Thursday

Started my day off sitting in on the devotional time with the women of ABC. Then finally had some time to sit and visit with Rich and Robin for a bit before I had to head out. I’ve been on the go since I arrived and have barely seen them so it was nice to slow down for those 2 hours.

My plan was to go back to HOH this morning and show them more photos of some of the recently adopted kiddos as they had requested, but then I remembered that Thursday is their day or prayer so today is not a good day for that. So instead I went to the market in Kimironko to get some more beaded necklaces and a few things for a friend.

I met with Peter (and Ruth and Dear Klein) and Fidele for lunch at Bourbon Cafe. It was so good to catch up and at one point we all sat there amazed at how my little JP Mugisha started all this. JP was Fidele’s first international adoption and Peter’s first case to act as POA. We marveled at the ripple effect from that and it still makes me cray just thinking about it. My little Mugisha has been a blessing in so many ways to so many people and he doesn’t even know it and neither do they. Only God can create that kind of beautiful story.

From there I went to the Nu-Vision office to meet with a few more students.

I was able to see Aloys, my boy, he is growing so tall and his english is excellent and he looked so smart and handsome. He is an excellent student, doing so well. He wants to be an engineer. His family is doing well also. His father is deceased, but his mom knows the importance of his education and encourages him in his studies along with his siblings.

Next I met, Emmanuel, he is the sponsor child of my best friend and it was a treat to get to meet him and give him gifts from their family. I asked to meet him because he has just taken his senior 6 exams and I wanted to learn what his future plans are now that he is done with High school. He had just gotten his results from the exam and he was happy to show me his marks. He did amazing! We are now waiting to see if he will get a government scholarship to attend university, so he is applying for a job and the MTN call center and researching which university to attend. He wants to study international trade. I asked him what he would do if he did not get a government scholarship and his sponsors could not continue any support at all towards university expenses. He said that he was very motivated and would work and save money until he could afford the fees for that first year. He also loves to “train” himself. By this he meant physical exercise. He likes to run and play basketball. He told me about his family and how they are so loving and caring for each other. His mom is an usher at church and the funny part, was when I asked what the dad did for a living, he said, “I don’t know, my dad doesn’t have a stable job, he just does any odd thing to provide for us. It is never the same.” It is clear to me that his dad has done well to show his son what it looks like to work hard and persevere no matter what. I have no doubts that this young man is going to be a big success story from our program. =)

Here he is in his new shirt from his sponsor family.

Next I talked to Miriam, she too has graduated and has been taking computer classes adn trying to find work to begin registering for college. Miriam is so sweet and she helped me communicate with the 2 twin girls that came to the office that day. Miriam loves to sing in the church choir and she looks forward to the choir practices 2 xs per week. She wants to study business management or marketing. She is well spoken and easy to talk to.

The next conversation was a bit harder, only because the girls did not speak english much at all so we needed Miriam to translate, but also hard because I had to find out why these girls were performing so poorly on their report cards the past few terms.

They responded that they admit they were being careless and not spending as much time on their studies as they should, but they also said that the were attending a really poor school and they changed schools in January and since then they have been trying to do better. They like the new school much better. Their report cards come out soon and I told them “momma Tina” wanted to see those reports. So we will see. There are 4 boys and 4 girls in this family and dad is deceased. Most of the time, mom is not home as she is looking for food, so mom does not encourage the girls with their studies. partly because mom was poorly educated herself, so the kids are really on their own....no one to help them with their homework when things are confusing for them.

I ended the night at Sole Luna, just me and Robin, sitting for hours just talking and catching up. It was the best way to spend my last night in Rwanda!