Wooooohoo!
We're having an incredible time out here in Zambia. For the past two weeks we've been doing village ministry in Katubiya and Sekute every morning, doing VBS with the kids, and visiting the Lubasi home in the afternoons. The Lubasi home takes in orphans, raises them, and pays their school fees until the children are of age. It's been such an honor to work there. On Tuesday, we helped with the gardening, which made Phil deliriously happy :). Shelly and Matt played netball with the kids, and Colleen and Phil shamed the USA with their pathetic lack of futbol ability. Seriously, five-year-old Zambians play exponentially better than we do. It's embarassing.

Last weekend our team had the opportunity to minister with Butch, our contact, at an open-air crusade. After worship, led by our friend Pastor Dominic's church, Butch preached a short message on Mark 2, on the man who was healed and forgiven after being let down through a roof. Our team was part of the ministry group who prayed over those who came foreward after the message for healing. God moved powerfully: one girl who came with hip problems, on crutches, walked away on her own, completely healed; older women with back and leg problems were healed, and many others. Our whole team was so excited to be a part of it. God is good.

Village ministry in Sekute this week was great. The children there are less needy than those in Katubiya: they were better fed and better clothed and better loved. In Sekute there is a chief's palace as well as a school and a clinic. The connection between education and development was so clear in the difference in retention between the children in the two villages. In Sekute, the children learned quickly and memorized easily; in Katubiya, we had to work a lot harder to get each lesson across. On a personal level, we probably connected more deeply with the Katubiya kids, simply because they were a whole lot more eager to love us and to be loved by us.

We've been learning a lot as a team the importance of loving people, not as they love you, but as God loves you. This has become especially pertinent in Sekute, where we had to work a little harder, reach out a little more, to get the kids to open up. Loving these kids makes us push past the love that comes from our need to feel needed, to see that though the children in Sekute seem to be more privileged, they are as desperately in need of the love of Christ.

The gentlemen of team Zambia were feeling a bit under the weather today, but, praise God, they were all recovered in time to eat Katie's sweet potato fries and Shelly's brownies for dinner. Also, Janet and Butch's long-awaited truck arrived, prompting a ride around the block to test her out, and a music/naming party that resulted in a car wash to christen her: the name, by the way, is "Lady." Thank you, Tom Jones.

In other news, we were invited to a "bri" (read: barbeque) at the neighbors' house. Arthur and Leisl are missionaries from South Africa. Janet, our contact, helps their little boys reading and writing (Leisl homeschools). The team consensus is that all barbeque should be South African style. Colleen whipped up a marinade (side note: one of the pleasant surprises of this trip has been the opportunity to expand our culinary abilities) and Janet made her famous cole slaw.

The trip is half over already, and we can't believe it! Time has flown by, and we're believing the Lord to make the second half even more increible than the first. Tomorrow will be our second Saturday facilitating a low ropes course for some youth groups in the city. Last week went really well: we've been combining the ropes course with abstinence training from Janet. It's a powerful and desperately needed message in a nation riddled with AIDS, HIV, and orphaned children. Please keep us in prayer. God is faithful!

Colleen