A Blustery Day At the Beach :)

We went to a beautiful beach last weekend. The sun was shining and we had a great picnic. Ayana decided that she wanted her own blanket and started to lay it out. 

As we were right beside the ocean, there was quite a breeze and laying the blanket flat proved to be a challenge.  Ayana is a determined young lady and she refused help....it was actually really funny to watch as she battled with this blanket.

She was however victorious in the end and lay in the sun for a well earned rest:)

 

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We recently enjoyed a beautiful sunny day at the park with our special friend, C.

Ahhh, is summer finally here?

Playdate Fun!

My dear friend Sandie came over the other day and the kids all had so much fun together. This is her 3 month old baby boy...smiling and laughing the whole time. He is such a cutie! I got LOTS of cuddle time with him :)




Here are Ayana and Moses playing with their little friend J. He is a.d.o.r.a.b.l.e! They had fun being Batman, racing round on bikes and trikes, watching a movie and doing puzzles. 
And here is baby L with his mummy, my friend Sandie :) We had fun chatting, drinking tea, cuddling L and lots of laughs...

I felt a little sad as they drove away, I am going to miss my friends when I move to Africa. I am already missing my dear friends L and S and of course little M because they moved to Calgary.

I need to make the most of my time here, spend lots of quality time with great people and store up memories of our time together for those days in Africa when I am lonely and homesick.

So, my dearest friends..you all know who you are....let's plan some playdates :)

Happy Birthday Joshua!!
It was Joshua's birthday last weekend. We started with a lovely breakfast of cinnamon buns and fruit. Dave then took Josh up to play tennis for an hour and we went for a "special" drink (aka strawberries and cream at Starbucks. Amazingly, Starbucks had not ordered enough cream and couldn't make his special drink :( A Stewarts limeade had to suffice :) )

After a delicious inside picnic of sandwiches and juice all spread out on Mexican blankets in the living room, we went out to Best Buy where Josh chose some new movies etc with his birthday money. Probably the highlight of the day though was heading into Vancouver for a birthday dinner and then onto one of  Stanley Parks beaches to play frisbee and light sparklers in the dark. Happy Birthday Joshua, you are an amazing and fabulous guy :) Love you soooooo much.

Here we are at the beach...

You Have To Say Goodbye....

Following up my last post re sponsor children and how important we are to them. This is one of Erin's little sponsor boys saying goodbye to her as she left. Erin said his shirt was soaked with tears and he was sobbing as he said goodbye. (She was sobbing too!)

I think this is such a profound picture, full of love and sadness at the same time.... 

We matter to them.

I don't know how many of you sponsor a child or a few children. I don't know if you think it is important (if you do sponsor) to stay in touch or not...is it just a few dollars a month and that's it?

Well, a while ago I did a post on "A Goat For

Christmas" and I talked about the teenaged boy in Kibaale Uganda that I absolutely have a heart for and really connected with. I actually don't sponsor him as he is already sponsored....BUT I treat him as though I sponsor him. I write to him regularly. I send him gifts and baskets of food for his family. Get this....he "thinks" I am his sponsor.  (This shows him playing soccer, he is an awesome soccer player.) 

I am not saying all this to say..look at me..aren't I great...NOT AT ALL.

I am saying that these kids really love having regular communication and building relationship with people. You are SO SPECIAL to them if you sponsor (or in this case with me, if you take the time to build relationship) It is such an important

responsibility. Am I preaching? Don't mean to be, but let me tell you a couple of stories that will get my point across without being annoying:) Hopefully. :)

As Erin was just in Kibaale, she was able to play, laugh, dance, walk alongside, and visit them homes of her sponsor kids. Erin has two sponsor children and she adores them.

She has fundraised for them in order to build them new houses, get pit latrines built for their families, provide essential food baskets etc etc In these pictures, you can see Erin beside the vehicle with her little kids (a girl and a boy...all the kids have their heads shaved) before she went and visited them in their homes.

Erin said that as she entered Jackie's home, there was not much in it, nothing to decorate etc...except a little picture on the wall. They all pointed at the picture smiling and as she looked, she saw that it was a picture that she had sent of... our family. In pride of place. In a home made frame made out of banana leaves, up on the wall. She started to cry. Thousands of miles away in the middle of rural Africa, there is a little family living in abject poverty

that has our family picture framed up on the wall. 

