Family Worship Centre

Dear friends and family

It is time for me to write my monthly newsletter.  I have been so busy and have not had much down time to even get my thoughts together to inform you on what I have been doing in the last month.

Yesterday was a very interesting for me, so much so that I have decided to tell you the happenings of just one day!

On a regular Friday morning, I am normally in a village until 1pm or at the base doing office stuff.  Recently one of our staff members just had a baby and we were planning to have a baby shower for her in town.  So I decided I was just going to run some errands in the morning and then help get things ready for the party.

I got into my truck, started it and let it idle for a few minutes then took off down the road.  I was at the end of the road when I heard this loud grinding sound so I put on my emergency light and switched of the truck right at the stop sign.  A few men came running and said madam it is your fan, it broke off.   I crawled under the truck to see if I could see anything unusual and did not but I did see pieces of my radiator fan on the road.  They asked me to open the bonnet and I knew it was not safe to be standing in the middle of the road with these men, so I politely said I live just there and I will go home.  So I turned the truck around and drove to the house I am staying at.  Stopped right in from of the gate and switched the truck off.  By this time Allan, one of the domestic workers that live at the house had come and opened the gate for me and I said Allan I just want to check why the fan broke.  I open the bonnet, jumped up on the bumper  and put my head right into the place where the fan is…………..

All I saw was little white cat legs…………I was shocked, terrified and ran to the house screaming at the lady who lives in the house, I killed the cat Janet, I killed the cat!

She graciously embraced me while I cried like a baby, then a few minutes later together with the other workers pushed my truck into the yard.  The heard the cat making sounds, they managed to remove it and saw that it was injured but not dead.  She took the cat to the vet, and it got some stitches on its eye, and legs.  For now that is all the details I will give you, it was and still is freshly traumatic!

Now for those of you who know my extreme hatred for cats may think this is a funny story, and yes I guess it is, but at that moment I realized that I needed to stop my very evident negative words about cats and wanting to launch them off the gorge.

Everything in Zambia works at a slow pace so by noon we were back home and getting ready for the baby shower which went very well.
I later decided that I would go visit friends (Arthur and Liezl) for the weekend.  They live about a 35 minute drive from town, driving mostly on a dirt road filled potholes and can be very slippery especially with all the rain we have had in the last 2 weeks.  Liezl cannot drive at night and Arthur asked if I would drive their truck home with Liezl and their 3 children while he rode his bike out.  I agreed and we started our journey, he rode ahead and said he will give us an hour and if we don’t get home, he will come looking for us.

The first half of the drive was fine, normal Zambian road conditions, meaning you mostly drive on the shoulder or the other side of the road.  The Chinese are building a new road for the last year, so we have been detoured through a road in the bush pretty much.  We get off the main road and start our journey through the bush about a 4km drive remaining to their home. A very narrow road that is slippery because of the rain, you have to be in 4WD and have to stay in the grooves so you don’t go off the path.  Halfway into the drive a herd of cows come thought the bush and started to walk right in front of the truck.  I try to be patient because there were a few calves and then I hear this moo moo, it sounds like it is right next to me, I carry on driving thinking okay they are more but had no idea where they were.  We drive behind these cows trying to get ahead but could not because we had to stay in the tire grooves to be safe, a few minutes go by and I hear the moo again this time a huge bull jumps in front of the truck followed by another that jumped really high to get in front, now I was not going to mess with them so I drive real slow.  Remember we are driving in the bush, so there are no lights, no other cars, no people, no houses or huts yet and because of the rain the tall grass is sagging and in the line of view of the windscreen.

A few minutes later we see a light and it is Arthur on his bike, what relief

Well he tries to drive them off but they will not budge, just stood right where they were, he starts to drive around them to get them to back into the bush, the mud is really thick and he slides and falls over with his bike.  He is an experienced rider so he wakes right up and states to get them away again, yet nothing works.  He gets off his bike and tries to now kick them away (cows in Zambia respond mostly to a whip) they move but not to much, he starts to walk away and 2 cows get behind him, now we are praying for his protection because it would be easy for them to charge him.  He manages to get on his bike again and the cows moved to the side, I take that moment of opportunity and pass by them and drive the rest of the way to the house.

So my friends this was Friday in the life of Bev, I am not too sure how the cat is doing, it was still pretty drugged up when I left the house last night.  I hope it has a full recovery.  Arthur later teased me about not know the size of my bulbar on the truck, apparently I was being a girl, my excuse was that I did not want to hurt 2 animals in one day!

Other than that I am doing well, we had to cancel a few teacher trainings because of the rains making it difficult for the villagers to come on and hard for us to drive out to them.  I will send out a newsletter in the next week or so!

Love to you all

Bev