The first grade students gathered at our house for a cooking lesson/pizza making party.
Mrs Mono made the pizza dough for the students. They then shaped the dough into pizza crusts and added toppings.
While the pizzas baked, we watched a video. When they were done...we all enjoyed delicious fresh baked pizzas!
Wow! Things sure are happening fast here in Macha!
The school is growing very fast and we are quickly out growing our 2nd temporary space.
We recently hosted the MICS 2nd annual family picnic at our home.
We had games, food and plenty of activities for all the family members of the school.
Everyone had a wonderful time celebrating the progress of this new school.
It is amazing to see how God has blessed the school. It is a long road, but we are slowly making progress with this huge task.
Thank you to all the MICS parents and students, and thank you to all that have supported and prayed for us this past year!
Although we do have many things to be joyful about, this is a different kind of joy!
Ronda's sister, Joy, arrived this week for her annual visit to Africa (her 5th visit!) 
She arrived on a Flying Mission plane safe and sound. The first grade students made the trip out to the airstrip to greet her. 
While she is here, she will be helping us with the school and our move to our new home at the site of the new school. We are SO excited to have her here!!
We love visitors...so check your schedule and book your flights!
To celebrate Skip/Gil/Dad's birthday, we went to have picnic on a nearby mountain. We were also there to have a farewell party for Dorien our good friend and valuable helper from Holland.
We had a great time...lots of fun. Fun sounds like a funny choice of words, but all of us think it is such a great quiet get away place.....leave the pressures of Macha behind. We all laughed, as when we and everyone else thinks about it, Macha seems like the place where you would come for quiet and peace and to leave the pressures of the world behind. I guess all of us have high pressure jobs(-:???? here. Anyhow we all enjoyed it!On the way home, Doc Phil (no...not the guy from TV!) decided to show us a short cut...during the "short" cut it got dark and we got stuck one time....you would be soooooooo surprised at how many people came out of the bush! Then we got lost a few times and people had to tell us how to get back...Any of you that know Skip/Gil/Dad will know that this type of adventure was the highlight of his birthday celebration!!!!!!
We have had some problems with the website over the past week. Hopefully things are fixed and we will be back up without any more interruptions.
We will be updating very soon...so please check back to see what is happening in Macha!
With the arrival/unloading of the containers containing the wooden house and the arrival of the men from Holland to assemble the house, we wanted to update you all on the progress.
Everything has gone at lightning speed as you can see from the following pictures...
Now all that remains is the painting of the outside.
Needless to say we are excited!!!!
August 4 - AM unloading of the house components
August 4 - PM arrival of men from Holland for house assembly
August 4 - PM Inspection of house components after unloading
August 4 - PM Inspection of slab for house
August 5 - AM House assembly begun (floor placed on concrete slab)
August 5 - PM Floor laid and start of assembly of exterior walls
August 6 - AM Raising of "KMB" flag and continued assembly of exterior walls and some interior walls
August 6 - PM Completion of exterior wall assembly and topping roof rafters
August 7 - AM All roofing boards in place and placing of final side of roofing steel
August 7 - AM Interior kitchen work started
The Next Chapter Of "For Such A Time As This"
0 comments Posted by Gil and Ronda / SoMacha.com at 12:19 PMAbout seven weeks ago Gertjan vanStam's father came from Holland to visit Macha. While here he decided to purchase a used prefab wooden house and ship it in cargo containers "For Such A Time As This" because there is such a shortage of housing in Macha and we had to send the head teacher for MICS on an early paid maternity leave because the hospital needed the house the Sakalas were staying in. He returned home with this mission. He purchased the house but first it had to be taken apart. As they took the house apart they found that they had to ship the house in three containers...not one or even two.... 
Well, the men here began to prepare the foundation and poured the slab in preparation. As things were formulating, two of the men that were taking the house apart in Holland, found out where the house was going and volunteered to come at their own expense "For Such A Time As This" to Macha to help put it together...... They looked at the calendar and the only time they could come was the week of August 5th. Only FIVE weeks from the date of shipping three containers. In all honesty no one thought the containers could or would make it in that short five weeks....at least from the human perspective....but when God is involved in " For Such A Time As This" nothing is impossible. If you remember the container that was shipped from the US in January just arrived last week..... over seven months later plus all the hassles of it being shipped to the wrong port. .... and that was only one container we were needing all THREE containers to arrive in FIVE weeks.
The slab was just finished this week and had just enough time to cure. The men from Holland arrived in Macha at 4:00 on Saturday by plane just after the containers were all unloaded and placed where they will be used as offices or work shops. Can you believe the men and the house were here and both ready on the exact day????? which,if you remember was the only time they could come....It truly is a "For Such A Time As This" miracle in Macha this year. The house should go up in about a week or two. The house has two three bedroom apartments and two efficiency rooms for singles or visitors.The house is most definitely here " For Such A Time As This" as we must move out of our current house before we return home to the US in November and we need the Sakala family back in Macha with us at MICS. A wooden house in Zambia is unheard of and everyone is watching to see what it will look like. God truly provided it "For Such A Time As This" and it will fill our needs for housing.
