Zambian kids at play

Our children like to play with the children of the caretaker at the new college building. They play football (soccer) with a ball made of plastic string from mealie meal bags. Here are some of the Zambian kids playing before our kids arrived. Joshua and Caleb joined in the game upon arrival.

Tires are another fun toy. Joshua and Caleb are still trying to master the art of rolling a tire around without it falling over every few seconds. They have fun watching the other children and trying to get the tires rolling themselves.











We let Becky give one of the little girls a dress that she had outgrown. Shortly after giving her the dress, we walked to a store a short distance away from the college to get some bread and water that we needed. (Our menu does include more than this.) When we were returning on the road, I saw the little girl wearing the "new" dress. But when the Zambian children saw us coming back, the little girl ran into the house and changed back into her old dress. I thought this was interesting. Zambian culture treats gifts in a unique way, putting an emphasis on the giver instead of the actual gift. If you give someone a wrapped gift, they will probably not open it in your presence, but will simply say thank you. It does not matter what the gift is - they are thankful that you gave them a gift. I tried to talk with the older girl about why the younger one changed back into her other dress, but she doesn't speak much English so either didn't understand or couldn't respond.

Chalk Art

All three children had fun using the sidewalk chalk that Joshua got for memorizing verses at Junior Camp. The small patio in front of our house became the canvas. This picture was taken after it had gone beyond the masterpiece stage, but you can still see the red fire truck, blue sky, and yellow sun.

After a few days of continued additions some of the art looked more like Bert's chalk drawings on "Mary Poppins" after it started raining, but the kids had fun and were only partially covered in chalk dust.

Workshop for Faith Baptist Church School

On August 27th I had the privilege of presenting a workshop for the teachers at the day school of the church we attend here in Kitwe, Zambia. My topic was "Using everyday objects in your math and science classrooms." I demonstrated the use of popcorn as manipulatives for math. My main focus was using common objects in science demonstrations. We had fun doing a variety of activities together.

One of my favorites was displaying the white roses that I colored simply by placing them overnight in water with food coloring. I used yellow, red and blue. I split the stems of several of the roses and placed them in two separate colors. The results were an interesting display of water movement through a plant. Another missionary family did a very similar experiment with daisies and colored water at the same time without either one of us knowing about the other's experience. I guess it was just time for coloring flowers. The instructions I was using said to use carnations, but they are hard to find here. Roses are everywhere. I bought these roses just down the road from our house. In a field there is a container that has a door and a window cut into it to make a "store." At this location they sell yard ornaments, rake-brooms, roses and other items. The price was under $6 for about 20 roses. Not a bad price. Why 20 roses? They don't sell anything by the dozen in Zambia.

CABC Olympic Fellowship

We decided to pay for a month of cable TV so that we could enjoy the Olympics. The Haflers already had the equipment in their house, so our cost was reasonable. During the games, we enjoyed having various people over to watch with us. A couple of evenings we invited the dorm men from Central Africa Baptist College to our home. They had fun eating popcorn and watching the international games. Unfortunately, Zambia was not very well respresented at the Olympics. But it was neat for our Kenyan students to see some of their countrymen and women in the running events.

Faith Baptist Church Junior Camp

The week after MK camp was Junior Camp at church in Riverside where we attend. Junior Camp is very similar to VBS, but with more team competition. Joshua and Caleb were able to attend and I (Sophie) was able to help throughout the week in small ways. It was a joy to be able to stand in the background and see most of the work done by Zambians. Another missionary helped lead singing and I helped with craft time. A couple of MK teens helped as team counselors, but national church members did the rest.


Bible lessons were well-taught and focused on salvation while teaching five things that God cannot do. A number of children were counseled after the lesson each day. We praise God that both Joshua and Caleb raised their hands, were counseled and prayed for Jesus to save them. They are still young at age 6, but we know that they may be able to understand and truly be saved. We are praying that God will give us wisdom as we continue to nurture them in the Bible.

The variety of games throughout the week were fun for all the children. On the final day of camp, the director came in costume just to make the kids laugh. It worked. He did a great job organizing all that needed to be done at camp. The week went very smoothly and God was glorified in all that was done.

