Daily Life

Here is what a typical week currently looks like for the Attema's in Singanga village:

Sunday: We have church in the village. Then the members of the team that live in town pack up and head back to Livingstone. In the afternoon, we usually rest, work on projects around the base, or go to a football game in one of the neighboring villages. The football team is made up of young men from the surrounding villages. Benjamin occasionally plays or helps coach. Lately, Benjamin has been working on different projects regarding the pigs and we have done a little bit of gardening.

Monday: This is our day off. We typically stay in the village and it is quiet and peaceful. The team has all gone to town except for 1 other couple. Our mornings are filled with rest and quiet time. We sometimes play games, do some cooking, wash clothes, or work on a project that's happening on the base.

Tuesday: We head to town on Tuesday's. We have team meetings all morning. The meetings start with team church where we worship and share with one another. Then we move into process group where we process different things that are going on individually or as a team so that we can all remain healthy. After process group, we are assigned different team tasks for the week, some of which are done in the early afternoon while we are still in town. We usually grab lunch in town (which means we eat some meat!), and we do all of our shopping for the week before heading back to the village in the evening.

Wednesday - Friday: In the mornings we do language learning, Allison tutors and Benjamin sometimes takes this time for devotions or working on his pig project. In the afternoons, we meet with our church groups. There are always many children around so we spend a fair amount of time playing games and hanging out with the kids. Benjamin also does some work with the four Zambian men who work on the base and we visit people in the villages and purchase different items such as fish and buns.

Saturday: In the morning we do some language learning and then we have required tutoring for all of the sponsored kids. All hands are needed on deck to make this program run smoothly. We both have tutoring groups that we meet with for an hour. After that, we have discipleship time for an hour that is open to all children. We typically work with the 12 and under kids teaching Bible stories and life skills. The afternoons are currently left open to help with any team things, work on projects, play football, build relationships with the kids and adults, or to meet with groups we weren't able to meet with during the week. At night the children from the children's home come over for a worship night. We sometimes have these hosted in different villages rather than doing them on the base.

Mouse Problem

So we have a mouse problem! Some of you know that back in Michigan we had an ongoing battle with mice in our house... well, the battle is not finished.

We have caught ten mice so far and also have had some of our mouse poison eaten. The issue with these mice is that some of them are clothes eaters. We call them squirrel-tailed-mice because they have the body of a mouse but the tail of a squirrel. Three of the ten mice that we have caught have been this type. A number of our clothes have holes in them now, specifically, underwear and shirts. We have a trap, poison, sticky traps, and moth balls. We are waging war!

The holes in our clothes from the mice.

The squirrel-tailed mouse.

A Year in Review

This past year has been amazing! We are now on a journey that we never thought we would be on a year ago. So this is a post where we are just looking back on the last year and giving thanks to God for how he has been faithful.

January
We took in our first child through Safe Families. His name is Jacob and we had him over several weekends from January all the way through April. We also began our journey of looking at organizations to work with overseas, specifically in Haiti.

February
Dan and Regina, from Love's Door, visited us at our home for dinner and we first started thinking about Zambia after that visit. Benjamin's grandmother passed away from cancer so we made a visit to Iowa to celebrate her life.

March
JJ (8 years old) and Jovoni (7 years old) moved into our house through Safe Families. They lived with us for a month and changed our lives.

April
The month of April was mainly consumed with having JJ and Jovoni, especially over spring break. We raced in a small relay triathlon in Holland and we took first place! We also officially decided to commit to serving with Love's Door in Zambia.

May
We flew down to Florida to surprise Allison's sister, Lindsay, for her college graduation.

June
We celebrated our one year anniversary on the 5th. Allison finished her job at Holland Christian. And we went to Israel for two weeks on an amazing trip with Ray VanderLaan.

July
We were able to celebrate the wedding of our good friends, Hayley and DeMyron. Allison taught Vacation Bible School and jumped back into summer tutoring.

August
We raced in the Fremont sprint triathlon. The Allison's parents took us on one last family trip to Mackinac Island (Benjamin's first time up north!). On the 25th, Carsen (9 months), Ethan (9 months), and Jayven (1 year and 10 months) came to live with us for a month through Safe Families. We loved these adorable little boys and had our own little family!

September
This was a busy and bittersweet month for us. We were parents for much of the month with three boys but then we had to say goodbye with lots of tears. Benjamin finished working at Industrial Control, and we packed up all of our belongings and said goodbye to our first house that we were renting. Calvary Church also commissioned us during a Sunday service.

October
We headed to Kansas City for three weeks of church planting training through All Nations. At the end of our time, we stopped in Iowa for three nights to visit family and then we spent a night in Chicago with friends.

November
On November 1, we said our goodbyes and flew off to Zambia. A week later we moved out to the village full time. We had our first holiday in Zambia, Thanksgiving, and started calling this place home!

December
This past month has been a combination of settling into routines, beginning outreach and projects, picking up a little local vocabulary, celebrating during the holidays, and thanking God for where he has brought us in 2016!

Thank you to everyone for your support and love! We are amazed at what all has happened in this year and expectant of what will come. It is always an adventure to let God take us wherever He wants!

Happy New Year's!

Christmas in Zambia

Christmas has come and gone here in Zambia. It was a lot different than Christmas in Michigan but it was still wonderful.

