Gwen's Diary Update!!

Hi there again,
Hopefully this won’t be as long as the last update I did.
This last weekend Donald, Paul and Janet went off to a village, so Katie, Lily and I stayed home. The girls were hoping to do some girly things like straighten their hair, watch a dvd etc! Well they didn’t get to do any of those sorts of things as on Saturday morning the power went off and stayed off all day. It came on for 15 minutes at 6pm – thankfully I was organised with our dinner and had it cooked in that time. It came on again at about 8:30pm! We did lots of our cross stitch and the girls played card games and tried to occupy their time playing with Copper the dog.

On Sunday morning I woke early and the power was on so was able to get water boiled for doing the dishes (I saved the hot water for my shower), did the dishes and then the power went off again! Oh well now it was time to go to church anyway so off we go. Copper decides that he was coming to church as well. We kept chasing him back home but he wouldn’t go. Bwalya (the night watchman) came at him with a stick and that was it Copper wasn’t staying with him! He led us all the way to church then actually went into the church building. Some of the students were scared and weren’t even coming out of their rooms and Copper was making himself at home still inside! At this point I decided that that the best thing to do was to just go home and hopefully he would follow! He did for a time then he decides to go and say hello to three children on the side of the road. They see him and what do they do – they run! All three of us are yelling out “don’t run” but they run anyway! I probably would too if I saw a great big dog running towards me. Then we look up the road and these two men who were walking were running as well. They ran so fast. I thought man you should have been running down here to hit the dog so he wouldn’t run after the children but instead they ran away. Well we finally got him back and started on our way again. This time he likes the looks of two dogs. We call and call him but he won’t come so we just go home hoping that he would follow and eventually he did. When he got home we managed to tie him up. I must admit that I did wonder why Bwalya hadn’t done this in the beginning instead of letting him just follow us!

Ok now we are home and still no power. Bwalya has gone home and we don’t have water either now. Apparently there is a tap under the water tank that Morgan (the gardener) turns off when he is watering the yard. He had forgotten to turn it back on again so the tank was dry. I didn’t know how to fix any of those kind of things and Donald was due back so we just waited for them.

In the mean time Donald, Paul and Janet are on their way home from the village looking forward to having a nice shower and flush loo. The place they were supposed to have their wash in, Donald wouldn’t let them, as people had been using it as a loo! Gross I reckon!!!!

So now they are home and very disappointed. Donald finds out what was wrong and turns the tap on, but now the town water supply is off so we have to wait until Monday!

We decide it might be a good time to go to Samfya Beach to have a swim (well 4 of them anyway). Paul decides to take his soap and uses the lake as a bath. When he came out he had his soap in his pocket and all the bubbles were running down his leg! It looked really funny. We head off home but first we make a stop at the lake near us to get some water.

Oh dear Copper has seen us and has met up with us! We have to take the long route home as the road was too bumpy with all the water we had in the car. That Copper ran in front of the car the whole way home apart from when he was getting into fights with the village dogs! He is certainly a dog that has character but ohhhh so disobedient!

Monday now and yay we have electricity and the water is hot! The power stayed on all day and at about 9pm went off but came back on pretty quickly! This time when we went out we tied Copper up! Donald has a conference on for three days with the 5 Samfya Churches – their elders, deacons and deaconesses. He says it has been really good but he is exhausted. We went to the shops close to us as Lily wanted to post some postcards. They paid for it and while they were waiting for their change, the lady started to serve someone else. They asked her for their change and she said in a very surprised voice – oh you want your change? Then she disappeared out the back for 10 minutes before coming back in with her change! Then we went down to the other end of town to buy some meat and saw a bakery. We bought some buns for lunch and Paul paid and we waited for a long time for change again. This time the guy had gone out the back and gone into the market/town to find someone with change as he didn’t have any but he didn’t tell us. We kept asking for our change and people just said ok and went out the back!

Today we also had the women’s group meeting to start the cross stitch. It was sooo funny. I thought they could design their own bookmark. They didn’t seem to understand that even though the squares on the page were bigger than they squares on the fabric we would be working with both! In the end it was decided that I would just design one and give them the pattern and show them what to do on Wednesday!

Tuesday now and I have such a sore finger from colouring in cross stitch pictures. Paul has been very frustrated as Donald has asked him to find the boundary pegs for the Bible School. We had Peter and Patricia and their 7 children here for dinner. Paul paid me the biggest compliment he could have by saying that it seems that I am coping very well here as I had cooked the dinner for all 13 of us without any help (Janet was helping him find the beacons and the girls were at SCCP), with all the low power and the like.

I know that the only reason that I am coping so well here is all because of God. I know that so many people are praying for me. It was also the right time for me to come – God’s timing is always perfect!
As I was just typing that last line a lizard ran across the wall in front of me!! Yuck I still don’t like them!

Today we had another cross stitch session with some of the women. A lot didn’t come as they were with Donald is his session which is much more beneficial than learning how to cross stitch! It was certainly hard work to teach them this craft. The fabric is not the best and the thread has a shiny coating that makes it slippery! Oh well Friday we are back to doing our study on Titus 2!

That is it for now. Donald has an update on his time with the Elders, deacons and deaconess’.
See you all soon.
Gwen