Tuesday June 17th was my first official day in Zambia! I had been traveling for 22 hours and slept for 5 of those hours, so I am thankful to be back with my team!
Wow what a way to start out my first experience here. My team has Unsung Heroes this month which is where we do research on ministries here in Zambia. We don’t have a set contact we stay with we find them. My team found a ministry and today we went to their church to check it out. As we arrived we were lead to this on the stage that the pastor had made for us. The church did praise and worship and I must say it was beautiful to watch and hear. The people were so passionate and you can tell they were really happy to be there. The entire congregation do this thing where the pastor says I’m going to count 1-2-3 welcome our guest. They all clapped three times then yelled welcome! It made me feel so happy inside and yes I felt very welcomed!
One if my teammates spoke to the congregation and the people were just so appreciative of every word that came out of his mouth. They were so excited to have a group of people from America speak at their church! They were so thankful and I felt so appreciative of just being welcomed into their church. After the teaching the church sang another song and we all got up and danced. We sang and danced to a traditional Zambian song. It was so amazing to hold these women’s hands and have them show you how to dance to the songs. I couldn’t stop smiling! To make my first day even better the church set up lunch for us and served us real Zambian food! It was really good and their was so much of it. They poured water over our hands as we cleaned them because some of the food you eat is with your hands! I’ve never had an experience like this before and it was amazing.
The drive back to our hostel the pastor took us to his home, there were little children outside all starring at us saying, “hi, hi, how are you?” It was so cute to see them and their curiosity. So my first official day here in Africa made my heart very happy! It definitely was a warm welcome and exactly what I needed.
