tonga school, the bus was stopped, boarded and searched. The police had many check points set up to see if they could catch the criminals and every car was stopped, including our bus. Outside the bus there were two men with assault rifles. Two others boarded the bus and walked up and down the aisle looking. After a few minutes, they left the bus and let us go. But a few miles down the road there was another checkpoint. This time we were not boarded, but outside there were three men with assault rifles. All together I think we got pulled over three times. It was interesting to say the least.

Zambian Food

I have recently completed 4 weeks of Chitonga language school. It was in Monze, Zambia. Since we stayed there for a week at a time, we had some interesting foods to eat. They served us the main, staple dish that Zambians eat, nshima. Nshima, cabbage, and some kind of meat is a usual meal. Most Zambians don't eat meat very often but nshima and some kind of vegetable are staple foods. We had nshima three times a day. It was served in a porridge form for breakfast, but for the other 2 meals it was a thicker consistency and was served as a rolled up ball. It tasted pretty good. The breakfast stuff was just like cream of wheat in the US. Along with nshima; they served either rape, a leafy green, pumpkin leaves, or cabbage. The rape tasted like spinach except a little more bitter. Pumpkin leaves had no special taste, and cabbage was cabbage. The meat is the exciting thing to tell you about. We had fish cooked in cornhusks. We had kidney; it was very tough. We had capenta, small minnows. We had chicken, sausage; and other beef pieces. We were also served termites, which tasted like popcorn. All the food we got to eat was very salty and also pretty good.