Everything is late in Africa, including this blog. But life is so good. It is still so unreal to me that I am currently living in Africa. Today as I was grocery shopping with a teammate I made the statement, “wow we are grocery shopping in Africa” and if you would have told me two years ago this would be my life I would have clearly laughed in your face. But that is the cool thing about God, He uses broken people- even me.
We started our ministry here in Zambia last week and it has been so amazing yet filled with so many challenges. Some of my teammates and I got the privilege of helping start a brand new school- which is extremely awesome but at the same time so hard. We were thrown into a room with children that barely (or didn’t) speak English. Bree and I have the oldest class, which ranges from 13-15 years old. Some of these students are on a first-grade level when they should at least be at the seventh-grade level. They are so ready to learn that they even asked me for homework. What!? Who wants homework? But we give it to them and it is complete the next morning with no complaints. They absolutely love math but struggle hard in English- which has made things a little hard. This week has been a little rough at school. Some of the girls got into a fight and the class basically asked for someone else to teach, which crushed our spirits. But we continue to teach them and trust that God will use us during this time of being their teachers.
Afternoon ministry looks a little different. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we do sports ministry in a local field with a bunch of kids. If you know me you know I don’t do sports, but this is seriously my favorite time of the week. We play soccer against the local kids and it is seriously the best time. We laugh, we run, we fall, but most importantly we have fun. On Tuesday and Thursday, we do door to door evangelism- we haven’t got to do it yet due to rain- but I really hope we get to this coming week.
We only have about 6 days of ministry left before we head to debrief for a few days, and then we are on our way to Bulawayo for month 2! Time has passed by so incredibly fast and I will be super sad to leave. This past week I read a book a teammate brought and it talks about being where your feet are- so this next week instead of looking ahead to debrief or Bulawayo, I am going to choose to be where my feet are. I will choose to get out more, talk more, and listen to God more.
Life is pretty good here. If you haven’t heard, I broke my phone & I am probably not getting a new one. My only contact is through my laptop and I don’t really like taking it with me all the time so I will update as soon as I can! I love you all & can not wait to share everything with ya’ll!
Also, this blog is spread out over two weeks but if you have any questions leave a comment and I will reply soon (:
til next time,
Ellen
