Field Trip!

We seem to be in a pattern of taking 3 field trips per year. Last year we went to the farmer's market, a national park, and the dentist/zoo. Today we took our first field trip for the year! We took all 22 kids and 13 adults to Momba Dairy Farms and to the Choma Museum. It was an exhausting and exciting day! At the dairy farm, we were able to see four cows being milked by a suction device (which we DON'T have at New Day!) Then we went to see the baby calves, the sheep farm, and the new lambs who were born just last night! Then we went to the ranching side of the farm and watched a slew of cows walking through their high-tech chemical spraying machine. We constantly watched our step and left smelling like a mixture of animal excrement ;) The coolest part was we saw them packaging some milk from their cows that is sold in the grocery store, and when we left they gave each of the kids their own pack of milk!

From the dairy farm, we headed to Choma museum where we had a nice picnic lunch on the awesome grounds there. We then separated so that some of us could buy orphanage groceries (Thursday are our usual shopping days), while some of our staffers took the kids in groups inside the museum. They learned a lot about traditional Tonga life and were pretty glad that they don't have to run bones through their noses anymore! The kids enjoyed playing outside and eating ice cream until it was time to go. We then took them to the gas station and the market. (I bet you could never get away with taking a group of American kids to a gas station, but that was some of our kids' first time to see one and see how fuel is put in a vehicle!) The market was neat for them to see where we get our vegetables every week!

Here are some pics to get a glimpse of our day!

Cambree enjoys her ice cream at the museum!

I told Joseph to smile with his ice cream, and he gave me a tiny smile...I kept asking him to "smile bigger" and his mouth kept getting wider and wider!! Hey, it's hard to focus on smiling when you're enjoying chocolate ice cream!

Picnic lunch

Joseph

Kefi

Muchoni (who had NO fear!)

Precious...isn't she?? :)

Mweene (who also had trouble focusing on both smiling and holding a squirming lamb!)

Cambree

Caedmon

Cason

Hildah, who is scared of her own shadow, had a lot of adventures today!

Cynthia

Cason found a nest on the ground where some baby birds had fallen..the kids were fascinated!

Watching the cows get sprayed

Cambree & Kelitah

The farm has around 1,000 sheeep!

Sisi, the last one to hold the lamb!

The farm had over 1000 sheep!

Papa Wes & Mama Lala with their group of 4

Hildah milks a cow for the first time!

See, quite the adventurer!

The kids loved checking out the suction that milks the cows!
It is always exciting to get to see the New Day kids experience things that they otherwise would never know about. I love field trips! (and I love it when they're over! ;)

Joyce

This is my friend Joyce. She is one of the first women I met at New Day back in 2010. She has 3 precious children, and she and her family faithfully attend New Day Church. Her husband is one of our best workers who has built many of the houses here at New Day. Joyce told us today that her husband took a second wife this past weekend. She is heartbroken, but this is quite common in the culture we live in. Please pray for Joyce in this very difficult situation, and please pray that God would give us wisdom as we talk to her husband.

Catching Up

I feel like I haven't been posting as regularly as usual, so I thought I'd catch you up real quick, with the promise of some really amazing blog posts this coming week! :)
We are in the last 2 weeks of the school term here at New Day, so students will begin taking their end-of-term tests next week. Tomorrow afternoon will be busy at my house as we study spelling words, subtraction with borrowing, and the major rivers in Zambia! We also have a field trip to a dairy farm and the Tonga Museum this week, which will be awesome and hopefully provide me with some good blog material!
We also have a team coming over Easter weekend. They are coming to do a big mission meeting for the IMB missionaries here in Zambia but wanted to spend Saturday night here with us to get to experience Easter at New Day! (more good blog material!)
The days at New Day are busy with morning devotions, school, construction (working on a huge garage to hold New Day vehicles now, but also have broken ground on a computer lab and will break ground on a huge guest house/dorm area shortly!), expense reports, thank you notes, library time, music class, ladies Bible studies, math tutorials, Wed night prayer/praise, movie nights (kids loved Stuart Little last night!), Kids Club (fed 99 today!), Bible studies at Kabanga and Nabukowa, and of course Sunday church.
We love our family here at New Day, but we know that the New Day family has many other members who check my blog faithfully and pray for us daily! We are all extremely grateful! More posts coming next week!

My Gardener

As I've blogged before, our 7 year old (almost 8!) LOVES to garden. Every Saturday he plants 8 new seeds outside, and he is constantly watering, weeding, and checking on his plants. He also helps prune my flowers and keeps the whole yard in good shape. This gene definitely came from his Grandpa! Last weekend he helped harvest our sweet potatoes - we planted these about 2 years ago and kinda forget aboout them. :) We now have some MASSIVE sweet potatoes that I have to find something to do with! We also have a few heads of lettuce, black beans growing, and our banana trees are starting to produce!

