Our First Month of the New Year

Greetings and best wishes for the new year 2009. The new year came in with a bang and not all of it good. We have been victimized with an enemy known in the US as "the flu." It has gone through the kids and some of the staff. So far it has not found me. I hope it does not. I am so grateful for the vitamins we have received and are giving to the kids every day. I am sure it would have been much worse had the kids not been in good health. David has had the worst time. We took him to Dr. Theo yesterday and he has developed Pneumonia and Bronchitis. Please pray for him and all the kids.

- mama Arlene

A Christmas Pageant

To celebrate Christmas, the kids put on a Christmas Pageant. It was great fun as the kids had to do the whole thing with as little adult help as possible. They did an amazing job. It was enjoyed by all.

[gallery]

I shared with the children the tradition of giving a gift to someone you love and the fun of the tree. Explaining that the tree is part of our culture. They had fun decorating the tree and each receiving a package from mom. The white bags are back packs and flip flops part of school supplies.

Urukundo Home vs Victory Orphanage Soccer Game

[gallery]

Both teams rented or borrowed uniforms and two official teams appeared. The uniforms did the trick. The win was ours. The score 11 to 0. It was impressive. Jubilation everywhere.

We are set for a rematch some time in January.

A Storm and a Mud Slide

The weather here has been exciting if you call unpredictable exciting.

In the last month, we have had a severe wind storm, an earthquake, and now a rain storm too severe to comprehend.

We do not have streams or rivers on our mountains, but mud slides are a problem.  Especially where new development is taking place as older developments are properly terraced.  If you are in the way of the path the water wants to travel, there is no contest. The water pouring downhill will find its own path. Move or be buried.

[gallery]

Our homes are built strong to withstand the winds and the earthquakes but not the devastating rain and mud slides.  So retaining walls need to be built to protect the houses.  Stones and cement are very expensive but necessary to protect our homes.  We need stone, sand and cement, but we know that god will provide.

Love to Share

The Puppies

Our puppies are soon ready to leave their mother. Two of the dogs are spoken for, but of course the kids want to keep them all.

The Bricks that Build Our Homes, Also Build Our Community

Building homes for our children takes a lot of bricks for the walls and tiles for the roof and we have been buying many of these supplies from the Women's Tile and Brick Association. Many widows of the genocide have been working hard to build a new and better life and this small business is a great example of that.

John received a call from a woman at the Association offering to bring us a load of bricks and she came to meet me herself. She said:
"You have done so much for me and my business. Your work has lifted us up and we have been able to care for our families and buy a bigger truck. We will always be grateful to you. We will deliver to you all the bricks you need and you can pay us whenever you have the money. God bless you for what you do for us."

It was a wonderful surprise and it's great to see such hard work along with such a strong sense of community. It's at moments like this that we know we are having a real impact in this struggling part of the world.

How do you say no when God sends a baby?

Surprises come every day here at Urukundo Home for Children and in the month of July we were presented with a great challenge.

This baby was thrown away. No father, no mother, and no name. Just a child of God. He was found in the bush and brought to us by the police asking us to care for this two-month-old baby.



He is very special as he now has a family of 38 brothers and sisters, a mama (me) and a papa (John) who love him very much.  We are not set up for a two-month-old child, but we have the most important thing a child needs: lots of love.  Keep us in your hopes and prayers as we take on another challenge in the children God places in our lives.

Realizing the Need and Stepping up to the Challenge

It is clear to us now that this will not be the last thrown-away child that will come to us.  So we will need to plan for the future of a nursery with a mama and those things needed to care for infants.  Most of the things we need, like diapers, cribs, blankets and clothes, can be purchased here.  I guess the bottom line is that we need the money to buy the things that all babies need and to build a home to care for them.



We can give these babies a future.  I am praying someone or a group of someones will want to help us build the house for babies thrown away because a mother can't take care of them and survival is the key.

Please pray for this child's mother. She must have struggled for two months to care for her baby and could not. I do not know her circumstances, so I do not judge her. I just know how heartbreaking it must be to know that if you keep your child, it will die, and to throw it away may give it a chance for a better life.
I am thinking that this is another reason why God has been so faithful to the work of Hope Made Real. We serve in mission and serve children.

We have named him David Chad Kayitare. Yes, John and Hope have shared their last Name with him.

With this child's arrival comes another: we have found a young woman who is an orphan of the genocide and needs a home and some little money to live.  She is now the mama for David as she will be caring for our new child, bringing two together and helping restore the families and communities of Rwanda.

God gives us so much and expects much in return.  Join us in celebrating this new child in our midst.

Cooking Food, the Price of Gas, and our New, More-Efficient Cooker

I'm sure everyone is well aware that the price of fuel has been going up.  It's been straining us here too.

Charcoal has become very expensive here because of the ban by the government on cutting trees.  This is, however, our least expensive way to cook.  Electricity is currently not possible for us and gas is expensive and can only be purchased in Kigali.  So we spend $20 to retrieve it and for $86 purchase a small tank that lasts less than a month.  There is no truck to deliver gas like in the US.

Looking for a solution, we discovered a new, much more efficient design for a cooker.  We had it build in a single day.  It is made of cement but has three cooking holes and uses a third of the charcoal and can burn scrap wood.  We have lots of that from old scaffolding.  It's a step in the right direction and makes sure we all have properly cooked meals.



It may be reaching a bit, but it reminds me of the old Iron cook stove in my Gram's house when I was a kid.  Any way you look at it though, we're please to be doing more with less, making better use of the materials and gifts available to us.

Playing Football in the Fields

One day, a day care or clinic will be on this land, but until the funds come, the land will not sit idly by.  As children tend to do, praise God, our boys see the open land and immediately use it to play football (aka soccer.)  The boys are now using the basketball court and the cement is hard on the balls as well as the knees and elbows of the boys when they fall which is often.  Much like life, soccer is a fall down, get back up, and keep on going kind of game.  I think we need some kind of protection for the knees and elbows but until then falling on dirt will be much better than cement.