We matter to them. 

They pray for us. 

That is incredibly, overwhelmingly humbling.

There is another picture here of Erin stood with Jackie as she recieves a gift that her mother sent for Erin . Jackie walked all the way back to the school 

with a basket on her head with some fruit in it for Erin. On another day, Jackie's mum walked to the school, sat waiting for Erin and gave her a home made craft.

We matter to them. 

It is so humbling.

Back to "my" boy. Actually, my group of boys.  Erin is stood with two of them here in the picture. I see that they are holding the letters we sent and their t.shirt gifts.

 When we were there, we really connected with this little gang of teenaged

 boys, we are under no illusion that they are angels, but we love them and we believe that they love us back.  

Here are a couple of excerpts from the letters that they gave Erin to bring back for us:

"I am so happy that you love me, I will be very happy when you come back to Kibaale. That will be a fun day. I pray you are happy."

"I thank you Auntie Lesley and Uncle David for sending me gifts, you are

my special friends. I pray for you"

"My life is Ok, but every day I remember when you here and I cry. I thank God for you. Thank you for your gifts to me, It makes my mind know that you love me so much"

"I do not have anything to send to you but let me send my heart to you. Always on my mind. I love so much" this letter was signed with the boys name and then 

he put our name after his...he associates himself with our family.

We matter to them.

They pray for us.

It is so humbling.

Oh I love getting their letters, their English and grammer are actually funny, but their love shines through. As I said, we do  not officially sponsor any of them,  (we sponsor other kids there ) but we have such a relationship with them.  

Isn't that what it's all about?

Of course, Erin came home with a new little sponsor daughter for us, how could she go and not come back with another little girl for us to love?  Here she is playing with some Duplo blocks that were sent over for the Primary classes from the Primary classes of P.A.

So, hopefully, if you don't sponsor, you will maybe think about it?

 If you don't know where to start, may I suggest Kibbaale Community Centre?

The link is www.paoutreach.net and then click on sponsorship.

 100% of your money goes directly to

the project. It really is worth it.

We matter to them.

Erin is in Uganda!!!

Erin has been in Kibaale, Southern Uganda for almost a week.

 She is on an outreach team with P.A. High School.  Right now she is at Kibaale Community Centre and in this picture you can see her speaking at the Primary Chapel.

Erin L.O.V.E.S. Kibaale and I can tell from this picture that she is soooo happy. She has raised funds for two sponsor children's homes to be built as well as put a lot of her hard earned babysitting money into sponsoring them monthly, getting them gift baskets and food parcels, buying them livestock at Christmas and sending money for clothes. 

On Tuesday she got the chance to go and visit the homes that she had had built for her sponsor families. She said it was going to be one of her life's highlights to sit in their homes and talk (via translator) with the mothers of her sponsor kids. I can't wait to hear how it went.

If you go onto...

 www.kibaale.blogspot.com

...you can see lots of pictures of the whole team, the center, the kids and just read up on this fabulous place. We visited as a family in 2005 and Erin fell in love with it then, (as did our whole family) so this trip back is a dream come true for her. 

She will be back on March 28th and although I can not W.A.I.T to see her, hug her, hear all the stories, see the pictures and watch the videos...I don't want the trip to end for her because I know she is in her element and will be SO sad to come back. 

I think this is where Erin hopes to live full time in a few years. A couple of weeks ago she GOT ACCEPTED AT TRINITY WESTERN UNIVERSITY and is intending to take education/teaching. (She also got a fantastic scholarship based on her marks...good  for her...she is a clever girl!)

She will come to Africa with us for two years and defer her Uni entry, but after her teaching degree, she has said she wants to go back to teach...probably at Kibaale.

I said to Dave last night that although it will feel like half of me is missing when she leaves home, if she ends up in Kibaale full time, I will be content because I know that is where she wants to be and we have prayed for a global servant heart for her since she was a tiny baby.

BUT that is skipping ahead of myself, she is still with us for a couple of years, thank goodness, and she is at Kibaale even if it's only for a couple of weeks right now and that means that she is happy :) and so I am happy.