Youth Day 2013

Every year on March 12th, we celebrate Youth Day in Zambia. As I watched the 22 children running around today playing games, I thought back to our first Youth Day in 2010 – which consisted of Mulenga! In 2011, we had most of our staffers here – Abby, Hildah, Elizabeth, Mulenga & Kalenga – but no children yet! Last year, in 2012, we had 14 children. And this Youth Day – to have 22 children on the soccer field was amazing! God has brought us many blessings in the last 3 years! Youth Day is for anyone in Zambia from aged 13 to 35 that is single, so we try to have most of the games for our staff, but we did throw some kids games in there! They loved the sack races and the water balloon toss! Our adults also love the water balloon toss and enjoyed learning the new game of Ladderball this year! We ended our day with snacks in the dining hall, but today was a special treat – everyone got cokes, iced donuts, lemons (thanks Uncle Jeff & Aunt Staci!), and lollipops! We can’t wait to see what (or who!) Youth Day 2014 will bring to New Day!
The adults enjoyed the Ladderball tournament!

Move out of the way - Teacher Carolyn is throwing!!

Mama Lala must have been practicing in America, because she was good at this game!

Mama Joyce had a blast!

We had some awesome snacks this year!

Seconds before Mweene's balloon burst!

Sisi & Cynthia as defending champions of the Water Balloon Toss!

Elizabeth & Wes also defended their title - just wait until 2014 guys - you will be dethroned!

Cason did NOT want to throw his balloon to Glory - he'd rather hand it to her!

Kelitah did great in the sack race!

Sisi easily won the sack race with her long jumps!

Joseph won the sack race for the younger kids, but Mweene was right behind him!

Mama Lala had to give Kefi a boost!

Caedmon & Misheck couldn't stop laughing in the partners' sack race!

They're BAAAAAAAAACCCCCCKKKKKKKK!!!! :)

Wes & Laurie are back HOME, and the New Day family is finally complete!!! We had a plan to have the kids meet us at several points along the way with balloons and signs, so as we got close we had Wes & Laurie move to the front of the bus. When we got to the first sign, they were surprised to see a few kids with balloons holding up a sign that said "WELCOME!!" Everyone got hugs and jumped on the bus and the next group met us along the way holding up a sign that said "EMOH!" (oh well - they tried!!) More hugs and that group jumped on! We drove a little further, and Mulenga was there in truck, prepared to do the traditional escort for the entrance of an important person, like a chief! He led us on an escort onto the New Day land, honking his horn along the way! All of the little ones were there with balloons and a song and there were hugs all around! It sure does feel good to be a FAMILY again! :)
Lala gets a big hug from Cynthia

Hugs hugs and more hugs!

Mama Lala meets Kefi!

Hildah tells Wes he has gotten stronger and has him hold her up with one arm!

Wes meets Kefi & Precious!

Cason was so glad to have his "ear buddy" back!

Happy Birthday Kelitah!

Today our sweet Kelitah turned 7 years old!! Kelitah is a spunky, smart little girl who LOVES to read. She is fiesty and sensitive, and I love her so much :)
I cheated today and bought 4 Neopolitan birthday cakes from the grocery store instead of baking them! The kids loved it!

Kelitah got 4 reading books (just for HER!), lip gloss, and fruit snacks :)

Some of our staff ladies having fun at the party

Hmm...who could that be up in the tree with a bucket of water????

Splash!

It was so fun to pour water on Kelitah because she giggled through all of it and had a blast!

