HOLIDAYS

Thanksgiving

Nov. 22 -Nov. 27
I spent the week at Kumbya with the Broses, Dr. John Brose (Dan's father who used to be a missionary doctor in Burundi. He was visiting from the US), the Vintons (Broses' best friends who are missionaries in Congo and co-owners of the cabin), and Ruth King (visiting from my home church - see previous post).


"The Kids" Austin and Aaron Brose and Laura and Christina Vinton.




The Turkey. This bad boy 30 pounder made it through three countries, a plane ride, and a 4 hour road trip before it graced our table. RVA sells turkeys each year and Aaron carried this one home in his suitcase (shh. don't tell Kenya Airways). We had the full thanksgiving meal complete with cranberries, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. Thanks for the pumpkin mom!

Indian Christmas dinner
The Asian community puts on a fundraiser dinner/dance every year. We had some really great Indian food and did a little dancing. We had a blast!


Aaron and I all dressed up


Dan and Tambry (Tambry had a beautiful sari made for the occasion)

Twizere
We put together gift baskets for all the caregivers in the Twizere program at the Rainbow Centre. TWIZERE means "Let's have faith and hope!". The program brings together caregivers for the over 500 community babies that we are strengthening each month. Caregivers are impoverished, HIV+ widows, grandmothers, aunts, young sisters, even neighbors of the malnourished or orphaned babies. These caregivers help us by taking responsibility for the orphaned or abandoned babies, rather than just leaving them at our gate (which would be their easiest, quickest solution, but overwhelming in magnitude to us). Caregivers are referred to us by AIDS organizations, clinics, hospitals, and word of mouth. We see babies throughout the week, making sure they are receiving the milk and porridge we give. We also help the families of the caregivers with medical, legal, emotional and spiritual counseling, food, and monetary support so they can have small businesses to generate income. When caregivers are AIDS infected themselves, they often are too weak to think past survival. We offer encouragement, love and acceptance in an atmosphere of trust, without judgmental prejudices. Our goal is to strengthen the whole family, many of whom are now or soon will be headed by children because of parents dying of AIDS.


I love this picture. I took it as I was driving away from our Twizere Christmas meeting. This was where we gave out all of the 225 baskets we had put together. These ladies were returning home and you can see the traditional way they carry their babies on their backs and their prized Christmas baskets on their heads. They are standing on the corner in my neighborhood. All neighborhoods have names. Mine is called Kinindo as you can see from the sign behind them.

Christmas

I spent Christmas Eve and Day with who else? The Broses! In case you haven't noticed I kinda like hanging out with them. They're wonderful. Also joining us were the Hieberts. Doug and Deanna and their little girl Maddy live up-country and do peace and reconciliation work. Doug's parents were also visiting from Canada so we made quite a merry little party. Christmas trees (or rather the cutting down of trees for that purpose) were outlawed in Burundi this year due to the deforestation that's been happening over the years. So Tambry decorated a house plant instead and it served the purpose nicely.


Doug, Deanna, and Maddy Hiebert

New Years

Dec. 26 '05 - Jan. 1 '06
We were back at Kumbya to ring in the new year. I'm telling you, Kumbya is one of the best places on earth. I wish you could all experience it's peace and beauty. God has blessed me so much during my stays at this wonderful place. This time there were about 25-30 people there to help celebrate. We also gathered on the 27th to celebrate Tambry's birthday. There was lots of boating and playing games in the sun and reading on the front porch.



Perhaps the biggest adventure of the week was sleeping with "the kids" out on the raft. Believe it or not there are five people on that little floating dock and no one fell in! We rowed out there in the dark with all of our bedding and finally found a SOMEWHAT comfortable configuration where MOST of us were at least partly on a mattress (sorry Chris). Needless to say, there was not a lot of sleep to be had and I took a nice nap the next day. But it was definitely worth it!