On Thursday, we met with the ladies from Sugar village again. This time it went very well. Elizabeth, Beatrice, and Christopher were the three Zambians who all showed up, but this time we also had eight kids join us. We told the story of Jesus' birth and then we decided to act it out with the kids and everybody loved it! The mood was much lighter than it has been in the past few weeks and we are hoping that we were able to break through a little bit.

On Friday, we met with the women at Tobacco Farm and with Lizzy in Singanga village. Both of these meetings went well. Lizzy ended up retelling the story in Lozi four times to the children! She then asked us if she could keep our drawing so that she could tell it to others.

We had a tutoring party on Saturday, which consisted of dressing up the students to do a nativity story reenactment as well as making paper chains and glitter star ornaments. In the afternoon we had a Christmas party with the children's home. During the evening we showed the nativity story movie and then we shared the God story through candles. It went very well and we had a huge turnout of roughly 70 people from the villages!

After our Christmas morning service on Sunday, we went over to a Faith's house for a Christmas party. Faith is also with Love's Door and it was so wonderful to just enjoy the food and the fellowship without planning anything! And finally, we finished our celebrations with a Love's Door get together on Monday night. We had a nice dinner and then we did a small gift exchange.

The parties have been great but we are ready to get back to normal life. We are excited for all of the things that will happen in 2017!

Lizzy telling the story of Jesus' birth

Some of the tutoring students dressed up as nativity animals

Candlelight service

Last Week

This past week went well! We are both almost recovered from colds that we had. Allison is in the midst of trying to get rid of ring worm, which has not been fun.

But the highlight of our week was meeting with a group of ladies at Tobacco Farm (the name was changed to Fruit Farm last year but the new name hasn't caught on with the locals yet). This was our second time meeting with a few of the ladies who live at Tobacco Farm. We met a woman named Angelina when she came to our church at Love's Door a few weeks ago and from there she has connected us and invited us in.

Angelina is a true person of peace. She is hungry for the gospel and is a gatherer of people. Her younger sister Jenny, and coworkers Frieda and Sandra met with us last Friday. They had some really great questions about whether God forgives unknown sins and what to do when you feel like no one is hearing your prayers.

We are so excited to continue our relationship with these women. They are soaking up Jesus stories and hopefully will soon be passing them on to others. Angelina has also blessed us with bananas from the Tobacco Farm and she said that she will butcher up two of her own pigeons for us free of charge. We are excited to try the new meat!

The women in Sugar Village have been much more difficult. There is a lot of influence from the New Apostolic Church, which has been discouraging people from fully accepting us. There are strong denominational pulls in Zambia that sometimes takes the place of really being a Jesus follower.

The New Apostolic Church, among other beliefs, believe that the current "apostles" who run the denomination have more authority than scripture. They also believe that they can grant salvation and that witchcraft and Christianity can coincide. We are still learning more and more what these local congregations believe but we are realizing that it is a big barrier.

So please pray for us as we continue to try to share the true Jesus!

Surprise!

There is a lodge a couple of miles away called Siankaba. It is a beautiful place on the Zambezi River. A night for two at this lodge costs roughly $1000! Earlier this year, some people here at Love's Door became friends with some of the Siankaba staff through volleyball. There is a volleyball court near Siankaba that their staff uses frequently. Just about every week we walk over and play for an hour or two against their staff.

This past week, Siankaba invited us to have a braai (the Zambia way of say of referring to cookout or grilling) with them. We found out this week that the manager extended the invitation to include staying a night at the lodge! So on Wednesday evening, a group of us from Love's Door headed to Siankaba. We played volleyball for a couple of hours and then we were shown the beautiful lodge. It is gorgeous! You can check it out online if you wish: www.siankaba.net

They fed us supper and stayed up late into the night chatting with us. We had breakfast there the next morning and then headed out around 10:00. It was a lovely getaway to just relax and recharge. We also found that the staff of Siankaba really enjoyed having others to share in the joys and struggles of working in the villages. They have a number of projects currently going such as building wells and building a school as a way of giving back to the community. It will be interesting to see if we can partner in the future or at least how this friendship will grow. But for now we are so grateful for the wonderful surprise respite that we received!

Supplies

Every Tuesday we head into Livingstone for group meetings and to purchase supplies. There is a store in town called Shoprite, which is similar to an American grocery store. They have most food items that we need plus additional items such as soap, hygiene products, etc. Around town there are various other stores that carry different supplies like paper, furniture, construction materials, etc.

Most Zambians shop at the many outdoor markets. These can be fun to walk through with so many people packed together selling specific items. We have used these markets for clothing, vinyl flooring, wood, containers, and some food items. There are also people all over who sell things on the sidewalks, usually food items or electronics. This is where we mainly purchase bananas, pineapples, and avocados.

Often times when we are in town, we eat out at a restaurant for lunch. There are a number of cafes and restaurants that have a variety of foods and prepare American food as well. So after a week of not eating meat it is nice to grab a burger, pizza, Zambian Mexican, shawarma, or some other food that might contain meat or cheese!

We are in the process of finding fish suppliers in the village and we may even be able to purchase a chicken periodically. We should be receiving our first fish tomorrow from a local villager as long as he is successful. There are some villagers who purchase items such as eggs in town and then resell the in the village. But they are pretty hit and miss as to whether they will actually have stock.

So it is usually an experience trying to find certain items! Sometimes it is like a treasure hunt and sometimes it is frustrating. And we always have to be weary of receiving the Mzungu (white person) prices.