Well… we have settled back in, and are REALLY enjoying having our niece, Katie, for the next four months… she will be helping with some writing that we need on various projects, as well as starting a writing project of her own. We also have Sebastian, a German young man, who has been helping us with website design. He’ll be here until mid-May. Josh arrives mid-April for a month, so we’ll be surrounded, once again, by a house full of kids! Hey… keeps us young, and we’re loving every minute of it!
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Katie exploring Musanze...and her new friends!
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A few months ago, we became aware of a non-occupied “compound” or campus that was previously occupied by the German road building company, Strabag. It has been a year since anyone has lived there, but consists of 17 small, one bedroom/one bath bungalows, each with a kitchen, and living/dining area, along with a commercial kitchen/dining building and a laundry facility. It’s set on 3 acres and is located just a few miles to the north of where we now live on the road that takes you to Volcanoes National Park. Of course, the cutest boy in the world didn’t have to think 2.3 seconds before he was making plans with all the things we could do with and on the campus. So… wheels started turning and negotiations began, and well, we are now the proud new renters of this campus. We are still waiting on a “move-in” date. Everything has been approved at even the highest level of the government, but as with everything here, even THEN things move slowly, so we make contact with the “powers that be” every day, and pray that we will soon get the green light and have keys in hand so we can open this base of operations to serve the people of Musanze. I will save all the plans we have for one of my future posts, but needless to say, it’s gonna be the bomb!! Photos will also follow in a future post...
I have also started tutoring Christine’s other two children two days a week in English and math… ok… English right now… we’re having to start from the beginning since they are getting so little in the public school they attend. At what point I ever thought I was going to be able to be an ESL teacher, I’m not sure, but I’m just taking it one day at a time, and know that eventually we will all be better for the experience. They will hopefully be able to speak English, and I will not have gone batty trying.
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Fanny, Tonto, and Elizabeth
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Who ME??
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Today, I watched a guy pruning a VERY large tree in front of our house… he was doing so with nothing more than a machete. He was simply standing on one branch, and chopping at the ones above him. He then started chopping on the branch he was STANDING on…. and I was thinking… DUDE… not good… I then thought how much like that we are with God… we find ourselves, in life, standing on the very small side of a very big branch, and instead of reaching out in faith for God, we chop away until we HAVE to reach out for Him in desperation, or worse, we never reach for Him at all, which surely keeps us on the small side of life just waiting for our branch to break. Why is that… why don’t we trust that God is there for every step we take, why do we continue to chip away at our lives, expecting some different outcome? Do we REALLY think we’re smarter than GOD? Clearly, I often do… but today, watching the chop master dude, I pictured myself just walking, one step at a time, to the end of that branch, knowing that God was there… waiting to catch me, should I fall… or jump. That’s what this move and our life here in Africa has been and still is… taking one step at a time to the end of the branch and JUMPING! Did God catch me… He sure did! Do I have that much faith with every step I take… I sure don’t… am I trying to have more faith… I sure am! My prayer is that we can all just JUMP… because when you jump… and God catches you… life is NEVER the same.
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| Chop Master Dude... |
