Happy Birthday Cephas Simba, Barbara, and 1 year old Rigby!

 

We celebrated our new son, Cephas Simba Muchenje's 37th birthday on Sept. 8th with a big surprise! I had his wife, Fortunate, and 3 children come to our apartment at 3:00 p.m. to get things ready. I showed Fortunate how to frost a birthday cake. Bruce brought Cephas to our apartment from the temple site. He claimed, "We forgot the chocolate we bought you in Johannesburg." We did buy him some crispy mint Cadbury bars, which he requested from our trip. Cephas didn't suspect anything. When he came in the front door, we all yelled surprise and the kids attacked him with balloons and singing "Happy Birthday" with their cute Zimbabwean accents. Cephas was totally surprised and said it was the best day of his life! We served the family a nice smoked brisket, homemade breadsticks (I also taught Fortuante how to twist them), fruit salad, and Bruce's sliced grilled potatoes, onions, and cheese. They all seemed to enjoy the meal and had seconds and thirds. We love sharing our apartment and American food with our new friends. Cephas and Fortunate are still coming to church and hoping to be baptized soon. We gave Cephas a triple combination and a bible as gifts for his scripture reading. Cephas shares a birthday with my sister, Barbara. We called Barb in the States, but she's a busy nurse practitioner and was at work with a patient. Ralph, her husband, and Barb hope to come to Africa next April to see my brother Jim's orphanage/children's school in Zambia. Jim has built a school for orphaned children and hopes to have 50 children someday. Currently, there are over 25 children with teachers, gardens, chickens, etc. to be self-sustaining. It is about 15 hours out in the bush of Zambia, which used to be Northern Rhodesia. It's the country just above Zimbabwe and we share the border of Victoria Falls.

We taught the Muchenje's how to play the card game, Sky Jo. They really loved it. We have adopted three more grandkids, Minashe, Kisha, and Mofaro. They lost both sets of their grandparents at an early age, so it's fun to play the role while serving in Africa. Reeve Nield keeps telling me, "Your grandchildren will be fine, there are so many children in need of your grandparental influence here in Zimbabwe that have never known grandparents." I still do miss mine immensely however!

Happy "37th" Birthday Cephas, as he blows out the candles on his homemade chocolate cake.

HAPPY "1 year old" Birthday to our sweet Rigby Anderson!!! He's almost walking and is such a joy to be around. He looks exactly like his daddy, Ian. We loved living with Ian and Rachel and Rocky and Rigby for a few short months before we left for Africa. We are eternally grateful to them for moving into our home and caring for our home, yard, and three Airbnbs.

Our sweet grandson, Rigby, turned 1 on Sept. 14th! He's definitely his father's child.

Pickleball all week at 34 North. We meet Cornelius "Corn" from Botswana. She is a LDS member there and has several safari camps out in the bush. We are improving our game with daily morning pickleball matches. We also play Alistair and Gemma Gibson every Wednesday afternoon. They brought two friends last week, including Neil Bradshaw from the temple site's contractor's team. We love this awesome way to get in shape and fellowship with our new friends.

This is Barbara White, not Barbara my sister (who had a birthday). Barbara is the administrator for Rio Douro on the temple construction site. We've become friends, and besides being our travel guru, she makes Bruce and I laugh. She's coined me as, "Benevolent mama bear!" I call her "Laughing Grey Tortoise", her spirit animal. She's quite the comedian!