ZAMBIA: Part One

We had a great time in Zambia! To be honest it was almost like a vacation for me and my family. The weather was cool (not the 90s and 100s we had been experiencing in West Africa) and someone made your meals for you 3 times a day! Plus there was dessert at supper every night! We were so happy to see some of our cherished friends that we trained with in the states and made many more friends that we will keep for a life time! We were there for 30 days but it seemed to go by so fast!

 We first stayed in the capital of Zambia, called Lusaka. Our group was very large so we were split up between two different places. We were housed in a seminary with other families of 4 and the singles. (All the other larger families were driven back and forth each day from another guest house.) My family and I stayed in a small room that had 4 twin size beds, 3 of which we pushed together to form a giant bed that we all slept on. The 4th one was a bunk and I don't trust my girls on top of those things yet! It was a bit cramped, but we had what we needed! There were 2 showers and 2 toilets for the girls in the shower room to share and the same for the men. For those of you from my hometown of Cleveland, TN, I kind of felt like I was in a weird version of Camp Cherokee again! HA!

The King family's room at the Seminary in Lusaka. 

Our days there were packed full of daily assignments in order to help us learn more about African culture. While in the capital, Lusaka, we went out daily and rode the "mini buses" (public transportation) to different areas of the town. We were packed in those things like sardines but it was fun! It is very easy to strike up a conversation with someone when you are practically sitting on them so we talked a lot on the buses with the nationals too! We were all paired into groups and each group had their own helper. This picture is of me, Sarah, and our helper Rose.

Rose took us around her neighborhood and we talked to some people she knew but mostly those she did not know. We had fun each day talking and interviewing the nationals and would drink a nice cold Coke (in a glass bottle because it is cheaper) each time we were out!

After approximately 2 weeks in arriving in Zambia it was time to head out to the bush!  Everyone readied themselves by taking the local form of Dramamine since it was to be curvy, hilly ride!  (I opted out of taking dramamine so I could actually be awake for the entirety of the day though! That stuff knocks me out!)  We all rode on a really nice grey-hound type bus to a small town called Petauke.  The landscape and view from the bus was great on the way there!

We finally arrived at our destination...BUSH CAMP!  This was probably my favorite part of our time in Zambia!  We, of course, had no modern conveniences here.  You had to draw your water out of the well each day and carry it a good distance.  (Well to me it was a good distance...the nationals put me to shame with the distances they carry their water!)  If you wanted to have hot water then you put your water in a metal kettle and heated it over the fire before you showered!  The shower was a fun experience too! You had a bucket attached to a pulley system that you would lower down, pour the hot water in, lift the bucket back up, and then pull a small lever whenever you wanted to release some of the water from the bucket out of a small shower head attached to the bottom of the bucket.  Fun times! It did not come without its dangers though. One guy got stung by a scorpion while in the shower and one girl got stitches in her head when the bucket full of water fell on it. Yikes! 

Bush Camp

Macy and Mara enjoyed bucket baths each day for the most part!  They were so dirty each day! I felt they could have been poster children for some humanitarian aid organization they looked so filthy! 

For the bathrooms, we used small buildings with "long drops" in them.  For the most part they were very easy to use, unless, of course you had bees swarming around your legs OR bats making noises below you.  The first time I walked into one, a bat flew out of the bathroom and I ran like a ninny.  I am not sure if anyone saw me and I don't really care! 

Macy and Mara loved sleeping in the tent at night! I have to be truthful...I slept well! It was cold at night but we had plenty of blankets to keep us warm! The hardest part was getting out from underneath the covers in the morning! (Breakfast was each morning at 7 am).

The King family tent

Macy and Mara outside our big tent. 

 In order for us not to have to walk around in the middle of the night to go and use the restroom we were provided with potty buckets (they called them choo buckets).  I really appreciated that since my girls had to go potty several nights when we were there.  The downside though..the potty buckets look like small trash cans with lids on them.  The place we are staying at in Kenya has small trash cans with lids on them....Guess what we found Mara doing? :)  

Of course there were no mini buses to ride since we were out in the bush so we all got to ride on the back of a flat bed truck each time we went into the small town for more daily assignments!  It was not that long of a drive and we all enjoyed it!  The girls got to ride on it twice with us too!

The flat bed truck that we rode in the back of! Wood benches were placed in the back that we all sat on. 

View of Zambia from the back of the flat bed truck! 

The first part of bush camp we went to the small town that was close to us.  Our group had the opportunity to go the office where passports, driver's licenses, and things like that were made.  So...we walk into a small room that had a small number of people lined up outside and about 3 people sitting down inside waiting their turn in line.  When we came in, the man made all the nationals leave and let us take their seats and spoke to us for about 20 minutes.  What would you have done if you were at your local DMV office and some foreigners walked in and they kicked you out?  Not the same reaction here in Zambia that I would imagine would happened in the states! 

