Here's your sign

I love to look at signs when I'm traveling. I get a laugh at some. I question others. Here are a few signs we saw on our trip to the eastern province.

Kelsey's 7th Birthday

Happy Birthday to our sweet 7 year old. And a birthday in Zambia... what could be better?!

Our morning began with a large stack of pancakes topped with candles. Hannah had spent the night, so she and Kelsey gobbled up those pancakes so they could get busy playing together. Then, at 10am some more friends came over for some playtime. I made a Cocoa-Cola Cake for all to enjoy.

For dinner, Kelsey chose Rhapsody's, a local restaurant at the mall. Before we could go out, daddy needed a hair cut. So, Kelsey took hold of the clippers and went for it. Watch Out!

WOW, how she's grown in just one year.

Hippos and more...

Hippos

Crowning Crane

Impala

These 2 impala are fighting. I have a long video of this that I might blog about later.

Waterbuck

Okay, so we got a little carried away with naming all the animals. As you have already seen, we had the Walmart Elephant and Geoffrey the Toys'r'us Giraffe. Now, meet the 'Ipod' of Hippos, the 'Burger King' Crowning Crane, the 'McDonalds' Impala, and the 'Target' Waterbuck.

Check out this short video of one lonely hippo doing a flip in the water!

We also saw a monitor lizard, but he didn't get a special name. And whenever we saw the warthog, we would sing together, "When I was a young wart-hog!"

Geoffrey the Giraffe

We saw lots of giraffe. This one was a little hard to spot since he's sitting down.

This giraffe was eating when we spotted him. It was amazing to see how he grabbed the branches with his tongue and pulled it into his mouth.

We were driving back to the Wilderness Camp when the kids saw all these giraffes together. We counted up to 14, but we think there were more.

We all said that we could sit all day and watch these creatures. They became known as the Toys'r'us giraffe since we were thinking of names from America.

Zebras

When you think of Africa, most people think of Zebra. They are the most unique animal to me. About half-way during our night drive as the sun was setting, our driver pulled up on the bank of the old river bed. There were 20-30 Zebra grazing near us. This is where we had our snack (Coke) and took some pictures and video. The zebra were doing what they call "dusting." All of them get in circle and one zebra gets in the middle and rolls around in the dirt. Then, when that guys finished, the next one takes his turn. They circle around to protect the one in the middle.

Doesn't this baby zebra look so cute? I think this one zebra who has her head turned is saying, "Do my stripes make my backside look big?" It's got to be a woman zebra, right?! Question of the day: Is the zebra white with black stripes or black with white stripes? If you answered white with black stripes, that is the true African Zebra!

Jesus Film

On Friday and Saturday nights we set up the cinema screen to show the Jesus Film in the native language of Chinyanja. It has been a while since I have seen this film, and to see it (and hear it) in a different language was really nice. The first night we estimate about 600-800 people were there. By there, I mean the local soccer field. Not a soccer stadium, but just a field in the village where everyone plays soccer (excuse me, football).

During the day, the men would go out in the village distributing flyers which advertised the showing of the film. By Saturday night, after word had spread, we can only guess there must have been over 1000 people in attendance. And most people STAND during the whole film. We brought our camping chairs, but all the adults stood and some of the children sat on the ground.

The first night we arrived early in the evening before the sun set. This gave the guys time to set up the screen and DVD player (which was run by generator). During this pre-show time, Coby and Kelsey drew a crowd - a rather large crowd. They had already made a few friends earlier in the day at the home of the church's leader. But now it was a lot of kids hanging around them. They enjoyed the attention at first, but then after the movie began it became quite bothersome to them. They wanted to sit and watch the movie, but the kids would not leave them alone. Finally, they were exhausted so I put all 3 of them in the car to sleep until the movie was over.

Coby was quite the entertainer (no surprise!) at the home of the church leader. He and Kelsey played games with the children, and then he gathered them all around and told them how to become a Christian. We were so proud of him and his boldness to share. He invited them all to see the Jesus Film that evening.

