Lifesong Farm

 Strawberry harvest has been full tilt for a couple of weeks now. We rejoice that the berries have been so productive thus far. We have been able to double our work force. More people are now able to work to provide for their families. As the farm begins to turn a profit, the money goes to Lifesong School. There, orphaned and vulnerable children are given the opportunity for an education that they may never have had available otherwise. Thank you for your prayers and support!

The kids run trays to the ladies so they can continue picking, classing and sorting the berries without interruption.

Claire with a box of class B strawberries. We sell these direct at the farm. We also sell them to ladies who then resell them at markets in town.

Savannah practicing carrying African style.

looking a little unsteady there Jonas! Moses..you're a natural ;)

Larissa resupplying Silvia.

 Oh give thanks to the Lord! Call upon His name; Make known his deeds among the peoples! Psalm 105:1

Fort

noun \ˈfȯrt\

: a strong building or group of buildings where soldiers live

Our children (like most children) have this thing with forts. Wherever we go, they have to establish some sort of permanent dwelling. It is a long involved process. Just selecting the site involves many hours of discussion and debate. Once a place is finally chosen, trying to decide on what materials to construct the fort consume more hours. The actual construction will last for days. And things are never quite complete. Adjustments are made each time the play house is used. New seating arrangements, new shelving units for all the treasures they discover, newly devised ideas to utilize the fort to its fullest potential.

As the kids have gotten older, their fort making has evolved to greater heights of construction achievment. Here’s a brief fort flashback.

When we arrived in Zambia, the kids started scouting out the possibilities. They decided they wanted to construct something close to where our new house will be on the farm. This is their biggest and best fort yet. It’s also being built in front of a way larger audience than they’ve ever had before. They ended up recruiting quite a few people to help them out. Erik got roped in to thatching the roof. He in turn, had to ask a Zambian worker the best way to go about doing it. Today, they enlisted the help of the teenage boys living close by to help with the thatching. Claire said they will try to pool the few kwacha they have to pay the boys for their labors. :)

 

window complete with screen

As for myself, I find my mind fixed on the following verses as the kids focus on constructing their new fort.

He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, “He is my refuge and my fortress; My God, in Him I will trust.”  Psalm 91:1-2

Blessings to you and yours.

Guest Blogger

This is for all of Larissa's friends...Her thoughts on departure day. It's a little late in coming, but it is her words verbatim. Enjoy.

To get to the airport, we rode in a big van. Both Grandpas and Grandmas came and my Aunt Abbie, Uncle Tyler and my little cousin Tanner came. I didn’t get bored because I brought a lot of things to do. When we finally arrived, I was excited and sad. I had to leave my Grandpas and Grandmas, aunts and uncles and cousins. We unloaded all our stuff out of the van and went inside to the airport. We went up to the desk and did some things. Tanner was getting a little squirmy, so my uncle had to take him on a little walk to check things out. When it was time to say goodbye, I felt so sad. I gave everyone hugs including Tanner. Then we had to leave. 

This is me heading in to O'Hare airport

We had a lot of luggage!

I went with mom. We went down this hallway thing and then a guy was standing at a desk. We had to show him our passports. We walked through, then my mom lifted me up so I could see my aunt and uncle and grandpas and grandmas one more time before we left. I waved. Then we went through security. Then we had to wait a long time for our flight.  It was  a few hours. We ate supper at the airport.  It was finally time. We got in a big line for people to check our passports. When it was finally our turn, they  checked them and we went through this tunnel thing. When we got to the plane they showed us where to sit.

When we first got on the plane before takeoff, I felt  very excited and halfway scared. Finally it was takeoff. I was really excited. It tickled my tummy when we lifted off. When we got into the sky, I felt really good and comfortable. Once we were completely in the sky, we were allowed to get unstrapped. So I unstrapped and figured out how to watch a movie. Soon it was bedtime. I fell asleep on mom’s lap for a little while. I woke up in the middle of the night.

Can you tell I am excited and scared?

