A few random pictures first. Taken in Kalingalinga. The women just sit there all day and crush rock....

Local market area. You can see James buying bananas in the background. But notice the big truck. Delivering mealie meal bags. (The staple food product)

Friday:
We have been busy this week trying to find furniture for our house.
This is a big job in itself. If you think about all of a sudden needing to replace everything in your house, but then think about being in a foreign country and trying to do it!
We ordered bunk beds for the kids rooms, and thought it would be fairly standard procedure to find mattresses to fit the beds. But we have been several different places, looking for good mattresses. Every time we have found one, we ask about selling just the mattress and not the boxspring and they tell us no they can’t do that. Or ,if it begins to look promising, they will say “let me ask the manager” and get back with you later that day. Which then turns into later in the week. Or as one person told us, “call you back in 10 minutes”. Well a few days later we are still waiting. We had someone call today to tell us that tomorrow they will have the price for us.

I really would have thought buying something would be a bit easier, after all, we have $ we want to spend at the store…but though it has been a bit frustrating at times, we have not been anxious about it and are just trying to “wait”.
So we are hoping tomorrow, Friday to get the contract signed and take possession of the house. We have a woman coming tomorrow to clean the house, and then we will see if we can offer her a part time job helping around the house later on.

Laundry only took 2 days to dry this week. Yeah! But unfortunately that was only half of it and I am still working on the ironing pile from last week. We have been busy this week, but I have tried to spend the mornings ironing. So it is about exactly where it was at the beginning of the week. 
I was holding out for the dryer…


Saturday:
This morning Kasango came with a very large truck and driver to help us get some of our things to the house today. The main thing was picking up the appliances and trying to get them set up at the house, as well as one set of bunk beds, and maybe our bed.

We had a very full day yesterday. James took the kids to school in the morning then came back to pick us, the boys and I up ( Emma was still schooling at the Guffeys) to go to the Crossroads Shopping Center. We had called a woman and asked if she would like a few days work of cleaning the house.
The contractor had finished the repairs and swept all the cockroaches out of the house, but that was it.
So we had planned to meet her at the shopping center to then drive her the mile or so to the house. SO she would then know where we live.
So we arrived there and called her and she said she was waiting at the gate. Well it turns out she was at the Crossroads Lodge, on the other side of town, only a few minutes from where we had been when James picked me up. So it took quite a while to find her, as she then walked to a bus stop, and tried to tell us where she was. Several calls later, and frustrations, we finally found her. She had said a few times on the phone, “I am right here!”. Well we didn’t know where Here was! Or the number 10 bus stop.

But while we were waiting to meet her at the Shopping Center (before we knew of the mixup) we met a couple from New York that live just a few minutes away from us, that are here working with street children and a local Zambian church. We had met briefly at the pool a few weeks ago.
They invited us to dinner whenever we get moved. They have 4 children, two girls and two boys. The boys are about Caleb and Jackson’s age, in fact the youngest will be 4 two days after Jackson turns 4.
So we look forward to getting to know them also.

We took the woman Maureen, to the house so that she could start cleaning it. She was able to get the kitchen and living room finished and was meeting James back at the house today to work some more.

In the afternoon, the kids and I went to a Valentines party at the Allens. There were about 8 moms with their children there. So about 27 children altogether. They had a lot of fun, playing games, making valentines and frosting cookies, and eating snacks. It was great for me to meet these other women. Half of us were “independent” as in not here with a group, and the other half were the families that are here working with Action Zambia. So it was a blessing to meet these other women who have been here longer. One woman told me that they had been here 6 months before they even met other missionaries and they had no one to help them transition into life here. So she said she was so happy for me to have had such a good start. She also lives near our house we are moving to.
Of the group there, it is mostly girls, but a handful of boys. There was an 8 year old boy there that was excited Ian was 10. But it was neat to see, that out of this group of Action Zambia, all of them had either adopted, or were in the process of adopting a Zambian child. So there were white kids and black Zambian kids and black American kids, all running around and having a great time. It was really great to see!





Then in the evening, we went to some friend’s house to join them in a bible study series on marriage. There were 6 couples, and that was quite amazing as well. We met everyone, the Allens and Guffeys were there, but then there was also a couple from Belgium, another couple with a Zambian husband and white American wife ( they met in America and just recently moved here), and then a white couple that were Zimbabweans. That had moved here. It was quite interesting to hear them speak of what life in Zimbabwe was like, and the culture shock he said they experienced in moving from Zimbabwe to Zambia, and how that was also different from South Africa.
Great to meet all different types of people from different places, united in Christ!