April 2, 2013

Easter Meetings

A month has flown by, and we are looking towards a season that is going to fly even faster.  As we move into the month of April and May we begin to see a good number of volunteers and short-term teams coming out to help at Karanda.  We love the activity and new faces (and some ones we got to know last year) around on the campus.  It also means a lot more help with the busy load of patients who come to our doors. Rains have ended and we can now cross the river!  That means a lot quicker trip to Harare (with a lot less bumps) and the patients who have needed to come can now cross.  We continue to pray with the rest of the community for a bridge to be built.


Leena Grace has been working hard at growing and enjoys here brothers' attention.  She is now over one month old!



We hope you had a wonderful Easter.  Easter here is quite a bit different from the United States.  The church here has what is called Easter Meetings.  They meet, along with other churches, to have a weekend of services, meetings, lessons and fellowship.  Christopher was able to go along this year and spend one night.  Here are some pictures of the time he was there.  


The Easter Meeting Christopher attended was with our local pastor at Rusambo, a former mission station, one hour north from Karanda Mission Hospital.


Uniforms are important in Zimbabwe.  The women dress in a certain outfit for their church denomination.  This is one of the services inside the church.



At night he enjoyed worship with dancing and singing!


The second night of Easter Meetings, they showed the Jesus film on the outside of the church building.  The film is in Shona, the language of the area we work.  

With how busy the hospital gets, Christopher has not been able to get away and participate in outreaches and rural activities of the hospital such as this.  He was happy to be a part of this experience and hopes with this season of help coming to Karanda, he can do more things like this before we leave.  

We also want to share that our TEP (our work permit) has been extended through the end of this year!  We are thankful that this was not a big ordeal like last year, and we can focus on ending strong here at Karanda.  Thank you for your continued prayers in many different areas.  You lift us up!