My time in Zimbabwe was unique to say the least. This was the first month with my new team: Mariah, Laura, Caleb, Conner, and Nano. We had the month to start forming who we are as a team but that process couldn’t be compete because our teammate Nano or Alessandro couldn’t get into Zimbabwe. His visa was denied. Nano is Costarican and getting into countries is a whole other process with more hoops to jump through than it is for us as Americans. So for some reason or another his visa was denied and he spent the month in South Africa with a Gap Year team doing ministry with them. That left the 5 of us to spend the month together. Once we got to Zimbabwe we spent about a week in the city of Bulawayo and then we traveled 5 hours to Binga AKA the bush of Zim.
While in Bulawayo we got our new jobs as paperboys (Papergirls? paperpeople???). We would walk around for a good two or three hours handing out GoodNews newspapers. These papers have a bunch of stories of Christians around the world living their lives for Christ. What I really like about Zim is that a majority of the people walk everywhere they need to go. So when we were out walking the roads handing out newspapers we couldn’t hand them out fast enough, we were constantly encountering people. I loved it! There is a different sense of community to be had in this everyday coming and going along the road.
Along with handing out news papers we would also visit different schools throughout the week. At the schools they would call an assembly and we would give a testimony and share the gospel. We have gotten really familiar with giving our testimonies at schools since we did that all of last month in the Philippines but giving them in Zim was a little different because during these assemblies we have everyone full attention. There was absolutely no talking on their end unless there was a question we asked. We also had a night at the church that was an open house for youth which any young person can come to and ask us any questions and just hang out with us. At the end of the week we went to Binga.
Once we were in Binga, ministry looked a bit different. We helped build two houses. These houses are supposed to be for orphans. My host grew up in Binga and his mom took in a number of orphans throughout her life time. After she past away my host decided to build this center in her honor. Our team was accompanied by a team of four from Hope Zimbabwe (our ministry host) and locals from Binga coming during there free time to help out. We all formed bricks and we filled in the foundation of these two houses as one big collective team. There isn’t heavy equipment or machinery to help so it was all done by hand. We made the bricks by mixing dirt and cement dry mix and water with our shovels. After that we had two big brick molds and we put the cement in the molds. Like sand castles, you flip it over and let the brick dry for about a week. If it didn’t rain (which it did most days) we would water the bricks for further cohesiveness. I didn’t do much of that myself because let’s be real I just slowed them down. I spent most of my time filling the foundation with rocks and dirt. We had a truck that people would take out to go find dirt and fill the back of it and then come back and drop it off in a pile for the rest of us to move to the foundation. The truck broke down after the first day so we spent the following days pulling weeds and finding dirt near the foundation that we could use. Shovels were limited so we came up with a system of having one person shovel dirt into buckets and the rest of us would pick up the buckets and walk them over to the foundation and pour them out. We also walked around looking for big rocks to throw in them before we started adding the dirt. By the end of our time we got the truck fixed and we were able to fill in the second houses foundation a lot faster than the first one. I learned alot while doing this work, so much in fact I have to write a whole other blog on it. So that will be coming soon after that one. We did this every morning (minus Sundays and off days) and then in the afternoon we would do school visits like we did in Bulawayo. That was a lot of fun as well, we did more songs and dancing with them than with the other schools. One school invited us to come and hang out with them during their P.E class. After that they invited us to come watch their track meet. One time instead of a school visit we did a home visit, this visit led to a couple of more. We went to the home of some of the children that Hope Zimbabwe are helping to support. Again, there is so much in this visit that I will have to write another blog on it. On Sundays, we put a hold on the construction and we would go to church and give testimonies and preach. I personally gave my testimony the first Sunday we were there and on the second I preached.
We then went back to Bulawayo for a couple of days where we did one more school visit and then a little presentation at church. After that we left for Victoria Falls for a couple of days to debrief the month with the rest of our squad and to say good bye to our alumni squad leaders who are going back to the U.S. (Alumni squad leaders are people who have completed the World Race already but felt called to go back out on the field and lead a new team for 5 months. Before they leave they raise up new squad leaders to finish the race with us. My old team leader Rebekah is now one of our new squad leaders!)
This is just a summary of what I did this month but because this blog is already pretty long I will end it here. I have way more to say so stay tuned for more blogs on Zimbabwe!
