We have so much to update everyone on again. Things have been so very busy lately and about the time I stop to consider updating the blog, something else significant is happening. I will have to just give an overview of some of the highlights and try to bring you up to speed. This will certainly be a mixed bag of updates!
Above all, this has been a time of people coming and going. Within the past 2 weeks we have seen 18 different people come and/or go from here. On May 1st we all welcomed the Miedema family, Brent and Kathy and their 4 children, to the team. Brent will be heading up the ongoing construction and maintenance efforts at the school. It has been great to have some new but familiar faces on board and to have Brent lend his skill and expertise to our building efforts.
Last week we said hello and goodbye to Stephanie VanKampen who came through GEMS to photograph and video some updated footage of the school. Stephanie works for the Canadian Broadcasting Company and has been involved with this project for sometime. She certainly got a raw look at life at the Esther School!
We also said goodbye to Lucinda Kollenhoven who has been very involved with our project for some time as well. Lucinda’s entire family was involved with GEMS and The Esther School and several of them were with Drew and I when we came for our planning/work trip in early 2012. Lucinda and her parents then lived in Lusaka for awhile, serving with a partner organization, and Lucinda joined us again to live and help here at the School since January. She will be dearly missed by the staff and students.
Also making great contributions to the school and to our family personally were Tina’s oldest sister (and Lindsey’s mom), Jennie, her husband, Mick and daughter, Olivia. This part of the Woods family was with us for the past 6 weeks and left on Monday. While here, they tackled many projects around campus, including the nest boxes for the laying hens, partitions in the main bathroom building, some reconstruction of the preschool building, classroom furniture and many other projects including a mud oven for staff use that will also serve as a model for a larger oven to be constructed at school. We were uniquely blessed to have Mick, Jennie and Liv spend time here with us and help out.
Finally, and with much heaviness, we said goodbye to our dearest friends, the Roelofs, and in doing so ended a significant chapter in our lives and in the life of the Esther School. Words could not express (for now) the significance of our relationship since we first came together at Hope College, through our early days of career, marriage, family and life and, especially, the past few years preparing for, traveling to and living through the first years of the Esther School’s history.
God was so clearly in control when he provided a way for us to come here together and created the “fraternity of four” that laughed, cried, worked and prayed our way through the pioneering phase of this project. We are thankful that, God willing, we will have the next 50 years together to share the many memories made and lessons learned, usually the hard way. God gave us the gift of each other and used our friendship and history to help us as we faced heartache, uncertainty, fear, even death. Our joy was also multiplied in small successes, growing families, and the daily laughter that kept us going. To have served with these amazing people was a privilege and an honor and it will be so strange to no longer have them be just a few bricks away. We love you dear friends.
At school we have now completed our assessments for selecting next years’ preschool class, we’ve nearly finalized the new roster, we have officially started our poultry operations with 100 laying hens and 100 broilers to feed the students and generate income and we recently had our first all-school field day – a success! This week we have final parent-teacher conferences, next week is field trips, and, if we survive until then, we will end the school year on May 30!
Tomorrow we will take a break from school to attend a court hearing where we will seek an official committal from the court to begin fostering our Teya. Although she has been with us for 10 weeks now, this is the first legal step toward her adoption. The approval should be granted without incident, but we will also be requesting an expedited process that would not require us to be further delayed in moving forward. We would appreciate your prayers for approval of our “Effective Date of Notice” and “Certificate of Urgency”.
Finally, and this is a strange one – we are asking for your prayer for healing as I (Kevin) was confronted and attacked yesterday by a spitting cobra. I was inside with Clayton when Haddassah (our dog) began barking from outside. When I went out to shush her I saw a very large snake coming in our front door. I kicked the door shut, but it turned and entered the other entrance to the side of the duplex that the Roelofs had vacated just the previous evening. I managed to get it back outside but pursued it because of the many children around. I managed to get a few swings in with a stick before it turned, hooded, and before I could react further, sprayed venom into my eyes and face.
Long story short, I was able to receive assistance quickly and will be fine. Several staff, employees and friends from the village came quickly to help me and to finish the snake off. By God’s provision, a friend from the nearby town, who happens to be an EMT from Iowa, “happened” to stop by within a few minutes and then called Tina who, at the same time, “happened” to be driving right past his house so she could grab his medic bag. After flushing my eye under the kitchen faucet, he set up a saline drip so that I could further irrigate in the back of the van (once again an ambulance – for me this time!) while Dave and Brent rushed me to Lusaka to an eye specialist.
The doctors were able to properly examine and irrigate my left eye, which took the brunt of the strike. They found a slight corneal defect from the venom’s toxin and gave me some medication to use at home. Tina and I then returned to the hospital today for a second exam where the doctor said the cornea had healed significantly already and she adjusted my medication. Although my eye is still somewhat painful and my vision a bit blurred, the progress in 24 hours has been significant and the doctors expect a full recovery without permanent damage. For that we praise God and ask for your continued prayer. I hope not to alarm anyone, but wanted to give the full story for those who had not heard or just heard something about the incident.
I will try to upload some photos from our last few weeks (minus the most recent incident!) soon…
The DeKam Family in Zambia 