A nice long weekend

First off... CONGRATULATIONS to my brother Josh and sister-in-law Jenn - they are pregnant. The cousins will be very close in age. We're so excited for them!

Happy Africa day (for Sunday)! I hope you celebrated in style. The only celebrations we heard about were political rallies, so we decided to abstain. We did enjoy the long weekend though... Friday night we hosted an exciting game of Monopoly with some friends. John and I tend to get a wee bit competitive with this game, so we decided to tag-team. I started playing with our four friends while John cooked pasta. Then we broke for dinner, and John took over my (pitiful) hand while I did dishes and baked (don't get too excited - it was a "just add water" mix!) It was fun. Saturday I spent most of the day writing a sermon, and John ran, but we also had yummy Thai food at the Blue Banana. We were going to walk there for exercise, but a white guy in a meat-packers' truck offered us a lift near the shops. He kept referring to the fact that Saturday was his drinking day, and he had just packed away a few, so we were thankful to arrive safely. Sunday we spent the day at Highfield Temple - a huge Salvation Army corps. There were people everywhere - standing at the back, sitting on the floor, and sharing seats. It was a blessed day, and I enjoyed preaching/leading the service/using my limited Shona. John gave two excellent talks on giving and praying. We went to Highfield with one of John's mother-in-laws, and we discovered that she is a bit picky for food. Between the services we went to the officers' house for lunch where 2 of the home league women had spent the whole morning preparing rice, beef stew, chicken, coleslaw, etc. (a feast). This officer sat down and said, "I don't take rice. Make me sadza." And she wasn't joking. So we all ate and she waited for her sadza. When it arrived she complained that it wasn't cooked well. Our hosts also brought bottles of fanta (a big treat) and she immediately said, "I don't take fanta - find me something else." But that was all they had. The salvation service started and had been going on for 20 minutes, so the C.O. came in and suggested, we may want to go in. My mother said, "can't you see I'm still eating my ice cream?" So we waited a bit longer. I was reminded of the importance of graciousness! Monday we rested. To be honest, we slept in, and then when John went for his run, I got in the bath and stayed there for 45 minutes. I was a prune. After I got out I went to read and ended up having a 2 hour nap. Talk about a day of rest! What am I going to do when I can't "blame" this type of behaviour on the pregnancy any longer? We did walk (exercise!) into town for an interesting movie about Saudi Arabia. I stupidly wore my "I'll fight club" t-shirt (referring to William Booth's famous speech about fighting injustice). Not a good choice for tense Zimbabwe these days... In the evening we visited some friends, and I was humbled and blessed by these two old women who have failing health and yet spend most of their time caring for others who are not well. That's Zimbabwean women for you - very self-sacrificial. I hope I can be like this when I'm an old gogo!

This morning in the bath I was thinking about my totem (monkey-baboon) because we referred to our totems at Highfield and that was a big hit! I realized that because totems are passed through the father, all of my siblings, and my dad and his siblings and my grandpa are also monkeys/baboons. And I started picturing a family reunion and it got me cracking up.