Wow. Africa you have already stolen my heart. I knew I was so beyond excited for Africa but I didn’t imagine it to be this sweet. We had a layover in Kenya before finishing our flight to Zambia and just landing in Kenya almost brought tears to my eyes. I was so excited to be in Africa & I know a piece of my heart will be left in yet another country.
These next 3 months, my new team (Team Alabaster) and 2 other teams are living in a beautiful home in Livingstone, Zambia. We hardly have a stove, sometimes have running water but sometimes it decides to stop working while you’re in the shower, occasionally run out of electricity for 14 hours causing all our refrigerated goods to spoil, have AC sometimes & have plenty of bug friends. And I absolutely love this place & all it’s little quirks!!!! In the past couple days, this place has become my home. Our host told us “I hope this place doesn’t just feel like home to you but that it actually becomes your home” and I can already see that to be true. Zambia is full of loving and welcoming people. “You are welcome” is a common greeting here. It’s not just a response to ‘thank you’ but it is a full greeting. They want to make sure everyone knows that they are welcome here & feels comfortable. It’s such a small thing that means so much.
Meeting everyone that we will be working with here at J-Zone has been so awesome. Everyone has such a big heart and a strong passion for The Lord. They love joking around with us and make our days fun. J-Zone is an organization that targets anyone who is in need- they don’t associate with any specific church, they just associate their organization with Jesus. They serve widows, orphans, children, churches of various denominations & villages just to name a few. So during my time here we were told we will do these different ministries as The Lord guides us. I can’t wait for a variety in ministries, as the past 6 months I have only been teaching English. This will be a nice mix-up! I can’t wait to get to experience many different urban & rural parts of Zambia! I feel super excited and honored to come alongside J-Zone and help them in their ministries. I can already tell it will be a great few months here (:
People in Zambia, except for some in the village, speak English! It has been such a treat actually being able to communicate with people without a translator or having to guess what they’re saying. Also for the first time in 6 months, we get to flush our toilet paper down the toilets here…. so that’s another new thing we aren’t used to! I know I’ve only been here a week but one of my favorite parts so far has been the 4 hour Sunday church service. They really get into it and there are a whole lot of “praise The Lord” “hallelujah” and “amen”‘s being shouted out constantly- even during the announcement part of church…. Not to mention the choir that sang crazy fun African songs with dances to go along with the song. They really make church a celebration and I love that! If you saw an African church service you’d see being a Christian really isn’t as boring as some people think it has to be.
Settling into Africa has gone as smooth as I could’ve hoped it to go. Crazy to think that in less than 3 months I will be on my way back to the States!! I appreciate everyone’s thoughts and prayers during my teams time in Africa and I will try to keep you all updated (:
P.S- My squad is currently hoping to be able to stay in Zambia for the whole 3 months, but due to visa issues we aren’t sure what is going to happen yet. Ideally we will be able to get 90 day visas, but they aren’t guaranteed. Right now we have 30 day visas, so if we do not get the 90 day visas we will have to go to Malawi or Botswana for the remainder of our time.
