Hi folks! Today we woke up to father’s day and for us Dad’s it was a bit of an emotional day away from home as we miss our families. The gifts and contact from our families certainly helped alot 🙂 Thanks!
We started out the day by making our way to Sunday School class at the Hope Community Church on the village grounds and Kevin and James went to the youth class while the rest of the team joined the men for their class. Following Sunday School we joined in with the service and WOW – things sure were lively in there 🙂 The harmony during praise and worship was amazing and they do actions with their songs that really get everyone involved. It was amazing to be in the presence of God with fellow believers so far from home!
Okay for those who know us well you might want to sit down while I tell you the next part – some of you will be shocked and I want you to be prepared. Pastor Zowa asked us yesterday if the team will do something special in the service. So…Barry spoke and shared a little bit on behalf of the team and also showed a short clip of the our kids singing the song from the farewell Sunday before we left home. It was special seeing our kids again! Then…all 8 of us got up on the platform and sang a song! Yes, you read that right, Doug, Alex, James, Kevin, Chris, Scott, Barry and myself all got up and sang Open the Eyes of my Heart. Now, when we practiced the night before accapella it actually didn’t sound to bad. But, for the service…well let’s just say it was pretty funny hehe. I played on the keyboard and Chris played drums but there wasn’t a mic for me and so the guys were having fun trying to follow along. Add to that that the guitar player and bass guitar player from the church played along (and did really good) and it made for quite a funny combination. Still, it was amazing to do that together and the congregation was really gracious with us 😉
Following the service we joined Gord and Anita Cooledge, Pastor Zowa and his wife and their daughter Ropa and went out for lunch together. Remember me writing about the Zimbabwe inflation in the last update? Well the bill for the lunch was $7,230,000! In CDN dollars that’s around $85. Another quick fact: Zimbabwe has the worst inflation in the world at 3,700%. To put that in perspective, the next worst nation is Iraq with 64%. Quite a significant difference isn’t it?
Tomorrow we will be getting right into the building project and will be working for 6 days on the school classroom – we’re looking forward to seeing progress being made on the building. I’m going to be accompanying Pastor Zowa to the Bible college where he teaches a class in the morning and then I’ll be rejoining the guys in the afternoon. I’m looking forward to that.
I’ve included a couple more pictures with this update:
1. Following the men’s Sunday School Class, Barry passed out some bookmarks that Alex’s daughter Jacinda had made for us to take. The men *really*appreciated them. Then following the service Barry passed out the rest of the bookmarks and some pens as well. Jacinda made 80 bookmarks and they were all passed out – Thanks Jacinda for making them! The kids loved it and Barry got mobbed! hehe
2. This is a picture of the price board for the pizza that we had for supper tonight. How would you feel if you saw this in Canada? This is what the avg Zimbabwean faces every day. One of the toughest struggles we are having as a team is that much of what we take for granted in Canada is such an *extreme *luxury here in Zimbabwe. Most Zimbabwe people would not be able to afford the food that we’ve been eating here – and it’s painfully obvious everytime we purchase something. We are spending more on food this week than what the avg Zimbabwe person sees in a year! A sobering reality of the economic conditions here.