Flooded

We're surrounded by farmers.  We live on a farm.  The church we attend is lead by farmers.  We work with a large population of village farmers.  So, the most common topic of conversation that we have here is rain.  Last year, it was lack-there-of.  This year, quite the opposite.

Yesterday afternoon, a rather large storm came up from Lake Kariba and dumped massive amounts of rain.  The significance of a storm approaching from this direction is that it dumps all of its rain in a valley which feeds the Kalaiah River.  Usually this river is a small stream, but because of the rains, it turned into a rushing torent!

Many of the large-scale commerical farms are situated along this river, including the farm where we are living.  When the water started rising yesterday, it didn't stop until it spilled over the side of the Kalaiah flooding some of these farms, including this one.  Because of the damage caused by the flooding, many power poles were downed meaning we are without electricity today and projected to be without it until late tomorrow night at the earliest.

No power, means no running water in the house.  So, this afternoon, Thomas, Ellie and I went down to get water the old fashioned way: hand pump style!  They had fun, but I didn't realize just how heavy that water could be.  Happy we only have to do this for a short time.

Be praying for our neighbors.  The farm we're on had such extensive flooding that the waters covered nearly 3/4 of our landlord's bottom two fields of soy beans.  Our specific prayer is that the rains would hold off for a while and that God would resurrect a lot of the crop in these two fields.

If you have facebook, we took some video of the flooding.  Just go to:  http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10151218746160143