Unbelieveable! The Container Is Finally Here!
0 comments Posted by Gil and Ronda / SoMacha.com at 12:02 PMWell, almost...
On August 1st the container made it to the Flying Missions headquarters in Zambia. It was unloaded thanks to the hard work of many helpers.
There are tons of items (over 14 tons!)to go through. Many of the items are for Flying Mission and their missionaries.
The container will remain where it is and will be used by Flying Mission for storage and work space. The items for Macha have been separated out. We have not scheduled a time for these items to make it to Macha, but we are currently trying to coordinate the delivery.
Can you believe it...almost 6 months of packing and prep work followed by over 9 months in transit...and it is finally here!
We are so thankful to Flying Mission, to all that helped with sending items to Arizona, those that helped pack, ship it, and unload it and we also want thank God for watching over it all this time!
Macha Innovative Christian School (MICS) had its 2nd annual Fun day!
Students, parents, teachers, and our classroom helpers gathered for a day of games and entertainment.
We had clowns, relay races, bingo, marshmallow games, hula hoops, and even a tug-o-war!
At the end of the day the children performed for the parents by singing.
Last week, while all our visitors were here, Mrs Esther planned a Traditional Tonga party for all the guests.
The local people that are from the area around Macha are known as the Tonga people (there are many different regions within the country of Zambia)
Mrs Esther served Tonga chicken and nshima (corn based staple in the Tonga diet)
We had a bonfire with traditional games and singing.
Some of the local women performed for us and danced in the traditional "Tonga style"
Kim, Britnee, and Dorien were not afraid to try to learn something new!
We had a wonderful time. Lots of eating, laughing and celebrating!
Friends of ours from Modesto, California stopped in to visit us last week. 
Doug Wesson and his son Aaron were in Africa on a mission trip, they planned their trip so that they could spend a couple days in Macha before meeting up with the rest of their group. We showed them the school, the hospital, local shopping, and the village. Then we took them on a true African adventure. 
Doug, Aaron, Kim, and Britnee came with us on an extended weekend to visit Chobe national park in Botswana,
the Zambezi river, and Victoria Falls (one of the 7 wonders of the world).
The trip required traveling by single engine plane, some major four-wheel drive roadways, car ferry, and even a passenger boat. At one point we even saw giraffe while we were driving down the highway! 
Everything went off without a hitch...we thank the Lord for watching over us!
The past 5 weeks we have had 2 Girls living with us and helping around Macha.
Kim is from Wisconsin and is a teaching student concentrating in sports.
She has worked with the kids at MICS and at the government school to teach them new games and have fun. She also brought balls and more to donate to the government schools.
Britnee is a nursing student from New Hampton, Iowa.
She has been working at the Mission Hospital and has spent much time in the maternity department helping deliver babies.
It has been a wonderful joy to have these 2 girls stay with us. We are going to be very sad to see them leave!
The 4th grade boys earned enough points in class to take us fishing at the Macha dam. The boys dug the worms, made the fishing poles and showed us how to fish. 
We caught about 30 tiny (about 2inch long) Kapenta that the boys ate at home. 
We also celebrated Christopher's birthday. He is 14 and had never been to school before this year. This was his first birthday party ever! 
He lives in the village where only bottles of soda are available... he was not sure how to open or handle a can of Sprite! We had a wonderful time enjoying the outdoors and getting to know these boys outside of the classroom setting.
We had the privilege of having the Dutch ambassador to Zambia and his wife, visit Macha recently.
During his tour of the village they stopped to see the progress of MICS.
The children welcomed them to the school by painting Dutch flags on their cheeks.
The ambassador was amazed with the advancements in the village and he was impressed with how far MICS has come in such a short time.
We wanted to let you see one of the churches in Macha.
This is one of the churches that we regularly attend. It is called the Pentecostal Assembly of God Church.
They just had major renovations with brand new plaster and the floors were redone...they are very proud of the new look. They really did a good job!
After the service, everyone goes through a greeting line to say hello to everyone else.
If you visit Macha, we will gladly take you to local church service!
We are thrilled to report that "the container" is finally in the country of Zambia! Many of you graciously mailed items to Arizona almost a year ago. Since that time, the container has been traveling around the world, on an adventure of its own. Who knows where it has been all this time!!?? It will take about 2 weeks for it to clear customs. We will keep you posted. We can't wait to see everything that all of you sent! The children of MICS and the people of Macha will definitely be blessed!
