Easter Eggs

Happy Easter to all of our family, friends and supporters back in North America. We counted many blessings this Easter. Among them were Teya’s first ever experience of decorating Easter eggs and our first 100 (and counting) eggs from the new laying hens we recently brought to the school.

It was actually a big week for our family, and for Teya in particular. On Monday we celebrated her fourth birthday. This was a big event for all of us, especially because, as far as we know, it was the first time her birthday was celebrated. She definitely caught up on celebrations and everyone within the province knew it was “a happy birthday for Teya”! We started the day with Jean’s world famous cinnamon rolls, an Esther School tradition, then had a family party in the evening. We are so blessed to have Tina’s sister Jennie, her husband Mick and our niece Olivia here for a 6 week work assignment and they were able to join as well. We were even able to phone and FaceTime several family members back home.

Tuesday and Wednesday were also great for Tina and I as we were able to go away overnight with Drew and Arika. After nearly two years here together, this was our first outing as couples aside from one afternoon lunch outing awhile back. We had a beautiful time and were able to relax, reflect and prepare for their upcoming departure.

We enjoyed a uniquely Zambian worship service this morning as the local congregation we attend hosted several sister churches in a weekend-long Easter conference at the nearby government school grounds. Nearly 100 visitors camped out at the school since Friday, participating in worship, teachings and baptisms. The Easter morning service was the capstone event and we were blessed by some amazing singing, a powerful message, and the chance to partake of the Lord’s Supper with our brothers and sisters here. This followed an equally powerful Palm Sunday service last week where we joined with the large local Roman Catholic congregation for joint worship and a palm procession through the village. I can tell we have been here for awhile as our presence barely registers notice anymore!

Unfortunately, the realities of life and death here are never far away and we were tragically reminded of this again earlier in the week. While away on Wednesday, we received word that a young neighbor girl passed away suddenly after a brief unknown illness. Marianna lived just meters from our home. She had just turned 5. Her family is well known to us including a sister in Grade 1 and several cousins throughout the school. She herself had just been registered for consideration for next year’s preschool class. So for the second time in just a few weeks we helped bury a young child and mourn with their family. The acute sadness of this event could only be offset by the beauty with which this community comes together in times of difficulty and grief and only accepted in light of the love of a Perfect Father with whom this little angel now rests.

Please pray for these mourning families and for the entire community as we continue forward in His name. Tomorrow, though a national holiday here, we will attempt to finish the roof of the P/K building that we have used the advantage of our Easter Break to complete. Tuesday we return to school after a week + off. This Friday is our assessment day where we will test the 78 children who recently registered for next year’s preschool class. The following week we will meet as staff and with members of the community to select the 24 that will make up the class of 2028.

After that we will begin to interview for next year’s new Zambian teacher, welcome the Miedema family to campus, and say goodbye to the Roelofs. Also before the end of the year we will harvest 3 acres of beans, peanuts and okra, have 3 class trips, 76 parent teacher conferences and 1 field day. Then, the final week of school, we will host a 10 person team from Dordt College, followed immediately by a 20 person team from Calvin College. If we are still alive at that point, we will conclude the year on May 30 and then continue assisting in the transition of staff and students while continuing our construction schedule and sustainability projects.

Needless to say, your continued prayer is appreciated.

Happy Easter! May the joy of His Resurrection fill your hearts and homes.

…of mice and men

Some of you may know that Tina and I have been open to God’s calling to adopt a child for a long time – we actually talked about adopting since before we were married. Adoption and foster care were always a special part of my family growing up and I (Kevin) even worked in the field of child welfare for many years early on. Although it was not the primary purpose of our move here, we figured that coming to Zambia offered a logical time and place to take this call seriously. The statistics regarding orphans in Zambia are staggering and the local response far from adequately addresses the need.

We shared with just a few people last year that we were pursing the adoption of a specific little girl who we had visited in an orphanage nearly every week for almost a year. Sadly, it didn’t work out, and was a difficult loss for us. We’ll spare the details for now, but when things fell apart with her, we obviously didn’t understand why. We had a difficult time discerning God’s specific plan for this aspect of our family. This became even more pronounced when we regrouped more than once and attempted to pursue other scenarios, only to have more doors painfully slammed in our faces.

