Christmas, Cholera and the Cone of Shame…

After ‘the most different Christmas ever’ according to one of our daughters, mainly because of the warm weather and lack of family around, we’ve spent the last week or so gearing up for the new start of school and our work at the Beulah Discipleship Centre. The news today though, will have almost certainly changed things…

Christmas was of course different, but still quite successful - all the gifts people sent us from the U.K. arrived on time, we enjoyed carol services (both in person here and also those online from England), we shared some lovely traditional meals with families who invited us to join them and also Gemma’s Christmas cake (made with marzipan she brought from home) was a real treat!

We did have a slight problem with our dog, Oliver, one night though when we returned from a carol service to discover he’d tried to jump the garden fence and got his back leg caught in it - we don’t know how long he’d been hanging there but he was so limp and still when Gemma found him she thought he was dead! It was actually quite traumatic for all of us but by morning, after lots of prayer, we were amazed at his recovery. He has somehow since then got an infection in his paw and so is having to wear the ‘cone of shame’ (and somewhat ironically, an old sock donated by Hannah from ‘Top Jump’!)👇🏻

This also means Oliver isn’t yet joining us on our new daily sponsored run! (Here’s a video for more about that -https://youtu.be/M6ApS2QoKpk?si=_0YegpLxVrGsmSAa)

So that’s Christmas and the Cone of Shame, but what’s this about Cholera I hear you ask…

Well, today the Zambian Government have announced that all schools need to delay their openings because of a Cholera outbreak in certain parts of the country. As far as we know there are no outbreaks near us but it will change when Abi and Hannah properly start at Chengelo.

The government have suggested a delay of almost 3 weeks with pupils then having to make up time at the end of the term. What it means for us exactly we’re not sure yet but please be praying - Feels a bit like re-living the strangeness of covid and school closures in England which I’m sure you agree we could all do without!  Will keep you updated.

Thanks for all your Christmas greetings and messages over this last little while, as always we are so encouraged by you standing with us! X