Another aspect of camp was verse memorization. There was a daily verse each day, but the kids were also given sheets of extra verses they could learn for extra points for their teams. The children who memorized the most verses were given prizes on Sunday. One of the Zambian girls memorized 111 extra verses! This included a couple whole chapters from the NT. She has an amazing mind and wants to be a missionary doctor. It will be exciting to see how God uses her. There were only two six-year olds who learned any extra verses. Joshua and another MK from another family both memorized 9 extra verses. He received a certificate, candy bar, stickers, and sidewalk chalk as his award. I'll post chalk pictures later. The campers who were able to come on Sunday sang some of their camp songs for the church. They did a great job. Several of the campers were chosen to recite verses in front of church too. Joshua was supposed to say three verses. He messed up on the second one and never got to the third, but he did ok and the church clapped for him anyway. Kids aren't perfect.

MK Camp 2008

Earlier in August, the school-aged children of the missionaries involved with Central Africa Baptist College enjoyed MK camp. It was held at the home of Tori Barrett from Thursday morning through Saturday morning. Becky, Joshua and Caleb had great fun during the day with the other MKs, but they came home to spend the nights. The older kids stayed overnight at Tori's but her house just isn't big enough for all 18 kids to sleep.

Cherith and Austin Hunt were a great help in planning and running the camp with Tori. Our children enjoyed games, chapel time, fun songs, earning tickets, spending tickets on cool prizes, eating with their friends, etc.

Simple Pleasures

It doesn't take much to entertain children. Becky captured this moth and thought it was a great treasure. I vetoed her request to find it a home in the house, but she carried it around for quite some time while playing outside. When it was time to come in for lunch, she put it inside the "fort" for safekeeping. The moth disappeared during lunch. Becky is sure that it flew away. I did not have the heart to tell her that it was not able to fly anymore after she handled it so much.

She had fun with it while it lasted, though.

DIY in Zambia

On Saturday John decided it was a good day to cut down the dead avocado tree in the front yard. He got out Steve's chain saw. It started a couple times, but would not start once he brought it to the tree. So John got out the ax which was given to us by Sophie's hometown pastor in Ohio. John put a "pull rope" up in the tree and started chopping away. When he was about ready to quit for lunch, our house worker came out and quickly said, "Let me do that - I know how to do it." She is very strong and got to work swinging that ax. She did take a break and let John have another turn at chopping. Then she finished off the tree while John pulled it over.

We have concluded that DIY is not "Do It Yourself". Here it means "Do It Yvonne". She cannot stand by watching us work. When we first were moving in to the Hafler's house, I was scrubbing the laundry room floor before putting in our machines. Ba Yvonne arrived and was rather flustered that I would be doing something like that. I was quickly replaced. We are thankful for such a dedicated and hardworking helper in the house. Many of you probably are thinking that we are spoiled by having a hired worker (actually we have two). It is just part of African culture. I think it is very interesting that our house help hires her own house help to care for her children and take care of things at her home while she works at our home!

We now have a new playground in our yard! The kids immediately started climbing on the felled tree.

Then they began gathering the medium sized branches to make a fort. As you can see, it progressed quickly. Daddy let them make the roof with some of the fading bird of paradise leaves that he cut. The fort is lacking some semblance of a floorplan, but the kids insist they each have their own bedroom and even a guest room/dog house in there. The imagination is a wonderful thing!

Birds

Since moving into the city of Kitwe we have missed the variety of wildlife that we enjoyed seeing and hearing when we lived in a more rural area. So it was a real treat when I heard some bird noises outside that definitely were not the obnoxious cawing of the ever-present crows. I went out to try to find the feathered source of this more pleasant sound. After some searching, I discovered two medium sized birds which were green and yellow. First they were in trees along the side and back of the yard and then flew away. As they flew, I could see more yellow under their wings. A little while later, they returned but this time to the trees along the front of the yard. They were high up in the trees, so I wasn't able to get very good pictures of them. Here are the best of what I got. I think they look like small parrots. They walked along the branches like parrots and were eating seeds from the trees.