Critters, Coke, and Christ

 

 

Hello everybody, I just thought I'd let you know that this is Dane writing this blog. Sorry it has taken so long but I always tell Bailey how good she is at writing it so I like her doing it ha. It is still pretty hot here. It's consistently in the upper nineties but it doesn't seem as crazy hot as it was before because it has been raining in the evenings some. It's pretty cool how it gets really hot during the day then all of a sudden you see the clouds start to build and then it starts to thunder and you might get a little shower. When I always thought of Africa I didn't think of rain, I knew they had a rainy season but its just weird how the storms form here. They also move east to west which is really funny because in the states most of the storms move more west to east. It has been REALLY busy here at the Orphanage. The New Day Staff here have been under a lot of pressure with Precious being sick, the thefts, Ricky's container of stuff coming and his house not being done to put all his stuff in so they don't know where they are going to store it, and just a lot of other stuff.  So if you could pray for them that would be really helpful. We have been teaching a lot at the school the past couple weeks to try and help relieve some of Laurie's stress and to try and give her time to take care of other things. Bailey and I also had the opportunity to go to our favorite Bible Study away from the orphanage in Kabonga. We went without Wes for the first time, it was just Bailey and I and Hildah to interpret. So that was a good experience. I taught in Genesis about Joseph and we really had a lot of fun with the people talking and just spending time together.

Bailey and I in our down time have also had the opportunity to read a book called Radical by David Platt (Recommended by Ricky). We are really enjoying it and there is one part of the book I wanted to share because I thought it was really interesting. This book talks a lot about mission work and it talks about a missionary who found himself in a remote village in Southeast Asia and the village had never heard the gospel. They were really friendly and hospitable to him and they invited him to share a drink with him. One man disappeared and moments later appeared with a classic red Coke can. Immediately it hit home with the missionary that a soft drink company in Atlanta has done a better job of getting brown sugar water to these people than "we" as the Church have done in getting the gospel to them. That was pretty crazy for me to think about and I talked to Ricky about it and he lived in Zambia two years and had gone on multiple mission trips prior to coming to New Day full time, and he said that you find coke everywhere. He said that it doesn't matter where you are at. You can go to the middle of nowhere out in the bush and you usually can find Coke. He also told me that at one time Jesus used to be the most well known "concept" or "thing" in the World. But presently Coke is the most well known thing in the world. And I just thought that that was crazy, who would have thought that a pop would be the most popular or well known thing in the world. Pretty crazy and a little sad.

Presently right at this moment we are waiting on Ricky's container to arrive by semi so we can unload all the stuff he's shipped over from America. And we are trying to go on a safari this weekend. We've had it pushed back four weeks so far because all the things that have been going on. It's just been too busy to get away. But hopefully the next time we blog we'll have some pic's of our safari.

Also I added some pic's of all the critters that we have been seeing. We have some more than the ones I put up so we'll put the rest on in a later post.

 

Dane

 

 

 

Me and Bailey at our favorite Bible Study in Kabonga. I had to put this picture up, when we showed them their picture they said "everybody in America is going to see us!" This last time we went Bailey was telling them about all the Tonga words she has learned and then we started teaching them English words. They love to hear us try and say stuff in Tonga. They laugh but they tell us they really respect us for trying to speak their language. 

 

 Bailey helping one of the village kids slide down the slide after kids club on Saturday. She tells me that the little boys get to her. I can see how they do. Look at this little guys smile

 

 

Bailey after church on Sunday at Nabukowa. They love Bailey's hair, look at his little hand grab it ha

Some of the workers riding in the Canter on the orphanage. This is a common sight down the highways of Zambia too

Bailey with the billy goat

Bailey and Axer

A gecko friend inside the house

A centipede he was about 6 inches long. There is another crazy one that moves back and forth so fast that it is blurry when you look at it. I'll try and get a picture of it for a later post but it will probably be blurry in the photo

A red toad, it's crazy how a lot of things are so colorful in Africa

Another different kind of gecko in the house

More of the spiders that are all over the house. I thought I'd post this picture because we think these spiders fight each other over territory of the walls haha. The top left one is dead we saw one of the other ones eating it. But you also notice that the one on the top right is missing a leg. I think they get in fights and injure each other

Here is a caterpillar that the kids found, they warned me not to touch it because the hairs give you a rash. It was around 4 inches long

Here is our friend Speedy the Chameleon. Definitely my favorite animal we have found here so far. I found him while I was helping Ricky with the rabbit cages. He was sitting on top of a wood pole under the roof. That's why his color is dark tan with brown stripes. We put him in leaves and then he turned a light tan color