Lauren to Levi: “Is
this your pocket knife?”
Levi: “It’s my knife
case.”
Lauren: “Where is the knife?”
Levi: “Daddy has it.”
Lauren: “Oh. To cut people up with at the hopstiple?”
Anna posing for a picture on a stone ledge…. Falls off! Scrapes her leg… Cries hard! Lauren is alarmed, as we all are. Lauren grabs her chest & says:
“Oh my! My heart is
beeping!”
Book Corner!
I finished a book last night… staying up way too late for my
own good – but I couldn’t help it! A
book recommended to me by my friend, Marilyn.
A book that is definitely worth reading.
Read it.
Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus
By: Nabeel Qureshi
Sunday, June 8, 2014
Life simply happens… and gets away from me! I haven’t updated our adventures in a while….
But we are still here & doing well!
Friday was the last day of school for Levi & Anna – Following the same
schedule as school back home. Now we
will have several hours to fill each weekday morning! I might have to get creative. Ha!
Some of you have been asking about a couple of patients we
have mentioned in previous posts.
Valentine (the little 12 year old girl who is the size of Lauren &
who had the worms in her belly… whom Joel operated on & we prayed for her
life…) God gave her life! She was discharged home last week! The kids & I were walking along the road,
heading back toward the mission/hospital & we passed her! We stopped her & her dad to smile &
giggle together. What a quick answer to
prayer! Before she left, we were able to
bring her eggs each day & Anna & Lauren colored with her a little
bit. What a sweet, smiley, beautiful
child. Her story has been on my heart a
lot – and in thinking about her family, siblings, neighbors who are drinking
dirty water…. The answer seems easy, but in reality is quite complicated. Anyway, something to keep thinking about
& and asking God about.
Mary is another patient we have shared about. She is out of ICU & into the general ward
for healing. She continues to receive
eggs from us each day & is healing well.
Her smile is bright!
This past week, we met some new friends. Toby & Kersten are from Germany &
they lived in our house for 4 days.
Every morning at breakfast, Lauren acted like she’d never met them
before & whispered her shy questions to me… but by evening, she would be
jumping all over our new friends, pretending to be their pet kitty! That is one thing that is different here –
and I really find myself enjoying it a lot.
The revolving door of Kibogora. There
are several long-term missionaries here, but the rest of the compound is
generally full of visitors. The visitors
are here for various reasons – medical students or residents on away rotations,
visiting doctors or nurses, social workers, dentists, teachers, carpenters,
electricians, peace corps, moms, maintenance workers, engineers, coffee
plantation supervisors, university directors, people to sew, people to sort
& organize, pharmacists, teenagers tagging along with parents, pastors,
tourists, honeymooners, …. That’s all I can think of right now… I like meeting
all these new personalities with stories of how & why they are here. They usually bring energy & excitement
with them!
Friday night we had some friends over to eat pizza and drink
Fanta with us, along with Toby & Kersten.
Emanuel works with Joel in the operating room; he is a surgery
nurse. His wife is Mary Ann; she is
going to nursing school & currently working at the hospital with HIV
patients. In her words, she has the
difficult job of “breaking the bad news” to people at their homes when their
test results are in. They have 3 kiddos. 7 & 4 year old boys (their names are
French & for the life of me I cannot remember how to pronounce them!) and a
2 year old daughter, Rosetta. The kids
loved playing with all the toys that were sent to us by Anna & Levi’s
school – and we sent a bag of match box cars & a soccer ball home with
them! Their parents told us they could
not sleep the night before – anticipating going to Dr. Joel’s house!
Yesterday (Saturday), we took a fun adventure. We live about an hour from a national park –
a rainforest called Nyungwe Foreset. We
drive through it any time we go to or from Kigali, but have never stopped to
hike. We took Anna & Levi, leaving
Lauren with friends. Several other
short-term friends went with us. We
hiked the canopy trail. This trail takes
you down, down, down to a suspension bridge that you can walk across & view
the majestic mountains, valleys & tree tops. The bridge is 70 meters above the ground (I’m
terrible at converting numbers, but I’m pretty sure it’s over 200 feet high!) This was a real test of courage for me. I don’t do very well with heights – and this
bridge was as narrow as my feet side by side.
We held on to a rope that was about shoulder height & there was
netting that went from feet to shoulder, so you couldn’t fall off. But the walk way was metal with holes through
so you could look down … Oh, I didn’t look down. Anna was so brave & she commented on how
the trees below looked just like broccoli & Levi loved watching the clouds
beneath us. I just kept asking Joel to
tell me this was amazing while I stared at the back of his head! The forest walk was gorgeous! Gorgeous!
Gorgeous!!!! It reminded me exactly of
Jurassic Park. The walk to the canopy
bridge was a down pour – we were soaked through our clothes, despite wearing
raincoats…. And freezing. We had to wait
about 15 minutes before stepping onto the bridge to make sure there wasn’t any
lightning, as the bridge has a lot of metal!
But the walk back up was sunny & stunning.
After our friend picked us up, we drove to a lodge in the beautiful tea fields that has
a pool (that’s where our friends were with Lauren). We were allowed to swim in the pool if we ate
lunch there, so that was a super nice day! We even ordered hot chocolate to warm up after
being soaked to the bone in rain! It was definitely an afternoon where we felt
like we were on a movie set someplace other than reality.
As soon as we got home, Joel had to head to the
hospital. I was left with 3 filthy,
tired, cold, hungry, whiney kids…. And our German friends trying to be helpful…
and while giving Lauren a bath, my friend Josiane showed up just to chat about
her day – and eat dinner with us…. And the rest of the mission was supposed to
come over for a movie night at our place to watch “Frozen” in about ½ hour…. And
Lauren was crying because she’s 3 & cries about everything right now…. After
Joel finally came back home & we got the movie rolling, I went to bed … to
dream about our wonderful day!
Love to you all!
Good Night.