Brad and Iwell, our helper, walking down a road in Petauke. 

Fun in Kenya!

Macy and I came to Kenya on March 8th. Since then we have done some pretty fun stuff that you are not able to do in our West African country. Some of the fun things we have done included: eating at Yogurt Planet, buying Barbie dolls, eating at Planet Yogurt, visiting the Giraffe park, eating at Planet Yogurt, eating at KFC, and visiting the malls! Did I mention eating at Planet Yogurt?



Macy loves her some yogurt! When we first left Memphis she was heart broken over the fact that we could not visit Yogurt Mountain anymore. It was so conveniently close to our house there that we stopped probably weekly!

On March 15th Brad and Mara joined us here in Kenya! Because Macy enjoyed the Giraffe Park so much and it is not something you can do everyday, we took Brad and Mara back to it! Giraffes are now my favorite animals! They are so beautiful and such a majestic creation ofour Father! Although, they do have the slimiest spit and it would hang off of their mouths and touch the floor. Ugh.



The workers hand you a handful of giraffe food and small carrot pieces and you get to feed them! You are only supposed tofeedthem one piece at a time but sometimes it was hard to keep them from getting all of them!



Mara loves giraffes and I wish you could here her pronounce it! It is sooooo cute! She was super excited to get to see the Giraffes but was not that fond of feeding them or getting too close! In this next picture she was clinging on to Brad and he was not even holding onto her! Bless her heart!



She would do her best impersonation of the giraffes though!



One of the ways to feed a giraffe is to hold the food in your mouth and let the giraffe "kiss" you. Brad was all for this. I am a little on the conservative side and would not brave doing this. ugh. It did make for a good laugh though!





We also took the time to visit the Nairobi National Museum, which was pretty neat! I felt as if the girls were on exhibit at times and actually had to ask some school age girls (high school age) to take their hands off of Mara. However, the taxidermy animals the museum had were great and the girls (and Brad..a kid at heart) had a tremendous time!





Macy loved the butterflies and all the birds that were on display too!





One of the things we have enjoyed the most about Kenya is all the beautiful greenery and flowers that are here! It is a huge change from being right below the Sahara dessert and then coming to the highlands of Nairobi, Kenya!





I'm sure we will do more fun things while we are here and I will try and post about them! For now, I am grateful that we are not in our West African country of service and that we are enjoying everything that Kenya has to offer!

Someone pinch me please

Someone pinch me please. Sometimes I am still in awe of the job the Father has allowed me to do AND that I am in Kenya AND how we ended up here AND what we happened to escape because we are here. Basically, I am in AWE of the Father and how he orchestrates things when we are totally oblivious to His ways. I know that I have sent out numerous emails to everyone that keeps up with us but I figured I could also explain on here what has happened the past couple of months to our family.

Since we have been in our country of service in West Africa we have battled sickness after sickness or some crazy injury involving one of us. I will not go into all of them but lets just say there has been enough of them to cover the next 10 years of my life. :) Even though we have had some traumatic times the Father has been faithful and has affirmed our work in our town EVERY TIME something crazy went down. EVERY TIME!!! For example, one of the worst days we had on the field (the kind that makes you want to buy your airplane ticket home) the Father allowed us to lead one of our new friends to Him the very next day!! Another day that was really bad we received EIGHT care packages!!! Who receives 8 care packages in one day!?!? Another bad day we received a financial blessing and on another bad day we got our crate!!! There were smaller blessings throughout these times but these are big ones that jump into my head at first!!! We have no doubt that we are where we are supposed to be.

The first week of January we had our first volunteer team come out. Since that week, things just went down hill concerning Macy's health. When Brad left to get the team (my first time at home by myself with the girls) both girls were great....until they both started throwing up in the middle of the night. We had been sleeping in my bed all together because we had a girl movie night since Brad was gone. I ripped the sheets off of the bed and we all headed to their room to sleep after showering them off. The next morning I was crazy tired (whoever gets good rest sleeping beside a child needs to give me their secret because I never sleep good beside one of my girls!!!) and then noticed that the dog had chewed a hole in our egg-foam mattress that was on top of our not-so-comfortable mattress!!! ahhhhh!!! The girls did fine that day but Macy threw up more that night also!

