1.28.2009

how to talk to girls

Day 18 and being sick in Africa has officially set in. It’s just a head cold, but I don’t sound too great and my nose will not stop running which is just really annoying. I also cough quite a bit and that’s just not fun at all.

So while the teams went out with the WHIZ staff yesterday to some different trusts, I stayed back and did office work. All over Zambia last year there were about 2600 people in primary school (grades 5-9) and in different communities that went through the Abstinence and Being Faithful program. They have all of the class lists from the local schools that are handwritten and bound together in this little book. So what did I get to do? Yep, you guessed it. I plopped myself down in an office chair at a computer and began to enter all of those names and ages and schools and whatever other information they needed. It gave me a lot of time to think and it was interesting seeing all the different names of kids across the country.

I finally went to town with Melinda the other day and we walked around. I bought a pair of shoes that I can hopefully wear with everything and they were pretty inexpensive. I also bought some chitenge material and we can have skirts made by the women of the community and help out the trusts with their projects so I am hoping to have that done too. The material here is so colorful and fun. Our style is way too boring in America sometimes.

The students are still reading a lot. You do that when you have no television at all. We sit on the porch in the amazing weather and watch the rain. We eat our amazing meals together all the time. We truck down to where the Garners are staying to get on the internet when it works. We have loud and interesting discussions. We sleep whenever we can. We share thoughts in devotions and pray together every night. And I couldn’t have asked for a better group of students to live with for three months. How blessed am I to be here.

Ethan is our resident storyteller. For the first week we were here, he read us a chapter every night from the nine year old author Alec Greven’s first book, How to Talk to Girls.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Marge... sick? thats rough but without being sick you would never of seen all those names. you know its amazing that God has a perfect plan..... Gods word is so powerful!! I love you Marge. i'm praying for you...

emma said...

i go through all the name tags and attendance sheets each week and i love reading the names! my favorite is King Harmel :)
I bet watching the rain is wonderful and restful...
love you

beth said...

its february already! can you believe it?? i love catching up on your blogs. you're a wonderful writer...many awesome descriptions :) sounds like the students have good community and are a lot of fun. i hope they realize how lucky they are to have you there!!

(oh, and tell kra hi for me)