Schwarz Family Sojourn

Taken a Trip

2011-11-21T15:37:00.001-05:00

Today the kids had some catching up to do in school and then it is no more school for the week. Thanksgiving, Yea! Which means our last supply trip for the year and this one is to Lusaka.

When we first came to Zambia, I made the kids do school the day before we left on a trip and the day after we came back, but not anymore. Back then we were behind in school, now we are a little ahead. Plus, I am not super woman.

I also learned don’t wait until the day before to do everything that you need to do before the trip. Last time I (Rita) went to Lusaka the electric decided to stay off most of the day. There are not McDonald’s drive thru to visit. We have to take our food. Now, there are restaurants, but why make a 12 hour drive any longer than necessary.

So today was a busy day. I made two loaves of bread and the bread machine did two more for me. Also, 24 rolls for sandwiches on the road. Cappuccino Muffins for breakfast on the road. Once in Lusaka we can buy food, but for our family of six it gets expensive. Steve is already seeing dollar signs. Plus, I just don’t like the bread here. So I take bread along. Some of the bread will go into the freezer once there for the trip back.

I did manage two loads of laundry today. I’m praying for at least one more load tomorrow. This morning after my alarm went off, Steve came in to tell me we have absolutely no water in any tank. We have a mystery on our hands for over a week now. We are not sure where it is going to. I spent most of the day in water saving mode. At 9PM everything is full to the top and the pump is turned off. We shall see what it looks like in the morning.

Steve was off to Kasama to pay the workers there and to have the 40,000 K (I think) check up on the car. He can do a lot of things himself, but this was a much bigger list than he wanted to do. Plus he had to pay road tax on the trailer and the retirement money for the workers. He was going to go to Shop Rite (groceries), but he called at 7 to say they are just finishing the vehicle!!! This was all to make our trip to Lusaka less hectic.

Curiosity

2011-11-21T00:54:00.001-05:00

Does your curiosity ever get the best of you? Does it get you in trouble? When I was little it did. Growing up helps. Sometimes curiosity can be a good thing.

In our back yard are three cement pads with heavy meddle lids in the middle of them. I (Rita) knew they had to do with our septic. What women wants to look under lids that have to do with the septic? My thoughts exactly!

Then I got to thinking, if my Dad came to visit he would have looked under them in the first day. He is notorious for that. He has checked out every place we have lived. Take for example the mission house we lived in before we left for over seas. There are two meddle grates in that yard. Dad put the hose down them and turn on the water and then went in search of where the water drained out, and we paid for our water there. He never did find it! That is my Dad! I love him for it!

So, one day last week I was walking around the yard checking things out. I decided to brave the lid and see if I could lift it. I could and I was grossed out. I put it back in place quickly. The more I thought about it though the more I realized that this is why our toilet gets backed up. There have been times in the last 2 plus years that our toilet has been off limits for going #2. Toilet plungers do not, I say do not work on these Zambian toilets. So it gets very frustrating.

A week later I was out in the yard again. We have a gardener who takes care of the garden, but doesn’t pick any veggies. So I try to meander around it and see what I need to take care of. Steve came out and together we investigated our septic system. The above two pictures are of the same cement box in our yard. We got a bucket of water and the hose and cleaned it out before I took a picture. You can thank me later. The week before, after my first thought, I had a second thought. They should have built if differently, than it wouldn’t get so backed up. There are four gutters draining into one gutter that goes into a pipe down to the next cement box. The top gutter it our toilet. The other gutters were clean. The tub, sinks, and shower help keep the stuff moving. Both toilet gutters should be at the bottom or to the left in the picture and the sinks and showers to the top or right. That way our toilet wouldn’t get backed up in here. OK, enough of that stinky subject.

This is the next box that the pipe from the above box runs into. This box is for the kitchen sink. It was just about as gross as the last one. Steve is cleaning out the first box. The sinks and showers all drain out of a pipe (no kidding) into a cement box right outside of the house where the sink or tub it. We have three of these, one outside each bathroom and then this one outside the kitchen. This one was filled with mud. It didn’t make sense at the time, but the more I thought about it, I remembered the ants. The ants filled this box with mud, there is no other explanation. Then a drain and pipe lead from the box Steve is cleaning out in the box to the left of him.

This box drains into a very deep septic tank. We took the broken meddle lid off of it. Steve put a long meddle rod and and it didn’t touch the bottom. So we thought we will just change the lids around. Can you believe it ever lid is a different size!?!?! The lids do cover the other holes but not properly and you can tell, it smells out back. So tomorrow it is off to get the septic lid welded. We were not so concerned about it as it was broken back in January. Now, knowing of our bottomless pit and that the kids ride their bikes over that lid, we are getting the lid fix.

There is one more box in our yard that we still are not sure about. Our guess at the moment is maybe we do have bore hole. That is a well for you folks back in the good ol’ US of A.

Better subjects to come later!

Rita

Ministry Happenings

2011-11-18T14:39:00.001-05:00

We had a Zambian mission team come help us out from Kasama. On Thursday, September 30th, Steve drove to Kasama for supplies for us and brought back six leaders from the churches in Kasama. Two more arrive by bus on Friday and one via a truck late on Friday night. Two women stayed in Heather’s room and the men camped in tents in our yard. We hired two Zambian women to do all the cooking.

Late Thursday they went prayer walking in Maround. Friday and Saturday they walked around Maround, talking and witnessing to people. Both evenings we showed the Jesus Film in the Mambwe language. Then after that, one of the guys preached.

On Sunday morning we had a church service in the community center. It was wonderful to come together and worship. The team did a wonderful job.

We have been meeting every Sunday since then. Sometimes it is disappointing at how few come. Steve and Wigan are visiting them during the week.

A side note: Wigan in in Lusaka for medical reasons. So one of the guys from Kasama came up last weekend and this weekend to help us out.

Our children came down with colds and so this is the first weekend I have missed and stayed home with three sick children. Steve came home to say what a good worship service it was and that four new men were there. Poor Steve, the ones that come are mostly women, even in his Saturday Bible study. So it is quite exciting to have four new men show up.

Please pray for Wigan as he is going to have to stay in Lusaka longer than expected. They cannot find out what is wrong. Also, we will be traveling to Lusaka for supplies and to celebrate Thanksgiving. Pray for safe travel.

Sorry

2011-11-06T10:38:00.001-05:00

I need to apologize for not doing a better job keeping this blog updated. I go to other peoples blog and then fuss about the fact that they haven’t updated lately, yet I am guilty of the same thing. So here goes: I’m sorry.

Life has been going on at a very fast pace. I have never been a fan of fast pace. I like to take things slowly. We started our school year early anticipating breaks and trips.

This past week was really hectic. Steve actually suggested we take the week off from school, but I couldn’t bring myself to do such a thing. We will have a week off at Thanksgiving. I just couldn’t do two weeks off in one month.

I have been very blessed to have workers. One worker keeps our house clean the other worker keeps the yard clean and takes care of the garden. They had finished grade 12 but never passed the tests. So this year they have been going to school in the afternoons and evenings. This past week was test week. When one worker is sick or wants a day off it is no problem. If I don’t have school to teach then it isn’t a problem for both of them to be gone. Both of them off made for a very long week.

I did think ahead a little. Last Saturday I made six loaves of bread, so that I wouldn’t have to do it during the week. If I have bread to make then the school day starts too late. I also put a chart on the board, listing all the things in the house that needed to be done. The kids were a great help in getting the house clean. We already have the garden divided up for watering it. After the first day I just made a new rule: only one child is aloud to be outside watering at a time. The rest needed to be in school. Too much playing around was happening on the first day.

The workers have one more test tomorrow morning. Thinking ahead again, we cleaned on Saturday. We usually don’t do any cleaning on the weekend. So by doing it on Saturday, we don’t have to do it on Monday.

Then the Lord blessed us this morning with a lot of rain. So we don’t have to go water the garden tomorrow morning. Now if I can just get Lane a little motivated to finish last weeks school work, we should be able to start this week off fresh and new with nothing extra to do.

Our house worker does want the month of January off. So if you remember: pray for us. It is going to be a long month. At least our yard worker will still be here. I do have him help in the house too.

Blessing,

It is too early for rain.

2011-10-01T06:37:00.001-04:00

Here in Zambia the rainy season starts around their Independence Day which is October 24th. Sometime near the end of September you might have a little spit of a rain. It will cloud up and smell like rain, but it doesn’t even get the ground wet.

Sorry I don’t know the exact date, but not too long ago in September while we were at friends we had that spit of rain. Oh, did it smell good! They live about 10k’s from us. As we went home we drove into more rain. At our house it was pouring down rain just like in the rainy season. The kids were excited. Lane and Seth just walked around the yard enjoying the rain and getting wet. I don’t know how much it rained, but it was enough that we didn’t need to water the garden at all the next day.

Since then it has rained 2 more times. Earlier this week it rained. I was thinking good, now that is out of the system, it will be dry this weekend. We have a mission team here from Kasama helping us. They are sleeping in tents outside. Well, it decided to rain again yesterday and get everything wet. Today the sun is shining and drying everything out.

I am told when it rains this early, than it is going to be hotter when it is not raining! If that makes sense! I’m living here in Mbala because yes God called us here, but also it is cooler here than it is in the rest of the country. So we shall see what the future holds rain and heat wise.

More pictures from Isanga Bay

2011-07-14T00:52:00.001-04:00

This picture is taken from the dock!

Tobias jumping off the dock. You have to jump out far so as not to land on rocks.

A while ago I posted a little ditty about Lane and Olivia. I promised to post a picture. I’m not sure I ever did. So here it is. This is on the ramp up from the boat dock.

Another view: our vehicle in their little parking lot. Actually, there is many more places to park.

Grapefruit, oranges, and lemons grow here.

Fish caught that morning in the lake.

Road Cleaning crew! Home we go.

God bless, Rita

My Adventure–part 2

2011-07-13T02:40:00.001-04:00

I didn’t tell you in the last post that when I got to the creek, I really wanted to turn around and go back home. But after 2 hours and 15 minutes of driving I was tired and had a headache. Seven loud children in one vehicle does that to your head. Plus the lodge was closer. Then there was three year old Luke who asked questioningly, “Auntie Rita can drive to the lodge?” Of course I couldn’t let him down.

So we arrived at a beautiful green Isanga Bay. They water the grass. Maybe you noticed in the last post how brown everything is. Two months of no rain turns things brown quick.

Lane, Seth and I stayed in this rondavel. Tobias and Heather said in with the Schaefer’s in the above house.

This lovely porch overlooks the lake. This is were we took our meals.

From the above porch you can walk down some stairs and then down to the lake. This is where Lynn and I went swimming. The next day a croc was seen swimming here. Usually there are no crocs here, but someone was keeping them and they got away!

This is the beach side. You can kayak, snorkel, and lots more.

Isn’t that the most beautiful beach you have ever seen?

More later. Rita

I Went on an Adventure!

2011-07-12T10:09:00.001-04:00

OK, for those of you who don’t know me, I am not very adventurous. I don’t do zip lines, bungee jumps, or roller coasters. I don’t like to ride in the car when the road in not level. I definitely don’t like to do very short and steep hills into and then out of a creek!!!!!!!

We never drive to Isanga Bay because the road was so so very bad. The wear and tear on your vehicle isn’t even worth it. Last November (I’m guessing) the chief drove up to the Isanga Bay Lodge to say the road is fixed. Last Christmas Schaefer’s did drive the road, but one bridge was out. Lynn was quite glad that I (Rita) didn’t come. She is right I probably wouldn’t have made it. She had walked across and then couldn’t even watch Grant as he drove across.

At the end of May, the manager of the Lodge called Lynn to tell here three land cruisers with trailers are parked here. They made it on the road. Well, if they can make it with trailers, than surely we can go with out a trailer. So plans were made to visit the Schaefer’s while they were taking care of the Lodge. In the mean time Steve decided he is just too busy to go. He has two classes to prepare for for the August Bible School in Kasama. One is on a subject he hasn’t taught before and so he has reading to do. So that means I, Rita will be doing the driving!! I did the driving and survived. I actually think it was better for me because I was driving and in control.

Tobias and Joel rode their bikes on that Thursday. I drove our vehicle on Friday with Heather, Lane, Seth, Hope, Charlie, Olivia, and Luke. Plus our bags and the supplies that Grant had gotten for the lodge when he was in Kasama on Thursday. We had stuff tied down on top and the inside was full. So here are a few pictures of our trip.

While driving you felt like you were on top of the world. Mbala is at 5300 feet. I wish I knew how high we were at this point.

Still up on top of the world. Lake Tanganyika is in view. Since it is the dry season it is hazy, mainly because of fires burning and dust.

The plank bridge that is no longer there.

Creek that we had to drive through. The sides are over 6 feet tall.

Picture from down in the creek. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Well, when I got home and saw the pictures, my thoughts were – “That don’t look so bad.” So if you want to see how bad it really looks, you need to come visit us and we will take a little drive. Come after the next rainy season and it will be worse. It took us 2 1/2 hours to drive 49 K. More pictures coming in the next blog, as our internet can’t handle lots of pictures.

God bless, Rita for the gang.

A Long Bike Ride

2011-07-10T09:16:00.001-04:00

Back in the Beginning of June our friends the Schaefer’s were asked to run the Isanga Bay Lodge while the managers went on holiday. Joel came up with this plan to bike to the Lodge with Tobias.

This mother was not too excited about this idea. Then Tobias kept getting sick about every five days. So the trip was put off one week. Grant came back from the lodge with all the kids on a Tuesday giving Lynn some free time all to herself. On Wednesday Joel stayed over night with us, so that they could get an early start in the morning.

They left our house in Mbala at 7:30 AM with lots of water and chlorine, just in case they ran out of water. They biked 49K to Isanga Bay in 4 hours and 7 minutes. They did admit to walking up a few hills.

These two pictures are of them ready to go. They made it safely with no problems. Way to go guys!!

God bless, Rita

May/June Newsletter-Page 3

2011-07-02T09:27:00.001-04:00

Football anyone?

When I (Steve) head out to one of the local schools every Saturday for Bible study, there is no shortage of kids. They
see my Land Cruiser coming and appear like early morning mushrooms. Early on, these kids were quite disruptive
during Bible study. If I let them in the room, they were constantly moving and talking. If I kept them outside, they stood at the windows heckling and knocking. What to do? We tried to have
a Bible teaching time with the kids but this only kept their attention for 30 minutes or so. It was a good start but

we needed something more. That something more turned out to be the Schwarz boys and a football (soccer ball). Seth and Tobias have been coming to Bible study and when they are there the distractions are few. As the word gets out what we are doing, more kids show up. Please pray that we have wisdom in how to best handle the growing crowd of children. If they are
going to come, they should be learning something about God. If they only play a game, we are failing. But if they learn about the love of Christ and seeds of the gospel are planted, who knows what they will be one day!

School Is Out!!! School is Out!!!

