faith like a child

hiii!

i hope that yall are all doing absolutely wonderfully and enjoying the summer! it’s so weird that it’s the smack dab middle of “winter” here in mongu, with a lovely swing between 40F at night and 90F during the day. oh, desert. godda love it! ;) 

the next week or so is going to be pretty hectic and crowded at mutoya – i can’t believe it’s already time for the teams to come in from south africa, australia, and dubai (oh my!)! VOH, the orphan school run by the zambia project, is also entering into a wild and crazy frenzy at about the same time. so while the base is busy getting water pumps, catering, extra firewood, and mass transportation ready and rearing to go for 120 people by tomorrow afternoon, many of the medium-term interns are also preparing to host a “fun day” at hope church for 4 of the largest elementary/junior high schools in mongu (including VOH) on monday, a “teddy bear picnic” at VOH on thursday, and a “sports day” at the school next friday. as if there wasn’t already a bit going on, hope church itself is hosting a “women’s event” and a “men’s soccer outreach” this saturday. if it sounds like we need a lot of prayers, we do!

 

for me specifically, i’ll join ruani (a fabulous missionary from south africa) and moses (translator extraordinaire and a respected leader at hope church) in leading the dubai team in the bush. half the team comes tomorrow afternoon and the rest arrives on saturday – about 40 in all! we’ll head out with an extra 8 or so translators on sunday and return wednesday evening, just in time for the “teddy bear picnic” and “sports day” up at the school. 

but more details on all that’s coming up later! before all the details completely fall out of my head, i really want yall to know what’s been going on at the orphan school recently, especially since it’s where i spend most of my time while i’m at mutoya. up until last friday, we taught the kids at the building that the zambia project uses for its training center inside base camp. (with the teams coming in this upcoming week and a new training session about to begin, we had to relocate the school outside of mutoya to the top of the hill, right next to the school’s new – yet still unfinished – 2-classroom home.) 

the training center is simply one 6 meter x 12 meter room with a side kitchen and storeroom, and every august, leaders from the newly planted bush churches come to bible school so they can go back to their churches and preach the gospel with a solid biblical foundation. while VOH was at the center, we had a white board, mosquito net windows, and a full kitchen for jane to cook and serve food out of. the kids could also go right outside to play on a jungle gym and jump on a small trampoline during their breaks. now that we’ve relocated to the top of the hill, school is held in a large tent, jane makes do with bush-style cooking techniques, and our playground is the sand. construction on the new school building grinded to a halt some time last week because of limited finances, so we aren’t sure when VOH will be able to move into their brand new home (we’re praying for september, just in time for next term!).

as anyone who’s worked with 4-9 year olds can imagine, every day is radically different – but we do move to a groove. aunt jane serves breakfast every morning at 8 am for the first group (the “tiny tots” and 1^st graders), lunch for the same group at 11 am, lunch for the next group (grades 2, 3, and “R”) and the teachers at noon. breakfast is either fritters (fried bread balls) or what the zambians call “super rice” (protein-enriched rice with extra sugar and oil) and lunch is mealy-meal (protein-enriched porridge with, you guessed it, extra sugar and oil), nshima (think congealed grits) and beans, or nshima and veggies. money’s been tight and food’s not always available, so the teachers have recently been alternating nshima and meat with good, ol’ fashioned bread and butter. we more or less stick to a basic timed structure: 8am, breakfast. 8:30, bible time. 8:45, lessons (english, math, social studies, and/or science). 10am, break. 10:30, music lesson or sports time with jayson. 11am, lunch. our afternoons look about the same, except with a little more order and a lot fewer distractions (the older kids understand english a bit better and are much easier to manage!). 

