Meet and Greet

I was just going through some blog entries I had written in Microsoft Word and discovered that I had this very nice entry that I NEVER POSTED ..................... Whoops, sorry. I will make up for it by posting it now. One of the advantages of a late post is that I can quickly and easily add pictures into the text.

And yes, I'm still "thinking" about my closing statements. We haven't yet shared our trip with the folks at church, so I'm thinking that will all come together when I prepare to give my testimony at church.

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1/4/2009 Update - -

The days are going by quickly. We have been very busy with the construction project. Now that I am somewhat coherent, I will try to get everyone updated (and perhaps in some sort of order).

Before I forget it, you can get more updates from Rwanda by following information on the Africa Mission Alliance home page. That address is: http://africamissionalliance.org/

As you know, it is a great distance from my home in the USA to Rwanda. With flights, connections and delays, it was almost 30 hours from our first departure in Seattle until our touchdown in Kigali. And of course, when you arrive in a new country, you cannot simply put your head on a pillow and sleep.

We arrived Tuesday around 2pm, went to bed that first night about 8:30pm . . . and I couldn’t sleep. I’ll bet I was up 4 or 5 times during the night. Excitement I guess.

The next morning (on Wednesday) was our first day of construction and then the New Year’s Eve bash at church.......we left church about 1am, not staying until the end like some of the die-hards.

On Thursday, being that it was New Year’s Day, we had no construction. So we did Home Visits instead. We visited 3 homes that had children in the Africa Mission Alliance (AMA) program, but the children were not yet sponsored. Three members of our team sponsored these children as we went to their homes.

It was so exciting to get to see the children be shy at first and then warm up to us and want to hug and shake hands. When shaking hands, all the people that we have met so far use a handshake a little different from ours in the States. They extend their right hand and put their left hand on the inside of the right forearm, just below the elbow. That is a sign of deep respect. Wow, what a privilege!


As we went into these different communities, which often involved quite a hike either up rutted trails (you can’t really even call them roads) or else up the side of a mountain, which involves switchbacks and general mountain-like conditions, we were often met with swarms of children.
They were always very excited to see us. And of course when we took their pictures, we always had to turn the camera around right away so that they could “see” themselves. They all thought that was pretty cool.

The last child of the day was mine. Her name is Claudine and she had just woken from a nap when we arrived. She was extremely shy at first. I was able to enter her home and meet her mother. This is an extremely poor family. She is a widow and has 4 children – 3 girls and 1 boy. It is probably the poorest home in the AMA program, and Claudine was the third child sponsored in this family. The youngest isn’t yet old enough for the program.

A sponsored child receives a school uniform, gets to attend school, receives a meal (I’m not sure whether it is one or two meals) each day and gets medical care for themselves and up to 6 other family members.



I had brought a few small gifts for Claudine . . . a jump rope, a pink bear, some smiley face stickers and 3 books with beautiful pictures. Even though she won’t be able to read them, I’m sure the pictures will tell the story.

Claudine held my hand as we were departing and walked with us up the path for some distance. The whole family walked with us and then the son arrived just as they were turning around.
So we got one picture of the entire family (see, they now consider me “one of the family”).

Friday was another major construction day. The entire external base of the water tower was completed by the Rwandan crew (a team of 8 folks) before we arrived Friday. So we gathered many rocks and threw them in the hole to cover the entire bottom of the tank. That was all smoothed out and then rebar was cut and laid down. Then we had to cut some small-gauge wire to connect each of the pieces of rebar together – to make the base stronger.

In the afternoon we poured cement. Cement is poured by the shovel-full. Very labor intensive. And of course water to make the cement is carried by people in 5-gallon containers from wherever the nearest water source is. It must be a great distance, because the individuals are gone a long time.

They come back carrying 2 containers of water (one on their head and one on their back). We got about half of the cement poured and worked on Friday. We finished the base on Saturday. Now we are not sure if there will be any more for us to do for Monday. Sometimes I think we were more of a hindrance than a help, but everyone was very gracious and it was fun to work together with the men and women and get to know them a little.

After we were done I said to myself, “we have just completed building a firm foundation for this water tower. A strong foundation is the first and most important part of anything, whether it be a building or our faith.”

Today is Sunday and we leave for church at 9:30am. I know that we were given a late wake-up today, but I couldn’t sleep any longer. When the birds start to chirp at sunup, I’m awake. Some of the sounds are familiar, but some are also very unique.

It was 88 degrees when we were done working yesterday.

I’ll have to do another post about the rest of our Saturday. It involved playing with about 200 children at the school. In the afternoon we also went to the Genocide Memorial. Very educational and sobering.

Thanks for all of your comments. I enjoyed hearing back from you. Hard to believe I’ll be back home in less than one week.