Packed up and ready to return

We made it back to Lusaka (Alfred and Muumbe's home) last night after a long and adventure-filled trip from Livingston.

We left last Saturday afternoon (after our last day of Children's Conference where we fed 355 children nshima, chicken, and cabbage) for Monze, where we met back up with Craig and Alfred.  They left Friday for Pilgrim Wesleyan Bible College in Jembo, where Craig was the speaker at their graduation (I will let him fill you all in on the details -- I am sure you all will hear much about our trip during sermons over the next month or so!).

We spent the night in Monze, then left Sunday  morning for the Nkandela village.  As soon as we arrived, Dan taught the adults a lesson while Will and I [with our wonderful interpreter, Mweembe (Muumbe's sister)] taught the children a lesson.  Following the lessons, we all returned to the church building for the worship service.  Craig shared the word while Will and I returned to the school for another lesson with the children.

After a nshima, chicken, goat, pork, and cabbage lunch meal provided by the ladies of the village, we walked to the old well where the village had to draw water before they received the new well in May.  Then we all met together for a long presentation from various village leaders, school leaders, church leaders.  We also enjoyed to sketches:  one from the school children and one from the ladies of the village.  They were quite entertaining once we understood what they were saying!   We also took many photographs of the community and were able to print them out right there on site using the power from the bus battery.  They were thrilled to see themselves in print:)

We left around 5:30 pm (or, as the Zambian's say, 1730 hours) to head to Choma for dinner and our lodging for the evening.  We staying at a beautiful guest house run by a the Brethren in Christ.  Our lovely hostess, Marian, is a sweet Mennonite lady from Pennsylvania.  She took such good care of us:)  We then hit the road for Livingstone, where we had lunch and checked into our inn before heading to Victoria Falls.  On the way to the falls, we came up upon 7 elephants walking on the side of the road.  It was such a treat.  The falls are just indescribable.  Hopefully, we will be able to download some photographs when we return and have faster internet connections.  After the falls, we visited a game reserve and saw impalas, warthogs, giraffe, elephants, monkeys, water buffalo, and guineas (probably some more, too!).  We ate dinner at a nicer restaurant and had a great time of fellowship with Alfred discussing his ministry and plan for the future.  We look forward to sharing that with you all later.

We left Livingston yesterday (Tuesday)  morning for what we were told was a 7 hour trip.  Well, it took a little longer, due to a few unexpected surprises.  One was when the brakes on our bus began to smoke and we were waved down by locals on the side of the road.  Fortunately, we were able to get back on the road soon and just drove slower.  Soon afterwards, we were stopped at a checkpoint because our bus did not have all the required stickers (strange, because we had made it through multiple checkpoints prior in the trip with no troubles).  After Alfred did his magic, we were again on the road.  We arrived around 1930 hours to a wonderful supper prepared by Muumbe using the new gas stove we purchased and installed for them -- because they had been without electricity for most of the day until right before we returned.  We enjoyed chicken and potato salad before we all met for one last team meeting and debriefing with Alfred.

We are packed and waiting for the bus to load up and head to the Airport.  Please keep us in your prayers over the next 30+ hours that we make all our connections and make it back to Montgomery at our scheduled time of 11:15 am Thursday.

Twalumba! (goodbye in Tonga)