About the middle of May we finally finished our school year. May is a good time to finish, but by then we all are about sick of school and ready for a change. I save all of their quiz and test papers for the proof I need that I actually did homeschool my

children. So what do you do with all of the other papers they did during the year? We decided a burning party would be fun. We sat around our burn pit and wadded up the papers. This took quit a bit of time. Then the kids had fun lighting the pit.

How about that!

Recently, while speaking the gospel to a husband and wife, a
drunk man stumbled into the yard and came to me. In a slurred voice the asked for money. I learned long ago not to carry money with me on evangelistic outings so I can respond honestly to men like this. I simply told him in his own language, “I do not have any
money”. To my surprise he accepted this answer and staggered away. We all had a grin on our faces and I continued sharing with the couple. About 30 minutes later the drunk man returned and gave me the shock of my life. He came up and kneeled in front of me, reached into his pocket, and gave me 500 kwacha (about 10 cents). He then rose and disappeared between the houses. I looked with surprise at my evangelism partner and he had
the strangest look on his face. “What?”, I asked. He said, “Well
you told the poor drunk man that you didn’t have any money. He
must have felt sorry for you and wanted to help.” What I meant
was that I didn’t have any money with me not that I was destitute.
I suppose I need to choose my words more carefully especially
when talking to the intoxicated. At this point there was nothing
else to do but proclaim the money as a gift and give it to the family we were visiting. Maybe the day will come when we meet this man again while he is sober and tell him about the One who is worth more than all the money in the world...Jesus Christ.

OK, This all of the Newsletter that Steve wrote.

God bless, Rita

May/June Newsletter–Page 2

2011-07-02T09:03:00.001-04:00

Kalambo Falls Hike

One of our favorite places near our home is Kalambo Falls. We
have driven there many times to gaze at the beauty of God’s creation. Recently we had an opportunity to experience the falls in a new way. A visitor from America came to see the sights of

Zambia and we agreed to show him our little slice of the country. The Schwarz men thought that it would be fun to hike up to the
falls instead of driving. After a boat ride on Lake Tanganyika to
a village on the shore, we began the two hour ascent to the falls. As we neared the top of the first major hill, a glance back
revealed the stunning view of the village and lake. After navigating more rigorous terrain, we were rewarded with an absolutely beautiful view of Kalambo Falls.

The only downside to the day was that we didn’t bring enough water with us. At the falls we were so thirsty that we decided to drink a little not so pure mountain water. The following days
brought some stomach and intestinal unrest but we will survive.
Will we ever do this hike again?

I hope so...but next time we’ll carry a portable water filter.

Even though their legs are considerably shorter, Lane and Seth hiked without problem or complaint. Way to go guys!!

Our guest, Matthew, and the Kalambo Falls Park Ranger, Abraham

Persevere: Be Steadfast and Immovable

The last few months of ministry has definitely had its highs and lows. The Maround Compound of Mbala is proving to be a challenging place to witness. The enormous ‘village’ is a melting pot of people from near and far. Apathy and false security abound. Most people are polite and accommodating but response to the gospel had been limited. When I think about the weeks, months and years ahead, the word PERSEVERE runs through my mind. This is not a short term endeavor and God is faithful!

“Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your
toil is not in vain in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 15:58

May/June Newsletter–Page 1

2011-06-30T12:44:00.001-04:00

A Visit to Luwingu

In the beginning of May, my team leader and I paid a visit to the Northern Province town of Luwingu. For nearly 8 years Luwingu was home to the Bowman family. Last June this family said good-bye to their friends and fellow believers in Luwingu in response to
the Lord’s calling to serve in another part of the world.

So, after nearly a year how is the work of the Lord progressing in Luwingu? Well, there is a lot of good to report. Even though this visit was impromptu, representatives from at least seven churches gathered in Luwingu to greet and meet with us. For an entire morning we met together in planning for the future, singing songs, and teaching of God’s Word. The churches are committing
to send representatives to the Baptist Fellowship Annual meeting in Lusaka this August. This is no small commitment because the cost is substantial. The Luwingu Association has also committed
to leadership meetings every two weeks to stay connected and continue in growth. Bible schools also continue to meet three
times a year.

While there was much to be encouraged about in Luwingu, there are also some challenges that need prayer. One need is for
evangelistic outreach among the churches. They are so occupied with daily living and maintaining current church membership
that they have not been able to expand the gospel work to those
around them. Pray that they will be led by the Holy Spirit to be passionately evangelistic.

Another challenge has come from outside. Some of the churches are facing pressures from other denominations to change
affiliation. Offers of material compensation often accompany this wooing. Please pray that church leaders have the wisdom to
discern the truth and remain steadfast in the will of our Lord Jesus Christ. We will press on together for the glory of God!

Seventh Day Adventist Wedding

May 29th brought another new cultural experience for Steve. An
invitation came to attend a wedding at a local seventh Day Adventist Church. Since Saturday is the day of worship for
SDA’s, the wedding was held on Sunday. Other than the day, the rest of the ceremony seemed to be in step with other weddings we have experienced in Zambia. Perhaps this one had a bit more
Western flavor because the families were fairly affluent. When the time came for the wedding message, we were a bit surprised at the title: “How To Avoid Divorce”. This really made us aware that divorce is as significant a problem in Zambia as it is in the rest of the world. Here is the advice the SDA pastor passed on to the couple: 1. Commit for a lifetime not an experiment. 2 . Show love for each other in word and deed; in public and at home even though it is not our culture to do so. 3. Communicate—listen
first then speak. 4. Put your spouse’s needs before your own.
5. Pray together.

Overall, this is not bad advice that has good biblical backing. We pray that the words will be heeded and that this marriage was
truly founded on the Rock of Christ Jesus. Only then will it stand the test of time.

Prayer requests

As evangelism in Maround continues, people seem to
be more closed and less willing to talk. The enemy does not like what we are doing. Pray that the Holy Spirit will open closed ears
and mouths for the glory of God.
Pray for the churches in Kasama and Luwingu to stand firm under challenges from within and from outside. These believers will be a big part of our ministry in Mbala in the months ahead.
Please lift up Rita and the kids as they prepare to kick off a new school year bit by bit as our new curriculum arrives. The break has been good!

Praises to our God and King

Praise the Lord for 18 years of marriage Steve and Rita
celebrated on June 26th.
We are thanking God for healed bodies after a wave
of gastrointestinal unrest swept though the family in
June.
Spiritual renewal comes in many forms and sometimes
in unexpected ways. Steve has been experiencing some
refreshing times with God recently...just when he needed it most. Isn’t that just like our on-time God?

Page two is coming. I can not just copy and paste the wonderful layout that Steve used. I copy and paste, but then I have to go through it to line it up right.

God bless, Steve (he writes the newsletter) and Rita (I put it here for those who can’t open it for some unknown reason. If you want to get a copy of the Newsletter via email, please email us at: steveandritaschwarz@gmail.com

Visitor from America-part 6

2011-06-30T10:10:00.001-04:00

He even swam across the river at the top of the falls to set his feet in Tanzania.

My guys at the falls.

Our crew with Matthew.

And with Henry. He keeps our house nice and clean.

Thank you Matthew for sharing all your pictures with us.

Visitor from America-Part 4

2011-06-30T10:04:00.001-04:00

Saturday Bible Study, these kids all show up to play.

He took a great picture of good friends of ours.

He also got a good picture of our language helpers and their family.

Visitor from America-part 5

2011-06-30T06:50:00.000-04:00

On Sunday the guys went to Isanga Bay on Lake Tanganyika. It is a little slice of paradise.

On Monday they hiked to Kalambo Falls. A boat took them from the Isanga Bay to a village below the falls.

The village is in the middle of the picture right at the lake.

Hiking in gives you a better view of the whole falls at once. When we drive to it we are right at the top of it.

A Visitor from America – part 3

2011-06-28T03:45:00.001-04:00

He took a picture of this cool dude.

He checked out the baby broiler chicks. They will be in our freezer soon! Yum!

This is where our children play every Friday afternoon.

A Visitor from America – part 2

2011-06-27T12:38:00.001-04:00

I had to break my post in to parts in order to post it. Too many pictures. So the driving tour for our friend continues.

Lake Chila: All of Mbala’s water comes from here.

A trip to the Moto Moto Museum, which Mbala is famous for.

He say cows being milked at our friend’s house.

He milked a cow for the first time in his life.

A Visitor from America – part 1

2011-06-27T00:14:00.001-04:00

At the very beginning of June we had a visitor from America come to visit us. He is a friend of the lady who runs our missions guest house in Lusaka. She planned this lovely trip for the two of them and then ended up not being able to come herself. So, he was brave and boarded a bus to come visit us – people he had never met before. Steve picked him up at the bus stop here in Mbala.

We took him on a driving tour of Mbala.

This is the old Market.

Maround Compound where Steve is working right not.

The school where Steve has his Bible studies on Saturdays.

Seth is now in the double digits!!

2011-06-13T09:57:00.001-04:00

On Tuesday Seth turned 10! On Monday night we had cake. He decided against the chocolate cake with the peanut butter icing, for a coconut cake. I went recipe hunting and we had coconut cake. We had the cake on Monday night because we had a visitor with us.

We had the Schaefer’s over for tea on Tuesday afternoon and finished the cake. Seth wanted candles all over again. So the second time we put a candle in every piece of cake to see if he had enough wind to blow them out. He did!

Customer Service

2011-06-12T12:56:00.001-04:00

About a week ago our electric bill came. It indicated that we owed two months worth. Steve got out his receipt to check and yes we did pay that bill. We even have a computer print out!

So, when Steve went to town to run errands he said he will be back in a few hours. I had to ask why, what was going? He said he would be waiting in line to get our bill straighten out. Well, he was back much earlier than expected. Why?

He forgot that there is no such thing as customer service in our Mbala office. They also must not have a copier. He came home to make copies of his receipt. Then it was back to the Zesco office with the copies. They have to fax them to Kasama where there is a customer service to take care of the problem.

We just keep practice the saying “This is Africa and Africa always wins!” When you realize that and accept it you are less likely to get upset at the way things work here.

God bless,

Tobias turned 15!!!

2011-05-12T11:53:00.000-04:00

On May 8th Tobias turned 15. On Friday night I (Rita) was surrounded by boys. Tobias had two missionary friends over that live in the area. Lane and Seth wanted a friend too. Heather on the other had thought a sleep over at someone else house would be a good idea.

Birthday Cake / Chocolate with peanut butter icing of course!

Breakfast for all the boys.

Testing our muscles!

Playing Legos!

Chair picture at 15 years old.

Chair picture at 10 years old.

New Family Picture

2011-04-19T09:09:00.001-04:00

These were taken in Malawi at the Sun and Sand Resort.

The Northern Evangelistic Team (NET)

2011-04-18T05:20:00.001-04:00

This is our team in Northern Zambia. This picture was taken at our annual meeting in Malawi. We are on the left and live in Mbala. The couple in the middle are the Adairs. They have two children. Heather is holding one. They live in Kaputa. The couple on the right are the Kimbroughs. They have four children and live in Isoka.

Seth’s Favorite Meal

2011-02-26T09:16:00.001-05:00

On Wednesday night of this week, I stayed up waiting for Steve to get back from Kasama. One of the night guards there is in the hospital and has been for most of the month. They still are not sure what he has. Steve went to visit him and meet the new night guard that was hired by the head guard.

I put our children to bed on most nights around 7 PM. When they were little they went right to sleep. Now they are aloud to read until 8 PM, then lights out.

Seth comes to me at 8:30 wanting help in his Language book. He is working on Thursday’s work!?!? I ask him why is he still up. He is to be in bed! He wanted to get ahead start in his school work so that he can eat his favorite meal.

I ask, “What is your favorite meal?” You would think a mother might know what her children’s favorite meals are, but I’m sorry to say that I don't. I know what they like and dislike, but not favorites. He answered, “Chicken.” I said, “I’m not making chicken tomorrow.” He says, “You know, bugs!" with this very cute smile that only Seth can make. He is up trying to get school work done so he can eat nshima and caterpillars at lunch time!!! :( YUK ! !

You have to know that I have a rule that started when Tobias was in 4th or 5th grade. He started procrastinating in his school work. He and I would be up until 10 or 11 PM doing school work. It got to be very frustrating. We didn’t watch TV, they didn’t have video games or game boys. There was nothing to take away from him to encourage him to do better. So I took away food. I figured out what was a decent amount of work to be done in order to eat lunch. They rest of school had to be done in order to eat dinner. It worked! He might have only had breakfast one day, but you can be sure he had all three meals the next. He would relapse and do this every week or so.

I kind of had forgotten this rule, but Lane is now our procrastinator. Tobias has grown out of it, Thank the Lord! I don’t think I could survive two at a time. So I started reminding them of this rule and last week I stared reinforcing it. On Wednesday, Heather, Lane and Seth were behind in school work. On Tuesday, Steve had bought the caterpillars in the market! I personally will never buy them. Since Steve was going to be gone on Wednesday, the plan was to have our house helper make it for lunch on Thursday.

Since Seth only got 1/2 a sandwich for being slow in school on Wed, he was making sure he got to eat lunch on Thursday since it was his favorite!

Thursday’s Lunch Menu, Seth’s favorite: nshima, relish – rape and Chinese cabbage mixed, soup, and caterpillars. All the boys/men in the house love them. The women hate them. Actually, we women refuse to try them, so I guess I can’t say we hate them. I can say they don’t smell good when you cook them! :)

Good Friends

2011-02-26T09:15:00.001-05:00

One is five.

One is ten.

One is a girl.

One is a boy.

One is South African.

One is American.

No Siblings to tell us what to do!

Five to ten movies pulled off the shelf.

We can control the remote!

Only the favorite scenes are watched.

Three movies later they settle in to watch one.

Mom says, “No more TV!”

Out the door they go.

Too many bugs at the garbage pit!

“Can we have the matches?”

They take out the garbage.

They light the pit.

They throw the papers in one at a time

Waiting for them to burn.

They use sticks to encourage the fire.

They pick strawberries and wash them.

They eat a few and bring the rest into the house.

“Do you like this?” (Pomegranate)

“No.”

“It is good.”

Knife comes out of pocket.

Pomegranate is opened.

“You just suck on the seed and then spit them out.”

“I know, do you like mulberries”

“Oh, yes! They are like blackberries”

Off they go to pick berries.

Shirt is pulled out and berries put in!

They to make it into the house.

They climb a tree.

They take turns climbing the light pole

With a toy gun slung over their backs.

Military training I am told.

They hunch down and dig in the dirt.

They stand around talking.

They climb the ladder to the top of the pump house.

They check out what is over the wall.

They stand around and talk some more.

Now they climb the wash line pole.

One is five.

One is ten.

One is a girl.

One is a boy.

One is South African.

One is American.

Both live in Zambia

Both are good friends!

Where in the World are the Schwarz’s Anyway.

2011-02-13T14:17:00.001-05:00

This was also in our last newsletter written by Steve.

