psalm 51:12 (and a bit more)

I’m sitting here with two of the other summer staff girls as we’re printing off a thousand pictures to go on the kids’ certificates tomorrow and I’m thinking about this past week. Tomorrow is ALREADY the last day of Week 2, and then we start Week 3 on Saturday! And while the days have flown by, we’re all exhausted and worn out in every way. Our strength for the summer has already been used up as we have constantly been running from 7:30am to 10:30pm every day, so we’re all really having learn how to rely completely on the Lord for his energy and strength instead of our own. Many of us are beginning to get sick if we haven’t already, and we hardly have time to rest and recover.

I found this awesome verse a couple days ago and I realized that it is exactly my prayer (and I’m sure many of the other girls’ prayer, too). It Psalm 51:12, and it says, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.” First of all, being on summer staff means having routines down and doing the same things day after day. I like having routines, but sometimes it gets hard to be joyful about doing the same thing over again. The verse says, “restore to me the joy of your salvation” and I know that’s what I need. I want God to remind me day after day about why I’m even here loving on these orphans, because of the joy of salvation. God has saved me and given me life, and I know that Satan is working as hard as he can to keep me from remembering that. If my days are monotonous, I want more than anything for the Lord to knock me over the head with the joy that comes from knowing Him! Secondly, summer staff can be very humbling sometimes as we are given jobs that nobody else has time to do and we do a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ work. Therefore, there are many times that we are assigned to do things that we don’t really want to do or we don’t think we have the energy to do. Satan also attacks us here by tempting us to slack off or not do our best, but that’s where our reliance on the Lord comes in. We have to ask God to “grant us a willing spirit, to sustain me.” That word sustain is so powerful because it means more than simply surviving, it’s being strengthened or supported. God will give us a spirit that is eager to help or do whatever is asked, and that will STRENGTHEN us. That’s exactly what we need! I know that I want and need to be strengthened and sustained over the next 7 weeks if I’m going to glorify Him at all. Please be praying that verse over me and the rest of the staff; we want so badly to do His work and love on His children in Zambia as well and effectively as we can, but we need sustenance from God to even have that be a possibility!

To finish up this post, I’ll talk a little about Zambian wildlife! The summer staff girls of apartment 7 have been blessed with a few pets over the course of our stay here in Mulungushi Village...
First of all, our friendly house-spider, Douglass, keeps us company in the bathroom as we get ready in the morning and as we do other bathroom business. He’s gray in color and about the size of a poker chip, and he’s super sweet in nature. He abides about 7 feet above ground in the corner of the bathroom by the toilet. There’s a little crack in the wall that he likes to venture in and out of, it’s probably where he rests and such. He likes to play hide and seek with us, so it’s always a gamble as to whether or not he’ll be peeking out of his little crack or not! 
Last night, Becca and I were walking around Mulungushi delivering supplies to our Americans when, out of nowhere, two baby kittens started following us everywhere. They would keep pace about 10 feet behind us, but they never went in a different direction. Since they decided to cling to us, we thought it would be appropriate to name them. In the spirit of Zambian culture, we named the kittens by the Zambian pronunciations of our names: the gray kitten is named “Labecca” and the white one with black spots is now named “Maliah.” After giving them milk and bread, they followed us all the way back home, but weren’t there in the morning. So maybe someday, Labecca and Maliah will make a second appearance for us!
Finally, it is rumored that there are black mambas out at the Tree of Life; and although I’ve never personally seen one, I know they’re there! Black mambas are more toxic and faster than any other snake in Africa, and they are the only kind of snake known to have been able to bring down an elephant. We watched a youtube video on them last night, and learned that they can stand most of their body up by their tail and can “run” on their tail. They slither more than 5m/sec, which is faster than the average human can run. Long story short, these snakes are legendary, and I’ve been close to this snake even though I haven’t seen it yet!

Okay that’s all for now! Miss you all and wish you were all here with me!