Back to Bethel

It felt good to be “home” at Bethel this morning. It was amazing to see the building progress that’s been done in just the 2 weeks since we’ve been there. The walls almost reach the roof now! The service was wonderful as usual. The choirs sang wonderfully and the sermon was very good. It was very windy today though, so lots of the dirt from the brick laying flew up in our faces every time there was a gust of wind. Erika filled in as the keyboardist today and did a wonderful job despite the keyboard having some issues. Jack, the usual keyboardist seemed so happy to have us back so we could play the hymns.

At the end of the service Pastor Mutentami addressed the congregation about Christian funerals and attendance at these funerals. He said recently fewer and fewer people have been attending the funerals of their church family members and he wanted to encourage people to attend. It was very interesting how he dealt with the situation. He spoke in a way so full of grace. It was so neat to see an issue or situation dealt with after church and discussed as a whole congregation.

I also met a very nice man named Thembi who was sitting next to me in church. He spoke excellent English! He was a visitor who has been to Bethel several times before. He had lots of questions for me about what I’ve been doing here as far as teaching goes. It was fun to talk to him!

After church I went over to campus to take a picture of Doris’ family since last time I took a picture, her son Raphel wasn’t there.

For lunch we had our avocado sandwiches and then decided to head into town once again. We wanted to check out the curio stands that set up at the Arcades on Sunday afternoons. Before heading into town though, we loaded up a backpack with clothes and shoes that we wanted to trade. The minibus ride into town was OK…we just took extra-long stops, which isn’t unusual. At the Arcades I managed to get the 2 big things I was looking for along with a bonus thing and all our clothes got traded. They were never a clean trade but giving them some clothes and shoes definitely made it a little cheaper. Depending on how full my suitcases are with all the stuff I bought, I might have to trade some more clothes.

It was a tiring afternoon…bartering wipes you out. We stopped at Spar for a few groceries and then headed home. On the way back we took the same turn we did the other day when we ended up in Kaunda Square. We thought the same thing happened to us again! But people said the driver was going the back way to avoid traffic. We were on some small dirt roads in a bus with absolutely no shock absorbers. But somehow we got back to one of the main roundabouts. It just took us a while. I didn’t see traffic anywhere, so I’m not sure if that was a legitimate excuse for taking us a different way. We made it though.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty lazy. For supper I made fried potatoes again, scrambled eggs with cheese and onion, and garlic bread. It was quite delish. After supper we went over to the other guest house to watch some TV and print, since our printer is out of ink. We printed some preschool certificates for our party on the 14^th and also printed some worksheets for English on Tuesday. This week is going to go by quickly—we have 3 days of teaching and then we’re headed to Kafue with Mrs. Birner to camp for a couple nights as one last hoorah before we leave. On our wish list are a male lion and a cheetah.

After accomplishing the printing we headed back to our house and got ready for bed and another week!

I was going to use this blog post as a shout out to my twin, Joe, who was supposed to run a marathon today. I was thinking about him all day, and after getting back from town I was going to look up the race and see if I could get any stats on how he was doing. Unfortunately I saw that due to weather, the marathon got cancelled. So he ran a ½ marathon instead, which got finished before the bad weather started. I feel so terrible for him. To train for months and months for this event only to have it cancelled at the last minute. So sad. I’m proud of him anyway! J