Easter Retreat—our last “vacation” in Africa—is here! Four missionaries and three missionary families could not make it, but our group was made up of 17 adults and 9 kids. We headed out early in the morning with the S family to the northern province, to Nsobe, a village on the outskirts of Ndola. This year’s Easter Retreat was held at Nsobe game ranch. What’s the difference between a game park and a game ranch, you ask? Well, a game park (South Luangwa that we went to a month ago) is a national park and usually has a bigger variety of game (big cats and such), while a game ranch is a privately owned area where the game happen to be. Nsobe has a large variety of antelope, as well as zebra and giraffe. Anyway, the game ranch has several different accommodation styles, but our group was tent camping. As many of you may know, nature and I usually don’t get along, and I can only remember two times in my life that I slept in a tent. I was skeptical of how I would get along with tenting for four days (but it turned out alright). N, D&L’s son, set up my one man tent for me. It was so cute. J
D is the mission coordinator, so we were the first to arrive, and while all the other families were making the four hour trek from Lusaka (with a stop at the Fig Tree for some ‘take-away’ hot drinks—unheard of in Africa!), T and I explored the camp. It was a nice big place with canoes to use and trails to walk and swings. J We grabbed a map and started out on the road for a brief walk, which ended up being 90 minutes! It was a neat feeling to walk through a game ranch, never knowing if we’d run into animals or not! We only saw one antelope on our walk and I don’t know if the consensus was ever decided between a sable, roan, and eland (none of which we had seen before). It was really cool. J
Upon return, everyone else was arriving and setting up camp, so we chatted and helped with everyone before tonight’s devotion. One of the JH’s gave a devotion on “this is the day the Lord has made.” What a good reminder in tough times; it stuck with me all weekend. Next was dinner (prepared by Nsobe, hurray!) of beef and nshima. Tasty, but nowhere near as good as Mrs. A’s cooking. J But—there was ice cream for dessert. With chocolate sauce. And they almost brought me two scoops, by accident. It was yummy. J After dinner, everyone chatted around the campfire and discussed the agenda for the rest of the weekend. There were “s’mores” to be had—biscuit/crackers with a tiny piece of chocolate and pink marshmallows. They don’t have graham crackers here. But they were still decent. And the kids were so cute toasting everyone’s marshmallows. J I talked with the other Schuschunckterhintzes for most of the night before turning in. It was a noisy night as there was a pig farm across the pond/lake at the camp, and of course, monkeys were running through the campsite all night…That happens all the time when camping, right?
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