Zambia is smack in the middle of Southern Africa. Steve had it nicely outlined and I hoped to copy and past and it didn't work. If you start at the bottom tip of Africa: that country is South Africa. Count up one country in the middle: that is Botswana. Now this map is small and it looks like the next country straight north and right in the middle is Zambia. I looked at a cloth map we have and Botswana doesn’t touch Zambia, but on the globe a little point does touch Zambia.

ZAMBIA Mbala is up here.

If you can blow this up. Mbala is listed on this map. It is in the northern and eastern corner on the Tanzanian boarder.

So how do you get there? Well, the first thing you do is book a
flight through your travel agent of choice with the destination of Lusaka, Zambia. The flights most likely take you through South Africa or Europe. Along the way you will move ahead in time by 6
or 7 hours from the Eastern time zone of America depending the
status of daylight savings time. Two calendar days later you land
in Lusaka with some jet lag and realize you are still 650 miles
from Mbala! Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Actually, the roads to Mbala have improved considerably in the last 18
months. If you travel hard, the road trip will only take about 12 hours. Head out of Lusaka on the Great North Road through Kabwe, Kapiri Mposhi, Serenje, and Mpika. At Mpika take Road
M1 to Kasama (the Northern Province capital) and then on to Mbala. Along the way you won’t see much wildlife as most of the game parks are in western and southern Zambia. However, the northern landscape can be quite breathtaking especially in the rainy season. Now that you know how to get to us, we are expecting some visits! See you soon!

Article from our January Newletter

2011-02-10T11:03:00.001-05:00

by: Steve Schwarz

The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let
the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is
thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of
life without cost (Revelation 22:17). In December I
(Steve) began entering the Maround Compound of
Mbala (pictured below) to share the good news of Jesus
Christ with all who would listen. These initial trips
into the area showed that an adjustment needed to be
made in the approach I was using. There is a veneer of
religiosity in most people resulting from years of programs,
events, and crusades. The first home visits revealed
that every person is affiliated with a church,
they all know Jesus, and they are all bound for heaven.
But just in case they needed to do something more for
their salvation, most would pray to receive Christ
again. Something was clearly not right.

The change of approach in January was very
simple but powerful. Instead of quickly entering into
the gospel in one visit, I began slowly working through
the issues on multiple visits while building relationships.
The people are so gracious and accepting that
they readily welcome many visits to their homes. The
first visit includes “get to know you” dialogue and basic
spiritual questions like Do you attend a church?, What
is religion ?, What is Christianity?, What is the Bible?,
and Who is God? The answers to these questions reveal
a great deal about spiritual condition of a person and
give direction for future visits. The second visit continues
to build relationship while going a bit deeper with
questions like Who is Jesus Christ?, What is sin?, Are
you a good person?, and How does a person go to
heaven? At the ready are stories of Adam and Eve and
the Fall of man as well as the encounter of Nicodemus
with Jesus. A third visit provides opportunity for my
personal testimony or a Creation to Christ presentation. All along love of Christ is demonstrated and gospel truth is being communicated.

A basis fact is that the people here have heard
gospel presentations many times but not as a part of a
complete biblical context. As a result, many who claim
to be saved don’t know who God is or what He is like.
They have no foundation on which to build gospel
truths so the good news becomes a false, legalistic security.
The general consensus is that all a person needs to
do is go to church and pray and he will be made right
with God.

So, what is the answer? A clear, simple understanding
of God’s Word from Genesis through Christ
will be a good place to start. To that end, I will be starting
a weekly Bible study on Saturday February 12th at
one of the local schools. Our prayer is that men and
women will begin to see God as He has revealed Himself
in Scripture and fall in love with Him. By the time
the New Testament is reached in the teachings, there
will be no doubt that Jesus Christ is the only answer to
the sin that separates us all from our loving Father in
Heaven.

This type of teaching will take some time but
those who respond will be true born again believers.
Jesus commanded His followers to make disciples not
get decisions. Praying a prayer does not make someone
a Christian any more than just reading a Bible or going
to church does. I thank the Lord for the direction He has
given us in reaching Mbala for the cause of Christ. May
the result be many Mambwe-Lungu people joining
those from other tribes, tongues, and nations in worshiping
the Lamb at the throne of God (Revelation 5).

Ministry has Started

2011-02-06T07:07:00.001-05:00

Steve has started going to the Maround Compound to do ministry in the afternoons. Afternoons were picked because a lot of people are in their fields in the mornings.

Pray for Steve and his language helper as they do this. For the past year of language we have been working with Christian people. Most of our workers are Christians. Steve is finding out just how dark it is here. What he is doing now is like survey work. Talking to people and finding out what they know of God, do they believe in heaven and hell, and such questions. It helps him to know what method of teaching he will need to do. Does he just go out and witness and then start discipling them. Or does he need to start at the beginning of the Bible and teach them who is God and that he created everything.

Pray for his communication skills. He studied ciBemba. I think he knows a lot, but to carry on a conversation is difficult. He has all his questions written out in English and ciBemba, so he can read it. He does read ciBemba pretty well. The thing is this isn’t just ciBemba country. A lot of people are Mambwe and they want to speak that. He has come across a few other language too.

So pray for Steve as he goes out and does ministry. Pray that God would open the eyes and ears of people and they would come to know the Lord as their Savior. Pray for Steve’s language skills.

Also, a big thank you to the IMB for providing us with a 4-wheel drive vehicle. Steve got stuck the first day. A friend told him during the rainy season just to keep the hubs locked. He forgot. So they got stuck. All it took to get out was to get out and lock the hubs and turn on the 4-wheel drive button and out of the water hole they drove. I personally would prefer to avoid all water holes / big mud puddles, but that isn’t always possible. You just turn on the 4-wheel drive and pray that you make it out the other side. Steve has been using it every time they go out.

On a side note, it has been raining a lot here. We had another gully washer yesterday. I dumped out three inches of rain from my cup. It rained several times in the night and most of the morning. I just dumped out another two inches!q

Merry Christmas from the Schwarz Family

2010-12-25T13:02:00.001-05:00

While your day is only partial over, ours is winding down. The kids are already reading books in bed. Steve and I are listening to a little country music. We have had a lazy, but good day. The game Risk was played thanks to my sister’s in-laws. Seth played chess with his daddy. A puzzle was started. Turkey was enjoyed. Steve and I enjoyed stuffing – our kids don’t like it.

Thank you to all of you who gave to the Lottie Moon Offering. That offering is was makes it possible for us to missionaries here in Zambia.

Love from Zambia and God Bless! Rita for the Schwarzs

Electricity Woes Part III

2010-12-25T03:43:00.001-05:00

The electric came on Monday afternoon. We are thinking maybe everything is fixed now. Think again. On Wednesday afternoon the electric went off again. Steve has a friend at the electric company, so he called him to ask what is going on and when can we expect electric. The transformer blew and it will be a few days before it is fixed! They usually keep a spare in the area – I’m thinking one spare for the Northern Province – but, it had been used and not replaced. He admitting to poor planning.

We Americans think – transformer blew, need a new one, put it on the truck tonight, it will arrive in the morning and install – right!?!?! Not so. The transformer had to be shipped from Ndola. I don’t know when it arrived, but the electric didn’t come on until Sunday at 3PM.

Life changes when there is no electricity. We went into survival mode. Steve got the generator going every morning. Our generator is only a 11 amps. So first he plugged in the coffee pot. Then when that was don’t the milk pasteurizer was plugged in. Then he came and got me so that I could enjoy at least one cup of hot coffee. Although, I think he turned the gas camp stove on twice in the day to heat coffee back up in a kettle. After that then the fridge and freezer were plugged in. We ran the generator most of the morning. Steve also plugged in the computer and tried to get some work done in the kitchen. He was trying to finish up preparing for teaching a Bible school class in Kasama the following week.

Generators are noisy. So in the afternoons we enjoyed the quiet! Then sometime between 4 and 6 again we would turn it on and plug in the fridge and freezer again. We would also plug in the TV and watch a show before we turned it off and hopped into bed.

We have a two burner gas camp stove that we cooked on. We also headed water on it to wash dishes and take bathes. Although I do know we forgot about it and our worker washed dishes with cold water. Steve did spend probably 4 to 6 hours trying to make it work right – the stove that is. Gas doesn’t flow through it properly.

I was planning Heathers birthday party for Friday night. She turned 13!! The party was to be at our house, but with no electric how am I to make pizza and cake. Our friends gladly helped us out. They were the ones invited to the party and their girls were staying overnight at our house. She has a outdoor brick pizza oven. It takes charcoal. So she made the cake in the pizza oven in the morning and then in the evening I brought over the pizzas and we partied at their house. Then we took the girls to our house.

There is so much that Steve does when the electric is out. He even helps or does most of the cooking. All this time we were without electricity, it was cloudy, raining, and we were having thunderstorms. So cooking on the porch wasn’t exactly pleasant, especially when the wind was blowing the rain onto the porch.

Sunday afternoon Steve is packing up to leave for Kasama and showing me how to do everything. How to start and stop the generator. What to plug in where. He even showed me how to unwire the pump from the electric supply and wire it to the generator so that I would pump water up into the tank.

I told him not to worry, that we would survive with him gone. He said he wanted us to more than survive! He is sweet. I told him, “If this was a class that I was taking. I would pass the test, maybe not with flying colors, but that I would pass and he was not to worry about us.

He left at 2 PM and the electric came on at 3 PM. For the most part it stayed on for the whole week he was gone.

Electricity Woes Part II

2010-12-22T06:42:00.001-05:00

So the electric came on Thursday morning and I was happy. Four days later it went again. Sunday morning is left us and didn’t come back until Monday afternoon. So we got some experience living for about 30 hours with out electric.

The four days with electricity were interesting. On that Saturday it took me all day practically to do one load of laundry!!! The electricity was so low most of the day that the contractor wouldn’t stay in. So every time I thought about it I went by and pushed it in to see if there was enough power to keep it in so that I could turn on my washing machine again and then later the dryer.

That same evening I was trying to use the blender to make applesauce. It wouldn’t go around fast enough. Steve thought: Oh! there is something wrong with that. I’m thinking, I haven’t done anything to make this not work. I think it is the electric.

We are suppose to have 220 volts coming through the electric lines into our house. If we have 190 we think that is good. At the time I was doing the applesauce we were only getting 75 volts. The thing is, all these gadgets we have to stabilize the electric should have cut off the fridge and freezer like it had been doing to my washing machine and dryer all day. So to save everything we just turned off the main to the house. Then we wait 15 minutes to 1/2 hour and turn it on and see if the voltage is high enough to run things.

Electricity Woes Part I

2010-12-22T06:29:00.001-05:00

Some families go into the mission field knowing they will not have electricity and so they prepare for such a life. We have one family in our mission in Zambia that lives without electricity. We had friends in orientation that were going to a place without electricity. We on the other hand knew we would have electricity. We did know it wouldn’t be great and it wouldn’t be always there, but that we would have it.

The Monday after Thanksgiving, while we were still in Lusaka, we got a call. The electricity is off and they are not sure when it is coming back on. We figure, no big deal, we are not even there. We drove back to Mbala on that Wednesday. The electricity was still off. In Kasama we filled one of our jerry cans with petrol/gasoline.

When we got home, Steve pulled the vehicle right up to the front door to unload it. He took off to the back to get the generator up and running. The kids and I unloaded the vehicle and trailer. We unpacked and climbed into bed exhausted from our drive. We had left Lusaka at 4 AM. We stopped in Kasama to take care of a few things there, so didn’t get home until about 6 PM.

Steve got up twice in the night to fill up the generator. At 4 AM the electric came on. Whoo hoo!!!! We really didn’t have to put up with that electrical outage as we were not here to deal with it. We didn’t lose anything in the Fridge or Freeze because no one was opening and shutting the doors all day. I was thinking, Yes! didn’t have to deal with that one. I think the Lord thought I needed to deal with an electrical outage as you will see in Part 2.

The reason for this three and a half day outage was due to some guys stealing bolts and or cables or both, holding up a tower. Stories are conflicting. Anyways, the tower fell over taking another tower with it. One of the guys was caught and sitting jail. I heard that others were caught, but this of course is not confirmed.

Putsy Fly

2010-11-13T03:21:00.001-05:00

Warning: Do not read this or look at the pictures if you don’t like gross things. Gross or not, this is what we have to deal with here.

About a week ago I noticed our one dog, Buddy, had a wet spot on him where he had been licking himself. I noticed a hole in the spot and thought our other dog, Vern, finally bit him good. The more I thought about it though, that didn’t make sense. There would be more teeth marks. I finally remembered to tell my husband this past Thursday morning. He meets with two other guys for prayer. The one guy has been here for 12 years and has lots of experience with this.

So after prayer time they went to work. You have to let the thing grow for 4 or 5 days so that it gets big enough to get it out. So on a person this can be very annoying. Then you put Vaseline over the opening. At this stage the maggot breaths air and so it starts to go crazy wiggling to the hole to come out. Then all you have to do is gently push it out.

This is a picture of the whole.

This is the maggot. Steve enlarged it so that you can all see it.

This is why we don’t hang clothes on wash lines. The fly lays its eggs in your wet clothing. You put on the clothes and the egg hatches and crawls inside your skin. It is itchy. You have to try and endure this for 4 to 5 days without scratching it!

You can hang clothes on the wash line. You then need to use a hot iron on everything. Or you can put them into the dryer on hot heat for 10 minutes. Or you can not wear them for 4 to 5 days. If it doesn’t have a body to crawl into it will die. Our family doesn’t have enough clothes to let them sit around waiting for bugs to die. I also don’t trust the dryer for 10 minutes and I refuse to iron all of our clothes. So nothing goes on the wash line at our house.

Language Study Officially is Over

2010-10-18T09:38:00.001-04:00

And now the witnessing for Christ begins. You can pray that Steve will be able to meet with area leaders of the Maround Compound here in Mbala. He has met with the police so that they know what he will be doing. Now he needs to meet with the leaders so that they also know. He has tried twice already to meet with leaders and didn’t find them home. These things take time especially when the person doesn’t have a phone. On Monday morning another appointment has been set up. This time an adult (wife) agreed that her husband would be there. The other times they found no one home or they told the children when they would come back.

You can also be praying that as he witnesses he would find people who are open to hearing and accepting of what they hear. Pray that many would come to know Christ as their personal Savior.

OK, our year of language study is officially over but we will still be studying language. Steve will still be meeting with his language helper and I will be too. I, Rita, had a lot going against me for learning a language in one year. The number one thing is I was 40 years old. On the front of one of our lesson books is a nice little list of how long it will take you to learn ciBemba.

20 years old        7 months     at least     1050 hours

25 years old        9 months     at least     1350 hours

30 years old     12 months     at least     1800 hours

35 years old     16 months     at least     2400 hours

40 years old     21 months     at least     3200 hours

The next thing going against me for learning a language is I have four beautiful children and I home school them. Here where we live there is no other choice but to home school them and I want to home school them.

