Crickets, wedding and students,watch out for cows!

- May 12, 2013

When I went to the US I got a new smart phone. At first I was thinking it was the smarter one of the two of us! I decided to put my message to notify me of new messages on a cricket sound. The first day I kept checking my phone every few minutes when I heard the c cricket sound but no messages! This went on for awhile until I finally figured out there are too many real crickets at the hospital and so I was hearing real crickets not a message coming through! I quickly changed to another sound!

This past weekend Major and I traveled to Gweru (in the middle of the country—about 6 hours from here) for the wedding of Sylvia’s nephew. We left Friday at 4 a.m. from the mission to get to the dentist at 9 a.m. in Harare for a dentist appointment. Then we met up with Gladys and we had Cheryl with us and we took off for Gweru. We met Ben Pennington in Gweru that evening and he took Cheryl and Gladys on to Harare while Major and I met up with Zebedee Togarepi and spent the night in Gweru for the wedding the next morning.

Cheryl presented at a ladies meeting at Masvingo Christian Church on Saturday. She talked on Women’s health and it was well received and they want her back for a week to do exams on all of them!

The wedding was great fun and we spent the whole day dancing, singing and celebrating! Saw a lot of Sylvia’s family and took lots of pictures for her to share in the celebration since she could not come from the US! The groom came riding in on a horse and looked like a dressed up cowboy!

We drove on that evening to Masvingo and met up with the rest of our group. We went to church with Pennington’s the next morning. Cheryl and I did another health session with the widows support group after church. We had lunch at Pennington’s with Marcia Kay Thomson, another missionary in Masvingo who has been going through chemo treatments. She was looking well and very bright and positive. She is looking forward to a Mediterranean Cruise she is going on in early June for two weeks.

We then drove on to Harare and spent the night there. Spent the next day running around doing errands while Major started a course in grant writing and funding raising for the week. A driver from the mission came to pick up Cheryl and I and we finally left Harare at 6 p.m. and got home at 11:30 p.m.! The road seems to be getting worse!

This week was busy with one doctor gone for 2 days to a conference and then both gone from Friday until Sunday night—so I am on call!

Friday night a group of Zimbabwe Christian College students arrived for 4 days of chaplain training. We teach them how to make hospital visits for the future congregations. These are seniors and graduate on June 7^th. We have 10 in this group and next week there will be 12. We spent a lot of time teaching about AIDS and ministering to people with AIDS. We have been doing this for 21 years and have trained many ministers. It is a great time for all of us. Some of those ministers are now working in Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, South Africa and Sudan! We pray they are ministering to many people with AIDS and helping them. This morning Major took 8 of them out to 4 of our churches to preach and encourage the churches and 2 stayed here to preach at our church here.

This morning I got called to see a 3 year old boy who got gored by a cow. He got cut on his scrotum and his testicle was hanging out! Ouch! We quickly sutured him back together! A common laceration here from cows!