Games with the Ladies

We had some hilarious moments with the ladies the past few days. Yesterday Kelsi taught a lesson on the face/senses, and her activity to practice was probably the ladies' favorite activity to date. We gave each woman a sheet of paper with a blank face, and on Kelsi's command, they drew a part of the face before passing their paper. For example, Kelsi's first instruction was to draw an eye; after about 10 seconds, she had them pass their papers so they were drawing on a new face for the next command. By the time Kelsi gave all of the instructions, there were eighteen completely ridiculous faces. I have never seen some of the ladies laugh so hard, and Kelsi and I were wiping tears from our eyes at one point. When our Internet cooperates, I will upload a couple of the masterpieces they created. I'm proud to say that the ladies' skills in English are better than their art!

We learned about the parts of the body today, and to practice, we played another fun game. (All of the credit goes to Kelsi on this one - she had great ideas this week!) I said a body part, and they had to find their partner and touch those parts together. For example, if I said "hand," they had to touch their hands together. The last pair to match up was eliminated. The women were excited to try it out after I explained the game, and when I demonstrated with Kelsi, one of the women yelled, "Hip!" to make us bump hips together. The women thought that was hilarious, so we decided to give them a taste of their own medicine. When there were only two pairs left, I called out, "Lips!" One woman started leaning into her partner before she realized what she was doing, while everyone else started laughing. I quickly interjected: "Just a joke!" before things got too awkward....

On Sunday, we said our good byes to Susan, Pastor Birner's wife. She is leaving very late tonight to fly to America for her daughter's high school graduation. She will return to Zambia just as we return to America, so we won't get to see her anytime soon. Sue is so funny and full of life, and we have been blessed to get to know her.

Lisa took us out to lunch after church on Sunday, and that was probably our last opportunity to spend quality time with her. She is very busy preparing for the nurses from WLC and her family to come visit in the next couple of weeks. Like all of the missionaries and their wives, Lisa has been so helpful and kind to us. God has richly blessed us with so many wonderful people here!

Things are really starting to wrap up here. Kelsi and I are beginning to get serious about organizing our supplies and our home in preparation for leaving next Saturday. We can't even process the fact that we are leaving so soon. Truly unbelievable how fast our time here has gone!

Tomorrow morning we leave for South Luangwa National Park. (It's taken me the entire three months we've been here to learn how to spell that correctly.) South Luangwa is highly acclaimed as one of the best game parks around, so we are very excited! Dan is driving to Chipata (his old home - a town near the Zambia/Malawi border), so he offered to swing us down to the park tomorrow afternoon. The park is over an hour away from Chipata, so it is really very kind that he offered! We are relieved to avoid the unreliable public transportation.

God's blessings! God willing, we will have a plethora of giraffe, elephant, and lion close-ups to share on Saturday!