Then there is cooking. Here in Mbala, Zambia if you want to eat anything for the most part you have to cook it. So, I will be continuing my study of the ciBemba language for some time to come yet.

Crocs

2010-10-15T09:27:00.001-04:00

Our family didn’t own Crocs until we came to Africa. I, Rita, didn’t really like how they looked. My children wore socks and shoes to go outside. I did invest in a pair of sandals for each child every spring. Then comes Africa and the dirt and then the mud.

When I was in South Africa last fall, I bought Steve and I our first pair of Crocs. They are comfortable and now we live in them. My mother-in-law mailed us some knock off brand for the kids.

When we come in the house we park our Crocs on a rug at the back door. Take a close look and see all the dirt!

Here is a picture of my indoor ones freshly scrubbed. I love the feeling of clean Crocs! The thing is in one day they are dirty!! Yes, I have two pair – one for inside and one for outside. My feet don’t tolerate going barefoot any more.

We have a new MacGyver

2010-10-09T01:13:00.001-04:00

OK, this story starts way back in the States before we even went to orientation. We went to Sears to buy a refrigerator to put into the crates that we were shipping to Africa. Our sales lady told us to wait and come back on a certain Sunday night as they were having a special sale and it would save us money. My concern was would we get it on time. She checked and didn’t see any reason why we wouldn’t. So that Sunday night came and we drove down to the Sears in Greenville, SC and ordered our fridge. One problem, all the refrigerators sitting in the warehouse had ice makers in them. We wouldn’t be needing an ice maker in Africa. Yes, one would be nice but how do you hook an ice maker up in Africa with filtered water. A fridge without an ice maker could have be shipped to us but it would have been after we had packed up the crates. So we paid the extra money for a fridge with an ice maker and shipped it to Africa.

About two weeks ago my friends husband – now he IS a MacGyver- tells us you really should have that thing working. Just put a bucket of filtered water on top of the fridge and run a hose down. So at the beginning of last week while this friend and Steve were in Lusaka, Steve got a plastic siphon hose. It was a great fit, but no water was getting into the ice maker. So after Steve put this all together and it is not working, he decides to consult the owners manual. It needs 30 psi. So as Steve does when something doesn’t work he thinks on it for awhile. That night while trying to go to sleep he came up with the idea of using a garden sprayer. So he got a new one and hooked it up. Now our ice maker makes ice. Steve fills it up with filtered water and once or twice a day he pumps the pump to add the pressure.

Princess Zanzibar

2010-10-05T04:56:00.002-04:00

Back in July I introduced you to our new cat Panther. Well, another cat has been added to our family. This one came to us at 6 weeks old. So it missed its warm mother. It would just meow pitifully at us. And so we would pick it up and put it in our laps and that is where it spend most of its first days with us.
It spent the first few days without a name. My friend had spent a short vacation on the Island of Zanzibar. Lane suggested that name. Since she is a girl Princess has been added and now just shortened to Princess.

She takes a lot of her naps on Heather.

When Heather has to get up and move around, this is how she rides around the house.

Tobias and Heather take turns keeping her and in this picture it was Tobias’ turn. His DVD player is a warm place to nap.

Here she is getting into trouble. She smelled lunch on the table and before she was caught actually ate part of Steve’s sandwich.

Our Lane turned 11!

2010-10-04T10:51:00.001-04:00

On October 1st Lane turned 11. The party started at home with presents from us at lunch time.

One of his presents was a pocket knife that he got last week when he went with his Dad and Uncle Grant to Lusaka.

He has already cut himself on the drive home! Then the festivities moved to the Schaefer Farm. His birthday fell on a Friday this year and we often go over to have tea time on Friday afternoons.

A treasure hunt was planned by Auntie Lynn. And they are off. They had 12 different clues to fine.

Here they are digging up 1/2 of the map and clue to find the other half. Can you tell by the picture that we are in the dry season?

OK, they are off to pester a worker named Sam for the rest of the map. He kept them busy for about 1/2 an hour. He was told not to give it up too easily. He took that job seriously!

We have the map and the digging is on.

A treasure chest if found with candy and popcorn for to nights movie!!

Of course we had birthday cake. Then Daddy and Mommy went home all by themselves. Thank you Lynn!!

Panther

2010-08-01T10:12:00.001-04:00

Back in March our friends the Schaeffer's came back home from South Africa. When they passed through Lusaka they picked up a kitten. Seth has been wanting a cat and so he found out how much one cost and started saving his money.

For the past month he has had a dilemma. He really wants a cat, but he also liked seeing his money add up. In the end the cat didn’t cost as much as we thought it would. We got it at a vet who saves them. It had its shot and has been fixed. So the cost of the cat is for that and food.

So this past Wednesday while in Lusaka we picked up a three month old kitten. Seth thought on it for awhile and finally announced that his name was Panther.

A cat carrier cost way too much and so a collar and leash were bought. It spent the first hour of our trip home all over the vehicle and meowing loudly. Then it curled up to sleep with Seth and then later on with Lane.

When we got home on Saturday we found a mess in the pantry. A week before we left Steve saw a mouse in the kitchen. Well, for the last two weeks while we were gone, it has made a big mess. Mouse dirt and popcorn seeds are everywhere on the shelves. It has been chewing on a plastic container with cornmeal in it. So there is bits of white plastic all over. On the back of the pantry door at the top is nailed a board with nails in it to hang things – broom, mop, dust mop. Also us there is a plastic grocery sack full of more grocery sacks. This mouse managed to jump off of a shelf on to this. The broom and several sacks were on the floor! So we are washing every thing before we use it. What fun, washing dishes before and after you eat.

So this cat has work to do. It had better be a good mouser. I guess you could say it is spoiled too. What cat has permission to walk all over your pantry shelves. Tonight I am even opening the cupboard doors. This mouse lives under them. We cannot see where they are hooked to the walls. So if he doesn’t catch something soon, we are going to put some muscle to them and see if we can’t move them.

Eureka Farm Campground

2010-08-01T09:55:00.001-04:00

This campground is very close to Lusaka. The nice thing about it is the wild animals it has – zebra, buffalo, giraffe, monkeys, impala, and other deer like animals.

We stayed here Sunday and Monday nights. It is nice for the animals and a cheaper place to camp. But it is busy and noisy. It is a favorite place for the overland tours. They travel on a truck that looks like a semi. It is bus like at the top and they store everything underneath. It is a camping tour.

On both nights the first truck to pull in had a smaller group and there for seemed to be a quieter group. On both nights the second truck to pull in was a large group. In about 10 minutes about 20 4 man tents were put up around the truck. On the second night a third truck pulled in. It put tents up right next to ours. It was a low budget tour and drinking was what they did the most of. The first two trucks pulled out by 6 AM. That third bus stayed up until 1:30 AM and didn’t pull out until 8 AM.

On the second night Seth was sick again and he and I spent the night in the truck. I got to see impala and something bigger eating grass pretty close to our tent. This place keeps a guard and after a bit he came waving a feed sack to get them out. Also got to see the second trucks whole tour group get out and push the truck to start it! That took a little muscle power.

Buffalo, we got a little too close and had to convince the kids to keep walking kind of fast and away!

Giraffe, he was just outside the gate where we camped.

Zebra, Heather walked up to these to take the pic.

You will have to zoom in to see this guy. I don’t know what he is.

The rest of the week was spent in Lusaka at the Baptist Mission Guest House. We went to the Tuesday Market and got lots of veggies. I spent Saturday afternoon here in Mbala getting them ready for the freezer. A family on our team flew in Wednesday evening. Steve did a lot of shopping that morning. Thursday morning we visited the grocery store. We made it out of there with only two carts, but still spent more than planned. Friday we drove to Kasama and stayed with another member of our team who is done and leaving us this week. Saturday – the rest of the way home. Yea!

Lazy

2010-08-01T07:05:00.001-04:00

Friday was spent as a very lazy day. Steve and I just sat in camping chairs reading. Camping chairs are not good for your back, especially that much time spent in one. The kids played and went swimming. It is winter here, but on the river it is warmer. I wouldn’t say warm enough to swim, but then I’m not a kid. Their lips were blue. Saturday we did go on about a 4 km hike before we spent the rest of the day reading.

Sunday we packed it all up. Since we were so close to Kariba Dam, we drove down to see it. I saw it in 1985, but we couldn’t take any pictures. Now you can take pictures!

Kariba Dam with its five gates.

Zambezi River after the dam. Zambia is on the left and Zimbabwe is on the right.

A look at the Zambian side. You can see the road we drove down to the dam on.

A picture of Kariba Lake.

After this we drove back to Lusaka to stay at a camp grounds there.

Almost forgot, Seth got sick on Saturday night. Unzipping my tent to get out, then zip it back up, then unzipping his tent and so on is just too much work. So Seth slept on the back seat of our vehicle and I tried to sleep in the front. At one point I looked out the window and saw a hippo slowly walking across the campground. I had to ask Seth if he was awake. He was and so I told him to sit up an look. Sometimes you get to see wonderful things when you are sick!

Boating / Drifting on the Great Zambezi River

2010-07-24T10:37:00.001-04:00

On Tuesday night we went to sleep on our tents to much noise on the river – hippos. I, Rita, thought they were just fussing at each other, via for their positions . Steve on the other hand is convinced it is mating calls. Whatever! Steve and I already saw a little crocodile while walking around the camp grounds. The kids and we were warned about crocs and poisonous snakes. There is a three legged dog here to prove they are dangerous.

On Wednesday we woke up to a beautiful few – the river, the sun rising, and a pod of hippos out in the river. We rented a boat with a driver and went slowly down the river. At times the engine was turned off and we just drifted, once in a while turning it back on to fix how we were drifting. We saw two little crocs and then a bigger one. Then we got pretty close to the fourth croc. He must have been sleeping. He suddenly flipped into the river. Steve managed to record this.

We got pretty close to several pods of hippos. One pod was up on land and so we got to see up close what they looked like and not just a bunch of backs sticking out of the water. That pod had little babies!!

Our driver was looking for elephants. We went past several places that they usually are. Then we found five male elephants! We just sat and watched them for awhile. We also saw a variety of birds. Then we held onto our hats and speed back to camp.

Vacation

2010-07-24T10:34:00.001-04:00

After avoiding the city for six months, we took two days to drive to Lusaka. The first day we just enjoyed the drive. Instead of speeding up and slowing down for pot holes we just took it slower. I, Rita, spent the day crocheting. It was pleasant and my nerves were still in tack.

We stayed over night at Forest Inn. Other members on our team have stayed there and recommended it. It was nice to not be rushed and to just relax.

On Sunday we drove the remaining three hours to Lusaka. We unhooked the trailer and then went to lunch. I didn’t realize I was really missing anything or hungry, but the chips (french fries) were really good. We then went to the Sunday Market at Arcades and spent some money on crafts.

On Monday a family on our team left Zambia for their furlough in the states. We went to the airport with them, Steve helped them with their many suitcases and we waved goodbye until we could no longer see them. Then we also drove their vehicle back to the Guest House and handed in the keys for them. The rest of the day and on Tuesday we did some shopping.

On Wednesday we headed for Zambezi Breezes to camp right on the Zambezi River.

Skinning a Puff Adder

2010-06-28T01:16:00.001-04:00

Back in May after Tobias’ birthday party he went to the Schaeffer's house to stay over night. When they had gotten home from our house one of their workers showed them a puff adder he had killed near the pig pens.

Here is Tobias holding the dead puff adder.

Here are the three boys skinning the snake with their pocket knives.

Don’t you wish you could help?

Curing the snake skin. They divided it three ways. Yes, I have a snake skin somewhere in this house.

Our Oldest Turns 14!!!

2010-05-21T01:07:00.001-04:00

On May 8th, Tobias turned 14 years old. He had two missionary friends stay overnight with him on Friday. They set up the tent in the yard and carried all their stuff out. While watching a movie in the house, it poured down rain. One corner of the tent got soaked. It happened to be Tobias’ corner. So they set up our other tent in Heather’s room. She was off at the Schaeffer’s house. They had all girls and we had all boys at our house.

We had hamburgers, macaroni salad, his usually chocolate cake with peanut butter icing and homemade ice cream. I think he could tell you which year he did not have this cake.

Singing Happy Birthday!

Everyone took turns making the ice cream.

The Waterfalls near Isoka

2010-04-25T10:44:00.001-04:00

After we drove on the roads I showed you in the last post, we parked in the middle of no where and started walking.

Steve has Abigail on his shoulders and is holding Isabel’s hand.

This is the top of the falls.

Bottom of the falls.

Seth

Lane

Mill to grind maize using the waterfall instead of electric, except it needs some parts to make it work.

Steve, Tobias, and Blake climbing around the falls.

Blake on the pipe that brings the water into the mill. Tobias climbing around the rocks.

The Roads to the Water Falls near Isoka!

2010-04-20T08:37:00.001-04:00

After leaving the village of Isoka, we headed to a waterfall on a blacktop road.

We turned onto a very nice dirt road, I mean Nice!

Then we turned onto this road. It too was actually not too bad!

This is a road, believe it or not!

Not too sure this is a road anymore, but we are just following the vehicle in front of us. He must know where he is going!

Stay tuned for pictures of the falls.

Station Visit to Isoka

2010-04-17T03:16:00.001-04:00

On Thursday, April 8th we went to visit fellow missionaries on our team, the Kimbroughs. Blake Kimbrough is now our immediate boss, so we did business on Friday. Saturday we went to visit a waterfalls that they have near their place. On Sunday we went to a new church that has only been meeting for about 6 months. For me, I think that was the high light of the trip. To worship God in such a simple setting. It was wonderful. You know how sometimes you go to church and on the way home you don’t feel like you had church, you really don’t feel like you worshiped God that morning. Well, this was really a simple worship service, led by Zambians. We sang a few songs, we prayed, we read the scripture and discussed it a little bit. After about an hour it was over, but God was worshiped!

I know I take a lot of pictures of roads. It is mostly to show you back in the US the road conditions. Last August Blake came to see us and got to hour house in 2 1/2 hours. His words – If you can drive 80 kilometers an hour on a dirt road, it is a good dirt road. Well it took us, I think, around 5 hours to drive it. The following pictures will show you why. I think it is as bad as riding a camel!

On the way home we were driving part of this road in the dark. On a lonely stretch with no people anywhere around we heard this awful sound. A grinding, screeching noise – like our brakes are grinding or something. We pull over. There also were no bars on the cell phone. I’m wishing I thought to pack more flashlights, but handy Steve, his air pump that you plug into the power outlet also has a flashlight on it. I drove the vehicle slowly while he figured out were it was coming from. He jacked up that corner and took the tire off. There is a cover on the back side of the disk brakes. It looked like it was bent and rubbing the disk. While trying bend it out some a very little stone fell out. All was fine. We only lost 1/2 and hour, but it was 13 more kilometers before we got any bars on the cell phone. We are very thankful God was looking out for us.

We ended our trip by stopping at the Schaefer Take Away to pick up our supper. We ended up just eating it at their house. The Schaefer’s are good friends we have here in Mbala. Twice now they have fixed us food for when we are coming back into town late in the evening. What a blessing!