i’d love to say that my time working at the school has been always rewarding, never frustrating, and only positive. i’d love, also, to tell you that the curriculum is top-class, the teachers flawless, the day’s events seamless. i’d love for that to be true, and you’d probably love to hear it. but a lot of what i’ve struggled with here is how much the school doesn’t look like a pre-school or elementary school that you’d typically find in the states. if you do the math (and if we’re lucky), each group of kids (morning and afternoon) gets about 2 hours of instruction per day – and half of that is time lost fighting to catch and keep the kids’ attention. we have 40+ kids in one room separated into two or three groups according to their grade, each with a teacher struggling to hear his or her own thoughts over the singing or chanting or dancing that the other groups are doing 3 meters away. margaret and stephen (the two main teachers here at VOH) are well-educated, optimistic, and have an amazing rapport with their students – they’re invaluable to the school! but there’s only so much a teacher can do when your students aren’t used to listening and learning and you’re outnumbered 20 to one. we have incredibly limited teaching resources: our pencils don’t sharpen, our personal chalkboards don’t erase, our clock doesn’t work, the kids don’t have individual workbooks to take home to practice what they’ve learned that day, and we certainly don’t have the 10am “granola bar snack break” that i looked forward to in pre-K. when we can’t buy rice one day, the kids won’t have breakfast the next morning. when we run out of paper on which to write our lesson plans, we extemporize. when we don’t have band-aids or antiseptic for cuts and scrapes, we clean the kids up the best we can with iodine, toilet paper, and a kiss. when we don’t have a white or chalk board, we hope that most of the kids are auditory learners. 

there’s just so many barriers to getting through a single day that at the beginning of my time here, i found myself overwhelmed with inefficiencies, the severe lack of resources, and my own ineffectiveness. i was frustrated that no matter how many times i taught moonga to write a “4” correctly, she wrote an “h” instead. i didn’t feel useful at all – although they label us “medium-term interns,” i’m only here for a very short while. these kids need consistency, not just someone who will come for four months and then leave again. they’ll will probably never remember my name, though they’ll stay with me forever. how much could i actually change their lives with a smile, a hug, or a lesson in the time i have left to give? 

so i found myself wrestling with two problems: one, i’m in the midst of devastating need and there are not enough people nor resources to meet it, and two, i was trying to find my worth in how i could affect visible change with impatience and intolerance and (obviously) failing miserably. 

me with john and isaac

about two weeks ago, right at my low point in how i viewed my place at the school, stephen and i were sitting in the grass chatting while a group of 3^rd grade boys played soccer around us on their afternoon break. he started telling me about panda, one of the students who i knew was really struggling in his schoolwork compared with the rest of his classmates. stephen found panda in one of the villages around mutoya on an outreach two years ago, when panda was 8 years old. stephen visited the village a few times that year, and each time he talked with panda, panda opened up a little bit more. one weekend, panda told stephen that he didn’t want to go home – that he wanted to go wherever stephen was going. stephen eventually found out that panda’s mom had died when he was young, his father was abusive until he died as well, and panda now lived with an aunt who alternately emotionally abused and completely ignored his existence. a couple visits from child protective services later, the zambia project moved panda into one of its orphan homes and enrolled him in VOH, where he could receive positive attention, enough nutritious food, and love for the first time in his life. panda’s past has damaged his future: severe deprivation of both food and love for so long now makes it difficult for him to learn and retain knowledge. however, stephen explained that his and the zambia project’s vision for panda was to help him through the 9^th grade so that he could eventually attend a training school and make a living as a carpenter or a mechanic. 

 panda, john, beauty, me, wamulume, and isaac (left to right)

if that’s not a humbling wake-up call to how patiently and how much God loves us, i don’t know what is! i realized with stephen’s story that VOH provides so much more than just education that these kids would have no chance of receiving at home – though they certainly do that as well. more than half of these kids are orphaned by both parents, and the rest of the kids’ moms or dads are MIA and don’t value their children’s well-being, education, or both. more than that, though, VOH provides a safe haven for kids like panda to find food, friends, fun, and most importantly, unconditional and consistent love. yes, i wasted an inordinate amount of time at the training center begging dried-out white board markers to work, and i still sharpen pencils that shred with sharpeners that don’t sharpen. we still don’t have a board for the teachers to write on, we still don’t have walls to divide classes, and the dust from the tent is turning into a legitimate problem. i’m also far from being perfectly worry-free in how i approach my day and my short time here, but now i’m finally beginning appreciate the time that i do have with each of the kids at VOH because they are SO AMAZING and deserve every single ounce of my time and energy that i can give them while i am here. their never-fading smiles and laughter puts my anxiety to shame, especially when i remember that they have so very little to smile or laugh about. their carefree and pure attitudes convict me to the core: so this is what Jesus meant when he said that we should have faith like a child. 

 digging up sandstone to make bowls and play-cameras with mike and kahzila

more on the kids, missionaries, outreaches, and everything else is definitely on its way. in the meantime, please brag to Jesus about VOH, its teachers, its students, and everyone who makes running the school possible, and ask him to keep it and us at the forefront of his mind when he thinks of mongu. i love yall very much, and i miss you!!!

veronica and docas

in His peace,

stephanie

nalulau - white, black, or gray?

