May 19

Today was the longest day of my life, and I'm still not quite sure why or how to describe all of it. I woke up early around 7 to meet with Pastor Phiri about the state of the community of Linda. We discussed the different churches in Linda as well as the large amount of growth of Jehovah's witnesses that have created a popular following here in Linda. All we can do as of now is to continue to show love towards these individuals. Please pray that the Lord would give us more opportunities to share our faith with these individuals. We also began more construction today gathering sand and pea gravel for the Bio Sands water filter. We are very excited to get this project started.

The main reason behind this is because the filter will provide, lord willingly, 40 liters of water a day for families. This clean water is much better alternative to those who are drinking out of local area streams and wells. Many of these families also reject drinking water with chlorinated content as they claim they are "allergic to chlorine".

In the afternoon Jospeh and I took another trip to the local college by bike to play basektball. Thus began a series of unforutnate events. On the way there, I lost control of a bike in a dark alley and ran into these trees on my right, these trees sent me flailing to the left where I hit the brick wall and then bounced back into the trees. Fortunately by the grace of God I was not seriously hurt save a few scratches. We traded bikes, but this bike's chain kept falling off, which slowed our 40 minute trip to almost an hour. At one point the chain fell off as I was by a drainage ditch . And my bike started slipping into the deepest drainage ditch in Zambia. ( Zambia almost has no drainage ditches, which is what made this so special.) I was able to jump off the bike before it landed into the ditch or else I would have been seriously injured.

We somehow arrived to the basketball court, and started playing. Now that I have shaken off the rust of playing on a different continent. I was able to play more comfortably as a point guard. With Jospeh, myself and Mike, one of Jospeh's friends, and two other locals we were able to dominate beating 3 different teams that came our way. I also met my first actually ripped Zambian today, he happened to be on the other team. The size of his arms made him look like a D.1 football player which was most interesting, because most Zambians don't have access to the gym here.  I'd like to suggest that together Mike Jospeh and I  are Boston's Big 3, (my least favorite team), but we don't really have a Ray Allen. I suppose we could be Miami's Big 3, because Joseph looks like Chris Bosh, but I am definitely not a Lebron James, and for sure there was no D-Wade on the court. (Maybe we can be the pistons, when Greg Monroe starts to dominate in the next few years?) Nonetheless, my series of unfortunate events didn't end despite our winnings, I suffered the worse charlie horse as we finished beating the third team from the college. I could barely walk on one leg as I hopped to the bike. Fortunately however, after praying for the leg, God miraculously allowed my leg to instantly become able to bike back to Linda. It was only by him.

There are so many other spiritually amazing things I would like to share, but I only have some many minutes to type. Until next time my brothers and sisters. God bless you all.