Kalambo Falls

2010-04-16T00:49:00.001-04:00

Only 45 Kilometers from our house in the highest waterfalls in Zambia and the second highest in Africa. Because the roads are a mess from the rainy season it took a good hour and 1/2 to get there.

This is what the main road out of Mbala looks like. This road goes to Tanzania.

Sign telling you to turn off of the above road.

Pictures of the 35 Kilometer road to Kalambo Falls.

Mouth of the Falls

Top half of Falls

Bottom half of Falls. Can you see a cave entrance?

Lane getting a closer look.

Seth getting a closer look.

Stone pathways and one little stone wall barrier.

Double click on this one for a closer look at the tree roots.

A picture of us! :) with the gorge in the background.

This falls is 221 meters high. Come visit us and we will take you to see it, if you want to.

God bless, Rita

School

2010-03-05T01:29:00.000-05:00

Here in Mbala our week is taken up with school for everybody. Moses comes in the mornings at 8 AM and helps me by helping the children with their school work. He gives them the tests they have that day. They read their reading books to him. He also does flashcards with them. I still have to do lessons with them in the afternoon, but he helps make that time shorter.

At 9 AM Wigan and Doreen come to our house and help Steve and me to learn ciBemba. They are our Language Helpers.

Miriam who is 3 years old and her youngest child is asleep on her back.

These to are acting up here. They are both talking, so I'm not sure how you learn language.

I thought you might like to see a little bit of what we do here in Mbala, Zambia. Our first year is spent in language study so that we can communicate to the Zambians in their own language.

Sausage and Biscuits

2010-02-20T02:33:00.000-05:00

Thanks for the comments on the biscuits. I will try the not twisting and going straight down with the cutter. I have since made biscuits and they were a flop.

We have ground pork that we can buy in Lusaka - 12 hours away. Then I add all the spices to make the sausage. It is good. We feel we spent too much money on the pork we got. So we are buying a pig and the butcher here is going to do it up for us. A pig and the cost of the butcher is much cheaper then then the pork we brought back from Lusaka. Plus, we will have a whole pig and not just part of a pig.

A Hectare of Maize

2010-02-20T02:27:00.000-05:00

Two Saturdays ago we went to see Steve’s language helper’s (Wigin) fields. We drove our vehicle and it was quite a ways to get there. If Wigin walks it takes him 45 minutes to get there. He says on the bike it only takes fifteen to twenty minutes. He has about a hectare of Maize. One hectare is the equivalent of 2.47 acres. This man does not have oxen. He works all of this land with a hoe.

The road to the field.

Wigan standing in his Maize field.

Pumpkins growing with the Maize.

Biscuits

2010-02-05T08:47:00.001-05:00

It started two years before we even came to Zambia. We knew we would be going to Africa hopefully. We always bought biscuits at Wal-mart in the refrigerated section. You all know what I’m talking about. So if I’m going to Africa, maybe I better learn to make a few things – biscuits was on my list of things to learn.

I would make biscuits and they would not be good. They were either hard or flat or both. So I would give up. Then a few months later I would try a new recipe to see if it would be any better with no results. Homemade biscuits take a little work. I mean more work than opening a can of them and popping them into the oven. So when the results were unfavorable, I really didn’t want to try again. Steve said we just don’t need to eat them for three years. Three years is how long we will be in Zambia before we come back to the United States and can buy already made biscuits in a store.

Over the two years of trying to make them once in awhile, I started to think, a good thing to do. I wondered if I didn’t follow the recipe to the T (I always follow them to the T, at least the first time you make it) maybe it would work better.

I use the Mennonite Community Cookbook. Surely, Mennonite ladies know how to cook! I just looked in the book and on the first biscuit recipe on page 12 I hand wrote on it “OK, roll thicker.” The recipe says to roll 3/8 thick. That is thin!!! They don’t rise up to be big biscuits.

Another missionary lady on my team taught me how to make biscuits. She didn’t have her recipe, but the Buttermilk Biscuits on page 13 in the Mennonite Community Cookbook was close to hers. And the trick is don’t knead them much at all and roll them out thick.

Buttermilk Biscuits

2 cups flour                      ½ teas. Soda

½ teas. Salt                     3 Tables. Fat

3 teas. Baking powder       1 cup sour milk or buttermilk

Sift dry ingredients together. Cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. (like making pie dough. Also my friend used half butter and half Crisco, I don’t) Add sour milk all at once. Stir until dough follows spoon around the bowl. Turn out on floured board and knead for ½ a minute (I’m serious, too long they get tough). Roll 3/8 inch thick (ignore this roll much thicker) and cut out with biscuit cutter. Bake at 450 degrees for 12 minutes. My friend also adds 4 teas. of baking powder instead of three. I double the recipe and add 7 teas. of baking powder.

It all seems very simple, yet I never did figure it out until I got hungry for sausage gravy over biscuits.

God bless,

Rita

A Culturally Bad Day

2009-12-31T04:54:00.000-05:00

I will not explain how the day was culturally bad, it just was. Sometimes things just get on your nerves, like little children constantly knocking on your gate and looking over your wall. Sometimes you wish they would all go away and give you come privacy.

Steve was having a bad day and so decided to use his hands to do some work. We have a carpenter making frames for our windows, so that we can have screens. This will be a blessing, as the Bowman’s house at Christmas was so much cooler than ours. Between 5 and 6 PM we close up all windows and doors as we do not have screens to keep the mosquitoes out. Sometimes we are fine and sometimes we feel like we are going to suffocate. Some of the windows have poorly designed old screens with hole on them. So Steve took them down and hauled them outside. Then, while standing on a chair he decided to get into the porch ceiling and get the bee nest out. The bees were gone, but we don’t want them back. The following pictures are of dead bees (we had been sticking the spraying wand in their hole and killing them) and their combs.

This is what fell when we took a ceiling panel down.

This is looking up into the ceiling.

Christmas 2009

2009-12-31T04:51:00.000-05:00

Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go. Oh! We didn’t do that this year. We went: Across northern Zambia and through the mud to the Bowman’s house we went!!! The Bowmans are the team leaders of the Northern Evangelist Team, which is our team. We had a great time with their family. They have cows and one just had a calf a few days earlier. So we went to see it.

We were trying to get it back into its pen. Instead of chasing it and trying to

herd it back in, Steve just decided to pick it up.

While there Amy took this picture of us. Consider it our 2009 Christmas photo that would have been in our Christmas cards that we usually send every year. Sorry, but you are not getting one this year. Our newsletter, blog, and facebook are where you will find updates on our lives.

God knew what he was doing when he shut doors to Kaputa and Isoka and opened the door to Mbala for us. I hate driving, especially long trips. From Kasama to Mbala is a 1 ½ hour drive on a tarmac (blacktop) road. To get to the Bowman’s house we drove to Kasama. From Kasama we went west to Luwingu. The road from Kasama to Luwingu is about the same distance from Kasama to Mbala, but it takes about three hours to drive it. It is dirt and mud. The following are some pictures of that road. Tobias got carsick. He was not a happy camper that day. On the drive back I gave Heather and Tobias Dramamine. About an hour into the trip I gave them some more; they were not looking or feeling good.

Nice Tarmac Road can be found near Luwingu and Kasama

Side road while they are making the road new

They are just grading this side road. We couldn't decide where we should drive. We did eventually drive over to the middle of the road.

Here they have pushed back the trees getting ready to build the new road.

This is just the normal Luwingu Road not under construction yet.

There were many water holes to go around.

Then it started raining.

We will not be complaining about the Great North Road after this trip.

Now we are finally up to date

2009-12-15T02:35:00.000-05:00

These last few post have been about the past. So this one will bring us up to the present.

One week ago Tobias was at the Schaffer's over night. The big boys decided to go for a bike ride. On the way back and only a little way from the house, they decided to stop and drink the water out of the water ditch they have. Filtered water was not that far away.

The very next day Tobais had diarrhea. He was sick to his stomach. Often I would just see him lying in bed hugging the bucket. Basically, we were told to let things run its course. So we didn't do any reading up on it until Tuesday morning. We have this lovely flow chart to figure out what he had. In the end we decided he had Giardia and started him on Flagyl. He was on it for 5 days. It helped him to feel better, but the diarrhea is lingering on. So yesterday morning (Monday) I went back and read up on it again. I found out it can last for 7 to 14 days and may need a second treatment of medicine. So we have started the second round of meds. Hopefully in a week he will be doing much better, I pray.

Keep him in your prayers.

Prayer Retreat

2009-12-15T02:25:00.000-05:00

On Monday, November 23rd, after seeing the Doctor, we drove to our Prayer Retreat. It was at the Protea Safari Lodge. It was a very nice place as the pictures will indicate. It was wonderful to relax and just worship God and pray. We were there until Wed.

The rainy season was just starting. So most everything was still brown. Thanks to Protea for watering, this place was beautifully green.

This was the path to our room. The sidewalks lead up to a door that has two hotel rooms or for us we used three rooms. Heather and Tobias stayed down a room from us.

This place is only about 40 minutes from Lusaka. It is fenced in and there are animals to go and see. So we went on a animal drive to see them.

Zebra

I just call this a beautiful animal. I don't know my African animals very well.

They did have a lion family in two cages.

The animals on Wed. came right up to the dining room. This is a flower bed in front of the dining room. Seth is standing on the floor of the dining room. One of the worker brought bread out to feed the animals. This baby was eating out of his hands.

Sickness

2009-12-15T02:07:00.000-05:00

At 40/40 they gave us a bottle of water and told us to drink 4 of theses a day. Well, at our home stay I think we should have drunk 6 or more of them. It was a very hot weekend. They hottest Steve and I have experienced since being here. We spent most of our time outside. Heather and I (Rita) got urinary track infections. Luckily for us Seth was already on an antibiotic for his cold. So we took his medicine too and just got more on Monday morning from the nurse.

I, Rita, had been having diarrhea since being at the Lake in early September. Side note: I just found out last week that they don't filter their water. So every night at dinner I was drinking unfiltered lake water that we were swimming in. Yuck! So that explains my diarrhea. But after our home stay, the antibiotic must have wiped out the good bacteria along with the bad. By Thursday I felt like I had the flu. Then I started running a fever. It acted like malaria. I would have a fever and then it would be normal. I would be freezing and then sweating. We took a malaria test on Friday night, but it said I was fine. After talking to other missionaries I started on the malaria medicine anyways.

On Saturday afternoon we decided to go to the Doctor. He took a malaria test too, still fine. He asked that I come back on Sunday morning when the lab was opened. On Sunday we were back. The lab took blood and a urine sample. I saw a second Dr. Nothing looked out of normal. Then the diarrhea was mentioned. It had drastically changed on Sat. night. The Dr. wanted to know why I didn't say something to the Doc. on Saturday. Well, I have been having this for over two months and everything I read didn't indicate that anything was wrong. So be come back Monday morning with a stool sample.

I had dysentery. I started the medicine and we drove off to prayer retreat. Dysentery can really wipe a person out. I really didn’t feel like I could stand or do much walking. My legs felt like they would give out on me at any moment.

So now I am better and starting to feel like my old self again. Thank you Lord.

40 / 40 at Ibus Gardens

2009-12-15T01:52:00.000-05:00

On Monday morning, November 16th, our ride picked us up from the village at 6:30 AM. The bus, which was air conditioned this time, was leaving the Bush Camp at 8 AM. We drove back to Lusaka and then about 1 hour north on the Great North Road to Ibus Gardens. Here we had a three bedroom house with air condition to live in. We debriefed here. Tues., Wed., and Thurs. mornings we studied Pilot, which is a way of learning the language. Steve has used it all this week and is loving it. I will also be using it starting in January.

Steve and I came away from this a little down in the dumps. They really stressed that the wife also needs to learn the language. I know I need to learn it, but how do I fit it into my schedule. Do we just stop teaching our children school for six months? They are already behind according to school in the states. I don't want to do that. We need help. We do have our name in at http://www.missionnanny.com/. So we began to pray about this.

Last week Steve's language helper wanted to know if we have some work for his youngest brother who has come to live with him. His name is Moses. He has finished high school and does speak English, although not as well as I would like. I have trained him this week. On Friday, I wrote out a schedule for him and he did 4 hours of school mostly all by himself. God is Good

40/40 Village Stay

2009-12-11T03:15:00.000-05:00

On November 13th, we packed up our stuff and went to stay with a family in a village.

We stayed with the Blackwell family.

Lots of children and adults came to see these white people.

This is the little two room house we lived in for the weekend.

On the left was the outhouse, the right is where you can wash up.

The door in the middle can be moved to cover either opening.

Little baby goats like to stick there heads in and drink from your wash water.

This is Lane and Seth in front of their pole barn.

They keep the baby calves in here at night.

Lane and the oxen and ox cart.

They just came back from the well.

They go to the well everyday, but they only fill up this drum three times a week.

This is their kitchen. It has one door and three very small windows that are only about a foot square. They cook over a fire on the floor in the very middle of the kitchen. Dishes are stored on one side and two plows are on the other side of the kitchen. The kitchen doubles as a chicken coop. The chickens come inside at night and sleep in the kitchen! The chickens, I quess, come in and go off to the left side every night. I also quess that they cannot see very well like us when we come inside into a dark room. I was sitting on a very low stool just inside the door on the left. Something bumped into my leg. The second time it happened I looked down and saw that a chicken was running into me. The third time the chicken ultered her course and walked right across my feet to get to where she wanted to sleep for the night.

The kids and I helped to shell ground nuts (peanuts) everyday we were there. On Sunday the wife built the fire up very high in the kitchen and roasted them. Here we are getting the red skins off of the nut. We did this by rolling them between our two hands.

Sunday evening we helped to make peanut butter.

This takes lots of arm muscles. Zambian women are very strong. They make nshema everyday and I didn't last very long trying to help.

They wash the dishes outside. Did you know rubbing dirt on the bottom of the pots gets the black off of it from the fire? The animals (dogs and chickens) are waiting for left over rice and nshema. That is all they get to eat. They have to find their own food. The chickens do get maze when the lady of the house wants to catch one to eat it.

The Second Part of 40/40 - Small Town / Villages

2009-12-03T03:47:00.000-05:00

After, I don’t know how many days, our stay in Lusaka came to an end. On a Tuesday morning we boarded a bus that was suppose to be air conditioned. We traveled east to Petauke for what was to be a 6 hour trip turned into an 8 hour trip. We learned to say “This is Africa.” Meaning things are not always going to be the way you think they should be or planned on them being.

Here we lived in tents. The kids had one end and we had the other. It poured rain and we stayed dry.

We had to pump our own water to take a shower. If you wanted it heated you put it on the camp fire, but the teapot needed to come back clean at the end of our stay. So the kids had chores. Two of them had to pump our teapots and two buckets full of water before breakfast which was at 7 AM. The water sat in the sun all day getting warm. I didn’t want to scrub a black teapot from the fire. Then it rained. That was the coldest shower I ever took. I folded and heated water for two days. Then it got warm again. We learned that it is pretty much daylight at 5 AM here. So the kids were up and ready to go by 6 am. Lesson: can’t get your kids up in the morning? Move to Africa and live in a tent!!

