Being Silly

There's always time for silliness. Even Marilyn was part of the fun! Wish you could meet them all.

Janette came fall of 2013 and is now walking. See her story under "Babies" that I wrote a few days ago.

Benita is the 2 year old that came this fall after her mother and sister died. She loves her new family. See her story called "Beneta" September 2014.

*Kenilla - grade 2
*Front Row - Rebekah, Claudine, Diana, Kenilla, Johnny
Back Row - David, Agide
*Rebekah, Claudine, Benita, Marilyn, Soso
*Janette, Benita

My Face

Our preschool offers three morning classes with 25-30 children ages 3-4 in each class. Our teachers David, Theogene and a new teacher all have assistants. You'll know our head teachers as they wear green coats. Louisa, Solange and Alexia are the assistants and wear bright polka dot coats.

This particular day we also had the 6 students from AEE help with teaching. When volunteers are in the classrooms it allows the opportunity for small group teaching.

The kids were learning the parts of their face and emotions. Our amazing teachers always make it FUN!!!

Grade 4

We are so blessed that donations came in to begin construction of two fourth grade classes! We broke ground and many from the community have been hired to level the ground. yes jobs for many!!! Excess soil is being hauled to a neighbor to help level his land. Of course we need to pay to dump it there.

Joining us on our tour to check the progress was a group of university students from AEE, 3 Rwandese and 3 from the UK. They came by to volunteer to teach in the preschool classrooms for the day. They joined our tour.

The classrooms will be located just below primary grades 1, 2 and 3.

A St. Paul's men's group, Accountable Disciples, is making a donation to help us purchase wheelbarrows, shovels, spades and other construction tools. Thank you!!!!

Lunch

Well the second day here we were treated to a wonderful lunch. Cabbage topped with red beats and chicken. We don't have meat very often. Green bananas (that are orange in color), beans and rice.

New Toothbrushes

Packing was a challenge for us with so many much needed donations. We brought 1,400 out of the 2,170 toothbrushes K-Cafe collected. Another team in June will bring the rest. All the kids needed new ones and and the dental clinic was completely out. What fun it was giving them to our kids.

The dental clinic's partnership with the University of Rwanda is actually in it's second week. Lilliana the instructor and 3 students Pascal, Patrick, Delphine are staying at Urukundo for 2 weeks as a part of their semester rotation. These three students all had parents that attended university. After they leave another instructor and 3 students will come for 2 weeks. While here they participate in the life of Urukundo and worship at devotions.

Backpacks

All the kids at the Urukundo Home had backpacks that were 2-3 years old. In fact last month, when Nancy from State College and her daughter from California went to Urukundo, Nancy was asked by some of the kids if she could sew and repair some of their backpacks. Little did we know that there was a need for new backpacks. There are so many needs and that had not been a priority.

But......Marilyn, who is here again his year, had a friend Meredith from Wisconsin. She was in Home Depot and bought 22 backpacks that were on sale at a huge discount. She mailed them to Marilyn to bring with us. In the meantime Marilyn told Mama Arlene we would be bringing backpacks for our primary school kids. She was thrilled and soon we saw why. Yes the backpacks had seen better days.

We made a big deal about exchanging their backpacks and what a gift it was for them to have something new. We chuckled as we saw that 3 year old Soso's backpack was almost as big as he was!!! Afterwards the kids went outside and marched around the front yard singing songs wearing their backpacks. What a sight it was!!!!

God Calls

We arrived safely in Rwanda on Monday afternoon to sunshine and warm weather. What a change from home. One car carried us to Urukundo and Oswald our usual driver brought a van to bring 9 suitcases full of many needed items....school shoes, layette kits, school and sunday school projects, 1,300 toothbrushes, vitamins, bibles, pen pal letters, prayer shawls, 250 knit peace dolls and more. There was a little room left for our clothes and much needed trail mix and peanut butter.

Urukundo kids, staff and other visitors were there to greet us. Yes a full house as usual. Timothy Shea, a Millersville University professor in charge of their global programs, and I connected in Lancaster the Wednesday before I left. It's a long story of a friend, telling a friend, telling a friend. He brought a suitcase for us and stayed the night at Urukundo to explore opportunities for his students to come to Rwanda to work with us and other organizations.

Then we met Abby and Sarah two students from a university in NY that were spending a month at Urukundo working in the dental clinic, classrooms and farm. That evening Sarah was leading devotions and asked if we knew a song to go with her message about the man who build his house on the rocks and another on sand. I sat there stunned. We had made a video of our children at St. Paul's singing two songs to teach the kids in Rwanda. Yes you guessed it. One of the songs was The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock. I had the video with me which she played at devotions. What a God Stop that was!!!! And it was only our first night.

*Sarah leading devotions
*The Video from St. Paul's
*Timothy at Devotions