Feeling blessed

Rain. And more rain. While most of our friends and family have been snowed in in a winter wonderland, we have been shoveling buckets of water out of our front door! As you can see from the pictures drew and Kevin are getting their daily workouts. We’ve even had to put sandbags in front of the doors!

Although the rain sometimes comes in excess, it has been a huge blessing to the people here in our village. They see their maize and ground nuts growing, and are able to collect rainwater for such things as laundry and bathing.

I had the opportunity last week to attend PE with Hudson and watch the preschoolers play “What time is it Mr. fox?” with Mr. Dave. The kids just love this game. Their squeals of delight were case in point. I was then able to go down to the preschool and help during “CenterTime”. I was at the flower arranging station. It was so amazing to see the kids put together beautiful bouquets and so excited to give them to their teachers! Here are a few pics from preschool…

This past Friday we had another beautiful Chapel, the favorite part of the week for most of our staff. Since preschool is currently meeting in our old “chapel” meeting space, we all squeezed into Ms. Jillian’s Grade 1 classroom. It was cozy but just perfect. We have all been taking turns leading chapel this semester, and this week happened to be our niece Lindsey’s turn. She invited our older kids to act out the parable of the Good Samaritan. She then went on to lead the kids in a time of worship. We were so proud to see her living out her faith and sharing her God given talents.

Today was a big day, as the guys woke up early for “The Big Pour”, poring the concrete slab for the new chicken run. It was a little inside joke for them, since both Kevin and Drew worked for large Concrete companies in college, and here they were pouring concrete together again, this time in Africa! we were so blessed and moved by the fact that Moline Christian School raised all the funds for this project to be possible. We are very excited to have a new home for our already existing chickens, as well as purchase new egg laying hens and broiler chickens for our lunch program.

Speaking of the lunch program, this was lunch today! 🙂

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This little one's mom, Charity, runs our school kitchen. She was one of our lead volunteers last year, working as many hours as needed and filling in for people when they didn't show. We were able to reward her for her hard work by offering her a paid position this year as our kitchen coordinator. She uses one day a week as her volunteer hours and is paid for the other 4 days. She works with and organizes the other momma volunteers and cooks breakfast and lunch every day for our 75 students and all of our volunteers. She does a wonderful job and we are so Blessed to have her as an integral part of The Esther School.

I quick stopped in Grade 1 today to take some quick pictures. I caught them during center time and they were all busy learning and having fun. Here are a few pics!

I was hoping to get to Kindergarten but they were busy with “Teacha Rachel” learning about the number 7 and I didn’t want to interrupt. 🙂

We are truly amazed with rebuilding of our preschool. As you can see the wall has already been rebuilt! We have a ways to go yet as we need new tresses and ceiling tiles. We will also be plastering and painting the interior walls, and need to rewire the electrical. All in due time. We want to thank so many of you for your outpouring of prayer support and financial support. We are so very thankful to outer church, Brookside CRC, for your special offering to help with rebuilding efforts. We were truly humbled. We have seen time and time again of the goodness of God, even in the midst of trouble.

We have had an amazing time with Drew’s mom and sister as they have been a blessing to us over these last 2 weeks. We are sad to see them go on Friday, but will be welcoming a new crew of family members. Mike and Shelby Heyboer (Caitlyn’s parents) arrive Friday and Mick and Sheri Honderd (Jillian’s parents) arrive Saturday. We are very eager to welcome them to The Esther School…and them put them to work! 🙂 Please pray for safe travels for them on their journey here.

Thanks you again to all of friends and supporters. The Lord is truly at work here in Zambia and am so excited to able to share a piece of it with you all!