Central Africa Baptist College graduation 2009

This past Friday, we were able to praise the Lord as 10 men graduated from CABC, our first graduating class. Nine of them received BA's in Bible and one received a certificate in Bible. Each of the men were presented with a towel with "Be great. Serve" embroidered on it to remind them that they have been trained to serve. Another interested Zambian aspect is that after each graduate is given his degree case and hooded he is greeted by family members, friends, etc who congregate at the front of the auditorium. This extends the time of the service, but with only 10 men, it was manageable. It was nice for the families to share in their graduate's accomplishments.

The faculty (minus some part-time) have poured their lives into these men. Three of the men have or are currently pastoring churches. Four of the men are from Kenya. Four of the men are married with families. The past few years have not been easy, but God has blessed them for their hard work and perseverance. Pray with us as the graduates go out to serve the Lord.

The church auditorium was packed as people continued to filter in well into the service. There were probably 300+ people at the graduation service. Following the service, everyone filed out and greeted all the graduates. That took a LONG time! Thankfully, the rain held off during that process.

Ladies Bible Study Dinner

Sophie enjoyed an evening out with some of the other ladies from Faith Baptist Church - Riverside. This special dinner marked the close of our Bible study for the year. We had fun playing some games and getting to know each other better. Of course, we also enjoyed some delicious food! It is always a blessing to fellowship and learn God's Word with Christian friends.

Thanksgiving 2009

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving with missionary friends and plenty of good food.

Joshua and Caleb with a couple of their friends.

Becky with two of her friends.

After eating, we sangs a few hymns of thanksgiving, shared praises and read some verses reminding us to be thankful and give our praises to God. We also played some games and just had a great time fellowshipping.

Garden continued

The garden is doing well! We are grateful that God allowed us to have a yard with a garden. Thanks to the regular rains, we do not have to water it much now. That helps with the water bill! We still hope to buy some maize (corn) seeds and some regular tomatoes, but what is planted is growing fast.

The small corner that the children planted is starting to produce yellow squash and there are a few blossoms on the cherry tomato plants. We picked two of the yellow squash today.

The rest of the garden is as follows: At the bottom of the picture (in front of Joshua) are the cucumbers. We are looking forward to pickles! Yikes! I need to start on them this week! Behind Joshua are the cherry tomato plants. There are some blossoms and a few tiny tomatoes. If all those plants produce like cherry tomato plants normally do, we will have LOTS! I think I will be sending the kids out to the garden to pick their own snacks. On the other side of the garden (in front of Becky) are the squash plants. I'm pretty sure all of these are zucchini. We have picked and eaten some of these already. If you find zucchini on your doorstep, well... Beside Caleb is the lettuce. It is starting to form heads. We are looking forward to lots of healthy eating!

Garden

I'm not sure why the format of this is not cooperating. Sorry if it is difficult to decipher.

We finally have our garden started! Let me walk you through the process.

There was already an established garden plot from the previous tenants at the house. But it had to be dug up. Joshua and Caleb (mostly Caleb) enjoyed using Zambian hoes to help with this job.

Becky even got in on the action. Our yard worker, Ba Charles, actually did most of the work. He is very good with letting the kids "help" him. He has 6 children of his own.

John was able to get fence posts and buy chain link fencing to enclose the garden area. In the foreground are the two main reasons for the fence. The dogs are avid diggers and we don't want all our vegetables uprooted.

So far, we have cucumbers, zucchini, yellow squash, lettuce and cherry tomatoes planted. The children have a corner of the garden for them to tend.

Today, they each planted a cherry tomato plant in their plot. They will greatly enjoy eating the results of their labors.

Trip to Northern Province of Zambia

John was able to go along with missionary teammates Steve Hafler and Todd Beaman to see the Nothern Province of Zambia. This was a survey trip as they also took two of the college students who have been praying about ministering in this area of Zambia.

This is a short video about our trip.

A rough road

Group at Lake Tanganika

Hot Supper - it was 100F +

Our nights accomodations

Handing out tracks

I think Harold visited our yard with his purple crayon

While the dryness of the season causes grass and many plants to turn brown unless watered, the Zambian landscape is not devoid of color. It is during this time of year that the jacaranda trees erupt with their lavendar blossoms, the plumerias adorn their bare branches with beautiful and fragrant flowers, and numerous other trees are covered with blooms.

