Life As We Know It

It rained on Sunday.  This was the first rain in Rwanda since June, and I am told that even the rain they had in June was very small.  It is the "dry season" in Rwanda, everything is dry & dusty.  Dust kicks up off the roads & coats everything outside and inside.  It is a welcome relief to receive a little rain.  I stood in the doorway of our house & watched it come down lightly at first.  You should have seen all the birds frolicking out there in it- loving it.  Of course, a month or so from now we will be into one of their two rainy seasons of the year.  All the dusty dirt will turn to a caking clay mud that gets tracked everywhere.  Then we will be grateful for a few sunny dry days (especially so we can dry our clothes)!

Apparently we have feral cats living here too.  One early morning we heard a cat carrying on quite loudly.  I asked the neighbor boy about it & he said the cat lives on our roof & it has babies (or apparently it was having babies, thus the noise?)  Now, we hear a cat meowing from time to time & it is like a "Where's Waldo?" for KaLia- she has been the one to spot the cat in the yard twice and I did not see it at all.  Then tonight I saw a cat outside the kitchen window.  From it's description KaLia thinks it is a different cat than the one she saw, so maybe we have a cat cluster living on our roof- who knows!

The kids (well, KaLia mostly) are begging us constantly for a puppy.  The neighbor has a cute fluffy puppy, so we may be checking into that.  It would be good for the kids to have some kind of entertainment.  We brought our Wii, but we have no TV so that is not available.  We have a portable DVD player, but KaLia is not really interested in any of the movies (she's seen them all) and Nate has to earn the priviledge of watching movies by being obedient in school (so far he's only been able to watch movies on weekends... sigh!)  Nate and the neighbor play together just about every day, but I can tell that KaLia is bored at times.  She reads a lot, and then she starts entertaining herself by being a pest.  Yeah, time for a diversion...

I just am still feeling a bit overwhelmed with everything right now.  Lots to do and I hate to add more to it (taking care of a puppy).  Tomorrow we have someone coming to work for us, her name is Sanyu.  She is a friend of many years & she will help me with the house cleaning, shopping at the open market, and some of the cooking.  I did get to go to a ladies Bible study today.  It was created for foreigners living in Rwanda, it is hosted at various homes, and the members are from a variety of churches and backgrounds.  Some of the ladies there today were from South Africa, England, and America too.  We are going to be studying James, which is so appropriate since Mike & I are really needing wisdom in so many areas right now!

KaLia is doing fine in school.  She is excited because they are starting up an afterschool music program.  She is joining the school band (she wants to play the flute or the trumpet) and the same teacher is also offering a guitar class (great since KaLia has a guitar in the US but hasn't had any lessons yet).  Nate's road in school so far has been bumpy.  The principal is unsure if the school is able to help him adequately, and has offered to allow for these first two weeks to be a trial period of sorts, and then we will meet together to discuss where we will go from here.  I am unsure of where this will lead, if we will end up having to homeschool him or not.  Please pray for us, for wisdom, and for the best for Nate.

We got to see our daughter Christine last weekend.  She is doing OK, but we really would like for her to be with us after she finishes her term at boarding school (their school year ends in November).  The government of Rwanda has put a hold on all foreign adoptions, but they have also promised to work through the applications that have been waiting to be processed (all 120 of them!  They apparently have been piling up since the beginning of 2010).  Our paperwork is somewhere in the middle of that pile, but I know someday soon it will be reached & our prayers will be answered as God has promised.

Thank you for your prayers for us. We are doing a lot of work right now with the ministry, sorting through things and restructuring some things. We definitely need lots of wisdom (especially for Mike).  I am so glad that God has promised "if any of you lacks wisdom let him ask God, who gives generously to all"!

Blessings,
Lisa

(and soon I will add some pictures to these posts- it's just going to be a labor of love & time because of the lack of speed on the internet here!)

P.S.  I added a new page to the blog here, see it on the left?  It's right above our family picture & it says "Wish List"...