It almost 6 PM on Friday, July 24, and I'm now in Mutare at the home of Tom and Tracy Sarimana, my host family. I stayed with them in 2004 and 2007, and it feels wonderful to be with them again. Our flight arrived in Harare last night at 9:30 PM (after leaving the USA at 5:30 PM the day before,) and it was midnight by the time we cleared customs and crawled into bed in our hotel rooms. I think all of us were bone-tired, and we slept like logs until 6AM. We all met for breakfast in the hotel dining-room at 7:30 AM, took care of some business in Harare after breakfast, and then hit the road for Mutare a bit after 10 AM. We stopped at Halfway House for lunch at 12:30 PM, and then came the rest of the way to Mutare for introductions to our host families and a brief overview of the work we will be doing in the coming week.

Our other team members are Peg Miller from Arizona, Rev. Mark Conard from Hutchinson, Kansas, and Don Corwin and Rev. Kennedy Mukwindidza from Quinter, Kansas. Every one of us has been to Zimbabwe at least once before, so nobody is worrying about culture shock. The economic situation in Zimbabwe is beginning to stabilize, but its impact is evident in many ways. On the road between Harare and Mutare we saw almost no buses, whereas there were many buses on the road five years ago. That is simply one small indicator of the economic hard times here.

On our flight between Johannesburg and Harare, an elderly lady sat between Mark Conard and me. She and her husband run a private orphanage in the outskirts of Harare, and she was returning after a brief trip to see family members in the USA. Her husband is eighty years old, and she is in her mid-seventies. Together they care for sixty-six orphans, with only intermittent help from volunteers who come from the States. Older orphans also do a great deal to help with the care of the youngest ones. The couple began the orphanage about ten years ago when they retired from mission work with the Seventh Day Adventist Church. What a remarkable couple!

More updates later this week!