off to a great start!

I’M FINALLY HERE!! We just finished our second day on the ground, so let me try to remember what has happened since we left DFW!

A group of us flew out of DFW on Tuesday at around 6 pm and I got to meet most of the other summer staff girls that I’m living with! The 10-hour flight wasn’t bad at all.. didn’t sleep at all but on the bright side, I got to watch a ton of movies! We arrived in London at around 8 am, i think, and Megan and I made the (best) decision to rent a room at the Sofitel during our layover. (The Sofitel is a beautiful hotel connected to the London Heathrow airport.) Our layover in London was about 10 hours, so we got a good 6 hours of sleep and the chance to shower! After we checked out of the hotel, we went back into the airport, made it through security without a hitch, and waited on our next flight to Zambia. The second 10-hour flight in two days also wasn’t too bad.. I did manage to sleep for about an hour! It was much like the first flight, but I watched different movies and the dinner and breakfast was less appealing to say the least... The absolute highlight of that flight was the incredible African sunrise that greeted us as we were preparing to land. I can honestly say that I have ever seen a more beautiful sunrise in my life! God truly welcomed us to Zambia by showing us His beauty through this sunrise-- every color of the rainbow was represented as they blended together to form the perfect sunrise! What a way to start off this summer!

We landed on Thursday morning at an early 6 am and were out of the airport by 7:15 am or so. Praise the Lord that we all got every piece of luggage that we sent over and that none of it was lost in transit! Such a blessing! As we all loaded the bus to make our way to Mulungushi Villas (our lodging for the summer), we were informed by FLMI staff that summer staff girls would be put to work immediately. We got to the villas shortly after and had a chance to unpack our stuff and get settled in. Megan and I are in one room together, and Kim, Hannah, and Emily are all in another room. Then we all loaded up and went to the orientation meeting for the Zambian Camp LIFE volunteers. It was about two hours of singing and dancing, passing out staff T-shirts, and listening to Greer explain the layout of Camp LIFE and the expectations for the volunteers. After we were done there, we all went over to the Arcades (the shopping center/restaurants/market close to the villas) and ate some lunch. When we got back to the villas, they had us start in on unpacking boxes and sorting uniforms that would be given to the kids at the Tree of Life. After an hour and a half or so of doing that, we went to the main villa and started loading up donation boxes and transferring them back to our villa to organize them before they were also sent out to the Tree of Life. Definitely got some heavy lifting in already! Anyway, after that, we finished up with uniforms and all tried to stay awake until dinner. Our pizza dinner was at Megan’s/The Hughey’s villa and I was definitely struggling to keep my eyes completely open as conversations around me were going on. We finished dinner and came back to the villa around 7 pm, and I was definitely out by 7:30 pm.

A whopping 12 hours later, I woke up, showered, and got ready for day two! Today we started out by heading to the main villa to start labeling supplies that would be sent out to all of the villas for the summer... such as cleaning supplies, storage bins, dish drying racks, etc... This was a huge task as there was a large number of these supplies! Then, Katy pulled me aside and we went to go write down the numbers of each of the villas’ electrical units. Each summer, FLMI rents out certain villas in Mulungushi, and we are responsible for paying the bills for the electricity, so that’s why we had to collect the numbers. We did that and then ate a quick lunch around 1:30 pm. I met back up with summer staff and we all headed out to the Tree of Life to help with the allocation of all of the clothes that we sorted yesterday. We got done with that a few hours later and got to see some of our kiddos there and hang out with them! Finally, we came back to the villas, bought internet, and went to dinner at Mandahill (basically a nicer Arcades). After dinner, we had a summer staff meeting with John and Katy and in which we discussed general expectations and goals for being on summer staff this year. After the meeting, we all had some time to catch up on emails and facebook, and then we talked with Paige until past midnight.. and then we went to bed!

So far it’s been a great first two days-- can’t wait for the Americans to get here tomorrow and camp to start on Monday!!


People mentioned in this blog:
Megan Jarvie- summer staff
Hannah Ellis- summer staff
Kim Schroeder- summer staff
Emily Herring- summer staff
Greer- CEO and founder of Family Legacy Missions Int.
Megan Malnar- staff on FLMI, lives in Zambia full-time, worked summer staff with me last summer
The Hugheys- Clay (father) is staff on FLMI, wife Erin and 4 adorable kids, lives in Zambia full-time
Katy Gibson- staff on FLMI, worked summer staff with me last year
John Tucker- staff on FLMI
Paige Baten-Locke- staff on FLMI, the “mother” of the summer staff girls’ villa