Almost April?!

I cannot believe that we are almost to April. It is crazy to me to think that we arrived here in January. Time is flying by, and April will pass by quickly as well. It will be a very busy month for our entire team. The whole month of April is taken up by the Muzha wa Yesu (Servant of Jesus) seminar. This is an annual seminar where leaders from each of the church plants are invited to stay in the dorms at the center and go to class each day to learn about how to teach and lead their churches. Each missionary is responsible for handing out the registration forms to the church plants they communicate with. The church then picks its own leaders to go, but we cannot take more than four per church. Sunday, April 3 we will have between 40-50 Zambian church leaders arriving. There are all kinds of tasks we will be doing in order to make this month work with all of these people here. Jeremy will be teaching a series on the Kingdom of God for two weeks of the seminar. Jeremy and I have been continuing to get to know the church plants we are working with. We are enjoying the Bible studies and the fellowship with the churches. We are also working hard at language learning. Ahhh, learning a language—sometimes it’s so rewarding, other times I want to pull my hair out! Jeremy is learning faster than me, but I am beginning to feel things connecting more and more with kikaonde. Cosmas is now coming everyday for 1 hour to help teach us. The young girls Bible study is going well. It is a highlight of my week. This week we studied on gifts and talents. I have been reading the book “When Helping Hurts” and a huge part of mental poverty is just the lack of belief in yourself and believing you are worth less than everyone else. The author encourages the reader to help those struggling with mental poverty to focus on God’s love for them and how they can be used, the gifts they have. It was so rewarding to do this lesson, because we had each of them go around the circle and say what gift their friend next to them had. It was great because they all took it very seriously. The gifts were of singing, taking care of a mother, praying with friends, etc. I was proud of them for opening up and really thinking about the question. Love these girls! Saturday was Mumena B schools “sports day.” They played net ball and soccer against a team from another area. Jeremy and I spent part of the morning out watching the kids play. It becomes quite the event out in the field. Each team has tons of their friends/classmates cheering them on. They have drums, and they do not stop singing or yelling. Jeremy chanted with them in a circle around the drums during one of the games. It was hilarious. Our school won the net ball game and as soon as the game was over, about 150 kids take off running up the termite mound and screaming “twa winnas”, we winners! Here are some pictures of sports day.

These are the morning glories that are finally blooming in our yard!