 

the walk between camp and the site for nalulau's new water well

hi, all!! :) one of the things i’m wrestling with this summer is how to deal with “gray areas” in a third world country. when you listen to your parents or follow a list of rules or read the bible, there are a refreshing number of clear “yes’s” and “no’s,” “do’s” and “don’ts,” “rights” and “wrongs.” mom tells you not to jump off the roof into the pool, so you don’t jump off the roof into the pool. virginia law says the speed limit’s 70 mph, so you go 70 (ish). the bible says don’t steal, so you don’t steal. simple, right? you may really want to jump off that roof, go 88 mph, and “borrow” your sister’s shirt for the day, but at least you know what’s right and you know what’s wrong. even if you choose to ignore your nagging conscience, black is black and white is still white. easy.

but what happens when kids as young as 3 or 4 years old dig through your trash pit in the bush? they’re only looking for discarded, charred, or rotten scraps of food, or empty bottles and cans, or shiny tin foil. do you let them dig for dinner and invaluable containers for their moms and dads to use at home, or do you stop them because they may also find shards of broken glass and sharp tin can lids? what about the dogs, all skin-and-bone, who paw through it alongside the children – are the burnt clumps of rice and bad meat okay for them, or do you chase them away just like you did the kids?

picture village kids entering into your campsite and folding up your fold-out chairs, picking up (and walking away with) pens, pencils, and bibles, and knocking on the door of your tent. do you tell them to stay outside an invisible boundary around your site so the entire village doesn’t come to camp with you, or do you invite them all in to make your camp site their home, too? 

you know that if you give gifts to villagers as you’re sharing Christ, they might wrongly affiliate money, gifts, and rich white people with the name of Jesus. you know, too, that if you gave one sandwich to one hungry teenager one day, you’d have to give away all of your team’s food to all the hungry children in the village until your supply runs dry. so what do you do, then, when you’re making a mound of PB&Js for your 12 other teammates when a group of kids who look like they haven’t eaten in a week are staring at your pile-o-sandwiches as it grows higher, and higher, and higher? 

maybe those are easy questions for some people to answer. of course it’s sad that kids are digging through trash with dogs, but you have to burn your trash each night in case one of the children gets hurt or the dogs have rabies. of course it’s hard to draw and keep firm boundaries, but boundaries can be healthy and necessary for your safety and sanity, especially if you’re going to survive long-term in the mission field. of course you can’t give away gifts and food to the locals because it might contaminate the gospel with prosperity theology – “the godly get rich” – and besides, if you give to one, you’d have to give to all. 

maybe those are the “correct” answers. really, they might be. but i can’t say i’m completely convinced of that. because, show me, where’s the black? where’d that pearly white go? it’s all gray. everything just turns gray.

i come from a very blessed, very wonderful, very privileged background with two godly parents who brought me to church every week, gave me priceless memories, provided me endless opportunities to excel, and allowed me to get a solid college education. i can easily just hop on a plane and head right back home if africa ever gets “too uncomfortable” or “a little much.” if i need money for food, i go to standard chartered in mongu, pray that the atm has enough kwacha in it, and have money in my hands in seconds. if my flip flops wear out, i hop to the market and find another pair for about a dollar. if i get absurdly dirty in the bush, i go into my tent and clean up with sanitation wipes and clean water. if i’m thirsty, i grab my water bottle (and probably a crystal light packet as well). 

i have everything i need and could ever want, all the time. these people have nothing that they need, never mind what they want, even when they’re tiny children. no transportation, no nutritious food, no clothing that wasn’t already falling apart when they first received it, no way to clean their faces so flies wouldn’t swarm their eyes and mouths, no access to safe drinking water to quench their thirst.

