A Field Trip to Livingstone

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

It is Tuesday evening here in Macha Zambia. We have spent a couple of full days in Livingstone combining a bit of sightseeing along with shopping for plumbing and building supplies.

We arrived in Livingstone in the late afternoon on Sunday. After checking into the Jolly Boys Backpacker Lodge we drove to “the bridge” that separates Zambia from Zimbabwe, over the Zambezi River. There is an incredible view of Victoria Falls from that bridge that I wanted to show Dan. Then we went to Zigzag Restaurant for dinner. What a great surprise to watch occasional highlights of the Packer game! We felt like we were home for a little while!

Monday was our “day off” and we made the most of it. We crossed the river over to Botswana, to Chobe Safari Lodge where we took a river safari in the morning and a game drive in the afternoon. Our family has been involved in Africa since 2000, and this is one of our most favorite excursions, so I was thrilled to be able to take Dan on safari. We saw so many animals including hippos and cape buffaloes, warthogs and crocodiles, giraffes, fish eagles and a pride of lions. In all of my safari experiences I have never seen so many elephants! There must have been hundreds!

 

After we’d returned to Livingstone, we connected with Bob & Jody Hayton, a missionary couple whose father lives in Hayward WI. We’d promised to bring back some items for them. We ended up staying for hours with them; we both came away saying “they are like us!” God was so in this relationship. When I shared that I was working on radio and television advertising and promotion for the school, they were able to take me over to ZNBC television station. This is the national television network for Zambia. I met the sales manager and she helped me with all the questions that I had about how to get advertising on their station. Not only was she a Christian, but she is a member of the BIC (Brethren in Christ Church). If you remember, the BIC owns the land that MICS is built on and the school will fall under their jurisdiction soon. She knew about MICS and was more than willing to help me with this project! All the way around, this connection was divine! 

Here’s how it played out: Our friends, Mark and Peggy Halvorsen, who are involved in work in Liberia gave Jim Burmeister our contact info, Jim called my wife, Kathy. We found out that Jim goes to the same church in Hayward that our daughter, LeeAnn does. Jim asked us if it was possible to bring back some items from Zambia that he would sell to benefit his daughter and son-in-law’s ministry. We made contact with them, Bob & Jody, and in talking with them, they are able to get us connected with the sales manager of the national television network, who I will need to work with to get TV ads on the air! It took each person involved to be obedient to the Holy Spirit, but you can see only God can orchestrate all of that! Wow, isn’t that amazing?

Today, Tuesday, we drove out to the Victoria Falls National Park to see this Wonder of the World. While the water is quite low its size still amazed us. If you’ve seen Niagara Falls, Victoria Falls will make it look small. We then went shopping for the building materials and plumbing parts that we still need. We got started at 10am and didn’t finish until 4pm! We went to Handyman’s Paradise (small Menards) then on to two hardware stores and the market. We found more plumbing parts at the market (like our farmer’s market) than we did at the stores we visited! 

We arrived back in Macha with enough time for me to Skype with Kathy for about an hour while Dan organized all our receipts. Now, we’ve put together a huge TO DO list for our remaining three work days. While I am out video-taping and interviewing people for the TV ads that I will be producing (really my production staff at DiscoverWisconsin Television will be doing this for me, thank you guys!), Dan will be finishing up some plumbing and hooking up water heaters. Together, between the two of us, we will be finishing up water pipes & covering them up, finishing up the septic dry wells, pouring concrete and building a cover for the borehole. You can see that we have much to do and not a lot of time. Please pray that our efforts will be multiplied and we will have completed all of this before we fly out on Saturday.

 

Thank you for standing with us, and praying for us. We feel your prayers here. 

God has been so good; He has been affirming us and confirming what we sense He is directing us to move in. We see so much more than we first saw and it is so good!

With excitement and joy for what He is up to,

Greg, with Dan