Chocolate Chips? ... and Sports

The other morning, my Mother saw some little black things out on the front porch (well, it's the back of the house, so I guess it should be called the back porch, but it's the only door we use). Anyway, Mother asked Emma to come out and look at "these little things that look like chocolate chips". Well, Emma, decided to have some fun, so she went along with Mother's idea and said they do look like chocolate chips. Of course my mother was perplexed how chocolate chips could have gotten out on the porch! (By the way, we do have some of them in the pantry, but my guess is it's only because someone brought them along from the states; I haven't seen any in the stores here yet!) It wasn't long before Emma couldn't keep from laughing, which gave Mother the clue that she was kidding around with her. It was then that Emma informed Mother that a goat must have been visiting the porch during the night and left some trails! It's good Mother can take a joke, because we all had a good laugh out of that one! Funny thing was...Mother said she was planning on baking some chocolate chip cookies that afternoon, but she totally lost her appetite for them! Mother went to bed early that night, so I decided to bake a batch of them for her. When Emma heard I baked them, she asked if Mother had any...Mother confessed that she did have some and they went down just fine, as long as she didn't think about that goat!

This morning we heard singing and lots of noise outside. We looked out and saw more people on the lane in front of our house than my parents have ever seen in their many years here at Nahumba! Cars, buses, and loaded pick-up trucks were packed with singing students, and they kept coming and coming! Never in my life have I seen so many bodies packed into one pick up truck, everyone holding on to someone else, some standing, some sitting and some barely even in the vehicle! They sang songs jubilantly and they waved as they drove down towards the Primary School. In a matter of minutes, we began to see a parade of these students, coming back the other direction, now coming from the Primary School. A group of young cadets marched out in front, with students in colorful sports uniforms carrying their school banners following behind, from Secondary Schools all over the Southern Province of Zambia. Hundreds of students, singing and waving to us as we stood in our front yard, taking pictures! As it turns out, they were marching up to Choma Secondary School for Sporting competitions - the best in their schools to compete with each other in various sports. We walked up to the school to watch and enjoyed watching some relays on the track, everyone running barefoot on the dirt track, starting lines drawn in the sand! The end of the race was great....the students watching would all run to the finish line and gathered ON the track just a few yards away from the finish line, cheering their team on! So much for giving the runners room! Doug, Dar, Mindy and Brent - so sorry this wasn't going on when you were here; you would have loved it! They will continue through Friday, so we plan to go up each day to watch more events.



This evening, we had Dr. Dwight and Carol Thomas (and their crew from Sikalonga) for dinner. They are staying at the Guest House here tonight and are on their way home to the states.
The Guest House ...

It was another beautiful day in Zambia - sun shining and God's mercies abundant. I miss my dear husband, family and friends, but God's grace is evident in so many ways.

I'm still working on Matt posting something...say a prayer for him!

Leza Amulongezye!