Our Saturday in Ndola was dominated by a visit to Kitwe where Benni Banda had organised a meeting for his leaders and worship teamchoir. We found out from Benni the previous day we were meant to speak at least twice at this meeting. We had already got out of a pastor's fraternal that had been organised with 20-30 pastors from the area. We were supposed to speak on the role of the pastor and the pastor's wife in ministry so we were lucky the dates and times were confused and we arrived too late for the meeting!

We got our first speeding fine en route to Kitwe, but with Rogers in the car it was easy to play the church card and who are the police to stand against us! We visited Benni's shop first to meet his wife and daughter then travelled into the township to where his church meets in a nice big tent with huge speakers and keen sound guys! Ant then spoke for the first session which was followed by a lot of discussion and a pie and coke lunch, perhaps this was the perfect African experience the tourists dream of! In the afternoon we both spoke on worship before heading home. It was incredibly humbling that the people there appreciated us visiting so much they took up an offering to bless us on our journey. It was only fitting that we visited Michelangelo's for pizza and managed to see the Sharks beat the Brumbies!

On Sunday we split up and Ant went to church with Mulela and Joey with Rogers very nearby, they in fact meet about 1km or so away from each other. There is a high density of churches in the Ndola townships, Rogers meets in a school where another 4 churches were meeting at the same time making it quite a challenge for both the preacher and congregation to concentrate over the competing sound systems! Mulela's church also meets in a school classroom but a smaller, more secluded one, although the sound of nearby congregations was still evident. We were very humbled to be welcomed so royally to their church meetings and had a wonderful time meeting the people which was really special. We hope we were in some way able to encourage and bless all those we visited. Straight after the meetings we left for Lusaka again, an uneventful journey and it was easier to arrive in Lusaka on a Sunday evening than our previous experience.

Our yellow fever cards had been posted to Arnold and Giseler Nel who live in Lusaka and lead a church in the city and we gratefully accepted their offer of accommodation for the night. To live in the comforts of home was very refreshing and to be able to talk of our travels and share experiences was very relaxing after what had been a very busy weekend on the road. Ant managed to fix a small leak on the pipe to the car's fuel pump which made him feel like the man, and smell like diesel, perhaps the mechanic's version of the frangrance!

We really enjoyed the Nel's perspective on life in Africa, and Lusaka especially, which was refreshing from all the bad news we always hear "down south". It's often only South Africans who have a view of the rest of Africa as being so dangerous and unvisitable. In fact, many tourists are more worried about visiting South Africa because of its common high rate of violent crime not present for the most part anywhere else, a view we've experienced ourselves in meeting other travellers. Lusaka's economy is improving and they are making strides to eradicate malaria and the outlook generally is positive although the recent history of the mines and migration into the cities remains a challenge.