Japan In Zambia?!?!?!?

Hi Everyone!

I hope you all have had a great week! Thank you so much for all your prayers lately I have definitely been feeling them. This week we had two more girls get diagnosed with malaria but now knowing the symptoms a little bit better they caught it early and were just able to get some take home prescriptions. So that's an update on our "team health"

After getting back from Zimba we had a lot of class time to do - So Wednesday and Thursday was filled with lecture BUT Friday was absolutely amazing! We have a couple of miles down the road from us a school for the deaf, blind, and mentally challenged. It is the only school for these kinds of children in all of Zambia. We went on Friday for a tour and to set up some times for doing clinicals there during our last 5 weeks.

I was so impressed with it! The school has about 210 students. These kids are absolutely amazing! The head master was showing us medals that they won at the special Olympics and the awards their choirs have received. He showed us where they live and how there are staff that do checks on them 24 hours a day. I was so encouraged when I was there! To see that these children have such amazing opportunities was a huge blessing. Since it went so well on Friday we were invited back on Saturday!

Saturday they were having a huge program. One of the teachers who works with the deaf children is actually Japanese. She coordinated a group of Japanese from the Country's capital to come down and provide a culture day for the children. There was dancing, drum playing, fashion shows, they could get their name written in calligraphy, singing, and so much more. It was also neat because the teacher had certain groups of the children to sing and dance.

One of the highlights for me was to hear the blind sing a song while the deaf children danced to it. They coordinated it by having a child play the drum that way the blind could hear it but the deaf could watch when he was striking it. To see this up close was beyond amazing.

The best way to describe this is with pictures so I am going to post a couple for you =)

This was in in one of the blind classes - They were learning brail, it was really cool to watch!

These were the girls in one of the deaf class rooms - I just loved watching the teacher sign and having them sign back - They were all so precious!

This girl just kind of came up and started hugging me! She just wanted one I guess but she just stayed like that for like 3 minutes =) I was so glad one of my friends snapped these pictures! She was in the mentally challenged class but I definitely found her on Saturday as well!

This is an awful picture of me but the joy on her face is so priceless I thought I would share it with all of you! As you can see it was such an amazing and rewarding experience! I loved Saturday as well but you are going to have wait for those pictures - Its amazing I got this many =)

I will definitely be posting on later this week - There are a lot of exciting things going on this week. Today was yet another amazing day!!! Tommorow is going to be good as well as Wednesday =) So be ready for another post!

Thank you all for continuing to keep me in your prayers =) I am so thankful! I hope you all have a great couple days until I talk to you again!

love

janna