It is 2012 – another day, another year! J Christmas came quickly since it was only two days after camp. We had a lovely Christmas Eve service at church – our decorations from the banquet were still up so the Church Hall looked very festive for the occasion. It was wonderful to see some of the young people from camp at church as well – they hadn’t been attending regularly prior to camp, but some of them were among the 10 baptized, so I think we’ll be seeing more of them in the weeks to come. Praise God!! J
Christmas day was spent with a good friend of mine, Zuriel Chirwa. I first met him last year at church; he was the worship leader. He is one of the many Youth Leaders that Kayla and I have come to know and befriend during our time in Malawi. Zuriel and I have decided to start dating, which is exciting and definitely something new for me.
I mentioned in my prayers on my last blog that I had a cough… Unfortunately, my cough decided to hang on during the week between Christmas & New Years – it is actually still around as I type this blog (Wednesday, 1/4). I had dinner with Pastor Nihaka, his wife, Chisomo and Peter on Monday evening; when they heard my cough, they said we should go to the clinic. At first, I said I would be fine, but I woke up Tuesday still not feeling well and figured it would be best to get some medicine to help me beat this illness. I finished my antibiotics on Monday night and they did help me to feel better; just not 100% yet.
My New Year’s celebration was a quiet one. Zuriel was out of town for work and since I was already not feeling well, I just stayed in my house. The church next door had a celebration of singing and dancing all night long – literally. It was wonderful to listen to them rejoice and watch some fireworks outside my windows as we rang in the New Year. I also got up around 7am to welcome the New Year to the US as well. J It was bittersweet to welcome in the New Year because this means that I have less than 2 months left in Malawi, which makes me sad, but I am excited for events and plans that I have upon my return to the US – if only I could be in two places at once!
I woke up with a smile and excitement on Tuesday – school was starting again! J I missed the laughter and chatter of all the children here. As of right now, I am still teaching in Standard 5 - Kayla and I will talk with the Headmaster & Deputy Headmaster to see if they would like us to change and to offer some suggestions of where else we would like to help. We had a good number of learners absent, which made me a little sad because many of them were those who had failed the first term. My hope is that they were just missing this first day and that they will be back to school soon. I also discovered a mistake that I made when totaling their scores; I was using Excel and forgot to add in one of their test scores – making all of their total scores wrong (which made it look like more failed than actually failed) and changed some of their class positions. Apparently, some parents had been calling last week and many were phoning Mr. Ntchentche to share their concern about this error. I felt so bad when I realized what happened! Thankfully, it was a quick and easy fix. I was able to give the teacher the correct total scores and I wrote a letter of apology to the parents. I think most of them will understand once they realize what happened and that we were able to correct it in a timely manner. I’m looking forward to the rest of the week & this second term with the children!! J
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