We left for Zambia on August 4th, 2021, and the day after we left, a wonderful crew of people in Canada, packed a shipping container full of supplies for Seeds of Hope. The container was supposed to arrive here in Zambia within a couple months. This container faced about every obstacle possible, short of falling off into the depths of the ocean, but it finally arrived mid January!! What an exciting day to open it up and see what was all in there!
Seeds of Hope always holds their "Grace Christmas" in November for the kids. Typically a team comes out to do the Christmas gift sorting and wrapping, and the Christmas decorating. On this day, they do dorm performances, have a Christmas dinner and get to open presents. All their presents were on the container this year, which meant no November Christmas. It was so hard for them to be patient, but Christmas finally came in January :) Shannon and I had the privilege of sorting out the gifts, and then we walked dorm to dorm to distribute them. It's a memory I won't soon forget! Shannon has been working so hard at emptying & sorting the remaining contents of the container!
In the container there were a bunch of boxes of reusable diapers for the baby house. When they were delivered, the auntie literally broke out into a dance of joy! With it being rainy season and so many babies in diapers, the diapers were not drying in time, so they were drying them with a hairdryer! These diapers were so appreciated!
At the beginning of February, the long awaited visit from Dad and Mom Schutte arrived! We were all so excited to welcome them, and it was an emotional meet up at the airport! It felt surreal to have them in Zambia, and yet so normal. (We received a Polaroid camera in the container, amongst many other goodies, and I'm borderline obsessed :D)
We got into a wonderful routine with dad and mom. Dad was working on setting up the new layer barn, and would work on that after breakfast.
I would start homeschooling in the morning, and mom and I would do coffee time together at 10. Growing up with dad working on the farm, it was such a part of the family's routine to do coffee time at 10. I loved that this slice of routine could follow them out here. In the afternoons, mom and I (and the kids, when they felt like it) worked at reorganizing the Grace library. While the books were all labelled wonderfully, they were about as mixed up as could be, so it was great to have it all back as it should be.
Oh how I loooved seeing the kids having time with their grandparents again!
Dave, Jon and Dad installed the new backboards and hoops in the basketball court! Before this, there were backboards, but no hoops!! This was super exciting, and they get used constantly!
We went up to Lusaka for a weekend with ma and pa. It was everything a weekend away should be - beautiful, relaxing, great company, awesome accommodations! The kids spent so much time in the pools, and we were thankful that God provided sunshine amidst the rainy season, so we could really soak it in!
Austin even mastered a back flip into the water!
The hotel that we were staying at had a lion cage. It was a beautiful 1 km walk to the cage, and it was a highlight for us all to be so up close to these magnificent, fierce animals!
Dad was being dad, and loved pestering the lion. The roars and pouncing were so fascinating to watch :)
We had fun watching a few soccer games - a return match between Farm and Construction in which the Farm team defended their trophy, and a game between the older Grace boys and Mwaiseni (Grace boys won).
Loved seeing kids sandwiched between dad and mom!
That basically wraps up our February! It was incredible to have dad and mom here! They've been to Zambia multiple times, working on different projects, so that part was not new to them. That part was great, but what was so special to us, was having them meet all the people we've come to know and love here. Having them participate in our day to day life, and interacting with people that have become like family to us - that was the highlight for us.
Thanks for reading along, despite the long gaps between posts!