the weekend in Zambia

I'll take Saturday, and Mandi will take Sunday...

We started off early at the HOM. We roared into the crawlers' room and stayed all day. There was very little hesitation on the part of our kids engaging in the nursery. Zeke loves to fly Mpo and Patricia around the room. Mpo is one of the 6 adoptable boys, and has a wonderful belly laugh. Patricia is the gal twin who came to the HOM extremely tiny (premature birth, plus being a twin, plus poor prenatal, etc. - Addie refers to her as "Patricia" while holding one hand about 8 inches above the other). Her twin, Patrick, is in the isolation room now...I think he has already had measles and is now in for something else. He does not quite have the health his sister has. If a baby starts crying and Patricia is next to them, you can assume it was her taking a swipe at them.
Rayna dances with "boy Gift" around the room - meaning she holds his hands and he leans/follows her steps. He is one of 3 babies named Gift - 2 boys w/ one we have not met & a gal. Plus Mpo means "gift". She also had fun introducing Playdoh to a few of the kids. They did not necessarily know what was up, though it did not instantaneously go into the mouth(that came later). Addie is all over the floor, rolling balls & "reading" (she has it just about memorized) her Dr. Seuss ABC book to the kids. She took it in stride when Christopher (1 of the 2 leaders of the pack in there, he is a hilarious little mimic) ripped a page.

We spent lots of time around all of the babies. I can say that time becomes almost still when sitting on the floor. We are fast running out of clothes because they are covered in pee, spit-up & chema (the corn flour cereal they eat every day). You walk in the room, they stare at you for half a second,then the arms go up & the smiles begin. You play, you hug, you wipe snot & tears. You sit on the floor for hours, and it is...(insert some word here, I don't knowone that sums it up). I highly recommend at some point you go somewhere and sit on the floor of an orphanage. Not to be too melodramatic but it's special.

Saturday night we ate dinner with the couple from Portland. It was an interesting mix as we shared our stories. We have been on very different paths, and we have both read and heard quite different things. It is amazing how God can drop off folks in some crazy places (kinda like Jesus sending his boys across the Sea of Galilee into a storm). Dinner was at an outdoor shopping center - from the parking lot it was very American in appearance (even a Subway,no cookies though), up close it just had some small differences. Then it was home for our journals (if you can see Rayna's journal it will be worth your time), reading "Stormy" and our malaria pills. You can see the photo of Mandi cutting up the kids' pills and then adding hony - it didn't help).

Sunday we got to go with Uncle G (Zambian who works at H.O.M.) to the Jesus Army Church. It was located in a very poor community. The church was a simple one room building and there were friendly adults and kids congregating outside when we arrived. The music was angelic, mostly sang in their tribal language but there were a few English songs. We were introduced by being brought to the front of the church. The service was about 3 hours long. It was a bit tough for the kids but they were troopers. Bishop Fleming preached a good sermon on the story of Joseph. At the end he asked Jamie to come up and close the service in prayer. Glad my husband is not shy. Then after the service he asked Jamie to preach next week. Seriously? We will find out.

The picture of Addie and I was after church. We were sitting on the step outside the building surrounded by curious Zambian children. They wanted to talk to us and touch our hair.

I cooked dinner for the first time in our guest house Sunday night. I had made one previous attempt to make spaghetti but we couldn't get the water to boil (remember there is no writing left on the burners buttons). We have since figured out the boiling, so I made some soup. The kids were not thrilled, but Jamie and I thought it was pretty good. At dinner, we were talking with the kids about the poor community next to the church we went to. The roads were dirt & full of huge potholes, most had no electricity, and there was no plumbing. We saw kids with their buckets getting water from the community pump. Jamie compared for them how much he made in a day verses one of those dads. They were like "wow!" Then came a key question: Did they seem happy? Without hesitation our kids said yes. What a great opportunity to teach them that having material posessions does not equal happiness.

Sunday night after the kids went to bed was by far one of the hardest moments here for Jamie and me. It was time to decide which child we would pursue for adoption. We had narrowed it down to 2 and for a long time we just sat there feeling torn, neither one of us able to say one of the childrens' names because we knew that when we said "yes" to one we would be saying "no" to the other. But we did finally make a decision, not based on any pro con list or any comparison chart. We think that perhaps God gave us a microscopic leaning which allowed one of us to say his name. Now we must trust both these boys into God's hands.

(Jamie's note - We had begun to learn as we nearing our departure from the US that we might possibly face a scenario where we would be choosing the child from a group. We were not looking forward to that. It was worse than I had imagined. We have great excitement for where we are going, but there is a deep sadness nonetheless.