Isaac's Happy Birthday!

This past Sunday we celebrated Isaac's 2nd birthday! It was a very simple Cookie Monster/Sesame Street family party. The only thing that would have made it better was having our family from the States with us. Isaac and his sisters celebrated by blowing bubbles and playing with balloons. He received many fun gifts, especially toy tools, which the girls have enjoyed just as much as he has! A huge cookie cake and homemade vanilla ice cream topped off the celebration. Enjoy the pics of his special day!

Bunnytown!

With our stay in Johannesburg longer than we expected, we have had some opportunities for fun family times. We went to a Bunny Park that is totally free and very delightful! Not only were there bunnies, but there were streams with lots of ducks and fish, cows, goats, sheep, birds, etc. It was fun to watch the children delight in such simple things, feeding carrots to the bunnies and bread to the ducks. Yes, Isaac did try to chase a rabbit with a stick, but isn't that normal boy behavior? :-)

It's a BOY!

If you knew us when we were pregnant with our first three children, you may be shocked to hear that we found out the gender of our 4th child! With this being our first child in Africa, things are a little different. Because we have to travel to South Africa from Zambia for the birth of this baby, there is some planning that must take place. Should my Mom & Dad bring our baby girls clothes from the States? Should I pack for Joburg my baby boy clothes? But most importantly in our decision to find out the gender was that the siblings wanted to know! And we thought we could best prepare them for this new baby's arrival if they could be praying for the baby by name. We were overjoyed to see that our next child will be a baby boy, Amos Jude Kimbrough! The whole family was able to watch the ultrasound and Abigail's face just beamed when the doctor said it was a boy...and he said it was very definitely a boy, so we shouldn't have any surprises come the end of July! Thanks for praying for this pregnancy and for our little Amos!

In this photo, Dawnya is with our missionary friend, Kristy, who serves in South Africa. You can see how Amos and Mommy are growing (photo at 24 weeks).

VBS

The highlight of our Sectional Meeting in Johannesburg for our kids was their VBS classes. Over 30 volunteers from Tennessee came all this way to care for and love on all the Missionary Kids, ranging in age from newborns to teenagers about to start university. They learned Bible stories, had great playtimes, and made lots of crafts & projects, including adorable tie-dye t-shirts!

Isabel with 2 of her teachers, Robert and Victoria. By the end of the week, Isabel decided that Victoria was her best friend!

Abigail had a special bond with one of her teachers, Diana.


Isaac with his new friend Rick. They had a blast looking for and listening to the airplanes literally flying overhead!

Where are we?

Being in Johannesburg, South Africa has been quite an experience and totally different from our normal life in the bush of Zambia! It has been fun doing some shopping in fancy malls and eating at nice restaurants and even fast-food chains like Kentucky Fried Chicken and the kids favorite, McDonalds! Along with freeways and police cars, in some ways we feel like we're in the States! There's even a Toys 'R Us store here! We were so excited to find Monopoly for a good price at the toy store. Not until we looked at it closer at our hotel room, did we realize it was in the Afrikaans language and using South African Rand for currency--oops! We quickly decided we needed to return it and wait to get a U.S. version of the game!

Happy Easter!

We had a wonderful celebration of our Christ's resurrection! We spent the day in Lusaka, attending an English speaking church and then enjoying afternoon lunch and fellowship with fellow missionaries. You may notice we often talk about how much we enjoy fellowship with others. We miss that while we are in Isoka as there are fewer opportunities for fellowship with fellow believers who understand what our life is like as rural missionaries.

Luwalizi Update

In our March prayer update, we implored you to pray for the evangelism that would take place in Luwalizi on a Saturday. Because of concerns with our Land Cruiser (it’s a long story, but all is well), Blake was unable to go to Luwalizi that day. Although he was very discouraged, he later found out that the believers did still go out around their village doing door-to-door evangelism, even though the missionary wasn’t there! We praise the Lord for the excitement of Luwalizi Baptist Church to share the gospel message with their fellow Zambians! In fact, the following Saturday they met again to continue door-to-door evangelism and they have committed to go out every Saturday to evangelize! A few of them even ‘practice’ sharing the gospel on Tuesdays and Thursdays…isn’t that great!!!

Ruth's Testimony

Ruth is one of the new believers in Luwalizi Village . Blake asked them to share a testimony of how their life has changed since becoming a believer. Ruth said, “Before I received Christ, I drank lots of beer and got drunk all the time. But since Christ, I no longer thirst for beer.”

“…Anyone who drinks this water will soon become thirsty again. But those who drink the water I give will never be thirsty again. It becomes a fresh, bubbling spring within them, giving them eternal life.” John 4:13-14 (NLT).

Isabel, Abigail, & Isaac

Here's a recent picture of our kids. Although our yard is very small, they have a blast playing outside among the beautiful flowers and always getting into the orange dirt. We praise the Lord for the beauty all around us!

Northern Evangelism Team (NET)

About a year ago we posted a picture of our team, which we often talk about in blogs and in our prayer updates. But in a year, many things change! So here's a new picture of the Northern Evangelism Team, with new team member Justin Drummons and 2 precious little baby boyss, Hutch Adair and Luke Bowman. In the coming year, we look forward to welcoming several more members to our team. We encourage you to check out their blogs to find out what is happening all over the Northern Province of Zambia!

Photo taken at Arcades Shopping Mall in Lusaka, Zambia, where we enjoy many restaurants, a big grocery store, even a movie theater and bowling alley--a fun place to be which is VERY different from our daily lives in the Northern Province!