We received wonderful news the other day! Cheryl Timmermann (Darla's sister) emailed to tell us about a fundraiser for MICS, that she and her mom (Rita Jansen) had organized. They had a scavenger hunt, with 7 teams (approx 4 people per team) racing around St. Rose, IL and most of Clinton county locating/solving clues and trying to find items - all with an African/safari theme. It sounds like they had a great time. What a wonderful idea!!
The winning team, Matt and Lisa Schrage, Don and Pat Hendriks, Cookie and Jim Kuhl and Susie Willis, generously donated the winning prize back to the school in Macha. This brought the total amount raised for the new school to $700!! Cheryl and her husband Brent have offered to take the winning team out on their boat for a day, to reward them for winning and donating their prize back to the school in Macha.
Cheryl and Rita, thank you so much for taking the time to organize this wonderful event! Matt, Lisa, Don, Pat, Susie, Cookie, and Jim thank you so much for generously donating your prize money back to the school in Macha!
We have yet to meet any of you, but we are looking forward to, someday soon! We are so touched by all your effort, time and generosity...thank you very much!
I have had a couple of strange bug bites this year with even stranger reactions. First, I think I was stung by a hornet or wasp. I say I think because it stung me on my leg under my skirt while I was outside on playground duty at school. I didn't see it but there were several stingers in my leg when I checked it. By afternoon when I checked it I had a reaction ....there was a big two by three inch patch of red on my leg below the bite. It looked like a rug burn. The doctors said it was an allergic reaction and that the histamine had settled there. It took about three months to go away..... but it finally did.The good news was that the doctor was right and I did not need my leg amputated! :-)
Then a few weeks ago ...in keeping with my "For Such a Time as This" for 2007....I was bitten by a spider. I was at home and I felt something on the top part of my calf just below the back of my knee. I brushed it off and saw that it was a strange brown spider about the size of a quarter. I stomped it...... and did not give it another thought until that night when it started to burn alittle. I put my hand on it and YIKES it had a sack of fluid hanging from the bite spot.....but I did sleep fine! The next morning at school everyone was watching the sack get larger and the spot get redder. The teachers all decided I should go to see the doctor on the way home from work. My wonderful friend and Dutch daughter Dorien decided to walk me home. She knew that if I was by myself I would not stop at the doctor's house....so we stopped and talked to the doctor's wife. She had great advice, "you need to see a doctor". She then began to explain where we could find the doctor at the hospital. She said that we could find in him in surgery, as he was trying to do surgery on a woman, but they needed two units of type "O" blood or he could not do the surgery and she would die....Dorien and I both said we are type "O". Imagine that!
.... both Dorien and I were type "O". The blood bank at the hospital in Choma and Livingstone were all empty. Hospitals are not allowed to get blood from local donors any more due to all the HIV and Hepatitis....So on with the story......We went to the hospital and found the doctor. We showed him my leg and the lovely sack of fluid......yes.....I needed a strong antibiotic and he wrote a prescription quickly for me. We then said "Oh, by the way we heard you need two units of type "O" blood. We are both type "O"". He rushed us to the lab to have them check out our type and check to be sure we did not have HIV, Syphilis, or Hepatitis. No other questions were asked about medications or anything???? Imagine that?! Our test results came back quickly and we were both type "O" and were negative for all of the above by the way(-: PTL!
So then ..... it was just please come in and pull up your sleeve!! Dorien gave first and was very brave as she had never given blood or even had blood taken for tests before....she did get white lips and felt dizzy about half way through.....it got me thinking. WOW!!! What am I doing??? I have not given blood for more than ten years. Having been in Africa you are not allowed to give in the US anymore. Well, my turn then came and I stepped up " bravely"??? Guess What??? Piece of Cake!!! My blood filled the bag in record time and with no reaction!!!! 
They treated us to cookies and orange Fanta. For a minute there we felt like we were at the blood bank in the U.S.
The question of the day is, sooooooo....."What did you do on your way home from work?"
I loved answering ...." I Saved A Life".
So....you see, I know I got that strange spider bite so I would be at the right place at the right time with the right type of blood... "For Such A Time As This".
We wanted to say THANK YOU!! to the St Rose Church Catholic Youth Ministry (CYM), located in St Rose, IL.
This past Sunday, the students presented Greg (Gil and Ronda's son) with a check for $100 that will go toward the new school in Macha.
During the Lent season, the CYM held Friday night fish frys. They have generously decided to support the construction of the new school in Macha with the proceeds from their weeks of hard work.
It continually amazes us how the Lord works and how He has gotten so many people from so many different places involved with MICS. We have never been to St Rose, and we have never met any of the people involved in this donation, yet they were generous enough to want to help the children of Macha. A special thank you to Rita Jansen (the mother of Darla, Greg's girlfriend) for telling the people of St Rose Church about Macha and also a special thank you to Pat Henrichs and Lisa Schrage, the leaders of the CYM for their commitment to these young people of St Rose.