We are very fortunate to have mature trees in our yard. Two huge jacaranda trees shade a good part of our front yard.

On breezy days, more than dust is flying in the air now. The ground under the trees is a carpet of purple.

More Fun with Baby Geckos

So far, we have enjoyed having 7 geckos hatch from our collection of eggs. A few more look like they may have occupants, so we are still waiting to meet some more friends. One day, we found four babies in the container! The kids had fun watching them for a while before getting them out and holding them.

They were still losing their first layer of skin. One of the lizards looks like it is wearing a hoodie!

Becky colored at the table for a while as "her" gecko explored the table. Unfortunately, its world was a flat object and it fell off the edge onto the floor. It was not hurt. Becky also held one and sang "rock a-bye baby, in the tree top..." Then she would coo at it and say, "Ah, it's all right baby."

One of the babies from another hatching was introduced to the wild frontier of the train table in the boys' room. From this aeriel view it looks like a big mean crocodile about ready to cross the river and rest under the palm trees.

New Arrival!!!

The moment we all have been waiting for----

One of the eggs hatched today!

Here is the newest occupant in our home - a cute little gecko.

During a recent gathering of missionaries in our home, I was showing them the eggs. Some of our friends were skeptical that the eggs were really lizard eggs. Now we have living proof and another member in our mosquito-eating army.

We like geckos!

Lizard eggs

These are not on the breakfast menu.

While cleaning our window screens I found quite a few lizard eggs sheltered in the window casings. We are watching some of them to see if they will hatch or if they are duds. If any of them do hatch, I will try to get picts of the baby lizards before Caleb makes their tails fall off by handling them too much. What a welcome that will be into their new world!

What's that sound?

The past couple weeks we have heard what sounds like a distant chainsaw from our backyard. It actually was a multitude of bees and other flying insects feasting at the avocado tree. It is covered with tiny blossoms.

It's too bad that our family doesn't really like avocados. Quacamole is ok once in a while. We know plenty of people who willingly take our abundance. And the dogs eat the soft ones too.

By the time I figured out how to run John's high-tech camera, most of the blossoms were gone along with many of the insects, but I was able to catch (with the camera that is) this bee on the first try! Our simple point and shoot camera is out of batteries and we haven't invested in more yet.

Happy Father's Day

Got Lemons?

The fruit on one of our lemon trees is ripe right now. We are drinking lots of lemonade, freezing juice, making lemon desserts, and giving away lemons to anyone who dares to come into our yard. I even used lemons to barter with the man who sells fruits and vegetables from his bicycle. Unfortunately, there isn't much of a market for lemons right now with everyone's trees ripe.

Butterfly ring

Becky loves butterflies. She tries to catch them, but isn't too successful most of the time. Caleb goes after them for her with a stick. He catches them, but they are usually in pieces. This one faired a little better than most. By the time Becky was done enjoying it though, this butterfly was extremely tattered too. There are plenty more outside where it came from.

Becky's first lost tooth!

Becky has been wiggling one of her front bottom teeth for quite a while now. She was scared and reluctant to have it pulled out, but was very excited when it did come out! She went screaming with joy to show her brothers and Daddy.

The boys have been losing teeth right and left it seems like. Caleb's count is five and Joshua is at four lost. With three kids losing teeth at the same time, we are glad we decided not to do the "tooth fairy" thing. In Zambia, the tradition is the throw your tooth on the rooftop. We haven't done that either. We just put them in little bottles. Not sure why - but both our parents did that.

Gone Bananas

We just ate some bananas off our first bunch here at our new house today. It reminded me that I had taken pictures of bananas developing when we were living at the Hafler's home. That bunch was harvested and eaten shortly before we moved out. I had never seen bananas growing before moving to Africa, so I thought it was interesting watching how they develop. Good eating too!

August 4 - A purple flower comes up from the center of the stalk.

August 6 - The petals start opening one by one revealing tiny bunches (hands) of bananas.

August 11 - A few more petals have opened.

August 17 - While more petals open, the first bananas start plumping up.

