2 Months in Zambia

It has been a while since our last blog post. To say time is flying is an under statement. It seems as we rise each day to the delightful sounds of the busy morning birds, we are quickly greeted with the warm, breathtakingly pink and orange, African sunset. The farm has consumed much of our time as Karl and his team have been busy maintaining current crops, seeding maize (corn), experimenting with new crops and putting in a berry patch. We are now into rainy season and, wow, the power of our Almighty God, in the thunderous storms here is overwhelming. The amount of rain we get here makes me so grateful for Gods promise never to flood the earth again, because, you guys, at times it feels like the river of water flowing down our driveway is going to carry our house along with it! On the contrary, we have had some scorching days with really high UV index as evidenced by Karls killer farmers tan! Aside from the crazy storms and scorching heat, you can feel and see God working here in Zambia. There are many captivating stories that my sinful heart wants to tell you because they are pretty cool, but honestly what’s most important is acknowledging our tender Fathers grace and love during our time here thus far. I am constantly reminding myself that God is in the little things and even mundane moments are building character in me, just as much as the big mountain moving moments we have also seen thus far. We have been blessed with many new encounters over the past two months of being here, from visits with farm committee members from Canada, crazy trips to town, hosting and learning from a knowledgeable organic farmer, doing outreach with the Christmas team from Canada, spending lots of time at the local hospital with our own kids haha and spending intentional time with the kids at Grace. There is a lot to fill you in on…so here it goes!

The farm has a lot of moving parts. Karl has spent most of the last two months catching up on the current workings of the farm, assessing processes and productivity, and implementing some new practices. We were super blessed to have a very knowledgeable organic farmer from Zambia come out to the farm to share his insight. His name is Abel and he is from Organic Farm 7. We were able to learn a lot from Abel about our crops during his visit to Grace and we look forward to fighting the pests of this fallen world with the wonderful bounty of natural matter God has given us.

Lets begin with an update on the:

Bananas

Wow, it is so cool to see a banana plantation in real life. Who would have thought it would be such a complex practice of maintaining these beautiful plants. Karl and I have been in awe at the intricate details thought out by our Creator. For instance, when you look at a station of bananas you want to see a Grandmother plant, a Mother plant and a Daughter plant. When you cut down the Grandmother plant did you know that the Grandmother as she dies feeds all of her nutrients into the Mother and her Daughter? That was something so cool to me, to see God weave His sacrificial love into His design of these plants. We have bigger plans to optimize production from this mature plantation, but for now we have added chicken manure to the base of the plants and are working on thinning out each station. We found these little bats hiding in the banana trees....kind of creepy I would say, Tucker would beg to differ!

The Orchard

We learnt a lot from Abel in regard to our Orchard. The trees have not been growing as well as they should be and so with some pruning, aerating, natural fertilizer, mulching and the rains of this wonderful season, we look forward to giving the trees a boost and hopefully seeing the fruits of our labour very soon! Hehehe I had to!

Pigs

We have roughly 70 pigs. Shortly after we arrived, Karl realized (after running insanely large numbers in his head, yes, he was blessed with a brain like a calculator) that between the demand for corn in the cafeteria and the pigs ration, we would be short on corn to feed the pigs. Karl and the management team have now implemented a system where all food scraps from the cafeteria and dorms be fed to the pigs. It took some work as there was a lot of plastic within the food scraps, but after some training and frequent follow up by our hardworking compost man, there has been enough clean food scraps to feed all of the pigs without the need of corn and commercial feed. We are not sure how this will impact the breeding sows and our growers, but Karl is closely monitoring them and will likely find a healthy balance where needed. Also, amazing news! One of the past farm managers was here for a visit and brought a sausage maker! We just butchered a mature sow and made her into sausage! Reviews were very positive. The kids at Grace will be cheering when they hear their requests for sausage have been granted! Thank you Lord! This is Karl and I’s first time making sausage and so we are grateful that the process went smoothly and the end product, even from an older sow, was delicious. Note I said WAS…because almost half the entire 105 kg was sold on the first day. Most going to the cafeteria, the rest going to staff and the community who tried a sampler and were in love! Haha It appears sausage may be staying on the menu, Lord willing! 

Chickens

Both layers and broilers are doing well. We are getting about 30 trays of eggs a day. The hens in one barn will be retired and we will move in fresh young pullets very soon. We’ve just finished up our first batch of broilers. Growing meat birds here is somewhat different than home. We are using uninsulated barns with meshed windows. This brings about some challenges in regard to temperature management on the hot sunny days, but having adjustable curtains in the windows proves very helpful when the wind and rain begin. We are changing to a two week rotation between the three broiler barns. This helps us to have more regular butcher days and as fresh as possible chicken for the cafeteria. As a family we get to eat lunches from the cafeteria and Wednesdays are chicken days. Even though I would love to give my husband and his crew all the credit, that cafeteria makes a mean spiced chicken! Its finger licking gooooood!

