Today is Tannen’s birthday. If you take nothing else away from this post, remember that. And send presents. In honor of her illustrious birth, as well as Kathy’s (which is later this week), we ate dinner at the Copper Cabana, a stylishly thatch-roofed bar & grill / restaurant / music-thumping social hotspot. Mufulira seems to be benefiting from the increasing demand for copper.
Tannen and I spent the day at the Church Planting School, hosting an Orphans & Vulnerable Children (OVC) workshop. We were discussing LRPI’s philosophy for orphan care, as well as hearing from some potential partner organizations that we’ve either already been working with, or were identified by Johnny during his sojourn here. We had Joseph and Hilda from Enfys, the Chibesas and two of their students from Tanzania, Simon (our first loan recipient), Jane Chinyama (interested in developing an OVC program at her church), Herbert from Solwezi, and Terry and Idah from our Regional Office. All of these folks have a real heart for this ministry, and it’s inspiring to hear their stories and vision.
The highlight for me was a comment Joseph made that a couple of our Earn It alums, who have graduated from school and now have jobs, have started giving back to the program. Not only have they gone on to see success in their own lives, they’ve also been motivated to pay it forward, which is one more step towards sustainability.
So altogether, not a bad day. Plus there was cake. And ice cream. Some team members, who will remain unnamed, may have consumed ice cream 3 times today. In their defense, every ice cream machine in town has been out of order since we arrived, and today they were so excited to find a working one, they had to stop in twice. But that was before they were informed that there would be birthday dairy delights this evening. We shouldn’t judge. Not too much, anyway.
~Megan
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