Day 7

Word of the day – laughter.  Sorry Joel, it’s not Psalms 103.

Here is the team having breakfast out on the patio where we have been having our morning and evening meals.  Zambia is in it’s dry, cool season which means mid 70’s and sunny during the day and very cool in the evenings/mornings – about 50-55.  So it's beautiful to sit outside for our meals.

As today was Sunday we attended church at Christ Community Church where Wilbroad is the Pastor.  The church is fairly close to Spree so we walked to church with Zikki.  Experiencing worship in an African church is wonderful and something you don’t forget.   Below is a photo of the drummer. Really!  During worship I didn’t pay much attention to the fact that there was a drummer playing since it was “working”, but then I realized I couldn’t see him behind the singers.  Turns out he’s about 8-10 years old and plays standing up since he wasn’t tall enough to sit and play.

Joel preached out of Psalms 103, we had communion and then we “performed”, as a team, “It Is Well”. Perform might be a strong word.  To quote Joel “Practice, Practice, Practice, FAIL!”.  This is where our laughter for the day really started.  I was supposed to start us on the right key, but there was also a piano player who I thought was also going to give us the key.  Joel was looking at me and saying “start us off” and I was saying “I’m not starting us”!  We started, and then, for some unexplained reason, someone whom we all love and follow, jumped from verse 1 to verse 3.  We were all looking at each other like “what’s going on and what are we to do?”. It was hard to keep a straight face in light of the gigantic train wreck.

We had lunch a local restaurant and then went back to Spree to change.  Then we walked to the stadium for a football game of a couple of local teams.  The stadium holds about 40, 000 folks and the photo below shows about half the crowd.  We had decided that half of us would cheer for one team (yellow) and half for the other (white).  But we discovered that we were sitting in the section for the “yellow” team so it was a little awkward to cheer for the opposing team. They are very enthusiastic fans including drums which were played non-stop! The game ended up being a tie.  Towards the end one of the “opposing” team members received a red card. As he was leaving the field our “section” boo’d him.  He responded with a hand gesture.  Some things don’t require an interpreter.

We then walked back to Spree, had dinner and our usual team meeting.  But it wasn’t usual.  We spent a significant amount of time encouraging each other.  It was very meaningful and also included hysterical laughing.  The younger crowd, meaning not Joel and I, ended the evening with a dance party.