Finally, Brad and the team get back and Brad comes down with a double ear infection..what in the world? The teams' trip to a village is delayed a day, but hey, the girls are back to normal. The teams leaves and Brad and one of the translators are exposed to bats while sleeping in a hut. This means automatic rabies shots even if you don't think you have been bitten. Great. (Here I owe a shout out to Fred's Pharmacy for making me give immunizations the past flu season!) We got the shots for Brad and I get to give them to him! Fun times!

A couple of weeks after this Macy began to complain about a hair in her throat. She would come up to me every 30 minutes or so and open her mouth for me to see if there was a hair in her mouth. After the 3rd day of her asking me and Brad this question, she started screaming LOUDLY saying her throat was hurting. At this point she could not even swallow her saliva. We were very concerned and after talking with our medical folks, we decided to get her to the closest Dr. that next morning. The doctor at the hospital we went to diagnosed her with Strep, however, I still believe to this day that it was not strep. There was no actual test done to verify it to be strep. Macy took the 10 day supply of amoxicillin but her eating habits never went back to normal.

Because she was not eating normal, Macy started drinking profusely (in my opinion) and would use the restroom every 30 minutes or so. She also started having horrific dreams for about 2 weeks and wet the bed for that time period also. I know that the dreams could have been caused by her malaria medicine (which we stopped and changed to Malarone) but I am convinced that spiritual warfare was taking place because of something I experienced myself. We upped the amount of time we spent in prayer and praying with the girls and over their room after they were asleep. At this point, Macy had lost a lot of weight and complained of not getting enough sleep at night. What four year old complains of not sleeping well at night?

We took her back to the hospital we originally took her to and they did another round of tests....urinalysis, CBC with diffs, and a stool analysis. Everything was fine. They said it was viral. Hmmmm.

After another week of this going on we headed to the capital to see the best Pediatric doctor there. She was wonderful and did everything in her power that she could do there. Again, all the tests came back normal and they sent us home. She believed Macy was just dealing with a fear of swallowing because of how bad her throat hurt (which is true now, we know).

We went back to our home, but nothing got any better. It finally accumulated to the day when Macy started screaming loudly again after eating a soft tortilla shell that food just kept getting stuck in her throat. After that, Macy and I were soon Kenya bound that next week.

Since being here in Kenya, Macy has seen several different kinds of doctors, from an ENT, Pediatric GI specialist and counselors. Macy had to have CT scan done when we first got here of her throat. Bless her heart, it was scary to her. She did a tremendous job but her little chin just quivered during the whole CT scan and crocodile tears rolled down her face during the procedure. I did everything I could not to break down right there in that room. I sang to her, talked to her, and prayed with her during this. (I am not sure how parents who have chronically sick children that need procedures like these done do it all the time. My heart goes out to them!) The next week Macy had an endoscopy done and we found out that Brad and Mara would be able to come and be with us the next day!! We were super excited because we did not expect them until the next week!! The endoscopy, though, revealed an esophageal erosion that had already began healing in Macy's esophagus and a couple of other inflamed areas. Her throat had at one time hurt her really bad...thus the fear now to swallow. She was placed on Nexium and will continue to take it for the next 6 weeks.

What a blessing it was for Brad and Mara to get out of West Africa when they did. If they had waited another week, they would have been stuck in our country of service because of the current coup there! The Father works in mysterious ways and it is always for the good of His children! I am torn though. I long to be back in our home and with our friends that we work with. I am happy that we are here but can't help but also feel guilty that others are there having to deal with the stress of the turmoil going on around them. The past 2 days I felt like a emotional basket case. Today I am better. Two nights ago I was struggling with all the emotions in my heart and finally just committed them to the Father. Like a wise friend said yesterday....I told the Father that night that as long as He gets glory from everything that has happened in our family's life recently, that it has been worth it.

That's really all there is to it. Whatever may come my way and my family's way, as long as the Lord receives glory, IT HAS BEEN WORTH IT.

Today we found out that all of Macy's biopsies came back normal. We are now set up to work with a family counselor to help us help Macy, and a little help for ourselves on the side. We will be here in Kenya for at least 2 more weeks. After that, who knows when we can get back into our country. We get to go to Zambia the latter part of April for 30 days so we may not get to return until after that. I will keep everyone updated!

