Golden Harvest Zim

20th August 2011

The fire went out all by itself! Herbert said he watched it until about 12 that night and it just went out! The Lord is so good! An answer to prayer! It hardly even looked burnt. Exodus 14:14 – “The Lord will fight for you!”

We went into Harare today for a ZH (Zambezi Holidays) camp dinner. They are celebrating 25 years of camps. Matt went on them a long time ago and anyone reading this may remember them and gone on a few themselves. It was more significant for us in that where the dinner was being held; there was a ZH dinner at the same place four years ago, the dinner where Matt and I met! It was funny being there again tonight and thinking back to the night when I saw him walk in the door and thought how gorgeous he still was, and he met me and told his room-mate that he had met his wife that night. We went home our separate ways that night but tonight we went home together! How romantic!

19th August 2011

It is 8pm and I am sitting alone in the dark. Matt is out fighting another fire! There was no power tonight and Matt received a message from Herbert who now lives at the field to say that there was another fire. We looked out of the window and could see the glow in the dark night – the one side of Babar was completely lit up and the flames were illuminated against the smoke. Matt threw on his fire fighting clothes and went down to the field with a few guys. He has just sent me a text to say that it looks ok but they will wait a while and watch it. Please Lord; make it go out by itself!

Matt is home now and they all felt that it wasn’t burning too badly. A few of the guys were going to sit around their fire and keep watch but praise the Lord, tonight is the calmest night we have had all month, not a single breath of wind. The fire was moving slowly and it wasn’t as bad as it looked form the house apparently. Herbert will keep watch a call Matt if necessary.

The guys told Matt that there are a group of guys with nothing better to do and they go around with a pack of dogs hunting any wild game that may be in the area. They purposely set fires to chase the animals out into an area so they can catch them. They also told Matt that if they put that one out the guys would probably either just lit it again or set one on our property to be spiteful and to catch the animals that may be on our side. It made me so angry to hear that! Why can’t they just do something useful instead of create something that often gets completely out of hand and destroys nature.

18th August 2011

The shade house is completely finished now, irrigation installed, water jets attached to the piping, and the pump house is in the process of being completed. The guys put up gum poles for the wall and we are getting cement for the floor base when we go into Harare this weekend. All that is missing is the pump!

27th July - 18th August 2011

I realise that I am not going to catch up every day so what I have done in this period of time is group the stories under headings.

Fires –

There have been a few fires around the last few days. One started during the day up “Babar” (the mountain that you always see near the dam and in the background of the shade house.) Another started at the very end of our road and that one burned for a few days. Matt and the guys went out to fight the one up “Babar” but it was a pretty small one fortunately. However the other one was a raging torrent that was just destroying everything in its path. It had gone down a road that a friend lives on and we knew she was away for the day, so Matt took the guys along the road trying to contain it to one side of the road – if it crossed the road and got away from them it would mean that it would have been a lot closer to us and could easily have come up the back mountain of our property! After seeing what a fire did last year while we were away we were not prepared for that. I just went along for moral support! The wind was crazy that day and did not help at all in stopping it. At one point the guys back burned from the road so that the fire was burning on itself, they left it for a brief moment and a gust of wind picked up this enormous flame and carried flames almost horizontally across the road. We thought that was it – they would never stop it. Matt and I rushed back home to grab a few containers of water to help out, but by the time we got back the guys had managed to contain it and were back on the other side of the road again. What a miracle – it could have gone bad! It continued to burn but they had managed to calm it down a bit and keep it away from our friend’s property. Fire – something that is so necessary yet so destructive when used for harm!