At one point, we even came to terms with the idea that adoption may not be, for some reason, God’s plan for our family. We reluctantly accepted this as a possibility, although it never felt right. Eventually, however, after so many dead ends, we recognized that we had been trying to lead and not following God in the process so we stepped back and prayed for God’s direction.

In hindsight, we saw that we had again gotten caught up in creating our own plan – in this case one that involved adopting a baby or an older child. When we let go of our own plans we were almost immediately presented with the option of adopting an older child – a plan that we would never have sought on our own and, honestly, brought us significant fear at the time. But, we recognized God’s voice in the call and decided, cautiously at first, to move ahead. We have had nothing but peace since.

We were quickly introduced by our social worker to a beautiful little girl in an orphanage about 4 months ago. She had been found wandering around a busy road in Lusaka almost two years ago and authorities estimated that she was around 2 years old at the time, so very rough math puts her around 4. After searching in futility for family members to claim her, including a media blitz that included national television, the authorities concluded that she had either been purposefully abandoned or that a caretaker had died or otherwise left her and she wandered away. She was placed into the care of social welfare and assigned to an orphanage where she has since lived, along with a minimum of 25 other 2-5 year old children.

Our little angel was given a new name when she first came into care, likely by another social worker or police officer. We have given her the name Teya (“Tay-ya”). We will likely never know anything about the first two years of her life – even how old she officially is, but will have the unique opportunity to give her both a new name and a new birthdate.

We visited Teya several times in the orphanage and were eventually able to take her out for the day in early February. We later had two weekend visits that went very well and it didn’t take long for her to steal the hearts of our whole family. Last month, we went in for our home study interview and were hoping to ask to be able to have her visit again, either for that weekend or for two days the following week. Our long shot was that they would let us keep her in between as well so we would have her for a full week.

Instead, the Social Welfare Officer ended up granting an indefinite pass starting that day and promised to register our court request to begin the mandatory 3 month foster period. That basically means that Teya is in our home for good as long as everything continues as it should. At this point we are waiting for a confirmation of the court date where we would obtain the official approval for fostering. In the meantime, we are scrambling to initiate the first steps in the adoption process.

We have witnessed some difficult cases with various friends and acquaintances seeking to adopt here lately so we will never be fully confident until we are all safely at home, but this was a VERY positive step. Teya has been doing very well here and it feels like a family already.

Its amazing to see her blossom here – we hardly recognize her from the little girl we first met and visited with. She spends most of her days skipping, dancing, singing and laughing all over the house. She has even shown her sassy side a bit, but we thank God that at least she is full of life!

With a process as difficult, but familiar to the one in which we had to abandon our plans for our lives and recognize and follow God’s lead to move to Zambia, we turned the sharp corner of releasing our plans to adopt a baby and embrace God’s plan to give us an older child. Also as before, we take so much peace and and joy in the benefit of hindsight that reveals how much greater God’s plans always are for us. We can’t imagine it any other way now and are beside ourselves with anticipation for bringing this angel home.

Again, we are thankful for all of your support while we are here and for walking through this next journey as well. Some specific prayer requests:

Obviously, that things with the adoption process would progress as smoothly as possible and that we would be able to leave at the end of our term here as expected. Immediately, that means that we would obtain a court date very soon and that our request to foster would be approved.

Also, that Teya would continue to acclimate to our family and receive the love that we are so ready to share with her. Please also pray for the boys who are adjusting to receiving a new sibling “mid-stream”, and a GIRL at that! (This is new territory for all of us!)

Please join us in praying for God’s direction and peace during the final stages of our service here at the Esther School. Specifically, we will soon be notifying our friends and partners here locally that we will be leaving at some point soon. This promises to be a challenging process, so please pray that they see God’s hand in this project and trust His long-term plan for the future of the school.

Pray also, please, for the transitioning staff and leadership at the school – for those of us who will be withdrawing and for those coming in. We trust that God has called those who he will equip for the unique needs of the next phase of the project and pray that the appropriate roles and responsibilities can be adequately reassigned and clearly accepted and understood by all.