Fun Times

Becky and Emily were having fun with their chitange's (length of cloth used as a wrap-around skirt, or to tie a baby or any load on your back, etc).

Becky loves playing "Zambian". She is with Auntie Nellie, another family's homeschool teacher.

Joshua loves the dogs. Between our two and the Hafler's three, he has lots of "best friends". Justice looks mean so he is a great guard dog, but he is very docile and makes a good pillow too.

The kids love climbing trees. This is as far as they are allowed to climb in the plumeria trees, though. The branches are very brittle and break easily, causing a fall and sticky, milky sap to come pouring from the tree. The flowers are beautiful, though.

We enjoy having guests in our home. There are four single missionary ladies ministering in our area now. One Saturday, they had fun playing games and eating supper with our family. Rachel, the young lady at the front left of the picture, is now living with us. She is here short-term working as the secretary for Central Africa Baptist College. It is fun having an "Auntie" around the house.

Go Figure

During our recent trip to Lusaka we made some purchases to help us during our frequent power outages. We bought a rechargeable light, some citronella oil for our lanterns, and some special marshmallows to roast over the candles during evening darkness. Our "normal schedule" for losing power is Mondays and Saturdays for 10+ hours during the day and Tuesdays and Thursdays for 5+ hours in the evenings. It is not as bad as it sounds except when you expect the power to go off at 5pm and it goes off at 3:30pm. I am especially thankful for my gas stove on those days.

Since our return from our trip, the power went off as "usual" on Monday during the day and hasn't gone off again since! We have enjoyed 10 straight days with electricity!! We haven't used our new light, though it is charged and ready. We haven't used any of our citronella oil in our lanterns. We didn't have any reason to roast our special marshmallows. Our kids complain when the power doesn't go off on Tuesday and Thursday nights because they normally get marshmallows for dessert when the power is off at suppertime. The first Tuesday that the power stayed on, the kids turned off all the lights and played hide-and-go-seek with flashlights!

Tonight, our second Thursday with power, we gave in and let the kids roast marshmallows anyway. I have never seen such a variety of marshmallows as is available in Zambia. In Kitwe, we can get white and pink, twisted, kiwi and litchi, and chocolate. In Lusaka, we found marshmallow mice, flowers, grape and strawberry flavor with smiles. We also saw cappuccino, and some other coffee flavors that did not appeal to us at all. We did however get some of the other kinds.

Caleb roasting his mouse.

Joshua roasting his grape and strawberry smile.

Becky roasting her flower.

Pizza with CABC men

One of the joys of working with Central Africa Baptist College is providing fellowship opportunities for the students. There are about a dozen men who live in the dorms. Recently, we invited them over for a time of cooling off, playing games and eating pizza. We co-hosted the evening with the Beamans, so Sophie didn't have to make all 12 pizzas. Actually, Kathy did most of the pizza work while Sophie and Janelle S. helped add toppings, make popcorn, etc.

After eating as much pizza as they could and then some more, the guys played a game. Fun was had by all and everyone left with a full stomach.