Much needed encouragement

So I went to the first big worship service today in Kenya with a friend. (At home we worship with two other families once weekly so I have not been to a large service since last October.) I am already a little emotional because of our current situation....Brad and Mara still in our country of service...me and Macy in Kenya dealing with doctor appointments....parenting on you own....Macy not eating much...the list could go on and on it seems. I took Macy to the children's class, which she already had a friend in that she had made our first day here, but it took her a second to go and she started crying. This made me tear up too. She finally went shyly with her friends class and had a great time. I took back off to the auditorium and started crying as soon as I walked in the back doors. So many people praising our Father at one time blew me away and I was overcome with emotions I did not realize I had pent up. I could not even sing the first song I cried so much. I don't cry pretty either. I NEEDED that time of worship. I have been drained...physically and spiritually. I needed encouragement and the Lord so blessed me with that this morning. HE knows what we need and provides for us! Then the guest speaker preaches from Isaiah 49! The passage speaks of God glorifying Himself through us even when we don't think He is. I cant eloquently say it like the preacher did so go read it on your own! God spoke to me though thru this passage.....even if I experience personal discouragement God will still glorify Himself and then gives a promise in verse 6, "I will also make you a light of the nations so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth." How I needed that message this morning!

I have been extremely blessed since being here too! Macy and I spent 2 nights with the Gandy's and some time with our Journey girl friends, Emily and Ester! Linda took me and Macy to the Giraffe park yesterday and we had a blast! Not to mention that Nairobi is beautiful! It is a city that has been placed smack-dab in the middle of a rainforest! There are flowers everywhere and crazy winding hilly roads that make up the city! We are trying to have some fun and much needed rest amongst the medical visits that must be made! I will keep everyone updated!

Also..thanks to each and every person that has prayed for us during this. From personal emails to my family telling me that people are walking up to them telling them that they are praying for us! This has meant so much. I will never be able to put it into adequate words! THANK YOU.

My Love is Like Leather???

So I have been meaning to make a blog post of just random weird things that I have seen or experienced since moving to West Africa. This will be an on going post as I will just add to it when a random weird thing happens, or I see something weird, or whatever!

1. So around Thanksgiving we were out trying to find the place here that sells pork. We found it but they were the smallest, skinniest pigs I have ever seen. Poor things. As we were walking around the "pig market" a man comes up to me and tries his best to talk English to me. I understand some of what he says but he is slightly getting on my nerves and I am getting a little weirded out already. Then he says to me in perfect English, "My Love Is Like Leather.". Umm, What??? I don't even know how to take that. Weird, weird, weird. It will forever be lost in translation to me what he meant!

We are so "crate"ful!!!!!

The past two weeks have been rough and wonderful all at the same time!! Macy has been sick and was eventually diagnosed with her first case of strep throat! (Thank the Lord for wonderful medical care located about 2 hrs from us that is run by the Christian Mission Alliance (CMA) and the great medical doctors there!) The same day we drove there and back to our house we got the news that our crate would be making it to our house that night from the capital city, which is a good 3 hr drive. I did not let myself get too excited because so many things happen here that can delay arrivals but I was hopeful that it would arrive within a couple of days! To my surprise it arrived at 1:00 am on Saturday the 28th!!!!!

I want to make our life here "real" to all my friends and family in the states! I immediately was so grateful to EVERYONE that contributes to the LOTTIE MOON offering every year. Without your giving, days like I just talked about would not be possible. The medical care that Macy received, the gas money that we used to drive 2 hrs, the money we used to pay for her antibiotics, the crate that we received, the money that it cost to get that crate across the ocean,...all that we are able to do here is ONLY made possible because people that love the Lord give to support us and the work that is done on the "field". The day we got our crate I could not help but be overcome with joy for the amount of support our organization receives and also simply for the fact that now my house feels like home again. I know we are to not find our joy in worldly possessions...but, oh, how wonderful it is to sit on my comfortable couches and sleep on my wonderful bed. I praise Jesus for the blessings in my life (and my family) and vow to be a good steward of everything I have been given to HIs glory!!!

To help make it real, I wanted to show you a picture time line of sorts of how the crating process went for us. (It is not exactly the same for everyone in our company and some do not even get to crate because of various reasons.) First off, we have not seen our house goods since early July 2011. The packing company came to our house and packed up all of our belongings in 2 days , put them on a truck, and drove out of the parking lot. Brad and I were just praying that we would see it all again one day!! Here are a few pictures of the packing done in the apartment we lived in at Mid America for a few months and the truck that took most of our earthly possessions.







After we watched that truck pull away we moved back to Cleveland, TN to be with our families for a couple of weeks before we went to training in Virginia. While we were at training though, our belongings were packed into a crate and sat in some shipping yard until we "landed" on the field. The week we came to Africa we learned that our crate had left the shores of the US and was headed across the Atlantic ocean to make its way here! We got to Africa on October 5th and our crate got here January 28th. "Why does it take so long?" is the question people ask. I am not sure of all the reasons but I do know that things get pretty sticky in customs. It sat in our country's capital for almost a month. The man that ran the shipping yard where our crate was sitting kept "making up reasons" why our crate could not be released. One day they needed the original documents (????), one day their supposed x-ray machine saw something suspicious, and then (after they had signed off on our stuff to be released) they said we had to pay to get the actual metal box that held all of our wooden boxes off of his yard. Crazy I know. Our company does not pay bribes, for any reason, so the wonderful men who God granted with much wisdom that day said, "Keep the metal crate!!!", and they went and got an 18 wheeler to load all the wooden boxes on to get them to our house!!! (Shout out to Matthew!!!!)