Children’s home tea cup joy

Some friends in Harare have taken it on themselves to help collect things for the Bonda Children’s home (the orphanage I help out at). We were able to pick up a few things when we were in town and I took it to them the one afternoon. The head nun wasn’t there as she had gone to the hospital to see one of the girls. But the two nuns that were there came to the car and I started showing them what was in all the boxes. They were overwhelmed and could not stop saying thank you to me. I told them I was purely the messenger and that it was the Lord they must thank. There were blankets for the children, little cups with straws and a bunch of brand new curtains for their rooms. There were a few goodies that I felt would probably get broken if left with the children like glass water jugs and glasses and a lovely set of tea cups and saucers. This particular item brought great joy to the one nun; she is very short and wears these very large glasses, with the sweetest, gentle manner and radiant smile. I pulled out a box of the tea cups and saucers for her to see and she began to dance in circles singing “we can have a tea party; we can have a tea party!” It was so funny and she was being so genuine. The entire time I was there she kept saying how excited she was to have tea in proper tea cups! An elder from the Anglican Church (the orphanage is Anglican run as Bonda is entirely Anglican from the very beginning) came to say thank you too. He was so aware that it was something wonderful done and he too couldn’t stop thanking me. I felt embarrassed as it wasn’t me and it wasn’t about me. They sang a beautiful thank you Jesus song in Shona and prayed together saying how grateful they were to Jesus. It was so humbling in that these were mainly every day things that most of us have in our houses and take for granted yet they brought such joy to the children and ladies this day! Thank you God for tea cups!!!

Goat dogs

The other day our next door neighbor’s goats decided that they liked the tasty grass around our house. Fortunately they didn’t get into the garden knowing how destructive they can be – but I did see them up in what is going to be a herb garden, and I thought well if they are in there now what is to stop them going in there when there are herbs in there. Anyway the goats were outside the gate and they were also around Moses’ house being a nuisance, so I said to Matt well they are on our property, if the dogs went after them and bit them it wouldn’t be our fault! Probably not the most neighborly thing to think, but I just wanted the goats to learn that they shouldn’t be around here. I opened the gates and the dogs went hurtling up the drive way after them. After a few seconds they had disappeared into a bunch of small gum trees, all shoulder height, so it was pretty thick in there and I couldn’t see goats or dogs. I ran in after them and there to my complete amazement and annoyance were the goats, standing still and the dogs standing with them eating grass!!!! I could not believe my eyes. The dogs saw me coming and ran after the goats again to the other side of the drive way to another grassy patch and again stopped, sniffed the goats and enjoyed the tasty fresh

19^th July 2011 – 6^th August 2011

It is ridiculous how a month flies by. I thought that I was up to date with the blog but looking through photos I realized I am not!!!

We have had 3 guys with us who put up all the main structure of the shade house and they have recently been building a staff house close to the shade house for the manager to stay in with his family. We need someone staying close by for security reasons because our house is all the way on the other side of the road. These guys are amazing builders. They gathered a few rocks (the same guys who built the stone wall all the way back in January!) for the foundation and it looks so professional! It is professional!

As this was an on-going project for about a month I am just giving the main pointers of it all.

After many trips to Mutare (1 hour from us) of collecting cement, asbestos, window frames and door frames, and many trips to a guy down the road who makes bricks, the building was under way. A few times I looked at it and thought ‘hmm it doesn’t look that big for a family to live in but anyway’ but the more the bricks were piled on the bigger it seemed to get. Apparently, while all the guys were down working on the continuous moving of the seedling bags and working on clearing, there was a bit of talk about who was actually going to live there. Matt hadn’t told them yet so they all thought they deserved to live in this new house and individually all went up to Matt to stake their claim on it. Even Herbert, who is the manager and now living in it, told Matt that he really thought that he liked it and decided that it would be his! After it was complete and the floors laid and walls plastered I even thought to myself that it wouldn’t be a bad place to stay – but I am quite happy with where we are!

The finished product is awesome! Herbert and his family are super happy with it. They have been staying up at the top house all this time since before we were even here, and now they have a home to call their own and a space that belongs to them!

I have been trying to come up with a few other structures that I am sure we need added on to our house. Surely there is something that we can get the guys back to build!