The Rest Was History

Hello from your good friends Mina and Emmy! 

Here is a little bit about ourselves:  We both grew up in the beautiful West Michigan, where we live fifteen minutes away from each other, but still haven’t been to each others house.  Classic.  But we live together both on campus and in Zambia so it makes up for it for now.  Mina loves donuts; Emmy likes donuts.  Emmy loves pizza; Mina likes pizza.  Its always a win win situation.  ….Except for when you are in Zambia with very very few donuts and pizza.  But hey… it makes it all the more special when we do get to eat them, and something to look forward to when we get home.  So if anyone wants to catch us coming off the plane with pizza and donuts we would probably fall to the ground and weep at your feet. 

Other things we love:

Traveling and experiencing new places

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Hanging out in our Enos

The great outdoors

Lake Michigan

Gazing at the stars

The Detroit Tigers

Waking up at 4:45 in the morning to witness the blood moon

Hudsonville Ice Cream

Skyping our homies who are holding down ToHo 504 for us back on campus

The Blood Moon that we saw at 4:45 the morning (Photo Credit: Kara Wise)

Now, to what we did this week!

We are still in Zimba working at the hospital here and taking classes.  This upcoming week will conclude our time in Zimba, and we will be headed on to Livingstone this Saturday. 

Choma:  Every Monday we have been traveling to Choma, Zambia (about two hours away from Zimba) to partner with a mission organization called EMIZ (Elijah Mission International of Zambia).  During our time with them, we spilt into four teams all partaking in different ministry opportunities.  Group 1: Led a soccer ministry where they played games and did a brief Bible study with a group of young boys and girls.  Group 2: Went on house visits in a near by village, visiting the houses of some of the students that EMIZ sponsors for school.  They spent time checking in on the families, praying with them, and seeing what other immediate needs they had.  Group 3: Visited the Shamponde House, which is a house paid for by EMIZ as a transition home to help families get back on their feet and reintegrated into the community.  Group 4: Went to the nearby Secondary school and met with the students there that they sponsor.  Choma is always a highlight of our week and we love working with the EMIZ staff.  We are headed back to Choma today and are excited for the new opportunities that we will get to experience this week. 

Outreach: Each week a group of students is able to partner with Zimba Mission Hospital and go on village outreaches.  We go with the Maternal Child Health department to provide immunizations to children, prenatal check-ups for expecting mothers, and family planning teaching.  These services are provided for the Zambians who live so far out in the bush that they have very little access to coming in to town to receive health care.  Each team has had a very different, yet very rewarding experience.  It was such a unique experience for our group that we were inspired to write a little song on our very bumpy ride home.  

On our First Day of Outreach

(Sung to the tune of the 12 days of Christmas)

On our first day of outreach this is what we saw,

12 urine samples,

11 tetanus shots,

10 tedious notebooks,

9 pounds of nshima,

8 monkeys crossing,

7 hours later,

thirtySIX kilometers,

5 caaaaarrrrrdboarrrrrd boxes,

4 nursing students,

3 bagged turkeys,

2 random ladies,

and a guinea fowl under the seat

If you have any questions about this song or about our experiences on outreach please feel free to email us at Emily.kimes@myemail.indwes.edu or hanneke.veldhuijzen@myemail.indwes.edu.  We will get back to you as soon as possible (Zambia internet pending).

Academics: We don’t really have a strong desire to talk about our academics, but since this is an “Academic Trip” we figured we should cover all of our bases.  We currently have Mama Marcie here with us to teach us about Community Nursing.  We have learned so much through this class and it has applied in so many situations that we have experienced here in Zambia so far.  We just took our final test this past week, and are preparing to take our final exam for Community Nursing this week.  Unfortunately this means that Mama Marcie will be leaving us shortly, but we are eagerly anticipating the arrival of Grammy Pammy in two weeks.  When she arrives we will be continuing our “academic studies” with a Leadership & Management of Nursing Course.  In the mean time, some students have been participating in a History of Zambia course, where they have been stretched and pushed to look at things in a new way.  The group of students not in the history class are taking part in a Professional Transitions class where we are preparing to take the NCLEX after graduation.  Okay… enough about that….

The last thing we would like to talk about in this week’s edition of Zambia Team Updates 2015, is the Saturday Fun Night of this week.  It actually ended up being a Sunday Fun Night, due to the very frequent power outages that Zambia has.  This week we took some time to celebrate our engaged sisters, Maureen and Leah!  They are both so precious and so darling and it was awesome to spend a night honoring them.   We had a story time where Maureen and Leah shared their love stories, a marriage question panel with our team leaders, our on rendition of the Newlywed game that we liked to call “The Nearlywed Game”, a toilet paper wedding dress competition, a hashtag game where team members created potential hashtags the brides could use on their big days, a time of prayer over each of the girls and their future marriages, and a toast to them (complete with cake and sparkling grape juice!!).  Overall it was such a fun night to celebrate the two girls and bless them with love and support. 

Maureen receiving her custom fit toilet paper wedding dress.

The Brides to Be with one of our hosts, Gertrude, who made them a cake for the special night!

The whole team at the end of the night!

So this is what we did this week, and when we weren't doing these things the rest of the time was spent in History class (hence the title: The Rest Was History) We will be so sad to leave Zimba come Saturday, but we are excited for the future experiences that God has for our time here in Zambia.  It’s crazy to think that we have already been in this beautiful country for a month, and as we try to slow the time down, it seems to just keep speeding up on us.  Thank you all so much for your prayers and support from home, they truly mean the world to our team.  Please continue to pray for good health and safe travels as we move on to our next location on Saturday. 

Our last Sunday at Pilgrim Wesleyan Church of Zimba! We will miss worshipping with these wonderful people!

Much Love to all of the family, friends, faculty, homies, and facebook users that just like to read random blog posts that they come across on their news feed,

Mina and Emmy