Happy New Year!
We hope you had a wonderful holiday season and that as this new year begins you are refreshed and filled with joy. It has been a whirlwind of preparing Christmas for 30 people, children finishing school, and getting back into the swing if things, here at Project Samuel in Zambia.
We had some fun celebrations over the holidays. On Christmas Eve the children invited their friends and we had a big party with dancing and singing, a Christmas play, and lots of popcorn and other treats. The children worked hard to present a wonderful Christmas message to our visitors and had a lot of fun doing it. On Christmas day we celebrated with a traditional Zambian meal of goat, chicken, potatoes and rice. The kids absolutely stuffed themselves. I couldn’t believe how much they ate or how much they enjoyed it! Then, all together, we opened presents. Many of the girls had been wanting teddy bears for a number of years, and this year we received a great donation, a barrel full of many bears and other stuffed animals. Seeing the pure joy on their faces as they opened them, was my favourite part of the day. There were screams of joy, lots of laughter, and such gratitude. It was beautiful.
Over the last few months we’ve had a number of new child sponsors. We are so glad to welcome you all onto our amazing team of partners!
All of our kids are doing well. Lizzie and Kennedy have just graduated and are anxiously awaiting their exam results which will determine what the next steps are for each of them. Both would love to pursue medicine!
Susan, Silvia, Norah, and Lavential wrote their seventh-grade exams as well and are glad to have now joined the older kids at high school. We had a wonderful Christmas break. Their days consisted of eating mangoes, playing soccer and with their new Christmas stuffies, the occasional treat of watching a movie, and of course continuing to help with the cooking, cleaning and other Project happenings. It felt just like Christmas break should, with lots of fun, a little bit of chaos, and a good bit of relaxation! We are glad to be getting back into the swing of things here in the new year.
From our family to yours, a great big thank you from the bottom of our hearts!
Sending our love across the miles,
Kim and Brenden and our Project Samuel Family