 

so what do you do with the gray areas when all of them spawn from the undeniable and irrevocable fact that you have much and they have little? i’m used to having enough food and water; i have a plan B and plan C and plan D to remove myself from danger or discomfort if i need it; i expect time and space that i can call my own; i think of my upbringing and good education as normal gifts instead of incredibly profound miracles. 

i’m starting to see why africa changes people. dealing with those “gray questions” can be easy when you’re looking at them with a clinical eye, objectively and practically. but when i’m right there, when i see with my own eyes how hungry those hungry eyes are, when i see how incredible the disparity between my lifestyle and that of the villagers is, Jesus’ words run through my mind on repeat:

"and if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, i tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward." (matthew 10:42)

"'for i was hungry, and you gave me something to eat; i was thirsty, and you gave me something to drink; i was a stranger, and you invited me in; naked, and you clothed me; i was sick, and you visited me; i was in prison, and you came to me.' then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry, and feed you, or thirsty, and give you something to drink? and when did we see you a stranger, and invite you in, or naked, and clothe you? when did we see you sick or in prison, and come to you?' the King will answer and say to them, 'truly i say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even the least of them, you did it to me.'" (matthew 25:35-40)

"sell your possessions and give to the poor. provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys." (luke 12:33)

i don’t pretend to have answers to all my questions – i call them “gray” for a reason. but i do know that Christ’s church has an amazing task set out before it here in mongu, out in nalulau, down in south africa, back in the states, and throughout the whole world. ignoring the disparity between rich and poor because it’s too painful to think about, or too geographically distant to care about, or too culturally distant to understand is not okay. we already know that! but for me, avoiding these questions because they’re hard and unclear is also not okay. so please, wrestle through them with me! and above all, pray for peace, unity, comfort, and grace in Christ for the beautiful people of nalulau!!

all my love,

stephanie :)

kande, nangula, nalulau, & mewawa – oh my!

hi to all again! :) 

i can’t believe we’ve already been in africa for over a month – there’s been so much going on that i’ve hardly had a chance to sit down and take it all in! i miss you all so much, and i thank you again as always for all the support and prayers that you’re sending my way. please keep em comin – all of the missionaries working with zambia project and i certainly need them!

for the past couple weeks, life at mutoya (base camp) has certainly been interesting! i have 8 other house mates, we now have sixteen 20-somethings eating out of one (quite small) fridge, and all of the medium-term interns are gearing up for another 120 visitors who will stay at mutoya in just a couple of short weeks. it’s a huge blessing to have so many young people from a similar cultural background to live, love, and laugh with who all have such incredible hearts for missions! we’re scattered all over the place – some of us are down at the orphan school, some working with the ladies to begin making purses at hope art, some doing construction at the malnourishment center and the new site for the orphan school, others out in the bush, one working with marinette to develop the zambia project’s website, a couple developing soccer and youth ministries through hope church, and all of us working with the kids at kids’ church on sundays and with the young adults in cell groups during the week. amazingly though, even though we’re all very different and have a ton going on, we’re all already becoming good friends. i ask your prayers for all the medium-term interns here: kate, katie, catherine, jane, lucy, kiersten, holly, regina, big wes, little wes, big bryan, little brian, lucas, jeron, zach, and tyler. please pray for continued grace for us as we live and work together with the missionaries here at mutoya!

although i’m primarily working at the VOH orphan school in mongu, i’ve been able to go out to the bush quite a little bit over the past few days. two weekends ago, hope church went on an outreach to kande, a small village just outside of mongu, to visit homes in the area and spread the word about Christ and to invite people to visit the church that the zambia project helped plant about a year ago. that was my first time sharing the Word with complete strangers since the team went to mwai kalupe, but i already felt more comfortable receiving outrageous hospitality from people i’d never met, starting up conversations about Christ, and even sharing a bit of the amazing work that God’s done in my life. that sunday, leonard (rock star translator), graeme, and i went to nangula (2-ish hours away, waaaay out in the bush) to visit the church that was just planted the week before. about 80 people (half adults, half kids) came to sing, laugh, and hear leonard preach on romans 8. when we left about 2 hours later, they were still going strong! one woman had walked five hours to get to church that morning, and she’d only just heard the gospel a week ago!! it’s incredible to see enthusiastic faith lived out so vividly – and nangula is just one of the many testaments to God’s active work in people’s lives here in the western province. although i play the tiniest and most insignificant role, i still can’t believe that i’m able to take part in it all.

