From The Field: April 2011

From The Kitchen Table

~ The Desk of Lynne Schaefer ~

March 2011

“I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jer 29:11

We are blessed!

It is amazing how one phone call can send you into a spin, create chaos, and doubts. When our landlord phoned to say he wanted to move back to his farm, we were distraught. The kids sobbed. But, now a few months later we can see that God had something so much better for us. The farm that we have moved to is amazing. We are blessed, and thank the Lord for providing a place far better than what we had before. It has been a very stressful time, but now we can see God’s hand in the chaos, and are grateful to him for making our plans!

Language

Pray for us as we seek to really learn Bemba this year. We are finding it much easier to learn now that we have been hearing it for so long. Our ears are tuned to the language, we now just need to get our heads to learn it and our mouths to speak it. We know the basics, but we want to really make an effort this year so we can be more effective in ministry.

Olivia’s Sheep

Little Olivia turned 6 on the 20^th March. She is the organiser in the family. She is the one who remembers everything and is like my “memory card”. She always wanted a lamb, so we organised a pregnant ewe for her from a friend. “Ma” arrived and we all fell in love with her. She was such a funny sheep and kept us all entertained as she wondered around the yard. She gave birth to a cute little lamb which Olivia named “Noodles”. But, Ma got really sick and we tried everything to keep her alive, but sadly she died. She was buried with tears and flowers on her grave. Noodles has been adopted by our other sheep, “Mean Ma”, whose name describes her character! To be fair, she is not as mean as she was when we got her.

Other News

The good news is we found the other “Boomslang” snake that got away. It was huge. He dropped out of a tree only to meet a huge club swung by our gardener.

We are in the process of starting a new veggie garden. It makes life quite hard not having one, as we rely so much on it for our family’s veggie needs. So our meals have become even more basic, as we start over here on the new farm.

We are blessed to have many great walking paths here on the farm. So in the afternoons, the kids and I take relaxing walks to de-stress from the day, pick wild flowers and examine fungi and other interesting things we come across as we walk.

We have had a lot of power problems since we moved in. Our transformer got struck by lightning which left us without power for 9 days. The first month of being here in the new house, we had about 17 days out of 30 without power. I am grateful for the little wood stove that we have in our kitchen.

Our driveway has also become a 4 x 4 vehicles only driveway, as cars continue to get stuck! It has got so bad and any attempt we make to fix it just makes it worse. With the rains coming to an end, it has dried up a lot, so we look forward to the dry season where we will try to mend it in time for the next rainy season.