Power at the Tree of Life!

On Thursday, the electricity at the Tree of Life (TOL) Children's Village was turned ON!! Through the "Power Up the Village" campaign this past spring, God provided the $380,000 necessary to wire the TOL with electricity! Now the entire village is equipped with power, which enables the TOL to grow! Before the electricity, the TOL ran off of solar panels. The solar panels could barely generate enough power for the 4 houses that are currently open and filled with kids. In order to grow the village and open more houses for more kids, they had to have actual electricity. To celebrate this amazing milestone we spent yesterday evening at the TOL and made brownies with the kids now that they have working ovens or "cookers" as they call them. We had such a great time and the kids definitely enjoyed their first taste of brownies!

Power at the TOL!!

The new school lit up! The first phase of the school will open on June 4th!

Lahema's House lit up! Agness lives in Lahema's House, so we made brownies with the kids that live there.

The kids LOVED helping...

Mariam and Josh pouring the batter into the baking dish...

Everyone enjoyed a lick out of the bowl!

Me with Esther and Agness. The brownies are baking in the cooker behind us. The solar panels did not produce enough power to run the cookers, so until now the house moms cooked everything outside using charcoal stoves.

It's brownie time!!

Josh and I with Aggie...

Brownies and milk....life if GOOD!

This morning we went to church out at the TOL....it was amazing! I couldn't resist posting one more picture of our Aggie! She is on the praise team and did a fantastic job leading worship this morning! She is wearing the dress that Josh gave her back in November.

Baby Bump at Week 18 (plus a couple of days)...

Week 18....Zambian style {no makeup and air dried hair}!

The baby bump has grown quite a bit over the last couple of weeks. Granted, this picture was taken after I thoroughly enjoyed 3 pieces of pizza and a coke for dinner! Baby seems to be adjusting well to life in Zambia. Yesterday morning was the first time that I really didn't feel well, but I think it was due to not eating enough for breakfast before we headed out to tour one of Family Legacy's Community Resource Centers and Lifeway Christian Academies. After lunch at Subway {don't worry...I had them torch my sandwich in the microwave}, I felt much better!

I am not taking any malaria medicine while we are in Zambia, so please pray specifically that God would protect me and baby from malaria and any food/water related diseases. Since we have been here we have not seen one mosquito! The mosquitoes that carry malaria only come out between midnight and 6am, so that is why we are sleeping under a net. Thank you so much for your prayers!

Home Sweet Home...

We're currently staying in Villa 38 at Mulungushi Housing Village. It's actually a really nice villa compared to the one we stayed at in 2008 during our first visit to Zambia. We've been busy unpacking all of our things and making it as homey as possible. We're hoping that we get to stay in this villa for good, but we may have to switch villas in a couple of weeks. Here are a few pics of our place...

Villa 38...

Sleeping under the mosquito net has been interesting! Thankfully our bed is very comfortable!

Lots of storage space...

Large window (with awesome curtains) and vanity/dresser area...

Our bathroom....with a working shower head and hot water!!!! Life in Zambia is not so bad!

Josh is also updating his blog during our time here....he is in front of the computer a lot more than I am, so he will have an opportunity to update it pretty frequently.

joshrives.com

In Lusaka...

In Father of the Bride terms...."George, she landed." We are so excited to be on the ground safely in Lusaka, Zambia! Our flight from London to Lusaka was super easy...no problems at all. We were extremely lucky to miss the Heathrow closing due to the volcanic ash. We landed around 6:30am Lusaka time (11:30pm Dallas time). It took some time to get everyone and everything through customs. We made it to Mulungushi Housing Village (home sweet home for the next 8 weeks) around 9:30am. After unpacking the basics and putting some sheets on the bed, we took a much needed nap for about 4 hours. In the afternoon, we headed out to the Tree of Life Children's Village to see the amazing progress of the school being built there and to play with all of the kids. The highlight of my day....I finally got to meet our Agness!! When she saw us, she bee lined for Josh and I....it was so amazing! We spent a couple hours at the village with the kids and then headed into town to eat dinner. We ate at a delicious place called Mint.....they have wonderful sandwiches, salads, smoothies, etc. It hit the spot! Now we're back at Mulungushi unpacking and getting settled. We're trying to stay up as late as we can so we can get adjusted to the time change (we're 7 hours a head of Dallas). Tomorrow we'll hit the ground running unloading all of the containers that were shipped over and getting prepared for Camp LIFE to start next week. Beside being tired, I'm feeling great! I think that I'm starting to feel baby "flutters" inside! I will post an 18 week belly pic this week. I missed week 17 since we were so busy getting ready for our trip.

Back to unpacking!!

Lots of love from Zambia,
Mindy

Safe in London...

We had a great flight from Dallas to London and slept wonderfully in our Yotel at Heathrow. Now we're about to grab a bite to eat and get ready to board our plane to Lusaka, Zambia!! We cannot wait to get there.

Will update the blog as soon as I can in Lusaka. Thanks so much for everyone's prayers as we travel and spend 8 weeks in Africa!!