Hakuna-Matata!

as told by one of our friends, the wonderful phrase from Lion King is actually in the local SiLozi language and does mean 'no worries' and they use it quite often! Meeting all of the missionary couples that live in the Mutoya compound has been such a blessing. Each brings their unique gifts to the project. Paul pastors and his wife Marinette markets for the project and raises their two kids; Zander heads and builds the well projects in the rural villages and his wife Linda cares for incoming teams; Dave heads building projects and his wife Chantal is on the worship team, schooling, helps community projects nearby and caring for her three kids; James preaches, heads bible school and his wife Jess teaches art and helps wiht the orphan school and both of them head the young-adult home cell group; Lihanna is the nurse and helps medically; Laubasi does everything including leading the youth group, is on the worship team, translating for the pastor training and doing all kinds of running around and networking; and Steven and Margret are the teachers for the orphan school. The team that resides here is so wonderful and helpful and cheerful and connected and so full of the Spirit. It is such a blessing to see them work together to build up this community in Mongu.

All of them will head out to different villages spordically to spread the gospel for about a week at a time. James preached this morning about 30 minutes away in Muwawa, a team came back from about 6 hours away, and a team at the end of the month (hopefully including us) will travel 15 hours to Fua. Clarissa and I are falling right into place here and feel like we have been here for forever. We help teach different ages at the orphan school in the morning, attend both Hope church services (which were full of energy and passion) and help lead the sunday school, attend the youth group and the young adult home cell. Each has its own surprises and blessings from the local people. Hopefully we will start meeting townspeople and start going there more to meet them in their homes.

We have been quite spoiled as far as food goes. We are supposed to cook for ourselves but have only made sandwhiches for lunch the past two afternoons. We are usually chatting during lunches or dinners and are invited. Marinette invited us for homemade 'pizza' with her lovely family before they went to finish a video and we watched a movie with jess while her kids slept. We has wraps with Jess and James the other night and chatted about everthing and then ended up singing childrens songs for hours tryin to think of new ideas for sunday school. Then tonight we got a surprise last minute invite from Linda and Zander for pancakes and mince along with Ivan who stayed behind from the previous Chi Alpha team. The bugs arent so bad but we still have yet to see animals besides cows on the flood plain and cats and dogs running around in our compound. The view from the road or the van Collers house is one of the most beautiful things ive ever seen. The night sky as well is too gorgeous for words. Hopefully we will remember to get our camera out one of these days to capture it for yall!

I love it here. Seriously woah. and yay God for sending us!
Carlie