I pretty much stayed up all that time until morning. When it became morning, mom said I slept only about an hour and half and had been awake the rest of the night. They brought us breakfast. After breakfast, I watched another movie and then it was almost time to land. When it was time, I had to strap in. We made a few circles around the airport before landing because other planes were landing before us. When it was our turn, we landed. I did not like it. I thought I was going to throw up. When we hit the ground, there was a little bump. We waited for a little for the plane to slow down, then we unstrapped and got out. We walked through a tunnel into the airport. We were in London! I was super tired because I didn’t get any sleep. We left the airport. Mom and Dad had to drag me around. We rode the Subway into the middle of London. We saw Big Ben (that giant clock)

(( Interjection in middle of story…Hey Mom, can we just skip ahead to when we get back on the plane?))

It was finally time for takeoff again. When we got on the plane, I sat there waiting to take off. I don’t remember much probably because I was so tired. We rode on the plane a long time. Then we landed in Lusaka. We got off the plane and we went to get all our luggage. We waited outside the door for the people from Lifesong to come pick us up. When they finally got there, there were so many of us and so much luggage we had to ride in separate vans. I rode with Mom, Claire and some other people. We had to drive a long time, we even stopped to get food. We kept driving and driving. Finally we arrived around supper. Our friends made a big welcome sign and were waiting for us when we arrived. We played with them for a while, they showed us our new house we would be living in. Shortly after, they had to leave. Once they left, we got all settled in and ate some supper.  I felt good. After supper, we stayed up a little bit longer before we went to bed. Then we went to bed. I slept under mosquito netting for the first time. It felt a little weird. But now I am used to it.

How are you really doing?

The title of the post is a question a lot of you have asked me. This is an attempt to answer. In short, better.

All in all it hasn’t been a terrible transition. We have gone through some rough patches and we still have moments. The behavioral outbursts are becoming less (for all of us;) We still have moments when the differences between our old life in the States and our new life in Zambia become stark and startling. We call these moments “twangs” (a term we picked up in one of our trainings). In those moments we feel pain and discomfort. We each work through the emotions in different speeds. We are working on being patient with each other and encouraging each other when we know others are having a harder time than we ourselves are.

Erik absolutely loves being on the farm. Seeing him use his talents there helps me to know the Lord leading us here is sure. The resettling issue for the kids and I is a bit more complex. One of our biggest frustrations is also our biggest blessing. Let me explain. Where we are currently living is awesome. We love the house, the place, the yard, etc. But, we are kind of a long ways away from the farm. We are completely walled in so we are safe. Yet no one really lives nearby for us to form relationships with. Established school and daily routines have added comfort and security for our children but we often feel trapped here with no vehicle and no one to meet with. How do you meet people who live completely differently than you do? How do you learn to empathize and share with people whose norm is not having food to feed their hungry children? There are no storytimes at the library, no public pools, and most don’t attend church. I want to help people, but still don’t even know enough to help. (not knowing where the doctor is, not knowing what symptoms belong to which disease, not knowing the language well, etc.) The learning curve is straight up and seems a little too steep to attain to. It’s hard to determine exactly what God has for us for right now. It has been a constant refocusing for me to place my eyes on Jesus and trust that He will give me creative ideas and wisdom about where and how to become involved.

Even as I type this, the kids are out playing in the mango grove. I hear them yell hello to people who walk past the outer gate. In the past week, while they have been at play, people have stopped by asking for piece work, others yell for kwacha. Some want to know if we need a house manager. School children on their way home from school stand at the gate trying to entice them to come out and play.  When my kids say “I will go ask my mom,” the kids at the gate run away and hide.

Some of our kids are having a rougher time than others. There have been many tears of frustration shed while being held tight by either Erik or I. Yet, there are aspects of this new life they enjoy. Their newest game is to keep their ears tuned in to the distant blasting of the copper mines. Upon hearing it whoever yells “Copper Mine, Boom, Boom!” first wins. Their bunk beds are right by the windows so they can lay on their beds and watch for lizards outside. And hey, who doesn’t love catching lizards and mice in their own living room and kitchen? Or like tonight, catching bats in their dining room?

