Update- July 5, 2009

This week's big excitement was the arrival of our daughter Sara on Thursday.  We took Jason and George to Livingstone with us to meet her at the airport.  The language lessons that the Harding speech pathology group taught at the orphanages really helped these two little guys with their vocabularies.  They are both now obsessed with naming colors, so the entire two-hour trip was filled with, "Nana, look!  Orange truck!"  or "Look, David!  Blue sign!"  They named every animal they saw and kept us quite entertained.  

Jason still remembers Sara from her time at the orphanage in 2007 and always stops in front of her picture to point at her and say, "Sara!"  And when George is around, Jason usually says, "My Sara!"  They were both glad to see her, and George was even willing to pose with her and a group of traditional dancers outside the airport.  

Jason was worn out after all the excitement and fell asleep in the back seat on the way home--wearing Sara's eye mask from the plane.

In a case of unfortunate timing, we had some painting done in the house on Thursday and Friday. The paint fumes were horrible, so we had to open all the windows and turn on the fans--on the coldest days we've had yet! We all piled on layers of clothes, and David tried to keep a fire going in the fireplace each evening. Tonight the smell is almost gone, and we have the windows closed again.

The annual Namwianga Lectureship started on Friday night and runs through Monday. Usually we manage to do some sort of American celebration here on the 4th of July. Yesterday we didn't manage anything remotely American or festive. David spoke both at the morning and evening sessions of the lectureship, I spoke at the women's session in the afternoon, and we went to a funeral in the middle part of the day. Sara was recovering from jet lag and a sore throat, so she stayed home and rested.   Maybe next year!

 Tomorrow the early team for Zambia Medical Mission arrives, and we'll have four new residents at our house.  The usual furniture in the guest rooms is going out tomorrow and will be replaced by bunk beds.  We're looking forward to lots of activity and fellowship the next few weeks.