When the crate got here, it was on this huge truck and it had to get into our drive way somehow!! A few tree branches had to be cut down and about 8 men had to help direct the truck driver through our gate!! It was quite a site to see!!!



Brad had to break the seal on the boxes!!





Time to unpack!!! We have still unpacking left to do and have to think of ways (or things to have built) to be able to store our belongings in our house! Our house does not have a lot of storage area, as do most houses where we live!! The wood that our crates were made of will become shelves, cabinets, etc. Yay!!!! Here are a few pictures of our house, which now feels like a home!!!

Mine and Brad's bedroom...please excuse the mess! :)



The girls were thrilled to see all of their toys!



Oh, you cannot imagine what it was like for me to get my new fridge and stove. Absolute bliss.



Brad and Mara enjoying some Big Screen TV! :)



Now, who wants to come and visit?

PeePee Castles and Tampon Whistles

Ok...I am warning you again...do not read if you have no sense of humor and are grossed out easily. As you can imagine, Africa is not the cleanest place in the world. Actually, I cannot think of a dirtier place; however, there must be one that exists I imagine. Since we have been here several gross things have happened which are slightly humorous and some that have compromised the health of my family which are not so humorous. Let us begin with the funny ones...

The first couple of weeks we were here the neighborhood children were outside our gate constantly. Young children to secondary school children were here. When I say young children I mean babies that have just learned to walk that are allowed to roam the roads here under the supervision of their older "responsible" brothers or sisters. One day when Brad was outside playing with Macy and Mara and the neighborhood kids he watched as a young boy (maybe 3 or 4) went peepee in the sand. After he used the bathroom in front of our gate he proceeded to sit down and make a sand castle type building out of the peepee sand. Nice. Note to self: don't let my girls destroy any sand castles they see randomly around our neighborhood. The funny gross stuff only seems to happen when I am not around. I am positive there is more to come however. This story is the grossest, but funny, but may make you gag. ;) Please guys..don't read if feminine stuff grosses you out.

There is a little group of boys that come around the neighborhood and go through everyones trash. EVERYTHING here is recycled and used for the craziest things.

So...Brad walks out to see who is going through our trash one day to make sure they are not making a mess. He notices one poor kid had gotten a hold of a HOT, HOT, HOT pepper that we bought at the market one day and did not use because of its "hotness"!!! Poor kid looked like he was dying, Brad said. Then he noticed the other kid was blowing through this white plastic thing like you would a whistle. When Brad looked closer he saw what he feared...the kid had one of my tampon applicators in his mouth blowing on it. EWWWWWWW!!! (I am sorry if this is personal and gross...I just had to share..plus I have already warned you.) At that moment (I was in the kitchen being Betty Crocker when this was happening) I heard Brad yelling for me to bring some candy out to some kids and to hurry. They replaced the yucky objects they had in their mouths with some yummy Smarties sent to us from the States.

We just recently had an outhouse building built for our guard to use. One side of it has a latrine and the other side has a small room that he may sit in during rainy season.
Before this building was built however, he would use the restroom in a hole in the concrete and cover the hole up with a small square concrete slab. It always smelled bad when we rounded the corner of our house where this small (for lack of better words) "poopoo hole" was located. We instructed the girls to never play around the hole and in the sand/mud area that surrounded it for fear that it was contaminated with feces and urine. If your children are like mine, though, there are just a few days out of the year that they disobey. :) Well, on one of these days that they decided to be defiant Macy and Mara decide to make mud pies out of the dirt around the poop hole. Brad then hears Macy instruct Mara to eat her mud pie. AHHHH! Maybe this is why we have all taken one round of worm medicine and why Macy is on two different meds now for funky stuff going on inside of her. Here is a picture of the newly made outhouse!!!

Besides all of the gross stuff we encounter (sometimes on a day to day basis) we are truly loving it here and, even though we have only been here for 2 months, are starting to form friendships with nationals!! So even though we are living in a "PeePee Castle and Tampon Whistle" world instead of a "champagne wishes and caviar dreams" world , we are truly blessed and are thankful the Lord moved us to this place!! I promise the next blog will not be so disturbing! ;)