Yesterday morning when I woke up and walked into the bathroom, this guy was on the wall! Maleah... they even follow me to Africa!

This morning we had to go into Kalomo to get our visas renewed... Thank you B Weave!!

This weekend was extremely eventful. We had some sad news Saturday morning before we left for a trip to Choma. We found out that baby Alfred passed away early that morning. We were very sad, but Alfred had been struggling to breathe the past few days and now he isn't struggling at all! That's the only way we can have peace about it, to know he is with our God in Heaven!

After a quick stop in Kalomo to fill Khaki Jackie up with gas and get some snacks for the road, we headed off to Choma. We spent some time at the little crafts museum and then we went to the grocery store (Super Spar) and got some lunch (a quarter of a chicken and chips, or fries). Delish. Then it was market time! Mrs. Mono, our neighbor who sews all the cute purses and stuff, asked us to go to a store for her and buy some thread while we were there. We had no idea where this store was so we asked an older man at the museum. He said, "Oh, it's too difficult to explain, I will just walk you there." It was like a 10 minute walk! What a nice little man! We walked passed some guys and they called to the man and said, "Boo yah! something something something" haha it was in Tongan, not English. He yelled back to them and I heard "boo yah" again. I asked him what that meant... it means grandfather. When I told him what we use it for in English he laughed hysterically! I love it. He was a funny old man. He said he finally feels like a grown up because he just got some grey hairs. Love it. Anyway, when we got to the shop it was closed. Bummer. We gave the man some candy in appreciation. He loved it. Then Jaime helped me pick out some chitenges for a quilt! I am going to take them to some of the ladies who are at Eric's house and they are going to make me a quilt! I am really excited about it. We decided we had enough chitenges and wound our way back to the front of the market. All along the front stalls, there are tons and tons of dried fish, rice, and other grains. We're not completely sure, but we think it's like a snack for them. No way you could get me to try it!

When we got home we watched Twilight and just chilled because we had a later dinner tonight. There is another orphanage about 20 min away (awful dirt roads in the bush) called 7 Fountains Farm. And the family that runs it invited us over for dinner. They are from South Africa so they have a cool accent... it's like British and Australian mixed. There are also a few pharmacy students from Lipscomb who just got here today that came to dinner too. The family made us a South African specialty called poikey (no idea how to spell it) but it means little pot. You apparently normally cook individual little pots of it, but they just made one massive one. It was basically just like a beef stew, plus we had rice, salad, and rolls. Then they made a ton of desserts and we had tea. It was like a 3 hour deal. It was delicious, too. Kaylee, Lacey, and I ended up sitting across from the Tulli (Dr. Tullos, his wife- Kerri, and their 13 yr old son- Ian). We talked to them about tons of stuff and by the end we were getting bored so we started playing ERS. Everyone else was looking at us like we were crazy because we were screaming and laughing, but we had fun.
Right as we sat down to eat, the power went out! So we ended up having a nice dinner by oil lamps!

This morning, we were invited to attend services at the Kasibi Church of Christ where Leonard (our amazing cook) is an elder. The drive out to it was crazy! The roads were super bumpy and in the middle of nowhere but we made it! When we arrived, some of the women of the church came out to greet us by singing and shaking all of our hands.
The entire service was done in English and Tongan. Dr. Tullos helped with the Lord's Supper and Will, a guy from Texas who is visiting with his family, preached the sermon. These two guys in the picture did most of the translating and they kept cracking us up! At one point Will said something about "athletic clothes" and the shorter guy was translating. He thought for a minute and then rambled out a bunch of Tongan and ended it with "sports attire." We all laughed pretty hard at that one. When the service was over, the Kasibi Singers (pictured below) sand a few songs for us. They were great! Then we were asked to sing a song for them. We sang Wonderful, Merciful Savior and even though we're not the greatest singers, they all loved it. After church, Leonard had us over to his house for a lunch he had prepared. His house and their little village was a few hundred yards away from the church. We had to drive Khaki Jackie since we weren't coming back to the church. Almost everyone decided to walk, but Lacey, Marja, and I decided to ride since we'd driven through some tall grass. Didn't want to risk being surprised by a snake! Since there were only 3 of us in the 12 person vehicle, we opened up the doors and motioned for the little kids to get in with us. They ALL wanted a ride! It was excellent. There were 27 of us in all! It was great. Leonard had fixed us a delicious meal and we all felt pretty special to be eating in his humble home. After we had cleared our plates and had a piece of his "Welcome to Kasibi Church of Christ" cake, we headed outside to listen to the band with the rest of the village. Dad, don't you have this shirt??? Love it. Maybe you two were on the same boat? The band was awesome. They all had homemade instruments and they all sang. As soon as they started playing, all of the kids started dancing around the band in a circle. I mean, they were dan-cing! It was crazy. After some convincing, we all jumped in there with them! It was so much fun.After about an hour of dancing, we finally decided it was time to go home.These two were my dance partners! They were so cute.