The men’s shower

The bucket with the shower attachment on it.

We were all given a teapot, bucket, choo bucket (bathroom in the middle of the night), and a tub to do laundry in. Our family was supplied with two each. This picture is of us moving in. We paid local ladies to wash our laundry by hand.

The first few days we took a flat bed truck into town and did our daily assignments there. We actually found a witch doctor and got to talk to him. I prayed most of the time (with my eyes wide open) while the others asked the questions. On that Sunday each family went to a different denomination / cult church.

The next few days we walked to local villages for our assignments or were dropped off in the van.

On a Friday morning after 9 days and nights of camping we packed it all up and headed to our home stays in the villages. That is the next blog.

40 / 40 in Lusaka

2009-11-27T04:18:00.005-05:00

Washing Dishes

Air drying Dishes

Public Transportation

I thought I would tell you a little bit about 40/40. I won’t try to catch you up or tell you all. I mostly want to post some pictures that we took.

The first part of 40/40 orientation was in Lusaka at the Seminary. Our family had the privilege of staying at the guest house with two bathrooms in our flat. Everyone at the seminary had two showers and three toilets to share for the women and I think the men had the same. They also shared two wash machines and two dryers while we had our own. So the first 14 days or so we were spoiled.

Most every morning we got on a blue bus and with our helpers went out into an area of the city to do our DFA’s (Daily Field Assignments). We started with just observing, then just sitting with them visiting and getting to know Zambians, to telling them the story of Creation to Christ. These DFA’s were training us to know how to get to know Africans when we get to our area of service.

Three of the pictures are of Heather washing and drying her dishes. We all washed and air dried our dishes. They went through a cold wash and rinse and then a hot wash and rinse. The rinse water had the purple stuff we wash all our fruits and veggies in. Then air drying. This is so we don’t pass on germs and make each other sick. All this and a bug was still passed around. We even had to air dry our hands. They use to have towels to dry hands but not anymore. Every 40/40 they try to figure out what they can do to stop passing the runs and a throw up bug around, so the shared hand towels went.

The picture of the blue bus is what public transportation looks like here in Zambia. The first morning we walked a little way to the main road to catch one and ride it to down town where we transferred to another one in the bus terminal. We were in teams of two with a Zambian helper, but three teams were going to the same area. So we had 6 white women getting on the same bus. The bus drivers started fighting over us. After that our Zambian helpers got the drivers phone number and called them and they came to the Seminary and picked us up and took us all the way to where we were going. The last Saturday we did this no buses showed up. So we walked to the bus stop again. This time the helpers had us wait outside the terminal while two of them went in and got a bus and brought it out. They did a wonderful job of watching out for us and keeping us safe. One other time we were in the terminal on a bus and a guy wanted to steal my purse. He saw how I had a hold of it and so since he couldn’t steal it he got mad and tried to steal my hat. One of the helpers saw this going down and grabbed my hat first. I think white women on public buses cause too much trouble. I don’t think I will be ridding those buses by myself.

Flamboyent Tree

2009-11-27T04:10:00.003-05:00

I cannot spell and the internet is too slow. This beautiful tree is one of many at the Guest House in Lusaka. This picture was taken out of a second story window overlooking the playground.

Scan

2009-10-23T07:22:00.003-04:00

I just thought I would tell all of you out there that follow this blog and are not on facebook to hear the news that my scan was clear! Praise the Lord, nothing is wrong with me! I just have some unexplainable T3 and T4 levels when not on medicine. Now we know that for next year. I should never need a body scan again.

I'm jetting off to Lusaka at 5:30 my time. I'm 6 hours ahead of you in the United State. I will be joining my family for 40/40, where no computers are aloud. Don't expect to hear much is anything from us until Nov. 20th or so.

God bless,
Rita

40/40 and South Africa

2009-10-21T10:36:00.002-04:00

My family has safely arrived in Lusaka, Zambia. 40/40 starts tomorrow. This is an orientation to life in Africa and how to witness to the Zambians.

I am in J'burg, South Africa. I was suppose to have a test on Monday. The technician was asking me all kinds of questions and found out that I don't need this test. Since my thyroid is out and I had cancer in it, and I had a big dose of radio active iodine, then I should be having a body scan. So they ordered a low dose of the iodine and I took that capsule on Tuesday afternoon. Tomorrow morning very early we will drive over to the hospital for a body scan. If all is alright, I will see my Dr. on Friday morning and come home (to Lusaka). If not they will order the big dose and admit me to the hospital for three days of isolation. They still admit you to the hospital for isolation in this country. Then I can go home on Monday.

Pray that the scan is clear, that they find nothing wrong with me.

God bless,
Rita
in South Africa

A Week of Waiting

2009-10-17T14:18:00.004-04:00

I have spent the week in Lusaka all by myself. Which means Steve is having to cook, do laundry, and teach the kids there lessons, plus learn Bemba. Pray for him.

On Monday I flew in a Cessna 210 from Kasama Airport to Lusaka. The trip costs the same no matter how many people are in the plane. So the Adairs flew down with me. They needed something that runs their fans at night when there electric goes off from 12 - 6 am. It is very hot where they are. There were two pilots this time. So five adults and two children flew in this six seater. It was scarier - wondering if all that weight in such a little plane was going to get off the ground and stay in the air, but it did.

Once we landed in Lusaka, I was whisked straight away to the laboratory for blood work. The rest of this week has had me hanging out at the guest house in flat 4. I have been having wonderful quiet times - no children running around the house. I have been reading. I have spent more time on the computer than I probably have since setting foot in the country. I have also been eating a very boring diet. Low Iodine. I can't find uniodized salt here. So I have been eating oatmeal, no salt. That is OK, I don't put salt in my oatmeal anyways, but I eat it for breakfast and lunch. I'm getting tired of it. I made a big beef stew, no salt of course, and have been eating it for supper for the past two weeks. There is a cookbook, but when you don't have the salt you need why try cooking different things.

So tomorrow, Sunday, I fly to South Africa for a test on Monday afternoon. This test will show if something is growing in my thyroid area that shouldn't be. I will see the Doctor on Tues. If all is well, I fly home on Wed. On Thursday 40/40 starts. That is an African Orientation, blogging will not happen during that time as we are not allowed to take our computers. So it will be quiet here for about 30 days.

God bless,
Rita

2009-10-10T13:59:00.001-04:00

Today, Steve spent most of the day working on one of our toilets. It has a hole for overflow in the top tank. It was overflowing. Steve messed with the float valve and fixed it. This morning it was overflowing again. Steve decided it needed new insides and we just happen to have some sitting out in the pump house. So to work he went. What a job it was. There were no directions inside the package! L He even took off the leaky pipe that goes from the bowl to the tank. Toilets here are not in one piece. He stilled didn’t have all the right parts, but managed to get it put together with only two leaks. The tank is cracked and he has board wedged between the wall and pipe to keep the pipe in the bowl until it dries. This is putting pressure on the crack. I think he went back in and put silicone on the crack. He did just flush if for the first time (7:30 PM) and he went back to playing games with the kids, so it must work or he would be back in there working on it.

This afternoon the electric went off. It has become no big thing; you just wait an hour it usually comes on again. I have spent the day making bread. Henry does make bread, but Steve made French toast this morning for breakfast. I was thinking the bread isn’t going to last the weekend. So I made our favorite oatmeal bread, then our new favorite recipe for sandwich bread and then 2 doz. Rolls. My feet hurt. The electric came on and we used the oven to bake it. A friend of ours bakes the bread on her braai (grill) when there isn’t electric. I haven’t had to try that yet.

When the electric came back on the water pressure didn’t come back, indicating the pump has problems. There are three breakers hooked to it and all were off. Steve turned them on and they popped off again. The culprit: the voltage regular. That is two now that have problems. We buy them to save our appliances from getting messed up and they keep getting messed up. The dryer had the voltage regular burning up twice!! Help! These things are no cheap!!
I think I better go and investigate. Steve is back in the bathroom with tools. That doesn’t sound good, although he isn’t muttering or fussing, so that is good.

God bless,
Rita

Second Package has arrived.

2009-10-10T13:35:00.002-04:00

Oh! We feel like it is Christmas. Chili powder!!! I just used up the last of what I had, that some nice missionary gave me. A soccer ball. The kids are having fun in the yard playing soccer again. Our other ball died in one month of being here. It was an old one! I, Rita, am trying to get the rocks out of the yard so that hopefully it lasts longer. Thanks for the package Lori.

Flour

2009-10-10T13:32:00.004-04:00

In this picture Steve is carrying about 50 lbs. of flour and the other bag is 50 lbs. of sugar. Yes we buy in bulk here. We can buy it smaller like we did in the states, but we go through it too fast. We always seem to be running down to the store for more. So I broke down and went for the big bags. The thing is that bag of flour in the picture is our second one we have bought and it is almost empty!!!

Our First Package has arrived

2009-10-10T13:31:00.001-04:00

Our first package arrived this week. It was for Lane, since it was his birthday on the 1st of October. It was from a 5th grade Sunday school class in a Church in Alabama. Lane says, “Thank you very much.” He is being very nice and sharing the M & M’s with his siblings. The t-shirt is a great fit with room to grow. Thanks for thinking about us, for praying for us, and for sending us the wonderful treats.

Water

2009-10-10T13:29:00.001-04:00

I just thought I would update you on the water. Our Logistics Coordinator –Dwayne and his wife Betty were here for one day. He brought a water tank. He and Steve spent the day digging and putting pipes together. We now have a nice new tank on top of the pump house. The real neat thing is we don’t have to turn things on and off anymore. The tank and the reservoir have float valves that shut off when they are full. If the electric goes off we don’t need to go outside and turn a valve to get water from the tank, it will come from the tank all by itself. They also put in a new pipe all the way from the front wall, now when the water comes the pipe is full. If that makes sense! Before the water only came at a trickle. Thanks Dwayne and Betty for driving 12 hours and helping us out!!

Interruptions in the life of a Missionary!

2009-10-01T02:26:00.003-04:00

Interruptions seem to be something of the norm here. You wish they were not normal, but then we pray that we handle them in the right way, as people are watching: little and big.

Flying to Joberg, South Africa I would say is a major interruption, especially to Steve. He had to teach the children school and still try to study language. He had to cook and keep after the laundry. Our worker Henry does all of the cleaning and does make the bread. I probably need to teach him more. My next trip south is more planned and so I am trying to do cooking on ahead.

On Monday, Sept 28th, our dog discovered a great place to dig in the mud. He was coated and so off he went to our outside laundry area to get washed off. Steve and I took showers too close together and the drain was over flowing. We knew it was clogged, but were ignoring it. Ignoring it really isn’t a problem here unless you are trying to teach your dog to stay out of the garden and not dig everything up!! Basically, all pipes come out of the ground outside the wall of the house and go into the house wall were ever you want them to. All the way around our house is a nice cement drainage ditch. So when the outside drain is clogged it just over flows into this ditch and drains into the garden under the grape arbor. This is where the wash machine drained until we started catching the water in a drum to water the fruit trees. So during a much needed language break, Steve and his language helper investigated. After digging around with a stick, he found a grate and pulled it up and the water went right down. All fixed and didn’t cost a thing.
In the afternoon the dryer quite while I was in the kitchen where I could hear it. It didn’t sound normal. I went to investigate. The voltage stabilizer was smoking. I quickly pulled plugs. Steve just hooked this new stabilizer on a week ago!!!!! Maddening!!!! Our washer will not spin on low voltage. I turn things off and come back an hour later and start it again and it works. Steve doing laundry doesn’t have that much patience. The thing should work. So he hooked it up to a voltage stabilizer. So Steve took a break from language study and unwired the washer and dryer from the stabilizer and wired them back straight into the electric. Some things around here you just cannot plug in, you have to wire them up. So back to square one and this wasn’t cheap. Steve just happened to find this large voltage stabilizer that someone had ordered and never picked up. Finding one this big is hard and we need them for the washer and dryer that are on our create or we might as well not even use them. This electric around here will mess them up.

Today, the washer did quit. The dryer has electric but the washer doesn’t seem to. Steve got out what few tools he has and started taking it apart. It turned out to be a fuse. Problem solved, but an hour has gone by that should have been spent studying.

God bless,
Rita for the Schwarz’ in Mbala, Africa

Pictures of Potholes

2009-09-16T04:37:00.001-04:00

The first picture is looking back at what we think in the worse section of the road. I had labeled it as a "long section - off the road we go". The second picture is a classic pothole. It starts little of course, but left unfixed they just keep getting bigger.

Calf Steve Delivered

2009-09-16T04:33:00.002-04:00

Better late than never. Here two pictures of the cows and then the calf that Steve helped to deliver a few weeks ago.

Our Trip back to Lusaka

2009-09-16T04:32:00.000-04:00

Our trip to Lusaka went well. We took two days going down, but drove it in 12 hours all in one day coming back. The trip itself can be broken up into nice 200 K segments. Each segment is not exactly 200K but it is close to it.

The first leg of the trip is from Mbala, of course, to Kasama. This section of road is not exactly nice, but it is under construction and suppose to be done by the end of October. It has lots of dirt sections. What was amazing is how much was done to the road in the one week while we were gone.

The second leg of the trip is from Kasama to Mpika. This road is very good. We did hit a few pot holes going too fast. Trying to decide if the black marks really mean a pot hole is coming or not was what we needed to figure out. Finally, Steve decided to believe all black marks and slow down. The thing is this section of road is good so you are flying a little faster and have to slow down faster.

The third leg of this trip is 240K from Mpika to Serenje. It is on the Great North Road and I will discuss it further down in this post.

The fourth leg is from Serenje to Kipiri. Again the road isn’t too bad. You can cruise along at 120 K per hour or faster for those with a lead foot. You do have to stop for police checks.

The fifth leg takes us from Kipiri to Lusaka. On this section of road is all of the speed bumps I mentioned in an earlier post. We kind of forgot all about them, so the first one was quite the experience. I am a back seat driver I will admit. I spend most of my time working at keeping my mouth shut. I find it easier to read a book so I just cannot see what is going on. But here in Africa, Steve drives and watches the road. I do watch the road, but I am also watching for signs that he is missing – like the speed bump signs.

The wild life that we got to enjoy while we are driving or should I say that we hit the brakes for so as we don’t hit them: goats and lots of them, sheep, chickens, dogs, and cows. It seems that if a car is coming the goats all want to cross the road in front of you. Chickens can never make up their minds which way they want to run. Sorry but that is all we have seen so far.

OK for the third leg of the trip. I got out a notepad and took notes. We counted pot holes. Steve helped, but don’t hold us to the number. We counted 210 potholes in this 240K stretch. We also counted what we labeled bad sections of the road. This might have been one big pot hole, or one side of the car was off the road to get around it, or there was more than 5 pot holes clumped together. There were 23 of these. Then there were 7 sections that we totally had to go off of the road. Then there were 4 sections of totally off the road we went but they were really looong sections.

