Well, it has been entirely too ling since our last update and for that we are sorry but we have been pretty busy!

CHRISTMAS:

Our second Christmas Eve, in Rwanda, was spent with just “the family” we had super yummy hot chocolate and home made peppermint chocolate chip cookies and a candy cane for a treat. We spent the whole evening singing and dancing. Right before bed we brought up the children’s presents! Some wonderful folks from a company called “What if Productions” donated a really cool gift for each of the children here. They sent 64 teddy bears that glow in the dark! They are really neat as they glow from within and last thru the night. The kids were fascinated by them. We spent at least an hour with the big million candle power flash light charging them up for the night.

On Christmas day we spent the day as a family. Everyone worked together and we had a huge feast late in the afternoon. Afterwards…when all the bellies had settled we spent the evening with song and dance again. It was time spent to just thank and praise our Lord; it was a very nice day.

On the 27th we had an outreach feeding day. We had over 200 people attend…a really great turn out. Among those attending were some of the local officials. We had Emmanuel the Chief Executive and Alex the Social Affairs representative join us for dinner. We also had Bishop Joseph and several Victory Pastors and some church choirs join us too. And of course, we invited the families of all our workers. We put on a huge 7 course spread…it was a huge success!!

SCHOOL:

In November we took our top 12 students into Kigali for a big treat, we took them to a really great Mexican restaurant, owned by an African American from Washington DC, where they enjoyed authentic taquitos and tortillas and Fanta!! They also played volleyball, basketball, and swung on the swings for hours. They had such a blast and for sure it encouraged everyone else to do their very best in school in the next year. They told us that we are going to need to rent a bus to get them all into the city!

Our Primary aged kids have once again gone back to school on the 12th of January. A pretty late start and they were very happy to get back as the break seemed to be getting a bit long. We have 39 children enrolled in primary school this year and 2 of those children are actually in their final year. Louise and Fabrice have both started grade 6. Next year they will have to be sent to boarding school as that is the only option in Rwanda for secondary so some serious thought and planning needs to go into that as finances will have to be raised as it is quite a bit more money. It is also a bit sad as our area does not have a secondary school so they will likely be sent somewhere quite far and then they will only be able to come back home on extended holidays.

We have also got our own nursery school started this year with 14 of our own children attending. We have asked Pastor Veronique (you may remember that it was her wedding that I was apart of in September) to be our teacher and she has accepted. She is the Pastor of the church in Taba but she is also trained as a teacher so it has worked very well for us all! We will be able to have a total of 30 children so this is a really great outreach to the community as well as a subsidy income for the children’s nursery school.

On a side note, Pastor Veronique had money donated to her from the wonderful people of Victory Church in Moncton NB for a new church to be built for her and her congregation. Right now, she is renting a small store front to hold church and it is so packed that people actually gather outside. About 90% of her congregation is children so for her to be able to raise the necessary finances herself was impossible so this gift was a huge blessing! Well, the church is almost completely built and will actually be dedicated sometime in February ~ Praise the Lord!!

MAMAS:

We have a new addition to our mamas; her name is Stella and she came to us on her own one day, right when we really needed her…she must have been sent from God! She is a young woman and certainly a great asset to our family. She has had 3 years university training in the medical field; so she is now our resident nurse! She really aspires to be a doctor but obviously requires further schooling. She has really “whipped” this place into shape ~ medically speaking! It is really great for everyone, but especially the children to have someone here who really knows her stuff when it comes to health and nutrition.

LIVESTOCK:

In early December many of the children joined forces to complete the emptying of the fish pond so that it can be restocked with new fish. This was a fun and hilarious and also informative event! Did you know that cat fish bite and it really hurts! By the time the pond was empty the kids we exhausted, proud of their achievement and completely covered in mud! It took them hours but it provided much entertainment for the local community and they all ate like kings for the next few days. We also stocked our second pond with thirty or so cat fish, biting cat fish that is. Rugamba was named the handler and had his fingers nipped several times! The next morning the pond was full of white Ibis birds feasting on the tiny fish left behind and the ones that had buried themselves in the mud. It was quite a sight but of course, none of us thought to get our camera out in time to take a picture. We still have the 2 ponds although the stock is way down. Pastor Hazel will be bringing finances for restocking them with a better quality fish when she comes with a team in February. Thank you Victory Churches once again.

We have been busy with our animals as of late trying to not only get them nice “fancy” houses that some of the locals have asked to rent! But also even in trying to purchase them. The new goat/hen house is finished and our 6 goats are enjoying their new digs! We have the inside of the chicken house painted white and lighting wired in for brightness as well as the nesting boxes built. They only things we don’t have is the chickens! We had only planned on having 24 chickens because we only want them for eggs and that is all that the space would allow but apparently we can only purchase a minimum of 100! So now we are trying to be as inventive and as investigative as we can to try and get this purchase made. Hopefully we will have a line on at least 20 chickens within the next week or so.

We still have the cow but, we have discovered that Dolly is a dud! We were told that she was due to have a calf in November so we anxiously awaited the big day. We were so expectant that we actually shot out of bed one night and raced down to her pen when we heard her mooing loudly thinking that it was time only to learn that she was just lonely! When November came and passed with no new additions we had the vet come to look at her only to learn that she was not in fact pregnant…she was in heat! We had her artificially “hooked up” once again and now we have learned that she is likely infertile! So we are stuck with this “gift” that is only costing us money. We are trying to trade her up for a different cow but nothing here is as easy as it sounds and because the cow was a gift from the First Lady we must go thru all the proper channels.

NEW FRIENDS:

We have come in contact with an American woman, named Arlene Brown, who has started a children’s home in Gitarama town about thirty minutes from here. Dean and I along with the girls, my mom, Francoise, Bishop Joseph, and Joseph and Grace went and spent an afternoon there seeing how they operate. They have an amazing piece of property! They are a good example of self sufficiency as they have many businesses started there. They raise chickens for both eggs and eating. They supply many locals as well as restaurants and grocery stores with eggs and chickens. They are also in the beginning stages of starting a bakery where they will supply bread. They have completed their first guest house and have a second one planned. They are ideally situated on the very top of a hill near the edge of town and on a clear day can see all the way to Ruhengeri with views of all three volcanoes. All in all, a very beautiful place. We have taken twelve of our children there to play a game of soccer with some of her children. They were very, very excited about it and had a really great time even though we got beat pretty badly…11 to 0! Oh well, its not if you win or lose but how much fun you have ~ and that they really did! Our second game is set for Saturday January 17th.

What is really neat about Arlene is that she is well into her seventies and is doing this alone with only the help of the people she has employed here. We quite like her and have had many visits to her place since our first initial meet.


US PERSONALLY:

We have had some additions to our family….well honorary additions anyway! One of our mamas, Monicah whom we call Bebe, has a daughter that just had a baby girl whom she named Kathy and a very good friend of ours who lives just across the highway had a baby boy on the 27th of November and they named him Dean! Now with the spelling here it is actually Katy and Dina but they are still our namesakes and we think that that is pretty neat and a real honor!

As many of you know we are returning to Canada, landing in Calgary, on February 1st. We have told everyone here of the news and it was taken pretty well. We had been doing our best to drop some hints along the way and to distance ourselves a bit, letting Joseph & Grace step into our roles and it seems to have made the news easier to take. We really ask that as our departure approaches you pray for the actual leaving to be as easy on everyone as possible and for our transition back into North American life and culture. Please pray about continued direction for our family that God alone will have his will in our lives. We also ask that you lift up the missionary that is coming to replace us. Her name is Grace Van Mil and she is coming to teach English and work on some vocational schools. She has been working in not only Africa but orphanages as well as she worked at one in Malawi. We are very happy that she is coming to be with these kids and to be a support to Joseph & Grace. She arrives on the 17th of February and we ask for prayer for her (and her luggage) and that her transition be a smooth one as well.

Joseph & Grace are completely settled in now and have taken their leadership role very seriously. It is such a relief for Dean and I to see them take the well being of these children so seriously. They genuinely care for these kids and the mamas and it gives us peace to know that all will be okay here when we leave. They have a baby due sometime this month and we are really hoping that the new little addition will arrive before we leave.

My mom is still here and we are starting to do more travelling with her this month. In December we didn’t venture too far. We spent one weekend at Lake Kivu in Kibuye which is one of our favorite spots. Unfortunately she was still getting used to all the different water and foods so she was somewhat sick for most of the trip but still enjoyable none the less. She enjoyed watching the local fishing boats going out and coming in. Late in the night when they are on the water all a person can see is the lanterns they burn and it looks like cars parked out on the water.

So far this month we have taken a day trip to Nymata. We had never been there before so it was neat to drive a road we had never been on before. We figured the President must drive that road a lot because the pavement was perfect…just like Canada! The purpose of our drive was to visit a Genocide Memorial. It was to be mom’s first and last as she doesn’t think that she can handle another one. This particular memorial was an actual massacre sight. It was a Catholic church where 5000 – mostly women and children took refuge. The Interhamwe blew their way into the church where they systematically murdered everyone. In remembrance they have pretty much left everything as is. There are huge holes blown into the building and many of the windows were pulled out. Up until last year even the bodies were left where they had fallen. They were preserved with lime. Now, they have shelves of bones laid out. It is very sobering. They have all the adult skulls and femurs laid out respectfully on several shelves but all the children’s bodies have been placed in coffins that or at the other end of the church. They have also kept all of the belongings that were there. The clothes are hung over all the rafters, in one corner all personal items have been placed...nothing has been removed not even a spare pen that was lying around. There is a trunk that was filled with bibles and school books. Water cans and mattresses were stacked in the rafters. The goal really is to never forget. We were also shown the kitchen behind the church where many people were locked in and burned to death. There was one building my mom could not even walk into and that was the nursery school; there was still blood on the walls. The fear and chaos was very real, just by looking at the large holes in the walls you could feel the terror that these victims experienced. It is unfathomable what man is capable of.

We have spent a most relaxing week at Kibogora ~ probably our very favourite spot. There isn’t much to do here but enjoy the scenery and relax…pretty laborious eh?! It is a beautiful drive to get here; you have to drive thru the Nyungwe Rain Forest. Pretty much always guaranteed to see some monkeys along the way…which we did!!

We have some trips planned that Bishop Joseph is going to take us on. He will be taking us to his home village in Butare which happens to be right at the border with Burundi so we will take a walk across and have a peak around. Bishop is also taking us thru Ruhengeri and into the Congo where we will visit with a Victory Pastor there. My mom finds it a little bit unnerving but we have been assured that all will be okay. We are actually pretty excited about it as we have wanted and talked about going into the Congo the whole time we have been here. On our way back we will be stopping at a Pygmy village. One of the tribes that makes up Rwanda is the Twa, they are about 2% of the population. We are going into a remote village where they actually live in the trees and have there own society with their own Chief. We are going in with gifts of rice and beans. We are very, very excited about this trip…a life experience for sure!

Our final big trip with mom will be to Akagera Game Park for a safari. Our family really enjoyed this trip last year and we are really looking forward to seeing all the animals again…and hopefully some that we didn’t see last time.

It has actually been really good to be as busy as we have been, away a lot, for this last few weeks. It has really allowed Joseph & Grace to take real ownership of their new roles. All of the mamas and the children know to go to them with anything and everything. All that Joseph & Grace lacked was confidence and with us stepping back it allowed them to step up and take that ownership. They are doing beautifully and are loved and respected by all.

We will finish off the month by spending as much time as possible with our family here and instilling within them the love and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Please pray for their minds and hearts to be filled to overflowing.

We have been invited to come and spend an evening with Bishop Joseph and his family. We have worked very, very closely with Bishop over the past 15 months and we will miss him, Liberatta and the boys very much.

We leave in less than 3 weeks and we have many mixed feelings, some days are better than others. We have moments where we look forward to getting back to Canada and other days where we are already mourning the life we will leave behind. Our only option is to look expectantly to the Lord, and wait upon Him to see what’s next.

We have ideas of our own about what we would like to do, but, we learned long ago that our plans are not always the Lord’s so we will just have to wait and see!

With out your love, prayers and support we would not have made it even as far as we did. Please know that we have always appreciated you and we will continue to do so. Your prayers have lifted us out of some very dark and scary times and for that we send our love, appreciation and our heartfelt thanks.

We look forward to seeing you all again soon…