When we got home, we had a nice couple of hours to just relax. After dinner, we were back at the house talking about therapy tomorrow and.... the power went out. We decided to have our own head lamp devo at home instead of going to church since we wouldn't be able to hear/understand anything without the mics and in the dark. We were all set for that when Dr. Weaver came in with the best announcement ever! Ian decided to be baptized tonight!!! What a blessing! We walked over to the Mann house and everyone gathered to witness. After Ian was baptized, another person stepped forward and decided to be baptized. And then another. And then another! Altogether, 6 new brothers and sisters were added to our family tonight! When we first got here, Ian immediately made a new friend, David. They are the same age and Ian has spent a lot of time hanging out with David and even went to school with him a few times. They have become great friends and tonight both of them put on Christ in baptism. So special! You would have thought Ian had 10 extra moms tonight because we were so proud of him! What a great way to end the weekend.

Tomorrow we start our final week of therapy at the Haven! I can hardly believe our time is coming to a close!

Well... the internet has been out ALL weekend long! Well, not all weekend, but definitely off anytime I really needed it. Which was very unfortunate since I had to miss 2 Skype dates with my Dad! Bummer. So... I need to fill you in on everything that's been going on!

Friday was my last day of language therapy... for that week anyway. It was getting a little crazy and I could tell even the kids needed a little weekend break. We did do the little language "safari" with Haven 3 and they loved it. That's what the pictures from the previous post are from. Friday night we decided to continue the tradition of movie night and we watched Hope Floats... great movie, but we all decided we wished hope would have floated more than the last 5 minutes of the movie!

The next day we canceled our breakfast with Leonard and got to sleep in! It was so needed... but when I woke up, I had a nasty cold! Since the internet was out, we spent the morning either sleeping or reading. After lunch, we headed into Kalomo for some shopping in the market. Kaylee, Lacey, and I figured we were good on our market purchases and really just wanted to get a snack at the little fast food place and then buy cokes and snacks from the little convenient store. When we walked back there, we found out that both of those places were closed! Big bummer. So we went on a wild goose chase looking for Cokes and ended up going in a few shady stores before finding what we wanted! We were so glad when we finally had our cokes and waters in hand. The road from Kalomo to Namwianga is a pretty decent little drive. A couple miles if you're walking... which most people do. Everytime we drive it, the Zambians try to flag us down to catch a ride. With all 12 of us in there, Khaki Jackie is already packed. The Zambian motto is "there's always room for 1 more!"... however, we are not Zambians and normally we decide there really isn't any room. That may sound terrible, but it's normally groups of people asking for rides, and there is really just no way. On Saturday as we were coming back to Namwianga, we passed a guy who held out his hand trying to wave us down. When we passed, he immediately started running thinking we were going to stop for him. Someone noticed his walking stick and pointed out that the man was blind. We all decided that this time, there was definitely room for 1 more! We stopped and Catherine, who was sitting on the end, helped the guy into the van and he rode with us back to the college. Turns out he was in Dr. Tullos' speech class and his name is Francis. He had walked to Kalomo that morning to buy a big bucket to keep clean water in. That is a LONG walk to just buy a bucket. Especially if you are blind! We were so happy we were able to give him a ride back. Our generosity even made Dr. Weaver cry. She said she was so proud of us, but all we could think was how could we NOT have stopped??

We spent the rest of the day reading, but by after dinner, I felt pretty miserable. I ended up taking some niquil and conking out by 7! If you know me at all, you know how ridiculous that is. The next morning, I still felt pretty bad. We went to church and then outside to have children's Bible class. We had leftovers for lunch and then we had from 1 til 5:30 to do whatever! I think half of us read and the other half slept. I read the entire 1st book of the Percy Jackson series. It was great! So much better than the movie- surprise surprise. For dinner we had "toasted cheese" or grilled cheese sandwiches with chips! One of the favorites around here, for sure. Bad news of the day was that Sarah had strep throat, Lacey has a stomach flu, I still had a bad cold, and Caroline's grandfather passed away. Since we had all that going on, that half of our group stayed home from church and were asleep by the time everyone else got home!

