"Look, It's Our Friends!"

After slogging through orange streams and puddles the past few days, we finally remembered to bring our umbrellas this morning. The day dawned bright and sunny, and as we walked to chapel, we joked with Martin and Mr. Zulu (two hilarious and sweet workers at the missionaries' houses) that of course the beautiful, clear day would be the day we remembered our umbrellas. We didn't feel so foolish at noon when the dark clouds rolled in and the rain drops filled the ditches. Besides the fact that both of our umbrellas were slightly broken, they offered a slight shield from the torrential downpour.

The rain eased by the time we finished our final tutoring session at 4:00. Kelsi and I took advantage of the nice evening by going for a run around the neighborhood. The roads were full of children playing and adults gathering together. We decided to loop around onto campus to see if any children were playing soccer. On the way, a few young boys asked to join us, and before we knew it, we had a trail of four children splashing through puddles behind us. On our run back home, we ran into them again, and one cried out, "Look, it's our friends!" They joined us jogging for a quarter mile before waving good-bye.

Kelsi and I fall more in love with the twenty-some children we tutor every day. They are so respectful, hard-working, and eager to learn. It's every teacher's dream! Tutoring has gotten progressively better over the past week. As Kelsi and I get a better grasp of the students' abilities, we have been able to develop plans to help them in the coming weeks. We discovered that the majority of our students have a limited knowledge of phonics, so like Kelsi wrote last night, we are starting with the very basics. I am very grateful to have Kelsi as my teaching partner. She is so gifted at working with young children, and I am learning so much from her!

Teaching the wives was a blast, as always. We had all of the wives together instead of dividing them into two class periods, and the classroom got LOUD. We taught them about numbers today. Our activity was giving them a flash card with a number or a word on it, and they had to find their match. For example, the person with the card that said "1" had to find the person with the card "one." Kelsi spontaneously made it into a competition, and the ladies loved it. We have played several games with them now, and it still cracks me up to see how competitive they get. There were about five children wandering in and out of the classroom today, and they were shocked when their mothers started shouting and running around the classroom. Several started wailing out of fear. I leaped at the opportunity and quickly volunteered to hold baby Bryen while his mom played. (Who is baby Bryen, you ask? Check out Kelsi's blog titled "Rainin' Down in Africa" to see his adorable face.)

God has been blessing me and Kelsi with wonderful days. We are quickly approaching the two week anniversary of our departure. We say nearly every day that we can't believe how fast time flies! Please continue to keep us in your prayers so that we can serve God and the people in Lusaka to the best of our ability.