So that was our driving trip, pictures to come in the next post.

God bless,
Rita

Veterinarian Skills Put to Use

2009-08-28T08:30:00.002-04:00

Last Saturday morning Steve put to use his 8 or 9 years of skills learned working as a veterinarian assistant. Lynn Shaffer wanted us to come over so the kids could play. We were leaving town for a week, so they need play time. I called to see about coming over this afternoon and could we please pick up more cow manure for the garden. We made plans and she informed us of their one cow was in labor and seemed to be having a hard time of it. I told Steve. I called her back to tell her Steve offered to come over and look at her. Then her husband Grant soon called back asking him to come over and have a look.

Steve on the way over is thinking it has been a long time since I have done any of this. If this is the problem – it will not be good. If that is the problem - it will not be good. Hopefully, the calf’s head will just be turned – that would be easy. When he got there, the calf’s front legs were in the canal and sure enough its head was turned.

Lynn called tell me they have a beautiful girl calf and that Steve saved the calf and cow!!! One never knows when some skill you haven’t used in years (15 years to be exact) might become useful. Are any of our life’s experiences ever a waste of time? Not from the Lord’s perspective. Everything that we experience, good or bad, prepares us for a work that God has foreknown since before we were born. Is there a God with an eternal purpose to save the souls of men through His Son Jesus Christ? You better believe it! What a privilege to be just a small part of that purpose. To God be the glory!

God bless from Zambia,
Rita (the beginning) and
Steve (for the ending)

Church in the Bush!!

2009-08-19T14:50:00.002-04:00

Do any of you in the States remember church camp? I think that is what it was called. Where I grew up the area Mennonite (since I was Mennonite) churches gathered at Penn York Camp for Camp Meeting. We spent Friday night and stayed until after Sunday lunch. I remember loving it. I couldn’t wait to go. I even had fun the year my parents did the cooking.

Well, that is what we went to on Sunday. The others came on Wednesday night or Thursday. This was a Baptist Convention meeting. The people look forward to and start planning and saving for this a year ahead of time.

We left Mbala about 9:15 AM Sunday morning. We followed another family up. We only had the six of us in our vehicle. They have lived in Zambia a lot longer, years longer than we have. They had 11 people in their vehicle, plus three dressed chickens and two live ones. The chickens were for help in feeding us. We drove about 45 minutes toward lake Tanganyika and then up into the mountains.

It was a wonderful experience. The kids loved the fact that we drove through a creek to get there – no bridge. They also loved going over bumps and seeing who came close to hitting the roof with their heads. That is until Mommy discovered they didn’t have their seatbelts on.

The people built the church walls, little sleeping houses, and the outhouse all for the meetings. We got there a little too early, especially for the children. When we got there everyone was facing the pulpit area. There was a corning on the back wall were we sat down on two benches that were quickly brought over. Immediately, we the white people were the center of attention. Most of the children watched us the whole time. We got there in time for Sunday School which is in Bemba, so we stayed in the church area. Then there was the preaching – it was in English and translated into Bemba. Then we walked down to a creek to baptize over 30 people, I think. They baptized four at a time. There were 4 pastors down in the water. Then it was back up to the church for the Lord’s Supper. By this time it was 2 PM. We hadn’t had lunch yet and the children had had quite enough of it. By 2:30 a lady from our church here in Mbala had lunch ready for us. We ate the traditional nshima with the rape dip and a tomato and onion dip.

For the trip home we traded Heather for Joel. Then Friday and Charlie (a girl) joined us to. So because we were carrying Schaffer children home, we ended up at their house for a few hours. A wonderful ending (coffee, tea, lemonade (fresh squeezed) and good conversation) to a wonderful day worshipping God in the great outdoors.

Water Lost :(

2009-08-19T14:48:00.001-04:00

Sunday morning around 9:30 I discovered the outside faucet was turned on. It had been turned on since before 6 AM. When someone turns a faucet on, if water doesn’t come out, the faucet is most often left on. I have started trying to make it a habit that when I turn the pump on I look to see if any faucets are also turned on.

We have home from church, ate lunch, and started doing dishes when the pump wouldn’t work anymore. Steve went down the checklist of why your pump might not work. Last thing on the list, water too low in reservoir. Sure enough, three hours of water running out onto the ground had drained our reservoir.

We spent all week being very stingy with our water. By Friday it was almost to the top again. On Sunday I finally took a normal shower. I had all week been using a dish pan to conserve water of course.

Water Leaks are an Endless Job

2009-08-19T14:46:00.001-04:00

On Saturday, August 8th, Steve decided to work on some leaks. The valve he had been opening and shutting all week to get water when the electric goes off has a leak around it. He shut off the water and went to work. He then drew a diagram, did some measuring and went off to town to visit the hardware store or maybe I should say stores. Since it is a week after the fact I will make it short.

The pipes are very old, let me say, they are VERY OLD. He got the one pipe he wanted off. It was leaking and had six different places that had been fixed. He is going to put a new pipe there in the future. Taking that pipe off made the pipe leading up to the tank leak. I climbed up onto the pump house shed roof and held the pipe steady. But no matter what he tried he couldn’t tighten the pipe where it had come loose nor could he get it to come apart at other joints. So he started turning the other way and the leak became bigger. So then it was how do we save the 250 – 300 gallons of water that is in the tank, before the pipe falls off and the yard gets watered.

We hooked an old hose with many holes that was lying around and started filling the 3 buckets that we have and I started watering the garden. Steve started dumping the water back into the reservoir. Then he got an idea. He unhooked the pipe that put water into the tank from the reservoir and siphoned the tank back into the reservoir.

Water Saved

One Water Leak Fixed

2009-08-11T15:49:00.003-04:00

One Water Leak Fixed

The pipe in the picture sprung a leak on Sat. Aug. 1st. This pipe gives up water from the tank on the pump house when the electric goes off. Steve to the rescue! He balled up some plumbers tape and stuck it in the hole. Then he wrapped the pipe with plumbers tape. Then he took electrical tape and wrapped it again pulling it tight. Then for good measure he topped it off with duck tape. Hey, whatever works! It doesn’t leak!!!

The Subject is Water Again

2009-08-11T15:43:00.003-04:00

This past week the power went off several times. We have had supper ready, but the dishes need to be washed and the kids too!! Our kids have never been this dirty. They get very filthy everyday and I promise you they are not rolling in it, but they sure do look like it. I was talking about water though. So Steve goes out and turns some knobs and we have gravity flowing water from the tank on top of the pump house. The only problem is the water is rusty, as you can see in the above picture. But it is water and we saved the sheets from needing to be washed in the morning.

We Need Water!!!

2009-08-11T14:43:00.002-04:00

On around July 29th or 30th we all of a sudden were not getting any water. So we were being very careful. Our water reservoir was getting low. The water reservoir is a round cement looking tank that is in the ground. We still hadn’t filled up the tank that sits on top of the pump house. It holds about 250 – 300 gallons. Saturday morning Steve decided to follow the line where the water comes in and found a valve had been turned off. It is in the front side flower bed out at the road. Some child (could have been one of 14) who has been playing in our yard must have turned it off. Water problem solved.

Water

2009-08-09T15:15:00.005-04:00

Picture: Our Water Reservoir looking a little on the low side.

In the previous blog I talked about our electric. For two nights in a row now it has gone off at around 6PM for an hour or two. Today it is suppose to go off for twelve hours. When the electric goes off, it affects our water. We need electric to run the pump to get water into the house.

Before I go on, I want to say we have it pretty nice here. Fellow missionaries that were in FPO (Field Personnel Orientation) with us and flew over with us do not have it as nice. Their electric has been nonexistent or very low, that the pump cannot pump water. So they have to drive to a source of water and fill cans and haul it to their house. So we have it pretty good.

Our water supply is council water (town water). It comes out of a small lake that is just maybe a mile down the road. So if we half to haul water we wouldn’t have far to go. The water is pumped out of the lake in to water towers just up the hill from us. Water doesn’t run like it does in the States. The water only comes three times aday.

The first few days we were here in Mbala, the water leaks and an extra holding tank were worked on. Henry, our house helper, spent a good part of two days cleaning the tank with a wire brush. Josh and Steve worked on pipes and installed a float in the tank so that it would fill up automatically. Steve likes to do things right – when pipes are installed they shouldn’t leak!!!
He had to settle for small leaks. In a few days though those pipes were not leaking, but many still are.

Both toilets leak water. Steve put this lovely black silicone around the pipe and then tried to tie ligging (looks like intertubes rubber cut in long strips). That is how you fix leaks here. The toilet still leaks and so we found a plastic container to put under the leak so that the floor isn’t wet. The other toilet also has a plastic container to catch the leak. The kitchen sink cold water we just turned off altogether. We get the cold water we need from the bathroom sink. It is how I am getting my exercise at the moment. Must be working I have lost 12 pounds since setting foot in Mbala.

Electricity

2009-08-02T07:39:00.001-04:00

I thought I would take time to tell you about our electricity. I want to do a post on our water, but I think I need to explain the electricity first. I wasn’t sure if we would have electricity all of the time. I was going off of the Adair’s blog. The Adairs are team members of ours who are on the border of Sudan. Their town only has a generator, which is too small for the town. So the generator gets hot and eventually turned off. We are on the main line. We have electric 24 hours a day, so far. It did go off twice already. The first time was for only maybe an hour. The second time it was off for maybe three hours. No hardships there.

Our electric isn’t stable though. It gets very low. When it is low the lights are more like candles and the fan goes around very slowly. Then all of a sudden it goes high. The lights get bright and the fan starts turning much faster. The refrigerator and the deep freeze are on voltage protectors. They have red, yellow, and a green light on them. If the light is red you know the electric is low. The electric is low a lot. When we first moved in this affected the water pump. We would turn on the faucet and no water would come. So we looked at the voltage protector on the fridge, sure enough the light was red. This was frustrating when you are trying to clean and wash things and move into a house.

Now, we also have voltage stabilizers on the fridge and deep freeze. This helps regulate the electric and they are able to run more often, keeping them colder. When our appliances arrive from the states they will be plugged into three things before they are plugged into the wall. The washing machine will be plugged into a voltage protector which will be plugged into a voltage stabilizer which will be plugged into a step down transformer which will be plugged into the wall. At least that is what we think the order will be.

So, that is our electric.

God bless,

Our Trip from Lusaka to Mbala, Zambia

2009-07-27T11:18:00.002-04:00

On July 18th at 5:30 in the morning we started our drive from Lusaka to Mbala. Our temporary vehicle is a Ford Everest. All four kids sat on one bench seat. The back doors just went shut. They get too much bigger and we will not be able to do that again. The back was packed to the ceiling. Plus we were hauling a small trailer which had in it six suitcases and the kids 4 backpacks. Josh and Amy Bowman and their children made the trip with us. Their trailer held two of our suitcases inside of it and two where strapped to the top.

We saw many new and interesting things along the way:

A “Lay By” is like an American Rest Stop on a highway, except there are no bathrooms or vending machines. Sometimes they are marked with a sign and sometimes not. They do have tall elephant grass in which to squat. We have decided that the elephant grass in way cleaner than a restroom and smells much better.

There are many police checks along the way. For the most part we were waved on. Some police checks have gates across the road. The guard just came out and opened the gate for us.

Speed Bumps – they are most anywhere in Lusaka and I know of one here in Mbala. They are not marked well. The paint has long since faded.

Rumble Strips? I am not sure what to call these things. There were signs for them, although I’m not sure there were signs for them all of the time. Some towns do have what I would call rumble strips as you come into town to slow you down. These other rumble strips are like huge speed bumps only there was 10 of them in a row!

Driving at night is dangerous. We use to fuss about the paint or lack of it on the highways around Louisville. Louisville’s painted lines look good now! Driving at night is nerve racking. Even Steve said his heart was pounding. We were following someone so that made it a little easier. At one point Josh got his vehicle totally off of the road. He had followed a car off of the road. We couldn’t see what was happening, but decided we better follow him off of the road too. Here a semi-truck was passing another semi. So the semi was in our lane, and he was flying. More heart pounding was happening after that.

Some roadside etiquette: At first we just thought this guy wanted to turn. Then we decided he didn’t know where he wanted to turn. Now we know it was his road etiquette. When driving down the road and someone is trying to pass you, put on your left turn signal to tell them that it is safe to pass. Put on your right turn signal to indicate it is NOT safe to pass. Also, and we noticed this at night, put on your right turn signal when someone is coming toward you to give them a point of reference. Also, you should use your horn a lot. This is not rude. It tells the person walking or the bike on the side of the road that you are coming.

We passed 24 Jehovah Witness Kingdom Hall signs and 4 Seventh Day Adventist signs on the way up.

Pot holes: I will do another post on just pot holes when we go back to Lusaka in August. The farther north one goes on the Great North Road the less great it becomes. If you see black skid marks on the road – slowdown now – potholes. If you see brown dirt marks up ahead – slow down – pot holes. If you see dirt on both sides of the road instead of grass – slow down – major pot holes – pot holes so bad that the side of the road is better!?!?!

At one potty break on the side of the road eight little children sat watching us the whole time. They hardly moved. Us white people must be interesting to watch.

At one point of the drive we were listening to Point Of Grace. There is one song that Heather Payne sings that we love. She has a wonderful voice. Lane made the comment, “She lets her voice go!” Yes, we had to agree. I wish I could sign like that.

Dad, at one point we thought you might like to have your front porch at one of the major pothole places just to watch the traffic. We changed our minds though, as the dust would be awful.

God bless,
Rita for the Schwarz’s
In Mbala, Zambia

It is Cold here in Africa!

2009-07-17T15:31:00.002-04:00

If is winter time here. I think is got to about 72 degrees today. It gets down into the 50's at night. This flower looks like the ones you plant at Christmas in the house.

Packing

2009-07-17T15:18:00.003-04:00

This morning I went to the grocery store shopping. Heather went with me and we used two carts. I don't have enough to last us until we are back in Lusaka, but we won't stave. There is food in Mbala and we can drive to Kasama to get some, it will just be more expensive and less of a selection. There is already less of a selection here in Lusaka compared to the States.

This afternoon was spent packing. Packing suitcases and better packing the grocery bags. Then it was off to pack the trailers that we will be hauling behind the vehicles. Our vehicle is full. The kids, all four of them, will be sitting on a bench seat made for three. It might be a very long ride.

We will pull out, hopefully, by 5:00 AM in the morning and drive to Kasama. We will be staying with a Journeymen there. We will drive the final two hours to Mbala on Sunday.

Please pray for safe travel. This will be a long drive on Saturday. We have only done short little trips here around town. This morning as I was leaving my parking space at the store I was on the wrong side of the road. At least it was in the parking lot. Plus that middle mirror is suppose to be on my right, instead it is on the left. I have hit the door a few times trying to shift. It is very odd using the mirrors, they don't seem right and it feels like you can't see all that you could see if the steering wheel was on the other side of the car.