Berry Patch

We are very excited to trial raspberries and strawberries. The Aker family who pioneered this farm had great success with strawberries, so we will see how it goes. Who doesn’t like fresh berries right? We put in 60 raspberry plants and 60 strawberry plants. We are just about to stake the raspberries. The guys just weeded the patch and added tithonia to the bases. This is a leafy bush we have all over the property that when cut up it can decompose very quickly and not only mulch the area around your plants, but also feed them as well. Thanks to the Aker family for that wonderful insight!

Corn

The corn plant just wrapped up. The team and students worked very hard to hand seed roughly ten acres of corn. The seedlings are already around 4 inches tall. We were so amazed at how quick the corn germinated. 5 days and it was like an inch tall! Africa! The heat and the moisture, such an awesome environment for growing.

Although the farm has been a priority, there have been many other things keeping us busy. For instance the introduction of a new foster baby. The third week we were here we began fostering a little boy named Milton. He is roughly 10 months old, but we aren’t certain his exact birth date as he was left outside the hospital when he appeared to be a newborn. We did not commit to working at Grace with the plans to adopt, but somehow God just kind of put it on our hearts the couple months before we left and after prayerfully pursuing this opportunity, God has kept the door open thus far. The social welfare system is challenging here and so we are in the beginning phase of the foster to adopt process. Baby Milton or Ton Ton, as we call him, is a cheerful and chubby little guy. A few weeks ago, he came down with an awful gastrointestinal bug that rapidly dehydrated him. By the time I took him into the hospital he was severely lethargic and so dehydrated they were unable to obtain IV access to help him. He needed fluids as soon as possible, so the team had try an intraosseous access (meaning a large needle into his bone) which they were successful at. He was started on fluids and antibiotics for the infection. Due to his severe dehydration his kidneys had shut down, but by the grace of God after less than 24 hours of fluid administration, his renal function was back to normal and he was eating and drinking again and we were on our way home. Quite the scare and experience for sweet Milton. He is now back to himself as we know him haha, chubby as ever and enjoying lots of snuggles and play time with his very excited and infatuated siblings.

Another big challenge out here has been Wynona’s health. A week after arriving here we had to take her into the hospital for bloodwork because she was extremely ill with what appeared to be pneumonia. We are very natural in our approach to treating most common illnesses, utilizing Gods bountiful medicine of herbs and berries and such, but with the restrictions crossing multiple borders on our way here, my home arsenal was slim to none. I was left at this point feeling quite uneasy and very unsure of how to proceed. Long story short after days of riding it out with no improvement, we were able to get our hands on the right antibiotic to treat her respiratory tract infection and she was back to her normal self within a few days. A few days ago though, she was hit again with a very high fever that came out of no where. After monitoring her for 12 hours overnight and well into the morning I found her to have the highest temperature I’ve ever seen, 41 degrees Celsius! My gut said malaria, and after getting our hands on a rapid test, we found out it surely was. Our poor baby girl had malaria! We brought her to the hospital where they checked her blood under the microscope and found it to be a simple malaria infection, so after some antiemetics and antipyretics we were heading back home to continue on our original course of treatment. After two days, her fever was still not gone, so we brought her back in for another blood panel. We were relieved to find out her blood was without any signs of malaria and her full blood count appeared to be normal, meaning her body was likely still fevering due to the inflammatory response. Praise the Lord we headed home. We will see what the next 24 hours brings for her. Prayers are appreciated!

