Shani! (Hey!)

Bwino! (We are good.)

We arrived safely in Zambia yesterday afternoon, which was around the time most of you reading this blog were probably heading into work on Monday morning. It rained just prior to us arriving, so everything smelled new -- lush and fresh.

Wilbroad and Zicky were there to greet us and then took us to Spree Guest house, where we are staying. We are certainly blessed at this guest house! It has a lovely garden outside where we sat under an avocado tree.

Some travel notes:
-All of our bags arrived with us! We had some issues with more and more carry-ons needing to be checked on each plane that we switched to, but even with 20+ checked bags, they all arrived. Praise God for that!
-On our long flight (12 hours) from DC to Ethiopia, the trip flew by. (heh, heh) Several of us -- a couple for the first time -- watched Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens together by syncing our individual screens. (We LOVED it.) That counts as important, meaningful team bonding, right?

After dinner, most of us succumbed to our jet lag and were fast asleep by 8pm. A few people stayed up until the power was turned on at 9 so they could check in with family.

Today, Tuesday, we spent the morning in prayer and talking through some of our projects this week.

Shawn leading us in prayer requests & team needs

Praying for VBS & working with the kids

Then we went into downtown Ndola with Wilbroad and Zicky to eat at the Savoy hotel restaurant, and practice the few Bemba words we know (there are 73 dialects of it!), then we visited Lighthouse Christian School and were briefly introduced to the students that we'll work with more extensively starting tomorrow. They stood up and told us, "Welcome to Lighthouse Christian School" in every classroom. The kids in the area who saw this church bus of white people would yell "muzungo! muzungos!". You can guess what that means.

"Welcome to Lighthouse Christian School!"

We drove briefly through the shanties and met with a grandmother who has two sponsored grandchildren at Lighthouse. Their father died, which is why they live with her. There were so many children at the shanties who were not at school; so many children who are not yet receiving an education. There are many things that can be said and described about our brief interaction at the shanties, but that'll save that for later.

There's even Vikings fans in the shanties

Today, we prepared. Tomorrow, we'll dip our toes in the water and start to get a better feel for what the school and church needs from us.

Twiya (goodbye from us)