our first sunset at nalulau

from wednesday to sunday of last week, eight of us medium-termers and 5 translators headed out to share God with people and help construct a well in nalulau, a small village about 2 hours north-east of mongu. the experience was much different than when ron’s team and i went to mwai kalupe. for one, there was a huge lake right next to our camp site, so bathing was actually an option (!!!), though the water wasn’t safe to drink. unlike last time, too, two of our translators were newbies to the bush, and song spoke a different dialect of silozi than the villagers of nalulau. we also didn’t have felix, our five-star soux bush chef – cooking meals was all up to the three ladies (learning to cook on an open fire in the middle of africa – check)! by just the second day, though, i could tell that our time in nalulau would be just as exciting and challenging as our visit to mwai kalupe.

the boys at nalulau's lake

since our team’s main focus was to construct a water well, we only took one day, thursday, to visit villagers at their homes. we still had services for the villagers next to our camp site every night and on sunday morning, but much of our time during the day on friday and saturday was spent helping the village build the ten concrete cylinders needed before we could complete the well. (basically, the ten 1-meter diameter cylinders are stacked one on top of the other below ground to provide support to the well and protection for clean ground water.) we would have loved to finish the entire well and leave nalulau with clean drinking water by the time we left sunday afternoon, but unfortunately, time and resources cut us short. the cylinders took two hours each to dry, cylinders kept cracking because one of the two molds was a tad finicky, and mixing concrete with sand, rocks, and water turned out to be more time-intensive than it sounds. thankfully, though, a team will be going back to finish the well in just a couple of weeks!

isaiah and villagers making concrete cylinders

i couldn’t be of much use (it’s critically important for villages to take part in the construction process as much as possible – it’s their well!), but i was able to help some of the women pound rocks into 1x1 cm bits for the concrete and oversee all of the major steps in preparing a well.

pouding rocks for concrete

 

anyone can help!

 aside from hanging out near the construction site for the well, i tried homemade bush wine (on accident…! won’t make that mistake again), lucas downed a full glass of milk straight from the cow (and regretted it later), and we feasted on sugar cane (picture gnawing on a long bamboo stick), surprisingly sweet green oranges, cassava roots, and sweet potatoes that villagers kept bringing to our camp site as wecome gifts. we shared what we had with the village, too – i showed a group of 4 year olds how to twirl, taught little boys how to play volleyball through a solid language barrier, and shared the glory of taking pictures with an ipod with a few teenage girls. in turn, regina, katie, and i received a semi-interactive lesson in the acceptable expression of zambian female sexuality while bathing from a group of 14- and 15-year old girls one afternoon in the lake. oh, what you learn in africa!

 

sharing the ipod's front camera with the gals

on sunday, leonard, graeme, and i visited nangula again for the village’s second-ever sunday morning church service while the rest of the team in nalulau taught about how much God loves us. that afternoon, we said our good-byes to the people of nalulau and headed back in greme’s truck to mutoya, mongu. since many of the medium-termers will be leaving in just over a month, few of us thought we’d actually see nalulau again – but hopefully, sometime in the next ten-or-so weeks that i still have left in zambia, i’ll be able to visit soon!

in the meantime, we have more than enough to occupy our time back at mutoya and in mongu. the teachers and medium-term interns working at the orphan school (me included) are helping to move the school to a temporary building (i.e. the tent that hope church used as a sanctuary before it relocated into a permanent building in town) to make the training center, its current home, available for use as a bible college for village leaders. i’m also working with a group of interns and young adults at hope church to put together three “kids fun days” – one on july 4^th at hope church in mongu, one on july 5^th at VOH orphan school in mutoya, and the last on the 9^th in mewawa (a 40-or-so-minute drive out of mongu).

thank you again for all of your prayers and support – and more details to come on all that’s gone on here with our Christian family in the western province! i miss you all, and i look forward to talking with and seeing yall soon!

in His peace,

stephanie :)

settling into "normalcy"

Ensha (That’s “hello” in Silozi)!

Now that we’re back from the bush, things seem to easing into a sort of “normal.” When the team first got back to base camp from Mwai Kalupe, we all took a day to rest, repack, and take a boat ride down the Zambezi River. 

