Leaving Home of Hope

It was my last day to volunteer and spend time with the babies at Home of Hope. One of these babies will hopefully join my family some day very soon. I was feeding one of the babies when my friend arrived to pick me up. I layed down the little girl I had been feeding and cried all the way down the hall, up the stairs and to the car. I sobbed for about a minute and I all could do was tell myself that, "I can do ALL things through Christ who strengthens me....even really hard things!"

Dossier update

We stopped by the minister's office today and her assistant said that she just received it this morning. She insisted that it was impossible to get it done before I leave. So I left there feeling a bit discouraged. All in His time!

Dossier is in

Today I dropped off our dossier to the minister's office. We will call tomorrow to confirm that the minister has personally received it and maybe find out when we might expect a response.

First trip to Home of Hope

I will try to describe my experience so that you can feel as though you are there....You beep your car horn for the gate keeper to open the gate and when you pull in you see a statue of Mary in a small garden. There is a larger garden behind the smaller one. To the right is an office, to the left is the building where all the children are. As you turn around…to the right of the gate are the stairs that lead you down to the rooms of children. The first section seems to be classrooms of some sort…I saw older children in those…then as you continue down the stairs you begin to hear more baby sounds. There is a door that opens to a long dark hallway. It takes a moment for your eyes to adjust. Then you go to the second door on the right and walk into a blue room with about 50 blue, meta,l basinet sized cribs all lined up in the center of the room. There are windows on only one wall of the room so it is dimly lit. There is a long changing table set up on the window wall. To the left of the changing table are about 4 or 5 larger cribs with older/toddlers. The back wall is where there are 2 or 3 super sized cribs where all the older infants go to play while their bedding gets changed…they also are fed their solid food while sitting against the rails with their legs dangling through the bars. The wall opposite the window also has about 6 larger cribs. And the wall opposite the super-sized cribs in a wall full of closets and storage of baby clothes and blankets, etc. I would say that there were about 5 women that helped take care of all the babies. I saw those babies get bathed and fed and rubbed with lotion every morning. They got clean sheets and blankets every day. Some workers were playful and loving, others were more reserved and less affectionate. But I did feel that the children received decent care and most babies were thriving and responded to my voice and made eye contact and smiled and played with their toys. Each crib has a toy tied across the top.
It is my understanding that many of the nuns on staff are registered nurses so they do get good medical care. They do get some immunizations at the orphanage and they seemed to have a good supply at the time of antibiotics, Tylenol, advil, etc. The biggest issue that I could see was DIAPERS!!! They used torn bed sheets that absorbed nothing!

I'm here!

Wow...I'm here in Rwanda and I am surprised how green and beautiful Rwanda is compared to Ethiopia. There are some HUGE homes here too. It really is the Land of a Thousand Hills...so breathtaking!

Rwanda or bust!

I fly to Rwanda to serve with missionary friends and turn in my dossier. I am praying that they can review my paperwork and give us the approval letter during my stay in the country so that I can identify a child while I'm here. I can't wait to go help out at the orphanage!

Getting Started...the Home Study

With joyful anticipation we wrote the check to Child and Family Services to begin the home study process. We sent the check on a Tuesday and on Friday we received a response that gave us the name of our social worker and the letter said that she would contact us later in the week. I doubted that this would actually happen because it was the week before Christmas. However, I should have known that God has been pretty faithful in encouraging me and proving me wrong lately! The social worker DID call on January 5th and set up our first meeting for January 11th. I had been thinking about joining our pastor and Mike on a mission trip to Rwanda. The trip was scheduled for February 5th and I was hoping to bring my dossier with me to submit to the Rwandan government, however I knew that I was dreaming because our first meeting for the home study was the 11th of January and I would be leaving a few short weeks later. Well, we met with the social worker on January 11th and I asked her what she thought the time frame would be until we could expect the final report. She said she thought it could be done the first week of February! Brock and I looked at each other in amazement because everyone tells you that the home study takes about 3 months. She noticed our shock and we then told her that I was going to Rwanda the first week of February and if I really could get the paperwork by then, that there might be a chance of the authorities releasing info on the children at the orphanage so that I could identify a child during this trip. When she heard this she said she would try to get it done by the end of January. That is only 3 weeks compared to the 3 months we were expecting. Isn't God GREAT!!!