This morning Sarah and I were both feeling better, but Lacey spent the whole night with a bucket. Poor thing! She is getting better all the time, but we're still not sure if she'll be able to come to the Haven tomorrow. After breakfast, we headed to the Haven. The first half of this week I'll be with Caroline doing the feeding groups! I was so excited to be back! I had missed those babies! All of our babies were doing great! Hamilton is getting to be a little fatty cheeks. We're still working with him, but prayers are working! Miller went to the nurse this morning, and Hamilton, Lushomo, and Alfred fell asleep so it was just Wesley and the girls left this morning. Caroline decided to pull out a book to read to them while they practiced sitting up. The book is called "No Matter What" about a baby fox and his mamma. The baby asks the mom "what if I was.... would you still love me?" and the mamma always replies with "I'll always love you, no matter what." Well at one point the baby asks, "What if you are far away? Does your love go, too, or does it stay?" And the mamma's reply was so sweet that we just couldn't help it... Jaime and I both teared up! Really? Really. We're saps.

The morning flew by and pretty soon it was time for lunch. We had enchiladas, rice, and......SALSA! Kaylee was more than happy. If you don't know Kaylee, well, salsa is basically her favorite food and she has been dreaming of it everyday since we had it last- which was at OTB in the Atlanta airport! This afternoon we spent almost our entire time at Haven 3 with at least one of us changing a diaper. Those kids were exploding. Dennis downed his bottle so fast this afternoon, though! He was a little champ. In Haven 1, we sat all of our babies in the little cradle roll table to try out feeding them rice cereal (which is just a powder formula mixed with water so it's kind of baby food consistency). Some of them were great with it! Others... well, they got it all over themselves and all over us! Caroline did warn us at the very beginning that feeding therapy was messy. And she was so right! But I really am having fun with it so it's okay!Miller, Lushomo, and Hamilton with Ian about to start feeding therapy with rice cereal!

Tonight we're doing Zumba and reading... both our favorite past times here in Zambia!

*This is about Thursday:

So I totally felt like I was all good with the whole jet lag thing but then.... this “morning” I woke up and felt completely rested and wide awake. Kaylee was going to wake me up after her shower but light was streaming through the windows so I just went ahead and got up. I got all my shower stuff and headed to the bathroom. I put my contacts in, checked the spider situation (one as big as a silver dollar right next to the cold water knob and one as big as my palm up close to the ceiling)... then I noticed there was no light streaming in through the bathroom window. I thought that was odd since I knew it just had to be morning. I went to get my computer to see what time it was and guess what? It was only 3 am! Unbelievable.

Turns out, just about all of us woke up around 3. Weird.


Later we headed into town, Kalomo, to change money, check out the market, and get some drinks and snacks. It was such a tiny town and the market was very primitive. But the people were sooo nice! Everyone said “Good morning” to us and they weren’t too obnoxious trying to get us to buy things. I think all of us bought our first chitenges. Chitenges are the pretty pieces of fabric that the women here use for EVERYTHING. Skirts, tying their babies to their backs, wrapping their groceries to put them on their head, and on and on.

When we came back to Namwianga, we all wanted to go to Mrs. Mono. She is a lady that lives two houses down and works on the mission. We knocked on her door and she was so excited to see us. She makes purses, coin pouches, aprons, laptop cases, bags, dresses, basically anything you ask for out of the chitenges. She pulled out all of her pre-made stuff and we went to town! All of us bought numerous things for gifts and for ourselves. Later we changed out purses to use the ones we got from her. We ran into her on the road when we were walking to dinner and she loved that we were already carrying her work. She is a precious woman!

During chapel, they made an announcement that there would be a soccer game at 3 o’ clock. A few of us (mainly Ian, Dr. Tullos’ 12-year-old son) decided to go. We were trying to get connected to the internet for a while so we were a little late going over there. When we showed up at 3:45, there were 2 guys on the field! We thought we might have missed it, but no one else had shown up yet. We waited around and at about 4:45 they started the game. The even asked Ian to play. He was so excited. He ran off the field to give his dad his watch before the game started and said, “This is awesome! I’m about to die!” They were pretty good, but it wasn’t very structured so it wasn’t that exciting to watch. We all ended up taking pictures and talking. Then all of a sudden, Lacey jumped up and ran away screaming. It scared all of us, but it was because a truck drove up that had their missing luggage in it! Lacey basically jumped on the guy driving the truck to give him a big hug because she was so happy. They were all so happy to have their luggage back.
Tonight we did Zumba again! Caroline lead Catherine, Kaylee, Jaime, Sarah, and me for about an hour. We were so hot in our little house that we decided to go outside on the porch to cool off. It just seemed like the perfect place to do an ab workout, so Catherine lead us in 5 minute abs. We all decided that we probably burned more calories by laughing than we did by the actual work out.

The internet has been out all night so this probably won’t be posted until tomorrow :(

*JUST GOT INTERNET!