Other than that the kids have been adjusting well to life here. Tucker and Lady have found a few friends, well many many friends, up at the orphanage and so that has been so encouraging as a mom, knowing the buckets you cant fill for your kids are being filled to the brim by other wonderful brothers and sisters in Christ! The guilt of not getting up to the orphanage due to the demands of our own 5 children has lessened knowing a part of our family is up there making an impact. I foresee as the routine continues to fall into place here and the Lord blesses us with the prayed for extra energy, that we will all be able to invest more into the kids up there. For now we have been doing lots of basketball and soccer and have big plans for Christmas cookie baking with the orphanage kids and some town outings before Christmas here. Yay!! The transition here was harder than I thought. We kind of jumped into this endeavour without much education on what we’d be doing or what it would look like. Susan the founder of Seeds of Hope, and mom to our dear friend, continually told us, “There's no way to really prepare you for life here. You have to experience it to understand it.” And boy does that make sense now. So many times here in Africa, I have actually felt like I am losing my stomach; moments where the thunder cracks and the heavy rains pour and I feel the Almighty power of our God, making me tremble like a scared little mouse. Questions like…What the heck are we doing in Africa? Am I able to tend to all my children in this new, seemingly scary place? Is God going to take one of my children from me because I haven’t been a faithful servant? Why are we in Africa? What does He specifically want from ME here? But then I would remind myself, or better said, Karl, would remind me haha, our time here, He has ordained, all the days of each of our little lives he has planned whether in Canada or Africa. As in Psalm 139:16 “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” So why have I been so fearful? I have to say I kind of laugh at myself with these serious thoughts, call them fears, because I think of great missionaries like Helen Roseveare or Jack Turner and think, I haven’t experienced anything like them or had to wear the armour of God like they have, but I am trying to validate myself in the sense that going over an ocean to a totally new and scary place, without anyone I know, carrying along four young children who are our prized possessions, does and will continue to, have its own challenges. But we are not alone, deep down I know we are not. Psalm 121:4-5 “Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord is your keeper; the Lord is your shade on your right hand.” Times where I am praying to God to give IV access to Milton, as he lay cold and almost lifeless in my arms, and all I hear and see is unfamiliar faces and sounds of a foreign emergency room, He is there. Times where I’m frantically trying to cool my precious little daughters body down before she starts seizing…I feel alone and scared, its all on me, no its not, He is there. Times where my heart aches as I try to pray for a little baby at The Children’s hospital working so hard to breathe. He is there. These experiences yet so minimal due to the short time we have been here, have already shaped me for life. Since the day we arrived to today, I feel God near us, giving us a peace that surpasses all understanding. As I sit in our air conditioned bedroom, with my baby girl sleeping at my side, reflecting on the moments passed, I look out my big bedroom window and notice the gentle breeze gracefully moving the large leaves of the palm tree outside, and for the first time in a while, I feel peace and calm. I know the seas never stay calm forever and trials that shape us will continually come, but for now I sit in this foreign place feeling at home because the Good Shepherd is near us, tending to us, as we tend to others.

We were blessed with many visitors this past month, which was absolutely a gift from God! How refreshing it was to see familiar faces! We got to spend time with the past farm managers Jon and Renae Deleeuw and Renaes father, Jon, who is also a farm committee member for Seeds of Hope. We were able to go over farm operations, but also just spend quality time touring around with them getting more acquainted with local resources for the farm and for our family. That was so special. It was hard to say good bye to them, but thankfully the Canadian Christmas team arrived, as they headed out, so we were excited to see even more familiar faces. I was able to be involved in some outreach work with the team, such as, visiting the local children’s hospital to pray with the children and then handing out menstrual kits to women in a village. It was a blessing to be involved in some outreach outside the walls of Grace. Other than that the kids have been enjoying hours of playing outside, chasing Karl and the many lizards and critters around here. The weather here has been wonderful, the sun has been shining daily, which, is such a gift, along with the afternoon rains expected during this season, to cool us down and water our crops. Its so cool to rely entirely on the rains to hydrate our seasonal crops specifically the maize! The days are very busy here, but here is a glimpse into an average day here in Zambia. Karl and I wake up around 530am to the wonderful sounds of the local birds, the kids rise around 630 and we have breakfast. We often do a morning walk around the farm where Karl then can have one more cup of coffee before the farm team arrives. He goes off and does devotions with them around 8am and I start the school day off with the kids. Sometimes we will pop up to the playground to get the wiggles out before school. We finish our school around 11 am and by that time the kids usually see Karl doing a fun job and are out of the house until lunch at 12. We are so blessed to be able to get lunch from the cafeteria almost every day of the week. We then have free time playing in the afternoons, sometimes we go to town and throw lollipops out the windows to the street kids, sometimes the kids are content just playing lego or reading, other times we are in the garden or around the farm helping out. Once the Grace kids are out of school, around 3pm, the kids head over to play until dinner time. As of now, with the days leading up to Christmas, we are making cookies or fishing with the boys and girls left at the orphanage over the Christmas break.  Over half the kids go to their families or guardians for a months break at Christmas, but the others without any family stay here and so its a great opportunity to invest in these kiddos and connect in a quieter setting. We are enjoying a totally different Christmas than what we are used to, but we are so appreciative of the opportunity to be here during this wonderful season of celebrating the most precious gift of all, Jesus! Songs like Once Upon a Christmas by Kenny and Dolly or Do They Know its Christmas by Band Aid can be heard through the open windows and dusty screens of our farmhouse here in Africa. We apologize for the long silence on our end. We want you to know we truly appreciate your support both financially and through prayer while we serve out here. We will do our best to keep you updated going forward, especially, because there is so much that so many people can be encouraged by out here. We will get to journalling more of our day to day encounters and we will be in touch again at the beginning of the New Year.

Prayer Requests:

• Praising God for His constant provision for our family.

• That the adoption process can go smoothly and quickly.

• That The Lords hedge of protection be around us constantly.

• That the family remains in good health and we can fend off malaria during this wet season.

• That we can develop in depth relationships with spiritual encouragement and accountability.

• That we can wear the armour of God boldly.

We do truly appreciate your prayers dear friends and family.

From our family to yours, we send you a very, very, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

With Love, The Grohmuellers