Warm Welcome!

Hello everyone! This is Jo Cook, (junior/softball) and Mackenzie Ralston, (junior/swimmer) writing today. We finally made it to Zambia after two long travel days. From London, we had an eleven hour plane ride to Johannesburg and then a three hour layover there before a short two hour flight to Livingstone. Once in Livingstone, we realized some of the bags were missing so those will hopefully be here tomorrow. John, a Poetice leader, met us at the airport to take us on a two hour bus ride to Choma. Even though we were all tired from all the travel we still managed to play games and bond as a team on the bus ride.

When we arrived to the base where we will be staying, we were welcomed by a swarm of team members and students. They greeted us with hugs, smiles, and so much excitement. Regardless of how exhausted our whole team was feeling, the warm welcome rejuvenated all of us and we are all excited for this week.

After unloading our bags and being shown to our homes for the week, we met back with everyone for snacks. We had popcorn, cookies, coffee, and tea with everyone and just got to know the people from Poetice we will be working alongside this week. We played a couple get-to-know you games that allowed us to find similarities between all of us and we even found some people have the same birthday.

After the snack break we were lead to the worship center where our team introduced ourselves and we got introduced to each team member who works at Poetice. We also got to meet some students who are joining us for the week who just participated for the last 3 months in Poetice’s School for Justice and Mission which trains and equips students from all over the world (6 different countries) for lives of mission. We were all then able to have a short session of worship all together. Team members prayed over us individually and for what the upcoming week will hold for us.  Most of us found this to be very powerful. We all saw God working today when we heard people we met an hour ago pray for our specific worries and thoughts going into this trip. It was personal to where we were at, and it was incredible for some of us to see God speak to us through the staff members who prayed.

We finished the night with dinner and team debrief. We did a short devotion on Mark 4, the parable of the sower, and each member of our group had some time to think about where our hearts are at in responding to Jesus in our own lives.  And we all discussed moments when we saw God working and got to talk about highlights of the day. We ended our meeting with prayer. Overall, it was an amazing first day here and we are all looking forward to tomorrow.

Jo and Mackenzie

Joke of the day:
Answer from yesterday: Plane chocolate

Today’s joke: Why can’t a bicycle stand up?

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *