Meet Abby

*Continuing on in the series on the children we play with at the local orphanage... (Again, taking photos is not allowed and every time we're there I just hope my brain is snapping enough images.) 

Abby (which is our nickname for her) is a little girl around the age of three. She has curly dark hair and loves to cuddle. The first day I picked her up with my regular little buddy, she just about burst with joy. She stood out at first because she was always making noises at me that I couldn't understand what she wanted. Normally, the other children would talk away at me in Kinyarwanda, and I respond in English in what I hope would be carrying on a conversation (wishful thinking). Communication is limited anyway because of the language barrier, but she was clearly trying to make a point. One day, Kristen learned that Abby is deaf. Suddenly my whole experience with her clicked into place. When I hold her now, she leans in on my chest and listens to me sing. I have another one on my other leg and she likes it when he cuddles in too and we rock together (he usually likes to be a bit more active though). She likes to hold my hand when it's time to walk over to the tables to eat snack.

When I think about her, I face the hard truth that she may live at the Home for her whole life as a child with special needs. I pray most of all that she knows love. I pray for her helpers and the sisters. Of course, I hope  that there is a family looking to adopt a toddler like her. We have prayed about our adoption and whether or not we are supposed to check that box or not, but feel that God is leading us to a different direction at this time.

We have been blessed beyond belief with a family here who shows us continually the definition of hospitality. They are a neat family and are one of the many here who have adopted a child and we have been so encouraged by their example. They decided to adopt a child with special needs once their son was born needing emergency surgery, recognizing the blessing he had of being born in a family who could do that for him, and so wanted to provide a home for a child who didn't get that in the beginning. So with a young two year old and a newborn, they started the process. Around the time their newborn was turning two, they received another almost two year old. It's a special version of twins separated at birth.

Again, my hope in sharing these stories with you is to ask for prayer for them as well as prayer that God might be calling you and your family to consider adoption. I don't know if it is His will for you, I don't even know if it's His will for us. All I know is that these particular kids have a place in my heart and that God wants Levi and I to apply and try. We would love your prayer for our process - that it would be God's will for us and that the timing would be an amazing testimony to glorify him.

Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns. - Rev 19
Father of the fatherless and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation. - Psalm 68:5

thoughts on the bike

I don't think we've ever regretted buying the motorcycle this past October. Not only has it enabled us to get to and from school for morning meetings, afternoon meetings, student meetings, etc., but it has absolutely provided comic relief. Today I had yet another completely ridiculous, illogical thought pop into my head while riding home, which has been a common occurrence whilst I am wearing my sweet flowered helmet.

I present to you snippets from my stream of consciousness on the bike.
...so tired. If I just close my eyes, I could fall asleep. Wait. I don't think I'm supposed to take a nap here. I'll have to ask Levi later...


...hmmm, that guard has a rifle. Getting shot would probably sting...


...better make sure my jaw is loose when we go over these bumps so I don't chip any of my teeth... 
(this one might not be so illogical.)

...am I supposed to go downhill like I would if I was on a horse? Who knows something like that? I wonder how many horseback riding-motorcycle enthusiasts there are in the world...


...dear Lord, please don't let us die today. It is my sister's birthday... 


...[staring down the steeeeeeeeep hill with 10 inch deep ruts that we drive every day] I wonder if Levi ever just wants to close his eyes and open them once we've reached the bottom. because I sure do. I guess he probably doesn't...


...mmm this bagel is tasty. I wonder why Levi is giving me such a surprised look. Maybe I'm not supposed to eat while riding a motorcycle?....


The bagel one was the best. Levi's face when he turned around and saw me eating was beyond words. There's not many times when I get to completely catch him off guard, but that was definitely one of them.

Without fail, every day I bump helmets with him. We might be going uphill and a sudden surge in the engine catches me unaware - Legitimate. Or we might be slowing down to go over a speed bump - Semi-legit. Or it's a completely flat part of the road and I've lost my sense of space and just can't help my head from bobbing forward - No excuse. The only thing that makes me feel better is that all of Levi's other passengers, except for a fellow motorcycle driver, have bumped into him.

All in all, it's been a great purchase, but I don't think I'll miss it when we get back to the States. Levi, however.... It will be hard to pull him away from buying one at home. But don't worry - I'll remind him about how dangerous they are (in the US only, of course), and how all ER doctors make their kids swear to never ride them.

The Beginning of the End

Hello friends!
I apologize for the long delay. It's hard to believe it's already May! We return to the blog with renewed vigor and purpose to document our last few weeks (!) here. (Don't hold your breath though.) We will be returning to California in June and praying that there is a teaching job somewhere for Levi. Please let us know if you have any suggestions! :)

As we wrap up the year here, I just want to reiterate how this is a great place to be. "This" being wherever it is that God wants you to be. The school is looking for teachers for next year, so if you are a teacher, I would highly recommend that you strongly consider applying to see if this might be where God wants YOU to go.

One of the parts that made this year so great is the orphanage we mentioned a while ago. Back in November, we started going almost every Sunday afternoon with my sister and other teachers from the school to play and sing with the children. The experience has been beyond our wildest imagination. It's a story that's still in process, but since January, many people in our family have begun the process of adoption. Amazing. Our story is for another day as our most recent news has left our hearts a little broken, but we want to start to share the children we've been able to know and love with you now. I share these precious children now in hopes that there is someone out there who will pray for them and to consider starting the long journey to adopt a child anywhere. It feels so intangible as I sit to try to imagine children around the world, but so personal as I think of the ones I see weekly. How I wish that I could have a picture for each story, but it's not allowed.

Today, I'd like to introduce you to S---a (I'm not sure if I should post names or not....I'll check around, but until then, to err on the side of privacy is always better. But she has a beautiful name.). She is a lovely, nine year old girl who lives at Home of Hope here in Kigali. She has a wide smile with a little gap between her front teeth. She is the oldest child we play with on Sunday afternoons. She shines when she dances and we got to see her perform front and center for a nun's goodbye party. She knows every child's name and fills us in as we point around. She is learning to speak English and she has several phrases down pat. I don't know her or anyone's story before they arrived at the Home of Hope, but I know she is sweet and fun and loved by God. She imitates another teacher's karate moves with careful attention and a happy glow. Every time I see her, I pray for her future. What awaits her next? Will there be anyone who will come to take her home?

Thanks for reading and for praying for her with me.  May your day be blessed wherever you are.

Christmas in Kigali

We had a wonderful Christmas season here in Kigali, even though we never had winter-y weather. Kristen started things off with busting out Christmas plates and decorations and surprised us from day to day with little Christmas rhymes and gifts.

Kristen was able to track down 3 Christmas trees in Kigali, but only after 6 hours of searching.

It was the biggest tree in all of Kigali and our guard Evariste (more about him below) always looked over at us with a bemused expression on his face each time we added a little bit more decorations: first lights, then ornaments, then candy canes out of the package.

The stockings were hung with care, but the weight proved too strong from the ribbon we taped to the wall. This picture is from the first day.

One of the best things we were blessed to do was spread some Christmas cheer to those around us, thanks to many members of our family. After hearing of their generosity to us, we immediately began planning fun things to do with their gift. Our thoughts immediately turned to the people here who support and ease our life. First gift was given to Irene, a sweet girl who works in our house a few days a week to help Kristen with cleaning the all-tile floors, the constant dishes, and the laundry machine that holds only 8 items of clothing  for a house of 7 people that can only be hung on the line during strategic times to avoid the daily rain (no dryers here). We recently found out she was sleeping on a thin mattress directly on the floor and so decided to buy her a bed and a thicker mattress. With another family, the gift also included bedding and a mosquito net. This Christmas gift also coincided with her birthday, so everyone together gave her a surprise party and made cupcakes. Unfortunately, we didn't take any pictures, but she was very thankful and appreciative for her new furnishings.

The next gift was given to Afrika (yes, that's his real name) and his 3 year old son Jhovan. Afrika drives the car for us during the week since neither Kristen or Erin know how or want to know how to drive stick shift in the land of a thousand hills and with people walking on the sidewalks in the most densely populated country in Africa. Public transportation is interesting - a "bus" that looks like the old VW bus from Little Miss Sunshine carries 19 people in it (not exaggerating) and does not leave the station of origin before it's full. But there aren't things like timetables or map routes that make it easy to understand how to get one or where it's going. If it happens to be labeled with a destination in paint, that does not necessarily mean the bus is really going there. There isn't a subway system like France. Many of the roads are not paved nor lighted. And, with 7 busy people in the family, trips to school, business meetings, and the grocery store occur multiple times a day. It's helpful to have someone who speaks Kinyarwanda with us, but like many other occupations, it's nice to be able to tangibly support people here by providing an income. Afrika was only 14 years old when he was orphaned here in Kigali in 1994 and he is working hard to be a good father for his son. Jhovan's mom died before he was even 1 year old. We decided that even 3 year old boys in Rwanda might like a little Christmas party and some presents. We invited him over and after just some play time, we brought out the Christmas cookies to have a little decorating party. You can see by his expression that the whole experience was quite new to him. He did warm up after tasting the frosting. :)

Irene was here that day and she couldn't take her eyes off the cookies, so we suggested she decorate some to take home too. She spent at least 15 minutes carefully decorating each of her cookies, using the sprinkles very artfully.

After the cookie party, it was time for the opening of the gifts. The first treasure was Lego Duplo blocks which he had never seen before, but quickly figured out they could build neat things.

Turning to the next present....

 

A soccer ball of his very own! He was so thrilled and was just glowing with joy.

Afrika told us that he went home and showed all his friends his new presents. He said he plays with the legos every morning and the ball all day long, but he won't let any other people touch it. He is only 3. :)

Our last gift was to our beloved guard/gardener Evariste. (Every house here has a gate encircling the property and a guard.)The plants are flourishing under his care and the daily rain. He lets us practice our Kinyarwanda with him and also speaks French with Greg. But he is not a man of many words and so we mainly exchange smiles and waves. He lives on the property with us in his own little guard house and goes back to his family on the weekends. He has very impressively stoppped Levi's motorcycle from crashing down the hill and once cut off part of the bumper on the silver beast of a car with his machete because it had lost its emergency brake once again and rolled into something.We have yet to get a picture of him or with him because we are afraid he will be too embarrassed by the whole experience since he has generally a pretty shy demeanor. We presented him with a decorated envelope of cash for him and his family and gave him extra days off on both holiday weekends (which is a concept unheard of here). His wife and 4 kids live on the family farm outside the city and he gets dressed in his best clothes to go out to them. He was very thankful and came back to us sharing the most we've ever heard him speak.

Our own house too was very blessed. Stockings are always the highlight of the Christmas morning giftings and this year did not disappoint. Before we left, our (Kristen and me) mom and sister sent over stocking stuffers they shopped for us. Here are the stockings in their next setting after the ribbon fell too many times to re-stick.

Thanks to Cindy, our families, and the postal service between the USA and Rwanda, we had many wonderful gifts to open on Christmas day. This is our tree Christmas Eve. Greg and Kristen were able to find some gifts for their kids, most comically being Ava's joy at finding a bottle of Heinz ketchup in her stocking. 

 

Kristen and I with our stocking gifts.  Not ketchup for us and that was just fine. :)

As mentioned early, Levi's mom Cindy was out here from Dec 22 until today. We got to see a lot of John and Robin, as well as show her our life in Kigali. Together, we visited the local orphanage twice and were inspired by Cindy's example to create games on the spot with only a few blades of grass. A major highlight was our time in Akagera Park, where we saw amazing animals. (We'll post about that soon.)

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Year celebration! Thank you for your love and support. I figure if you're reading this that you also got our Christmas photo, but just in case, here we are.

This was taken at our house and you could see the school in the top right, but the flash didn't work as well as we hoped.

Happy 2010!

The Nile Story

(Be warned: this is mainly for our record and we completely understand that you will probably get bored and stop reading.)

The adventure began at 4:30am as we left Kigali. We boarded a “charter” bus for Uganda, not realizing that 1) we would spend the next 14 hours on it and 2) it was probably the most dangerous portion of our journey. Rwanda is such a small country that traveling 3 hours from Kigali in any direction brings you to the border of another. You have to file paperwork to leave Rwanda and to enter the next country, a process that still befuddles me. I lived up to my reputation of champion sleeper and was able to snooze my way through the long ride.  The “bathrooms” along the way left much to be desired; namely, a toilet, a stall, toilet paper. There was also sometimes a fee for the experience which we would have preferred not to pay. We finally made it to Jinja, and thanks to our excellent friends, who navigated our way in the dark to the hostel we were staying at.

The hostel is run by Nile River Explorers and we had a great experience with them: hot water, water pressure, towels, decent food, reasonable prices. The day we went rafting, we didn’t have to pay for our stay and were provided 3 meals.

The rafting experience was great. We had a short training on how to fall, how to get back into the boat, and how to paddle before embarking on the rest of the river. The only downside was that we weren’t placed in the boat with the other 7 teachers, but there were only 2 boats and so we were able to watch their adventures.

All day long, we were just stunned by the beauty of the Nile. There were lush green hills surrounding it, the water was clear and pleasant. We saw a monitor lizard, even though our guide said it was a baby crocodile, and I was the lucky one who saw a monkey in the tree. We laughed all day at the people who surprised us jumping off rocks as they were bathing in the river since we didn’t see them until they catapulted off the side. We ate lunch on the boat, floating peacefully, eating delicious pineapple and glucose crackers with a sad faced little girl on them. We never quite figured out why that picture was used.

We’re going to try something new here.  This is Levi writing now.  If you see italics, it’s Levi writing, if it’s normal font, it’s Erin.  We’ll see how that works out.

As for the rafting, we were also were surprised to see thousands of pine trees along the river.  Thousands of pine trees, for quite a few kilometers along the east side of the river.  Lasted for maybe 5 kilometers or so.  Being a bit taken back by the pine trees (I suppose you wouldn’t think a pine tree would be shocking, but after a few months in Rwanda you‘d be surprised), we asked our guide what the story was.  He told us that there had previously been “fishers” there, folks that had done their fishing by using dynamite.  Bad for the Nile.  So, the government came in, planted acres of pine trees, and told the fishermen that they were now Christmas tree farmers.  And so they are.

Like we mentioned in the early post, there were 12 rapids over 18.6 miles and four of them were Class V. It was pretty amazing to look back at the rapids we just finished. We only fell out 3 of the 12 times, which wasn’t so bad, and felt a deep sense of accomplishment when we didn’t. There was always a moment of trepidation as we were coasting along and then heard the rapids as we prepared our strategy. We were followed the whole way by expert kayakers who were there to rescue us whenever we fell. There was also a medic raft, complete with a platform, that we thankfully never needed for anything other than our bag of sunscreen. The kayakers took the Class VI rapid we had to walk around and they were amazing. There was a big group of people along the river who were watching them. We have a copy of the time on DVD, but haven’t seen it yet. It was definitely an amazing experience that we will always remember.

We ended the day with a fantastic barbecue and a spectacular view before heading back to the hostel for much needed relaxation. The next day we walked the town of Jinja and even treated ourselves to some delicious ice cream. We saw Lake Victoria and it was also great just to see parts of the country of Uganda. Jinja is supposed to be the adventure capital of Africa and judging from the activities advertised it seems to live up to it: rafting, kayaking, horseback riding, bungee jumping over the Nile. It is also supposed to be source of the Nile, so that makes us feel important. :)

We arrived at the bus station at 11:30pm, as directed, and were told that the bus would most likely arrive between 1am and 2am. It actually was pretty nice as we sat under the stars and played games and chatted together. It was just the 9 of us at the station and the company worker provided chairs for us. We were so thankful the way that the travel details worked out because we sat at the Jinja station for two hours instead of at the Kampala station for two hours. Kampala made us appreciate the cleanliness and order of Kigali we didn’t even know we should be thankful for. The bus finally arrived at 1:45am, and we rejoiced that there were, in fact, the 9 seats reserved for us, relatively together.

When crossing the border leaving from Uganda, we all got off the bus, did our paperwork, and walked the ¼ kilometer back into Rwanda.  That in itself was interesting.  Once we had done all this though, and were ready to get back on the bus, the bus employees started taking everyone’s bags off the bus.  This had not happened on our way into Uganda.  While we were guessing why they were doing this (perhaps to get us all into our assigned seats?  Ha ha ha…), the employees started opening peoples’ suitcases and bags.  We still didn’t know what was going on until they caught someone with the dreaded contraband – PLASTIC BAGS!  So, a few folks got yelled at, got their bags (the plastic ones) taken away, and we boarded the bus, only a couple hours more until we were home.

We made it to Kigali in the early afternoon and enjoyed some rest before the usual routine of school began again.

If you want to see photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2601770&id=2513425&l=d57f278fe5.  It doesn't matter if you're not on facebook.

the short story: alive, amazed, and thankful

What an adventure. We survived 28 hours in a bus to raft 12 rapids on the Nile River, 4 of them Class V. It was a beautiful 30 km (18.6 miles) down the river that was lush and green and lovely. We have so much to be thankful for about transportation, safety, accommodations, navigators, etc. I don't think the details of the trip itself could have gone more smoothly than it did. We even got to eat creamy, delicious ice cream. The Nile itself was just breathtaking. I will be getting photos from the others soon and will write the long version later. Thank you for your prayers. Please join us in thanking God for his abundant provision.

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving!

Upcoming Travels

As you all are preparing for turkey, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie, we would love a little prayer for our Thanksgiving plans. Since we are teaching at an American-style school, we get the upcoming Thursday and Friday off, as usual. However, we have decided to join the other teachers on an excursion to Uganda to go rafting on the Nile River. (It's so unreal just to write that.) As the day of departure gets closer, I'm getting a little bit more nervous. Please pray for all the travel logistics to go smoothly, protection from disease, for safety, especially on the river, to not get robbed, etc. I don't know all of what could go wrong, but those are the main things I'm worried about. :) Anyway, I know that we are in God's hands and so that is comforting. It will also be a fabulous adventure that we will always remember and I am just hoping that all the memories are pleasant. We will be gone Thursday - Sunday. Thanks for remembering us in your prayers!