The Journey for One Stamp

Today was one of those days I just have to write about. Many of you know that we had a fundraiser last year for a vehicle, and enough money was raised to purchase a new truck! After having trouble purchasing one from Japan (as we did the bus), we found out that if the orphanage got its tax exemption status in Zambia, we could buy a brand new truck from the Toyota dealership here for almost the exact amount we had raised! We had applied in 2010 and been denied due to our bylaws needing amending and our failure to open a bank account in Zambia. So a few months ago, Blu was on a mission - to get New Day tax exempt status in Zambia! He started with the bylaws - a fairly simple process that involved emailing our lawyer in the USA and having him email us an amended copy. (Basically the bylaws said that if we dissolve, our assets will go to a non-profit. Instead, it must say that if we dissolve, our assets will go to a non profit IN ZAMBIA). So that was done in about 10 days. Next step - bank account. That process took about 2 months of Blu submitting papers, resubmitting papers, taking passport photos, submitting new papers, going to different offices, etc. But finally, after 2 months, we have a bank statement in hand - yay! So this week, on Tuesday, Blu took all of the paperwork to Lusaka to resubmit it. The good news was that the people in the office remembered him from 2010! The bad news was that when they looked over everything, they said "Oh, your amended bylaws have to be stamped by the office in Choma. That's the only thing you're missing. But if you get that done, you can bring it back on Friday and it will be submitted." That brings me to today...in bullet form. This process took from 10am - 4pm. *Arrive at Office of the Registrar - wait in line for 20 minutes. Ask the man if he can stamp our paper. "The man who stamps is not in. Let me call him. Ok, he says to come back at 2pm." *Take paperwork to the Commissioner of Oaths to certify that the amended bylaws are true copies. We need 3 certifications (basically a notary), but the office in Lusaka had underlined 3 lines with a red pen. *Take original to copy machine to make copy with no red pen. *Take paperwork back to get it "notarized." *Finish everything else and kill time until 2pm. *Arrive back at Office of the Registrar. Explain that we need his stamp on the 3 copies for the office in Lusaka. "Oh! You need a SR07 form! If you amend your bylaws, you have to fill that out." *Spend 10 minutes watching him search for the form. He finally takes his original copy off of a bulletin board and asks us to go make copies for him because he can't find his copies. He also tells us we need to write a cover letter, fill out the form, and go and have the police and the District secretary stamp the form. We explain again we just need 3 stamps on the bylaws. Nope, have to do this first. Oh and he needs it in QUADRUPLE form. *Go back to copy machine - make 4 copies of everything. Darbi frantically handwrites a cover letter. *Go to police station. Explain the situation and ask for a policeman to stamp our paper. (the paper we must have stamped so we can get the other stamp!) "Ok, you need the officer in charge to do this. Didn't you know? It's Thursday. We only work half days on Thursdays and he's gone home." We beg and he gives us the phone # of the officer in charge and says "bother him if you want!" We call him and he agrees to come to the station in a few minutes. 20 minutes later.. *He arrives and stamps our forms...our quadruple forms. *Go to find the District Secretary's office. *Find the office - District Secretary will not be in until 4pm. Try back then or try the town clerk. *Go back to the original office to try to submit the papers without the District Secretary's stamp. Nope. Have to have it. Try the town clerk. "Oh I forgot about you! I was about to go home!" Blu says "Please don't go! We're going to the town clerk and then back here!" *Walk full speed to the town clerk's office. "No, the town clerk is not in. Maybe I can walk you to the District Administrator's office." *Arrive at this office - meet a Zambian woman who speaks VERY good English. Explain the situation to her. *She doesn't understand why her signature/stamp is needed and what that has to do with her. She spends a few minutes on her computer searching for the Zambian law code that permits her to sign this. Not finding it, she stamps anyway ("after all, the police have signed it already" she says). *Go back to original office to get our long-awaited for stamp - WHAT???? The man has gone home!!!!!!!!!!!! *Find his helper and explain that we have all of the proper signatures/stamps (did I mention in quadruple form???) *He says his boss has gone home but he can give us the stamp - HALLELUJAH!!! *He stamps all of our quadruple forms and then GIVES THEM BACK TO US and says "Ok thank you!" ?????????? We pull out the 3 copies of the bylaws and explain that we need stamps on those. "Oh those too? No problem" and he gives us the three stamps we have been coveting all day long. The sound of a stamp hitting that stamp pad never sounded so good.... And now, tomorrow, we will finally submit all of the paperwork in Lusaka and wait to hear if we have tax exempt status....or if we need another form stamped. ;)

Happy Birthday to Glory!

Glory turned 6 years old today, so we had a fun party for her before Kids Club! This was her first birthday party and her first time to eat ice cream! :)
Candles in ice cream!

So cute!

Yum!!

She didn't care much for New Day's water pouring tradition :) Wait until next year!

T is for Tortillas!

So preschoolers are not my gift...at all! But when Teacher Diana asked if her Stars Preschool class of 10 could come over on Friday to make tortillas after learning the letter T this week, I couldn't say no! After all, she does teach my oh so sweet 4 year old every day for 4 hours!!! ;) 10 preschoolers, flour, and my cleaning lady had just left for the weekend - aahh!! It really wasn't so bad..except for when I turned around and Kefi had dropped his tortilla...twice...and then I turned back around and Precious was drinking out of my water bottle.. :) Seriously though it's amazing to get to be apart of teaching these kids new things (what other Zambian knows what a tortilla is?!) and to watch how fast they learn when they are in a safe and loving environment! (However, if anyone sees Teacher Diana, tell her I'm busy on Fridays from now until....the unforeseen future...)

Axer & Glory busy rolling out dough
Christina's smile makes the mess worth it!
While some were making tortillas, others were making "tall towers!"