Life in Lusaka

We have been in Lusaka for over a week now. The highlights of our trip have been an overnight date at Protea Safarai Lodge and fellowship/fun with our Northern Evangelism Team (Bowmans, Adairs, & Justin), along with other missionaries here. We had a team meeting which was really good and we are so blessed to be on such a great team. We encourage you to check out our teammates websites so you can be on board with what is happening in the Northern Province of Zambia.

We’ve also been spoiled with non-stop electricity and lots of eating out! We’ve discovered how much we like Indian food! In Isoka there is no where to eat out, unless we want to eat traditional Zambian food.

Although we have fun in Lusaka , there’s no place like home! With ministry in full-swing for Blake and Dawnya busy with the children, life is fulfilling although sometimes difficult and always adventurous!

Adventures in Isoka

Some may call this culture shock, but we just call it life! Here's a real life story from a couple of weeks ago. It all started when the power was off at least 3 different times one day, on top of the fact the power has been off more than on lately! (We later came to find out the entire country was having electricity problems). This one night the power stayed off for about 11 hours. In the 'relative' quietness of the night, we heard something in the kitchen. Blake investigated while I sat scared on the sofa and he discovered that we had a kitchen huge field rat that was rummaging through some grocery sacks in our pantry. He also discovered the source of our gas stove/oven problem which had been broken for nearly 2 weeks. We thought it was the regulator that had broken, but this rat had actually chewed through the hose running the propane from the tank to the stove!

So Sunday morning he immediately started to fix that before he even eats breakfast. Well, there's still this rat on the loose, but thankfully it did tear into the decon stuff he put out the night before. We had totally taken apart the bottom of the pantry with stuff everywhere in the kitchen. We had to pull back the stove and the big cabinet to the left of it (the gas hose runs behind it). We're trying to catch this nasty rat, but it kept getting away from us! It even crawled all over Blake but was so fast that he couldn't catch it! I was trying to keep my cool, but it was so hard! The kids were totally taking cues from me as to be scared or not, so the pressure was on. But I about lost it when Blake said I had to stab the rat with the end of a broom if it came through this particular spot! But thankfully it didn't!!!! It's still on the loose, but we think it may have crawled behind the fridgeto die...Blake even heard some kind of 'dying rat noise.' But in the midst of all that, we find that we not only had a field rat, but also little rat babies behind the cabinet. They were very tiny so Blake easily swept 'em up and eliminated them. In the midst of all this, the kids were SO hungry, there was still NO power, except it came on for about 45 minutes then was off again for another 5-6 hours that day! I hope you enjoyed hearing about our Sunday adventures. We never know what each day will hold...oh, about the stove, Blake has put in a metal pipe and then put a flexible hose through the pipe and he got it up and running! He's my hero! There may be more rats but at least they won't eat through our gas hose! Here's a few things we learned. I do not like rats, but I'd rather it be a rat than a snake anyday! We also learned how to bake things on the stove top (actually a Coleman camp stove), putting 2 iron skillets together (a make-shift Dutch oven). We feasted on southern biscuits, pizza, and even homemade bread!

Luwalizi Baptist Church

We are overjoyed to introduce you to the first members of Luwalizi Baptist Church: Lucky, Fred, Michael, Matthew, and Ruth.



These new believers in Christ were baptized yesterday (15 January), with many adults and children gathered around. I think you can see the joy in their faces, the joy that comes only from experiencing the forgiveness, grace, and salvation from our Lord! Please continue to pray for this new church!

Ballerina Isabel

What do you do when your 5-year-old says she wants to be a ballerina when she grows up, but you live in a country where there is NO such thing? I felt like there had to be a balance between sqashing her "dream" and encouraging her to try something she's interested in. So I found a "Baby Ballet" DVD that is a beginning ballet class that can be done in the home and gave it to her for Christmas, along with some basic ballet attire. In the picture you see, she is obviously decked out in her ballet clothing, which of course, is her favorite part of pretending to be a ballerina! She's done the little ballet class a few times and she's adorable trying to do the simple steps. But the biggest hoot of all is watching Isaac try to do ballet, while Abigail just watches.



As it goes for a 5-year-old, just yesterday she said she wanted to learn gymnastics. How does she even know what gymnastics is? :-)

Christmas in Isoka

Although Christmas was several weeks ago, I wanted to share about our first Christmas in Isoka (last year we spent it in Luwingu, Zambia). The pictures here show 2 of our Kimbrough Family traditions, special Christmas pajamas on Christmas Eve and our "Birthday Cake for Jesus."





Although our gifts were in big, black trunks rather than underneath a beautifully decorated Christmas tree, we tried to focus on the true GIFT of Christmas, Jesus. In the days before Christmas, we worked as a family (even Blake was in the kitchen helping us!!!) making simple Christmas cookies to share with our friends and workers, trying to help teach the children why we give gifts. The girls helped me make the delivieries to my 3 friends in town, who happen to be Jehovah's Witness, so we were able to share with them why we were giving them a Christmas gift. Speaking of gifts, our family sent an over abundance of gifts for us! We felt so spoiled, but mostly we felt their love.

Christmas was different here, without all the commercialism that does help promote that "Christmas" feeling. The church we attend doesn't sing any particular Christmas carols, so we tried to sing some on our own, especially teaching the children "Away in a Manger" and "Silent Night", along with some silly ones like "Jingle Bells" and "Frosty the Snowman." Even though Christmas was different, it was still a joyful celebration of the birth of our SAVIOR and we look forward to Christmas 2008, with Blake's mom here!