Zimbabwe

On Monday afternoon, we returned home from a two week trip to the orphanage in Harare. I'm not sure what order the pictures will appear in on the actual site, but somewhere on the page you should see Deanna (Baasch) painting vigorously--a frequent occupation for both of us--and Deanna crouched over "World's View," a hike we took the first Sabbath.

One of the first tasks on our list was to clean and organize the kitchen and several closets in the orphanage home. The picture shows a friendly version of what we really dealt with...behind the scenes were many unwelcome sights--rat droppings being chief among them. Painting clinic doors became our next focus. Oil-based paint with a precious paint thinner supply was tricky at times, especially since we had multiple colors to use.

Some of you viewers probably recognize Domboshava--the place of "big rocks." That was our second Sabbath's destination--a little more in reach than our first hike at World's View. (We learned our lesson after running out of diesel on that trip; a story of its own.)

Hours before we left, Grandpa took us to one of the "luxury" villages nearby. It's hard to imagine that just further down the road is a village crammed with 6 ft. y 6 ft. huts draped with makeshift plastic roofs.

Now life has returned to normal...I'm not ready for it! Both mom and I started classes on Tuesday after our 23 hour journey home. We were welcomed by zero degree weather and a few inches of crunchy snow.