Please Pray for Me

Hey friends,
Just a quick note to ask you to pray for me. I am feeling so sick right now. I sent Chad and Cooper with the safari group, but I stayed back at the hotel to try to feel better. Well, I feel better after every time I hug the porcelain. Then my stomach starts to hurt bad again a little later. Please pray I'll be able to keep some fluids down and feel better soon.
Thank you so much!
Heidi

A Successful Day

We are praising the Lord tonight that all our appointments today were successful and productive! We received Cooper's Rwandan passport just in time to ride quickly down the street to the US Embassy to get all the visa filing complete. We are so excited to be done with stressful stuff and really take it easy our last two days in Rwanda! We are going on a safari tomorrow morning very early, so I will not take time to post any pics tonight. God's faithfulness to us has been great.

Thursday

Today was another great day in Rwanda! When we wake up each morning we have an idea of what we will be doing, but it often changes as the day goes on. TIA, after all. (This Is Africa....picked this up from the Bowers family).

We started our day with breakfast at the hotel. Then we drove out of Kigali and into the beautiful countyside of Rwanda. To call this country the Land of A Thousand Hills is definitely not an understatement. The landscape was dotted with small mud houses and shacks, women and children carrying all kinds of things on their heads with babies on their backs, and many people carrying water jugs for miles just to get clean water for their families. Banana trees abound, with sugar cane and other crops also very important to the people who live there.

We made a couple of stops. One of them was along the Akegera River. It was in a beautiful valley, and its water flowed quickly. There we met several young girls carrying sugar cane on their heads and a boy on his bicycle. They were shy at first, but our POA was quick to win them over with her Kinyarwanda and contagious smile. We had some chewing gum and suckers we gave to them, and they were pleased enough to let us take their picture.

Our second stop was along a very bumpy road (on our way to a place we never did locate ....TIA). Our POA asked some ladies along the road if we could see their home. They said we could, so we all got out of the van and went to see the mud home of this family. They were cautious at first, but they too warmed up after awhile. There were some beautiful children there who enjoyed the rest of our gum, suckers, and Rice Krispy bars. One boy whom Chad gave a Rice Krispy bar said, "Thank you. I will remember this day and you giving me this good treat. Please come back and visit us again." So sweet.

We then decided to head back to Kigali since everyone was getting hungry and tired. We made it back in time for Cooper to have a good nap before visiting a grocery store and going out for supper. We went to a really pretty restaurant and ate outside on a veranda. We had tilapia kabobs that were delicious.

Finally we arrived back at our hotel where we gave Cooper his second bath. It's still his very least favorite thing we've attempted so far. He is clean, jammied, read books with Daddy, and is sound asleep on the bed.

Tomorrow we will take the kids to the pediatrician, pick up their Rwandan passports, and hopefully finish everything up at the U.S. Embassy. If all this happens, we should be able to leave Rwanda Sunday night. We still have a few fun things on our "to do" list, including delivering a lot of groceries to the orphanage, visiting our POAs home, and going on a mini safari. Signing off for tonight.

Heidi

The New Cooper

Today we saw the new Cooper. Yesterday he was relatively unresponsive to our attempts at making him laugh, smile, or even look at us. Today he has smiled, laughed, babbled, and played! We have had a wonderful day in Rwanda, due in large part to the improvement we have seen in our son.

Today we also saw glimpses of what Cooper's life could have been. We visited the place he was abandoned at around 10 days of age. It was a nice neighborhood whose people obviously have more than many in Rwanda. What would his life have been like if someone had not left him there? Would his life have been a happy one, riding on his mother's back while she went about her daily tasks? Would she have struggled to keep him well? Would he have gone hungry? We believe his mother made quite a sacrifice when she abandoned him there, knowing she was leaving him in a place someone would find and help him. Without this sacrifice, we would have never met our sweet little boy. We would never have had the privilege to raise him to know about God's great love for him, about Jesus's ultimate sacrifice for each of us. Yes, his life and ours would be much different.

Homemade Pizza

While we are on another continent, our kids back home were making homemade pizzas with their Aunt. They are doing well while their little brother and parents are busy in Rwanda.

We had another busy day in Kigali which included a trip to the US Embassy. We also got the opportunity to visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre this afternoon. Heidi and I are both processing all that we saw and read there and will try to put it into words in the future. To say the least, we will never know how that event impacted so many lives including our son's.

(Guest Blogger - Chad)

Gotcha Day! Officially

As I write this blog our son is sleeping in our bed. Today was an amazing day that started early with getting Cooper from HOH and applying for his passport and ended with a "To Whom It May Concern" letter in our hands that meant that Cooper could remain with us forever.

There were some neat answers to prayer along the way today as well. From our POA convincing the Immigration office to process all of our children's passports by Friday, to the Minister being in her office this afternoon, to hearing that several families just got referrals on the same day that 6 Rwandan children were officially adopted into their forever families, God has remained faithful.


There is still much to be done and experienced on our journey, but we will sleep soundly tonight with Cooper next to us knowing full well that God has amazing things planned for us!

(Ghost blogger - Chad)

Today

Today was a day like no other we have experienced. Today we flew halfway around the world to meet our fourteen month old son for the first time. Today we held him, sang to him, and played peek-a-boo with him. Today was the beginning of our forever with this precious boy.

We arrived in Kigali over two hours later than expected, so we rushed straight to the orphanage. We all waited in a little room, pinching ourselves to be sure we were really in Rwanda, really about to meet our children for whom we have waited. A few minutes later, we saw our frightened children being carried toward us. Cooper was hesitant to come to me, but once he did, he held on tightly to my shirt. Chad and I both took turns holding him, and while he didn't cry, he certainly did not seem happy. My heart welled up with emotion, knowing, for the first time in my life, I had absolutely no idea how to reassure our child. How I look forward to the coming days when we will learn how to make him smile and laugh!

It's off to bed now. We are tired. Tomorrow we will pick Cooper up at 9:45, dress him in clothes we have brought for him, take him out to lunch with our group, and come back to the hotel for a nap. We will have to return him to the orphanage at 5pm tomorrow, but Monday we should be able to have him with us for good. I'll leave you with a couple more photos of the day.