Woooooooooow is time going fast. I can’t believe it’s already been 3 weeks since I left home. Even crazier that’s it’s our last full week in Zambia and our last week of ministry. I feel like I blinked and the time went by! I’m so in love with this country in so many ways. While I’m so excited for Zimbabwe and South Africa, I have this slight fear that I won’t love either country as much as I love Zambia. We have been blessed in so many ways with this being our first country. To start off, we were so lucky with our ministry hosts! Aldridge, Mercy, and Dennis are some of the sweetest, funniest and most loving people. They welcomed us here with open arms and took us and everyone else in as part of their family. I’m so thankful we had the chance to live with them while we adjusted to our life here in Africa. Second, the community here is incredible. I know I’ve already talked about this, but seriously, I can’t say it enough! We’ve been stopped so many times by our neighbors in Namatama just to sit and talk with them and we were invited to dinner at their place. I feel like just as we have gotten settled things are about to change. I’m going to miss all of my friends and neighbors I’ve met here, but I’m excited for the ways God will surprise us in the next 2 countries!
Honestly, ministry here has been nothing like any of us expected. Right when we got here my leader, Hanna, told us all something that has stuck in my head this whole month. “We’re really just here to love on God’s people.” While we’re also here to share the word of God, one of my main focuses this month has been to just love on everyone I meet, in hopes that through that, they will be able to tell I’m a Christian. Just by choosing to be interruptible and love on Gods people I have made so many incredible relationships here.
Teaching this month has been a million times harder than I expected. I had this idea in my head that it would come easy, with no challenges. Hahahah God definitely laughed at the idea of that. Four of us are teaching at Young Heart Primary School, while the other six teach at the New Hope Waves School. At young heart, I was paired with a teacher in the class with students who are 2-5 years old. Having such little kids, I thought no problem! Nannying and teaching at Goldfish had prepared me for this…I thought. I soon learned this would not be the case. With a language barrier between me and my teacher and my students, communicating was hard. While my teacher knows a couple of basic English words, her accent is so heavy that it made it nearly impossible to understand her. Due to this, for the first week of teaching, it was pretty much her just pointing at things in workbooks and having me copy them down. We exchanged hellos and smiles in the morning and goodbyes and more smiles in the afternoon. I really, really struggled with this. I thought I would be doing a lot more hands-on teaching and I was honestly disappointed that my morning consisted of me copying down their assignments and grading them. Another huge thing I struggled with is their form of discipline. In the States, if you lay your hand on a kid you’d probably end up fired or in jail. Here, it’s a normal thing to slap, pinch, or whip kids when they’re misbehaving in class. The teacher I work alongside uses whipping and hitting as a punishment for coloring outside the lines, not singing loud enough, or if they’re talking when she wants them to be quiet. Seeing the looks of terror on these little kids’ faces when this happens literally breaks my heart. There have been various times I’ve had to excuse myself from the classroom just to get away from it. It’s in these moments when I remember what Hanna told me about being here just to love on these kids. While I wish I could be doing/serving more, I have to realize that maybe that’s not God’s plan for me here in Zambia. Maybe I’m here just to love these kids and work on encouraging them through positive reinforcement instead of negative punishments. While I’m unable to step in and teach lessons to them, I’ve really been working on building strong and loving relationships with the kids. I give out high fives after they get a question right or when they don’t understand something, I sit down with them and repeatedly work on it until I know they understand. Just in the past couple of weeks I’ve seen such a turn around in some of these kids. Instead of being scared to ask for help and covering up their wrong answers with their hand, they are more inclined to actually call me over and ask for my help (and they actually call me teacher now!!!). While it’s not what I expected to be doing, I’m glad I’m still able to have a positive impact on these kids. It’s really opened my eyes on ministry work. I’ve realized I need to ditch all expectations of what I think is happening or is going to happen. I need to trust that God is going to use me in some way regardless.
Yesterday we took a day trip to Botswana for a safari in Chobe National Park. It was crazy good!!! I saw hippos, African buffalo, crocodiles and tons of different types of deer with different types of names hahahah, annnnd GIRAFFES!!!! My only regret is not seeing a black mamba in the wild hahahahaha but that will have to wait until next time.
As our last week in Zambia is starting, please pray for my team this week as we finish up our ministry work here and say bye to all of the amazing friends we’ve made here. This Friday, we head into “midpoint” debrief and will be staying at a hostel in town. Also please pray for safe travels for Julia, our mentor, who arrives Monday and Bailey, our teammate, who we will be reunited with Thursday!!! I can’t wait to see the ways God will use us as our time here comes to an end.