My dad always tells me that people read this blog and then know how to pray. Please join us as we pray for patience as we wait to move in to our more permanent dwelling. Pray we make the most of our time here growing closer together as a family. Pray we can willingly be the hands and feet of Jesus.

this morning

This morning was one of those mornings.

I woke to the sound of Erik filling the toilet tanks with water hauled in from outside to force them to flush. Apparently we still had no water. We haven’t had water since yesterday at about 9 a.m. Things were starting to get stinky in all the bathrooms. I put the pillow over my head. It’s Saturday and I wanted to sleep till past 7 today.

No such luck. “Hey Mom! Guess what? When dad opened the toilet tank he found a tree frog living in there! Cool, huh? I put him in this jar and we are going to keep it moist so we can watch him for a few days to see what he does. Except, he has a weird looking bump on his back, what do you think its from?”

“Perhaps from living in a toilet tank??” I said as I stumbled out of bed.

When I finally made it to the kitchen, a precarious stack of dishes greeted me from the sink and countertop. I looked closer. Ants. Everywhere. I didn’t want to spray my dishes with Raid or Doom (the popular insect spray here) because that stuff smells so noxious it can’t be good for you. I found my organic insect spray made with essential oils and began spraying like mad. It worked! Ants were curling up all over the place. Erik got me some water from outside again and I began heating it in our electric teakettle. (one of the coolest inventions ever!) I brushed ants off of the dishes and dropped the dirtiest into a bucket of water to soak for awhile.

Oh right, breakfast! The kids would love pancakes. I’ll do that. I went to the fridge for milk and eggs and was so thankful to feel it was cold. (last month, it wasn’t working…we moved it and discovered the coils needed cleaning...also we found a very large, dehydrated mouse). Grabbing a bowl from the cupboard, I checked for bugs, mouse poop or any other foreign object. Phew…clean! After getting the rest of the ingredients, I began mixing. Suddenly, the electricity went off. Argh. Well, we have a gas stove. No problem. I checked the pantry. Yes! We still have some almond flavoring left that we brought with us from the States! The kids love almond flavored pancakes so I poured some in the batter. A few more stirs and I began to drop batter into the skillet.

The pancakes were cooking nicely. A little too nicely. I am still working to figure out the right settings for cooking different things on the stove. I burnt every single pancake in the first batch. As I went to dip the second batch out, I found a flour bug. I shrugged, dipped it out and kept on cooking.  Unfortunately, I burnt the entire second batch as well. The kids were nice and told me they liked burnt pancakes anyway. When I started dipping the last batch, I noticed an ant in the batter. Oh well. Too late now.  I scrutinized my flour bag and found nothing. By the final batch of pancakes, I finally had the temp right. Woo hoo!

I turned to the sink and with a surge of optimism turned the handle. Thank you Jesus! Water! The fact that He is the Living Water has taken on an entire new level of meaning here! “Guys…quick we have water! Someone get in the shower! And get a load of laundry in the washer! (It’s been piling up because of the water issue and because the woman who helps me out with laundry has malaria). Hurry and wipe off the table and go flush all the toilets again! And we have steady pressure so you can really scrub that syrup off your hands and faces!

In a flurry of activity, we got all the dishes done, and 2 people got through the shower. We didn’t make it out to the washer in time. When I got my turn in the shower it was still warm, but just a trickle was falling. Who cares? I’ll take it.

Glancing at the clock, I saw it was just past 8. Wow. It’s going to be a long day.

And that is the norm here. The days seem to drag on forever…but the weeks just fly by. It’s a weird phenomenon. Thanks for reading about our morning. I know many of you can relate to the chaotic feelings of morning and this probably doesn’t feel too different from where you are!

This simple post was not written to elicit sympathy in any manner;  Just to give information about daily life as an American living in Africa. Although…if you want to send packages with chocolate and candy after reading this…we would accept!