Keep Praying,
Rita

New Things We Are Learning

2009-07-17T15:02:00.006-04:00

When I am wearing jeans, pants, slacks, whatever you want to call them, I say I am wearing pants. Here in Africa that is wrong. They do wear pants here, but pants refers to your underwear. So I am learning to call my jeans - trouser.

That lovely little napkin you put under your fork - it is called a serviette. If you ask where napkins are in a store they would point you to the feminine hygiene products.

Then there are all those line we waited in to get our drivers license last Friday. There were lines to wait in on Tuesday getting our residence cards. Lines are called ques.

Little tidbits to learn.

Africa - Day 4

2009-07-11T14:44:00.002-04:00

What a day Friday was. We set out to get our Zambian drivers license. Some missionaries say you really don't need them, your US drivers license works. It sounds like mostly it is used when you are driving in other countries.

First we waiting in line until it was our turn. Blake went in with Kenny (another new missionary) when "next" was called. Blake took in with him our photo copies of our US drivers license and our international drivers license. He came out with four applications to fill out. We filled them out and went right up to window twelve. It had no line. The girl informed us the system was down. We continues to wait. She continues to do everything but work. Finally, she asked to see our papers. We didn't have the form indicating we had a physical from a Doctor. Blake informs her that we didn't need one. We didn't need one because we have US drivers license. That trumps the physical. The guy Blake saw first looked at the papers and told us we had everything we needed. This girl wouldn't budge. She shut down and walked away. We went to her supervisor, who by this time was receiving a text message from her. He said the same thing and offered to get us forms, which he did. Blake then went back to the first guy he saw to get the application form and told him his problem. Blake was not going to give up and go home.

The first guy knew who was working window 12. He went to her and told her she needs to enter our paper work. She refused. He told her that it is her job to do it and then told Blake to stand there until she does. She did it. She really didn't want to work that day. Blake thought she might leave for lunch early and not even come back that afternoon. She still would have been paid. That is just how it is here.

After window 12, we stood in line to get our picture taken. After standing in line for awhile we realized the 5 or so guys standing at the back wall were going in the door where the camera didn't work and crossing over to get their picture taken. What is funny is they spaced it out so that is wouldn't be two obvious. The funny part, they could have stood in line and got in in about the same amount of time as it took them. You are not allowed to smile when you get your picture taken. I had to take off my earrings. Also, over the door was a sign: remove your wig and false hair!!!

After pictures we got in another line to pay. Then we left the building and drove down town to another building, but we remember we needed to back to the Baptist Mission office and get something photo copied so that the mission would have a copy of what we have done so far. So then back down town to get a stamp that we don't need to take the driving test because we have US drivers license. We first stand in line at the wrong building. They send us across the street to another building room 8. We cross over and find a man in a nice bright yellow jacket (police emblem on back) and ask for directions. He takes us to the room.

Here we are told yes we do need to take the driving part of the test. Blake questions this, because new missionaries came in just last week and didn't take it. They reassured us that yes we do need to take it, but it is a short test, very short test. The man that showed us to the room came back and took our paper work, stapled it together with a new paper on top, and then preceded to put a stamp on every paper. Basically, we passed before we even took the test.

So back out to the land rover we went. I was a little worried. I haven't even drove such a vehicle before. Steve started out. He drove us down a few roads and turns. Then Kenny drove only on one straight stretch of road, no turns. Leslie was next. She had the same stretch of road, but I was sure he was going to fail her. After every ones turn he said congratulations you passed. I got out of the back of the vehicle and hadn't heard him say it yet. Plus, he told her to turn the vehicle off and the others didn't have to do that. I was a little worried. I climbed in to find she did pass, but that her husband better give her some practice time to get better.

Side note this is a shame society. So my turn. Thank you so much Daddy! You did a great job teaching me how to drive. Even though I haven't driven stick shift vehicle on a regular basis for over 10 years I haven't lost the touch. I did fine, even driving on the left side of the road and shifting with my left hand. And I didn't turn the windshield wipers on trying to turn my turning signal on. I have done that every time I have driven here, but not during my driving test!
Back to the side note, the guy kept praising me and my abilities to shame Leslie. I felt so bad for her.

The most nerve racking part was I had to drive back to his office, where traffic is thick and so are the people who walk just on the side of the road. After this we went out for lunch. The men went back to the first office in the afternoon to stand in line again and pay again. Not sure why we had to pay as many times as we did. Basically, it was a good day to learn a lot about the culture here in Zambia.

Rita

Africa - Day 3

2009-07-11T14:34:00.003-04:00

The morning was spent getting work permits. I (Rita) didn't have to leave here to do it. The men went. We met with Mary and learned about the paper work we will need to do to get reimbursed for things and what is reimbursable.

Lunch was with another missionary family. Hamburgers again but it was good. We got to pick there brains and ask lots of questions.

Steve spent the afternoon helping to load a trailer African style of furniture and such for our house in Mbala. We have a house to live in in Mbala, but in a few months we will have to move again. It looks like we will be moving into another house in 4 months. I found out why we had to move. I thought something was wrong with the house, maybe it wasn't up to standards, maybe it was too small. The answer: it is too big. It is 3100 square feet!!! I have never lived in a house that big. The mission board only allowss houses to be 1600 square feet for missionaries to live in.

We had Chinese take out for dinner and played Phase 10.

Rita

Africa - Day 2

2009-07-11T14:23:00.003-04:00

On Wednesday, Steve followed Blake with our SUV (Ford :( Everest ) to the mechanic. The plan was to get work permits, but that didn't happen. Blake took Steve around town to various shops. We both now have sell phones and our computer has something to stick in the side of it giving us email.

A warning to you all: don't send us any pictures. We will have the email settings set to NOT receive pictures. Life is soooo much slower over here. When we are in Lusaka, we will change the settings. So if you want to email pictures, tell us first and we will send you an email as to when you can.

Now it is Saturday as I am writing this and I have no idea what I did on Wed. I think I did some laundry. I'm sure I spent time with Dawnya. For dinner we grilled hamburgers!!! Yum

Rita

I just remembered, Dawnya took me to the closest grocery store to the mission house and we went up and down the isles.

Africa - Day 1

2009-07-11T11:15:00.005-04:00

We landed in Lusaka, Zambia at 7:30 in the morning. Several missionary families were there to greet us. Another family arrived on the field with us. These missionary families helped us gather up around 24 suitcases between the two of our families. We loaded up the vehicles and drove to the Baptist Mission.

We spent the first part of the morning visiting. The second part of the morning was spent getting cleaned up and organized. The Baptist Mission is a compound with an office building that has storage underneath it. It has an apartment type building with two stories. Then there are several one story building. So there are several places to stay here. We are in "Kudu". It has two bedrooms, one bath, and a common room. The common room has a kitchen area, table, a little two seater couch, and a cot that Heather is on. So we organized suitcases, so that the ones we don't need can be sitting up right giving us a little bit more room.

At lunch we had a pizza party with the Kimbrough's. I don't know where they got it but it is two for the price of one on Tuesdays. Then Blake took us out driving. He took us to the Seminary and then Steve drove around. I, sleep deprived as I was, also drove around. Blake is good, he makes us think about things. We were wondering about certain buttons in the SUV. We have 4-wheel drive, so after jumping out to the lock the hubs (so we would know how to do it), we realized we didn't have to. So this button had three initials on it. Blake wouldn't tell us what it was for. I finally guessed it was the real window defrost. Blake gave me a high five, like I finally came up with the right answer. I'm pretty gullible with a sleep deprived mind. The button is for the 4-wheel drive. As you can tell from this paragraph I still don't know much about 4-wheel drive.

We had pot-luck for supper in the quest house dinning room with all the missionary's that were in the area. Then we sleep walked to bed.

Rita

Flying to Africa

2009-07-10T11:24:00.003-04:00

Thanks so much to Uncle Dale and Aunt Marion who went with us to the airport and then drove our van back to my Dad's house. Thank you also to Uncle Eby who drove my Dad's truck to and from the airport. He also knew some back way to go. We all of a sudden popped out of the country and into the city of Philly.

We arrived at the airport kind of early, but we never have flown with our whole family before. We checked in and then got some dinner. Our plane took off at 9:05 headed to London. Heather didn't like the take off. During the flight she was fine. Then landing had her with the bag over her mouth.

We landed in London at 9 in the morning their time. We had a 10 hour lay over. Heather spent around 8 of that in the bathroom over the toilet. At 2pm I became more concerned. She needed to stop this so that she could get on the next plane. There was a pharmacy in the airport. I decided maybe she has a nervous stomach like I did as a teenager. I wanted Mylox, but settled on Milk of Magnesia. She kept it down and went to sleep. I then gave her Dramamen for the next flight.

We boarded the plane on time, but because of weather during the day they were behind. We sat for 1 1/2 hours at the gate. Taking off late some how didn't effect our landing. I believe that we landed on time. I could be wrong though. Heather did some very heavy breathing during take off and landing and did fine.

We were met in customs by a fellow missionary. She had paper work to show them. We still had to pay for tourist visa's, but only the adults. They helped us round up all of the luggage and drove us to the Baptist Mission.

In Africa,
Rita

Shot Day Number 3 is over

2009-06-12T16:13:00.002-04:00

This momma got four shots today. I will be very happy not to see a needle again for a long time. The poor nurses - I bleed a lot for just getting a shot.

Steve got away with just one shot. The boys only got two shots, Heather had to get three. Tobias had his tetanus in February and I'm not sure why the other two boys only got two. For tetanus you get a booster every ten years and so that is why I thought they didn't get it. Then I was told if you are living overseas then you get the booster every five years. So then I think they should have gotten it.

Oh, well it is over with. I will check the papers when we get them on Monday. The papers are a list of shots we got while here.

Seth and Lane have accepted Jesus as their Savior

2009-06-12T16:08:00.002-04:00

Seth prayed to ask Jesus into his heart on Sunday night, his eighth birthday. We have been having a lot of talks about such things since being here. He has been asking a lot of questions.

We have to witness using various ways three times a week here. The Sub-Saharan African Peoples Affinity group has to use Creation to Christ for the past two weeks. Seth has been given that presentation twice by Mommy and Daddy.

On Tuesday, I gave the presentation to Lane. It takes about 15 minutes to do it. At the end Lane said he wanted to ask Jesus into his heart.

We are rejoicing and so are the angels!!

Seth turned 8 years old

2009-06-12T15:59:00.002-04:00

On Sunday Seth turned eight. We had a small little party in our quad. We did have cake, but no candles since they are not allowed in the quads. What was really fun was seeing how creative other children can be. He received a card that involved the 5 senses. Smell - perfume, taste - candy taped inside, sight - a lot to read - two journeymen (women) helped, sound - recycled cards that talked, the noise piece was taken out and used in this card, touch.

It was really fun to experience a small and simple birthday. What was best was the kids loved it too! There was no complaining!!

Airport Day

2009-06-12T15:49:00.003-04:00

Last Friday the kids had airport day. The teachers had set up an airport in another building to teach them about airports. They made play passports the day before. They had passports, tickets and carry on bags. They were giving a lot of instructions about airports.

They had to stick together in family groups. The two younger classes that didn't have an older sibling were assigned to older children to watch. They were told about watching / hanging onto their bags. Lane lost his. He wasn't watching it and so it was stolen. But he was carrying his ticket and passport in his hand so he still got on the plane.

I want to brag on Tobias and how he has stepped up to the plate in being responsible. One little girl's bag was stolen and her passport and ticket were in it. Since she didn't have either she wasn't allowed to get on the plane. Tobias stayed with her. Actually her and her sister joined my kids and stuck together. Tobias said is she can't get on the plane then he wasn't getting on either. He wasn't going to leave her alone.

The teachers also told the kids what is was going to be like for the parents. That we would be tired. They were told that they shouldn't whine and complain, that it is going to be a tiring process. They even experienced plane delays in their little pretend airport. Some children after airport day were saying they are so glad that they are not parents!!!

Monticello

2009-06-12T15:21:00.005-04:00

On Saturday, June 6th we went to Monticello - Thomas Jefferson's home. We as a family really enjoyed the visit. He loved educating people. He loved variety in his garden.

The first picture - the man was demonstrating basket making. We learned how they get the wood so thin to make the baskets. In the back ground is part of the garden.

Picture #2 - the man was making nails. The garden again is in the back ground.

Picture #3 - the garden is around 2 acres. It is three football fields long. I loved the garden.

Picture #4 - is of the back side of the house. He leveled the mountain top off first, so that he could have views on all four sides.

Update on my Mom

2009-06-12T15:19:00.002-04:00

She was moved to the nursing home on Thursday, June 11th. She is back in the Fairmont Nursing Home in Ephrata, PA. You can visit her there I think. She is still in isolation, so you have to suit up. Keep praying for her, she has a long ways to go.

Schwarz Family Sojourn

Taken a Trip

Curiosity

Ministry Happenings

Sorry

It is too early for rain.

More pictures from Isanga Bay

My Adventure–part 2

I Went on an Adventure!

A Long Bike Ride

May/June Newsletter-Page 3

May/June Newsletter–Page 2

May/June Newsletter–Page 1

Visitor from America-part 6

Visitor from America-Part 4

Visitor from America-part 5

A Visitor from America – part 3

A Visitor from America – part 2

A Visitor from America – part 1

Seth is now in the double digits!!

Customer Service

Tobias turned 15!!!

New Family Picture

The Northern Evangelistic Team (NET)

Seth’s Favorite Meal

Good Friends

Where in the World are the Schwarz’s Anyway.

Article from our January Newletter

Ministry has Started

Merry Christmas from the Schwarz Family

Electricity Woes Part III

Electricity Woes Part II

Electricity Woes Part I

Putsy Fly

Language Study Officially is Over

Crocs

We have a new MacGyver

Princess Zanzibar

Our Lane turned 11!

Panther

Eureka Farm Campground

Lazy

Boating / Drifting on the Great Zambezi River

Vacation

Skinning a Puff Adder

More Water Problems

Our Oldest Turns 14!!!

The Waterfalls near Isoka

The Roads to the Water Falls near Isoka!

Station Visit to Isoka

Kalambo Falls

School

Sausage and Biscuits

A Hectare of Maize

Biscuits

A Culturally Bad Day

Christmas 2009

Now we are finally up to date

Prayer Retreat

Sickness

40 / 40 at Ibus Gardens

40/40 Village Stay

The Second Part of 40/40 - Small Town / Villages

40 / 40 in Lusaka

Flamboyent Tree

Scan

40/40 and South Africa

A Week of Waiting

Second Package has arrived.

Flour

Our First Package has arrived

Water

Interruptions in the life of a Missionary!

Pictures of Potholes

Calf Steve Delivered

Our Trip back to Lusaka

Veterinarian Skills Put to Use

Church in the Bush!!

Water Lost :(

Water Leaks are an Endless Job