Saturday update

Good Morning from Mukumba!  Today is a brisk sun filled morning – we started our day with “slop pop” and fruit, coffee and tea.  Thursday was another flexible day – we were hoping for help from the locals so that we could finish pouring the foundations, but there is a Thursday commitment to clearing land for the school so there weren’t enough people to help with mixing concrete to work on that task. So, we moved on to working on the fence around the orphanage – digging holes for the posts.  Deb and Barbara continued their Bible study for the house mothers and the women started the day with a Bible study while the men got the fires and breakfast going. The third funeral occurred so Rosemary wasn’t available for hut to hut.  We met Charles as he headed over to the school field work, Tenson stopped by and worked on the fence in the afternoon.  Jako and Steve spent much of the day repairing the generator that wasn’t working right – prayers were answered when their hard work was rewarded with the generator starting so we had lights in the evening. Yesterday we saw progress toward completion of tasks – the footings for the school foundations were completed by the end of the day and the work on the setting all the posts for the fence as well. Once again the women started the day with Bible Study and then Deb and Barbara had a Bible Study with the house mothers. They  have requested a discussion on Ruth today. One of the orphan’s is named Ruth – she is such a quiet, introspective child, often choosing to sit alone but she is quite observant of all that is around her.  Amber, Rosemary (a local midwife),Maggie another local woman, Chris and Denise went on 3 hut to hut visits with ill individuals: Albert – an older gentleman who has known he is HIV positive for a year and is on treatment but is quite thin, Charles – to praise God for his healing hand and encourage him in his faith, Timothy – an older man whose primary diagnosis he is unsure of at this time, but severe headaches – feeling out of his mind and a very bad cough – he has an appointment next week to help him understand what is wrong.  All three visits had a different flavor and the Holy Spirit lead us in how we were to proceed with each.  Unfortunately there was little turn out for the marriage class after the first day – impacted by the 3 local funerals. Each day is closed with a meal around the camp fire, a de-briefing on the day’s events and one of the team sharing their testimony.  Some evenings we sing songs and then we are off to bed – the day starts early today we got a bit of extra sleep as we slept past 5:30 am.  Will, Alyssa said Friday was  “snap” – yes she did share that story during dinner.  :)  Ethan, I hope you had a blessed birthday – I thought of you often yesterday – many people here send you their greetings. Today we are hoping to finish the fence around the orphanage and perhaps start on the sofits.  Thank you for your prayers – we feel them strengthening us as we have all found ourselves uplifted at just the right moment.  Have a wonderful Saturday!