August 29 - Full tree perspective.

October 2 - The lower petals just fall off along with dud bananas.

January 16 - Yes, four months later - the bananas are cut off when they just start turning a bit yellow. We were able to share them with our two employees.

January 19 - After a few days, they ripen and are eaten. These bananas are called lady's fingers because they are small and sweet. The kids (and parents) love them and couldn't get enough of them. It is normal for them to eat 3 each in one sitting. One afternoon, while John and I were gone and the kids were home with a sitter, the kids ate all the rest of the bananas! We were going to save some bananas for the Haflers who were coming home soon. The kids received a scolding for being so greedy. I guess its better to feast on bananas than candy, though.

Not an FTD bouquet

"Mom, I picked some flowers for you!"

Which Way?

After visiting the chicken and reptile farm, we were planning on enjoying a picnic lunch at a dam located on a nearby game ranch. A certain two homeschool moms had spoken with the ranch owners previously and received permission to do this. However, they did not get directions to the dam. We drove around the property for a long time on paths and trails and some roads before deciding to go back and go to the owner's house and ask for directions. The owner's son was home and told us there were four dams and he'd also take us through some of the game ranch. He hopped on his motorcycle and we tried to keep up. When I saw him jump over a bump in the road, it was John's signal that he needed to slow down for that part of the road. We all had bought eggs at the chicken farm and there were nine open trays of eggs (that's 270 eggs) "secured" in the back of our van. After driving over most of the same trails we'd already been on, but going through a couple more closed gates, we arrived at the camp where hunters stay while hunting game. It really wasn't a camp yet, but would be in a month or so. We were so hungry by then that we just ate there.


The owner's son had shown us a "shortcut road" that would be a shorter way out, so we took that to start heading home. It may have been shorter, but it took longer because it was muddy and full of holes. It hadn't rained for 3 weeks and the mudholes were still huge and deep. Thankfully, our non-4-wheel-drive van made it through. We did lose our power steering though. Amazingly, when we got home, John found the belt on top of the engine compartment and was able to put it back on.





Needless to say, all 270 eggs didn't survive the trip on that road. The people sitting in the back were watching the eggs behind them go up in the air and then back down again with a thud and a splat! I think we figured we lost about 60 eggs to our adventure. What a mess!

By the way, we didn't see a single animal on the game ranch.

Reptile and Chicken Farm Tour

A group of missionaries went to a chicken farm about 30 minutes outside of Kitwe for a tour. There is a reptile farm on the same property. It was an interesting combination. They catch rats in the chicken barns to feed to the snakes. The snake collection included both venomous and non-venomous ones. Of course, we were only allowed to handle the safe ones. Caleb held a brown snake. It was good to see the venomous snakes, though. The black mamba is greatly feared here and for good reason. This place had an adult and a baby one. Now that we have seen the real thing, we are pretty sure that the snakes we have encountered so far at home were not black mambas, but probably just brown snakes or house snakes, both non-venomous.

The older boys held a huge python! It was losing its skin, so they had snake on their hands after it went back into its cage. John wasn't too thrilled about getting the head end.

Joshua held a baby crocodile. There were a couple medium sized crocs in the swimming pool. The man tried to feed one of them some chicken while we were there, but it wasn't hungry.

There was also a baby bushbuck in an enclosure. The man said they found it in the woods after it had been attacked by dogs. Caleb was able to get fairly close to it and Joshua actually touched its head, but it was pretty skiddish with lots of kids around.

The children were amazed at the size of the chicken barns. There were a handful of long barns with rows and rows of chicken cages. The kids went down row after row looking for and collecting eggs. All the kids found eggs and helped the workers by placing them in trays at one end of the barn. It was interesting when someone found an egg without a shell. It just had the thin membrane holding it together.

Becky is definitely a girl. Even in a smelly chicken barn Becky wouldn't pass up a photo shoot opportunity. Yes, it was smelly - we smelled it all the way home on everyone's shoes.

I thought it was amusing contrasting these two forms of transportation. These cattle are HUGE and can pull quite the load. The Beamans truck is pretty big too, but maybe not as powerful.

Speaking of the way home - that's another story for another post. As soon as these picts upload, I'll start working on that one.