Muli Bwanji

It is amazing how one's (our) sense of normal changes as your surroundings change. John and I have been laughing lately at the things that have become strangely normal. For example: "Mommy, I'm going out to look for eggs." We hear this most mornings, as our children love to see what Fancy (chicken #2) has produced during the night. It more resembles an Easter egg hunt than life on a farm because poor Fancy doesn't have a proper place to lay her eggs and tends to choose a different spot each time. Last week she chose a window sill and we found it shortly after it happened. Twice she has chosen a windowsill that's not so level and it rolled right off -- mess on the patio.
More new normals:
- "There go the Muslims." --Ford, on hearing the chants/prayers from the mosque several times a day.
- Visiting with the guard that stays on our patio all night every night
- getting a call any time someone spots precious food items in stock at the grocery store such as sour cream, cream cheese or cottage cheese (only once)
- listening to BBC instead of NPR
- bartering for bananas and strawberries with the guys in the parking lot
- being chased down the street by a fella trying to get you to buy his mop for a "great price" (twice in one week)
- calling the patio a "condi", the water hose a "hose pipe" and soccer "football"
- lizards in our house at all times

We have been amazed at God's grace as He has enabled us to adjust to life here fairly well and quickly. There have been many, many people, especially the Boersmas (the other Dr. and family) that have answered our billions of questions and have loved us well since we landed in Lilongwe. We do feel like we are settling in to life here and we are not walking around quite as wide eyed as we were at first. In fact, as I write I am struck by my lack of exciting stories (I'm sure there will be more in the future) and wild facts. The past week has been very much school, grocery shopping, work, soccer practice, swimming lessons -- sounds familiar, huh? We do many of the same things we do in the States, with a twist.

Settling on a church is proving difficult. Worshipping in a culture so different from your own is hard. Many churches have English services in addition to the Chichewe service. I still find it difficult to understand sermons because of the accents. The music is beautiful and sometimes familiar, but very different. In many churches, the men sit on one side of the church and the women and children sit on the other - we lump our boys in the "men" category so that I don't have all the children by myself. Ruthie is plenty to deal with during a 2 hour service - another reason I can't always tell you what the sermon was about. Worshipping here is also a blessing for many reasons. It is a privilege to be able to know and worship with brothers and sisters in Christ here and to look around the room at a beautiful picture of the Kingdom. We have been humbled as we hear all night prayer services announced as an obviously normal part of church life. In the States, the only way you could get us to commit to an all night anything would be only with the promise of some GREAT entertainment! We struggle with sitting still for one hour, while here they may start their service at 7a.m. and finish at 10:00 - and that doesn't include coffee/fellowship time or Sunday school. One church that we've been to several times has designated times of prayer with the pastor from 4 - 5:30 a.m. five days a week. Congregational singing is mostly a capella, which is beautiful, but tricky when you don't know the tune. Hymnals are BYOH - can sometimes be bought outside after church. We are realizing that our ability to worship has relied so on our familiarity with the structure and content of the service. The many differences are distracting at present, but, in time, we trust that God will use them to refine our understanding and ability to worship in spirit and truth.

Sam attended a birthday party last week of a little boy in the first grade at ABC Academy. It was a bit (more than a bit) of a stretch for Sam and me to leave him in a most unfamiliar setting with extremely nice but, again, most unfamiliar people for his first solo event in Africa. We had been there for about 3 minutes and he squeezed my hand with a grip of steel and looked up at me with tears in his eyes and said, "I want to go home with you, I don't want to stay, I don't know what's going on." Everything in me wanted to say, "Me neither Sam, let's go!" I knew he would be fine, he did know a few of the boys from school, but I could very easily put myself in his shoes and understand what he was feeling. The family was more than gracious and welcoming to us. They are Egyptian, and have lived in Lilongwe for 10 years. The dad is a surgeon at the hospital in town. Anyway ........ he stayed, I left, came back to pick him up (a little early) and he ran up to me and said, "I've had so much fun!" It was one of those stretching times that God used for our good. It gave us a great time to talk about how God holds us in His hands and never leaves us. Ford was able to tell Sam how he had prayed for him and Sam was able to tell Ford how God had answered his prayers. Who would have thought -- all from a Scooby Doo birthday party.

Ford is pumped because he learned to ride his bike without his training wheels - if he could only learn to steer and brake. He is LOVING school and his new friends Thumbiko, Ike and Jock. Quote from tonight when the evening chants from the mosque started, "Let's go throw something at that guy."

Alice Ann has never been prouder of something that belonged to her than she is of Fancy her chicken. She always thinks she needs to go check on "my chicken" - every time it squawks, she thinks a dog is chasing it. She takes her responsibility of shooing her off the condi very seriously - AA isn't known for being the eager beaver, but give that girl a chicken ..... On a more serious note - her speech is getting better all the time and it is fun for her to be saying funny things now too.

Ruthie is doing great! We took her off Larium(malaria meds) for three weeks to see if it could possibly be what had been making her so difficult. After three weeks off, if was very clear that the Larium had absolutely nothing to do with it. Thankfully, good old fashion consistency has pulled through again and she seems to be over the "adjusting to Africa" hump. She is starting to talk and has been hilariously funny and happy for the last week or two. Praise the Lord! Her favorite past time is escaping from the house every time somebody forgets to close the door all the way (which is quite often). Tonight I found her running around the front yard naked calling "da da" while I was getting the bath ready.

We are learning a lot, thinking about things we've not considered before, loving the slower pace of life here, adjusting to the ever encroaching heat and overall very thankful that the Lord has us right here right now.