Happy New Year!
Looking back, 2023 stands out as one of the most extraordinary, challenging, and yet rewarding years of our lives. We rang in 2023 in Vancouver Washington with longtime friends and lots of family with no certain timeline for when we would be moving to Zambia. We finished the year here in Lusaka surrounded by new friends and one of Isaac’s cousins! Reflecting on the past year, we are deeply moved by God's kindness and goodness. His plans have proven to be far superior to our own. Throughout the ups and downs of the year, we experienced both joyous moments and faced formidable challenges, each one bringing valuable lessons and blessings.
December was another full month with visitors from the US, ACU graduation, fellowship and discipleship with the students, and the rains finally coming. At the beginning of December our friend Amber/
arrived to help us out as we prepared for the baby to arrive! She stayed for over three weeks and was such a help and blessing to us! We are so grateful for her willingness to travel across the world to be with us!
We had the students over one more time before the holidays and this time they cooked for us! We enjoyed getting to try a variety of traditional Zambian dishes, including fried caterpillars! Zambian food always includes a dish called nshima which is made from cornmeal and eaten with your hands. We are learning to make it, but have yet to perfect the art. In addition to the end of year get together with the agriculture students, Isaac attended his first ACU graduation on December 9th.
On December 13th, after almost 3 days of on-and-off labor, Beatrice Olive (8 lbs 11 oz and 21.5”) was born! We are so grateful to God and for her safe arrival and for everyone who has been praying for us! Her birth went very well without any complications and she and Faith are both doing great! She is precious and greatly loved by us all! With a new baby we are learning more about how Zambian culture varies from US culture. Zambian babies are not taken out of the home for some time, in some cases this can last three months.
One very sad thing that happened this month-our neighbor (who is our landlord) passed away quite suddenly. She had 4 children (the youngest is only 6). One of the customs here is that in the days after a death and before the funeral there will be a funeral house where friends and family gather to mourn together. Inheritance is also handled differently in Zambia. Unless there is a well defined will, friends and family feel entitled to come and take the deceased person's belongings. This can leave surviving children and spouses with very little. There are many cultural things here that are wonderful and that we can learn from, but unfortunately there are also many practices, like this, which are very sad.
Because of having a baby less than two weeks beforehand, our Christmas was pretty laid back.
Being from the PNW, Isaac is opposed to plastic Christmas trees, and since there’s not really many other options here, he ended up cutting some big branches off of an evergreen tree in our yard, zip-tying them together, and making our own tree! The kids were very excited and had a great time decorating it!
A few ACU students, who don’t have family in the area, joined us for Christmas day. We ate lots of good food, had great conversations, played in the rain, and shot off fireworks (a Zambian Christmas tradition)!
On New Year’s Eve, Isaac’s cousin Lydia arrived at 7:30 AM. This was her first time traveling outside the US and even with the jetlag she assured us that she still was game for a New Year’s Eve party. We hosted a party at our house and had a wonderful time ringing in the New Year with friends! We ended up having over 30 people come! It was a super fun time and a great way to end the year!
God has challenged and grown us so much in 2023, which we are so grateful for! We are looking forward to seeing what he has in store for us in 2024! Over the last year we have been overwhelmed by the love and support we have received from our family and friends (both old and new alike)! Thank you all for your support, and prayers! We are so grateful for y’all, and we wish you a very blessed New Year!
As always, if you want to read any of our previous updates you can find them here: https://raininitsseason.com/
and if you would like to support us financially you can do so here: .https://www.actioninternational.org/missionary/madsen.
Love,
The Madsens
Praises:
Thank you all so much for your prayers for a safe delivery for baby! Praise the Lord that the birth went very well and that Beatrice is healthy and Faith is recovering well!
Prayer requests:
Pray for our neighbors as they mourn the loss of their wife/mother. Also pray that we would be good neighbors and know how to help them during this difficult time.
Pray that we would be able to get all of the paperwork for Beatrice’s birth certificate worked out. The process is a bit different here.
Pray for Isaac and all the ACU faculty and students as they prepare for the new school year to start later this month.
Pray for Faith and the kids as we resume homeschooling next week.
Continue to pray for the ACU faculty as they work on getting the Agriculture program accredited.
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