Hello Friends,
It continues to be uncertain times that I write in, but I hope this finds you well in the midst of distancing and change. What a world we live in! Who would have ever believed or thought we might have a year like this one?!
It's been a crazy last few months for us in Zambia, with our kids all off school. Because we are an official Child Care Facility, we've been asked to adhere to certain safety guidelines during this time. This has meant our children have had very limited outside exposure since the start of CoVid-19, and has actually given us some precious time as a Project Family, while we have all been home together.
We've had, "Project Samuel School," going on with tutors teaching the kids right from home. It's been fun to see Lizzie and Kennedy step-up in teaching the younger ones and we've had a retired teacher, Helen, as well as a local high school teacher working with the others! This season has certainly looked different than planned but we believe it's been fruitful in many ways. Just these last few weeks our students who will test this year (grades 7,9 and 12) have returned to classes. We expect the others to continue to be off throughout the summer.
For our immediate little family, it's been a few months of questioning what was to come and how the next few months would roll out. It looked for a long time like we'd be staying put in Zambia for the birth of our second little one late July. Things ended up opening up for us though, and after many hours on-hold with airlines and some pretty crazy days of travel, we now find ourselves gratefully sitting in Canada! We came via the States where we had a wonderful catch-up with Brenden's family and are now in 14-day quarantine here in Kelowna, Canada with good friends. We feel blessed to be in North America for this exciting season, and grateful to be able to access the healthcare available to us here as we welcome our new little girl into our family in about a month's time.
We plan to arrive in North Vancouver later next week and to be there until mid September. This gives us time to get passports and such sorted and adjust to being a family of four after the little one's arrival. From there, all going according to plan, we'll pass through Texas to introduce our new addition, and then fly home to Zambia late Sept.
While in North Van we've been generously offered housing and a vehicle from friends who will be out of town until late August. We are still looking for a place to housesit and transport for our family from August 22nd - Sept 15th. If you live on the North Shore and are planning to be away some of that time, and might be open to assisting our family with either of those needs, then please be in touch!
Connecting certainly looks different these days, but even if it takes some creativity with social distancing, we'd still love to see as many of you as possible while we are home! If you are interested in connecting let us know and we'll set something up!
On a note of gratefulness, we also want to send out an extra HUGE thank you to so many of you that attended the Hollyburn fundraiser hosted by the Pearmains and team right before this crazy pandemic! We are blessed by the contribution so many of you made to that evening (both in your support and attendance). We hope that throughout the night you caught some of the amazing passion of our Project Samuel children. The support raised has been a great help with the ongoing expenses of our children's education, the building of our new mission's flats, staffing expenses, Project maintenance, and so many other needs. We've attached a few photos of the fun happenings that evening, for those of you who missed out!
We hope and pray that each of you stay safe, healthy, and happy this summer!
Sending all our love,
From the Vowells (Kim, Brenden, Alivia and Baby)
and our Project Samuel Family