The second night we arrived to set-up and found a soccer game going on. We had to wait for them to finish their game before we could begin setting up. During this wait time, Lindy told some Bible stories and we sang some songs with them.

At the invitation time on both nights, many came forward, so many we couldn't count. The following days were spent going around the village asking people who made decisions. We asked those who made a decision to meet at the church the next morning, and we had 4 come to be saved. The others made professions of faith at their homes when the leaders visited them. All in all we had about 125 salvations during this trip. It is hard to know just how many made decisions to be born-again, but God knows. Please pray for the ones who came forward.

Cropping Ladies Group

Our days were filled with a ladies Bible study, hut-to-hut evangelism, and meeting with the leaders of Cropping Baptist Church.

Kelsey and I attended the ladies group where Lee Shaw, a fellow missionary, presented the Creation to Christ story. There were approximately 8-10 ladies, plus lots of children. Four women sang for the group, babies attached and all.

Kelsey and I took on the duty of keeping the kids occupied while their mothers listened. This one little fellow, Andre, took a liking to me, but he didn't want to be held for too long. He enjoyed getting down in the dirt and crawling. I would guess he was 8-9 months old cause he couldn't quite walk yet. As he was crawling around underneath me, he noticed my red toenails, and he was quite mesmerized.

I had told Kelsey that we might play some games with the kids while the women were learning. At first, I thought it may be a distraction more than a help to take the kids to the side. But Kelsey was determined to play with the kids. She went to the car and picked out her Disney Princess book. I told her to go around the outside of the hut so the women would not be distracted. Soon the other kids found her and they began looking at the pictures in the book. I sat down and began talking with the children about the things they were seeing in the book. Many of them just wanted to speak English, so we were pointing to items in the book, and I would say the English and they would repeat. Then, they would teach me the word in their language (Chinyanja).

The Walmart Elephant

On our night drive we didn't see the first elephant. Since being in Africa since October, we have not seen any elephants, and we were starting to wonder whether they even had elephants in Zambia.
So, the next morning the Howards took us back into the park for a morning drive. Ricky was very doubtful that we would see an elephant. Finally, there appeared one lonely elephant near our path. Because there was only one, Ricky joked that our friends must have purchased that elephant from Walmart and placed it where we would be driving, so as to convince Ricky there were elephants in Zambia. We joked about the Walmart elephant the whole morning, until near the end of our drive, we came upon a herd of elephants from babies to big daddies. We just sat in awe at their beauty and grandness.
So, now Ricky believes there ARE elephants in Zambia, and they didn't come from Walmart!

Night Drive

The first night we arrived at the Wilderness Camp we went on a night drive. The drive began at 4pm and lasted until 8pm. Once it got dark around 6pm, we began looking for the 'cats'. We were hoping to see a leopard, but instead we were very fortunate to find 4 generations of lions. Our driver had to go off-road to find them, but it was so worth it! There were baby cubs, young lions, mother lions. And then we moved in with the other game vehicles to gaze upon the male lion taking it easy on a cliff. It was almost as if he knew we were all taking photos. He sat and posed for all of us, and then as we were driving away he laid his head down.

Traveling Adventures

After visiting with the Phiri family, we stopped in at the 40/40 farm to eat lunch. We visited a little with the Sprayberry's and the Keeton's who were setting up for the training. After this we headed on to Chipata. From Chipata it is 120km to South Luangwa, however, it is mostly dirt road, so it took about 3 hours to go that short distance. Along the way we see many children waving at the "white" people. We passed several small villages and some of the churches that were started by our mission several years ago in this area.

It was a beautiful drive seeing all the mountains and valleys around us. Once we got to the top of the mountain, we could look out over the Luangwa valley seeing the river as well. It was a very BUMPY trip, we called ourselves the "Bobblehead Family" since our heads were bobbing everywhere. The kids didn't even sleep on the way, partly because of the roads. Imagine all 3 kids in the backseat bouncing all over each other.