Local village along the Zambezi

Bryan and me on the boat

That Monday, the rest of the team from Dwelling Place headed to Capetown where they’re now working with Paul and Marinette’s church for a week or two before going home to the States. Bryan, Brian, Lucas, and I spent most of Tuesday discovering Mongu. We ate legit Zambian fare at Lloyd’s restaurant, shopped the town’s main marketplace (I don’t think I’ll ever get used to how much attention we get here), bought local veggies and sun-dried fish, and attempted to cook like the locals. The fish was an epic fail – but the veggies were pretty amazing!

Street market in Mongu

For the rest of this past week, I’ve been working with Lozi Teachers Stephen, Margaret, Jayson, George, and Patricia at Village of Hope orphan school with about 80 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd graders. I’m learning so much from them and the kids about the Silozi (mostly the Western Province) and Bimba (Northern Provinces) cultures, Zambia’s educational system and curriculum, and Silozi kid songs and dances (these kids aren’t afraid to get down!!). One of the coolest parts of living at base camp, though, is the clash of cultures in all places and all times. This past Saturday, for example, we had 5 ethnicities sitting in one room: Irish, English (UK), South African, Silozi, and American. And that’s normal! Awesome. :)

So it looks like I’ve got a pretty busy summer ahead. I’ll be writing lesson plans at VOH school, teaching at Kids Church, visiting the ladies at Hope Art, discipling girls in cell groups, going to all-night prayer gatherings at Hope Church, helping to host teams at the base, going out to the bush with short-term groups or water well guys whenever I get the chance…this summer will go by in a blink! For now, the long-term missionaries and all the medium interns are preparing base camp to host 110 people from Dubai, Australia, and South Africa in a few weeks. It’s an awesome problem – interest in and concern for the Zambia Project’s mission is growing exponentially – but the logistics with providing for over a hundred visitors in one week are borderline insane. We’re also welcoming 5 new medium-term interns to Mutoya tonight (picture 8 girls, one apartment, one shower). Prayers, please!

Thank yall so much for all your continued support, concern, and interest in what’s going on here in Zambia. I miss yall!!! Details coming soon on how school, Hope Church, and the Zambia Project’s other projects are going. In the meantime, check out my running list of things I didn’t know about Africa until I got here (and learned the hard way):

1.One-day-old fire embers are still hot.

2.Black sand and dust will get into EVERYTHING – even your nose and ears.

3.If you’re over the age of 4, don’t live in the bush, and are breathing, you have a Facebook and a cell phone.

4.Running uphill through foot-deep sand is hard.

5.Planning meals that don’t require electricity to prepare is a must – power is just as sketchy as the internet.

6.In the smack middle of the bush (and, depending who you are, in town too), dreads are taboo. So cut em off.

7.Everyone drinks instant coffee! YEEEEESSSSS!

8.Mcua means money (especially to taxi drivers and phone salesmen).

9.Q-tips, paper towels, and Kleenex are incredible luxuries.

10.When something gets dirty, it stays dirty, no matter how many times you wash it.

11.Leaving your headlamp at base when you know you’ll be back after 6 pm is an epic fail.

12.Americans have really ugly accents.

13.If you think something’s going to take an hour, it’ll take at least 2.

14.30 minutes late is “early” and an hour late is right on time.

15.Traffic laws are very mild suggestions.

16.Counting shooting stars never gets old.

17.You eat shima with your hands just like the locals do, and because you’re white, you still look ridiculous.

18.Ladies sit on the floor, guys get the chairs.

19.Girls, wear whatever you want to on top – just keep from your waist to your knees covered.

20.Guys, learn to make eye contact like never before when a village woman pops a breast out of her shirt to begin breastfeeding mid-conversation.

21.Raid is not an effective bug spray.

22.250 volts of electricity is a lot stronger than the 110 we use in the States.  Also, you shouldn’t electrocute yourself twice in one day. 

23.Soccer is life.

24.It just isn’t a big deal when you find ants in your coffee, on your “biscuit” (cookie), in your hair, down your shirt, between your toes, on your toothbrush, or in a peanut butter jar. Look at them as additional protein.

25.African sunrises will always make you want to burst into The Lion King’s “The Circle of Life” song.

26.Make friends with wall spiders named Bob.

27.Bugs are bigger in Africa.

I think I'll name this one George

 

All my love and in His peace, 

Stephanie :)

P.S. - Maggs, I didn't forget to take pictures! More to come ;) 

 Jet-lagged in Johannesburg, South Africa (check out the lion's hat!)

Loving Lusaka, Zambia with Lucas