Moving to Africa was one of the simplest and most natural experiences that I have endured.
Leaving a country where the government was disagreeing and was currently not operational (sorry U.S) to place with so much peace, purpose, and relational beauty was similar to exhaling after a stressful moment in time. Daily life feels so natural and correctly placed here.
What is odd, however, is that the government and political powers here are much stronger and the conflict in these countries are much greater than in the U.S., yet there still is an underlying peace.
Despite lacking basic luxuries, the stride of the Zambian culture is a far greater luxury in my eyes.
My daily routine feels more like a routine than anything has before.
The opportunity to fall into comfortableness is greater than it ever had been for me.
A look into our daily lives:
Monday through Friday from 8-12 we teach at a school for kids who cannot afford to go to the community’s local school in the area. Andrew and I are assisting in teaching twenty first graders. We also regularly catch preschoolers making a break for the road trying to get away from school. Some of the kids have never been to school before, so we started with the basics (ABCs, counting to 10, and how to correctly use a notebook).
In the afternoons we play European Football with the community full of FIFA prospects (they all are extremely good), and share a Bible Story.
As different individuals stay at the same hostel as us, we have the opportunity to share our faith, stories, and God’s love to those whom we are living with.
In-between activities we are either doing laundry, making food, going to town, spending time in God’s word, or spending time talking with each other and the kids outside.
Town is about an hour walk or a $2-3 taxi ride unless we catch the 30¢ minibus. We have a grocer where we can buy our food with our weekly budget (we each get $1 for breakfast, $1 for lunch, and $2 for dinner a day, although we usually combine our dinner money to make family meals).
There is an internet Café next to the grocer where we get about 100k/s internet to upload blogs and talk with family and friends.
Saturday is our off day. We can use our personal money to go on local activities (like getting to see a lion and cheetah!!). We also use this time to spend intentional time in God’s word and investing in our team.
On Sunday we get to go to a local church. Church services look very different than in the States. They usually run for 9 until 1:30, so they are much longer. The lack of AC means we get a good sauna session as well! Good for the soul and the body 🙂 Praise God! The pastor’s usually swap between their local language and English (and unfortunately accents make it sound like their local language still) so it’s very difficult to understand what’s being said. The worship is pretty great though!
Tomorrow our squad mentor, Julia (or Aunt Julia) from the States will be joining us for two weeks. One week she will be joining us for our daily activities, and the next we all will move into a nearby hostel for a short debrief of our time here before moving onto Zimbabwe. This time of debriefing will give us time and space to process the month and the new culture in an intentional environment. We will not give another debrief in our time here, so it’s just this month.
Our teammate, Bailey, will be able to rejoin us!! Our whole team is so stoked for her return. We are so thankful we are able to have our whole team together. We look forward to being able to serve alongside her in Zimbabwe.
Pace of life is slower than I anticipated. Having served 9 week-long international mission trips already, I have accustomed to the sprint pace of a week, in contrast to the sustainable marathon pace of moving to a country for a quarter year. It was a quick realization but I was not bothered by it at all, but simply noted it as true.
Thank you so much, everyone, for your prayers.
If anyone has any prayer requests, something you would like to share with me, or just feel like telling me what you had for breaking this morning, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email at [email protected], message me on Facebook, Google, or carrier pigeons work too.
I’d love to get to know or help anyone through something if I don’t have the honor of knowing you already 🙂
Thanks for taking the time the read this 🙂
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Until next time, have a great week.
