Running Up and Down

This week has been full of taking missionaries to immigration,

 Dr. appointments, and airport.  We were able visit a couple of projects

and did lots of financial paperwork.  Some challenges

with power outages so we ate out a few more times than usual.

  Because of last year's drought, the dams aren't producing much power.

  Some missionaries are without power from early morning

 till late at night.  Quite a challenge for keeping food from

 spoiling and for cooking.

  But it is amazing how resilient our missionaries are!  

Picked up missionaries arriving from Malawi.  Unfortunately we waited
 for 2 hours for one missionary to get through immigration.  He never made it and
 had to spend 2 days/nights in the airport jail, then had to fly back to Malawi.  

Loading up sisters and helping move them during transfers. 

Sisters Tuiaki (Tonga), Finn (Nigeria), and Mahe (Tonga).
 They are quite the characters.  Such fun personalities. 

Grandma loved the flowers on this tree.  

We got two long, steady, hard rains this week so our rainy season has officially started.
  These kids were so excited to gather some bugs that emerged from the ground.
  They fry them up and they said "They taste nice!"   We aren't convinced.

The Sisters next door did a heart attack on our front door.
 Sister Darkwa, (Ghana) and Sister Emezirinwanne (Nigeria) and
 Sister Olson ( Utah) did it.  Sister Olson was sick so didn't make the picture.
  We put Sister Darkwa on a plane to Lilongwe, Malawi.  

Visited Nyabombwe School to inspect the latrines and teacher's house that are finished
.  Hopefully now they will soon get two paid teachers to add to the head teacher
 to teach the 180 children there.  

Completed Nyabombwe 2-teacher house.  

The Nyabombwe garden.  Much of the garden died because their borehole
 stopped working for a while until they could get it repaired.  

Today was the Primary Program in the our ward. 
The 15-20 children did great with their songs and talks.
They were really cute.  Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.  

Mwachisompola Health Clinic Handover

This week was full of many office duties including airport runs,

 flat repairs, accident reports, getting supplies,

 teaching at missionary leadership council, monthly report, etc. 

 The highlight was the handover ceremony at the

 Mwachisompola Health Clinic.  World Vision put on

 a big show with about 500 people there, including

the permanent secretary of the National Health Ministry.  

The Church donated hospital furniture including these beds and medical equipment. 
We gave them their first ultrasound machine in the entire district.
 Most of the project was supported by World Vision.
 They built the maternity clinic and a new water system.  

We were told the program started at 9 a.m.but, it got started at Noon.

  So we tried to find ways to pass the time...

Young boys posing for us.

Before the program a group from the United Zambia church sang.

  They were really good.

Lots of impromptu dancing by the young boys

 before the program started.

When the dignitaries arrived, they were escorted in by this group.  

We found a member of our church with this group.  

There were about 500 people from the surrounding area who attended. 

This group of nurses kicked off the program as they sang the national anthem. 
We have learned enough of it to be able to sing along with most of it now.
  It's really a nice song!

Some locals performed a few dances. 

And more dancing after the program 

while dignitaries were touring the clinic.

Just to show that we do other things besides going to programs,
 here's a shot of the missionary truck that was hit by a bus.
  Lots of paperwork and repair quotations and insurance work.

Visiting New Schools

This week we visited 6 new schools and hope

 to start a project with one of them.  Got our contractor 

started on the Twikatane health post and the Bauleni school.  

At one school they really had to pump hard and a long time
 before water would come out.
 Hope we can just do a bit of repair work to make it better.  

Grandpa trying to learn their language.  They thought that was pretty funny.

They hold classes here for Grades 1-3 because the closest school is very far.
 55 students, one teacher.

Inside of that thatched classroom.  No desks, dirt floor.  

The community had two shallow wells.
 This boy is pulling up the water to water the cattle. 

Words in their language for counting.

Work at Twikatane.  The church is building a health post
 and the community is building a staff house and latrines.
 We are racing to see who finishes first.  They got a head start already. 

Twikatane with Chuma, our contractor

Such beautiful trees here.  Sorry for the washed out picture through our windshield. 

At month end, we get all the power and water bills paid
 and input all the vehicle odometer readings and gas cards replenished.
 Also dealing with accident reports for two accidents
 of young missionaries this month.  Thankfully no one was hurt.