Zawadi and family joined us for this photoshoot, so I thought I’d add a couple of them in here for those of you who have followed her story.
Game face. And no, it’s never quiet around here.
Category: Other Page 56 of 181
Lily and friends during Pamoja Week (kind of like Spirit Week)
Grace joined the swim team….this is at her first Gala!
Kindergarteners are always excellent at walking in line
Grace in her Term 1 assembly
(This is one of my favorite parts of HOPAC….each class takes a turn each term to put on an assembly. By the time they get to fifth grade, none of the kids have stage fright and all are completely comfortable performing!)
Josiah’s first grade class
Little Miss Kindergarten
Josiah’s first grade assembly
Lily’s kindergarten assembly
Grace’s field trip to test out their hand-made boats
Josiah’s field trip to the tide pools
Have you ever thought about what the world was like before pesticides?
Probably a lot more bugs.
A few years ago, we had a team here. One thing they brought was a couple bottles of permethrin.
It’s meant for spraying on clothes and tents while camping, to keep the bugs away. The team didn’t use it, so they left it with us.
We discovered soon after that this stuff is liquid gold. If we sprayed it on baseboards, mosquito nets, and under furniture, we didn’t have live bugs in our house any more–we had dead bugs. And the best part is that it keeps working for about three months after it’s sprayed.
When your house is full of ticks, mosquitoes, ants of various varieties, cockroaches the size of small mammals, and centipedes that sting, trust me, you’d be willing to try anything.
I get the eebie jeebies just looking at this picture.
We brought permethrin back with us in July, but now it’s gone. And the bugs know it, and they have invaded. So when my mom offered to send us a box of Christmas presents back with a friend who was visiting the States, one of the first things I asked for was more permethrin.
And the last couple of weeks, it’s what I thought about every single day as I opened my cupboards and saw the roaches and their droppings. I’m sorry, but I’m of the old-fashioned opinion that when you put clean dishes back in the cupboards, they should stay clean. You shouldn’t have to wash them again when you take them out.
We got my mom’s box on Wednesday, and even though I was happy to see the chocolate chips and the presents for the kids, I was most excited to see the permethrin.
This morning, I took everything out of the cupboards, blasted them with bug spray, scrubbed them, and sprayed them with permethrin. (The cupboards, not the dishes.) I dare those bugs to come back.
Listen, when I was in America, I bought organic sweet potatoes from Trader Joe’s like every other good little mom. But out here, I’ve got to say that I sure am thankful for pesticides.
My kids’ Sunday School teacher pulled me aside after the service.
She was talking to me in Swahili, and I was alarmed by what I was hearing. Finally, I asked her to switch to English. I wanted to make sure I understood exactly what she was saying.
Unfortunately, the message had not been lost in translation. Except it sounded even worse in English.
During Sunday School, all the children sit on a mat outside. The teacher told me that one of my children had found a little pouch with money in it. Even though it was in close proximity to another child, my child took the money. Another one of my children witnessed this event and encouraged the other child, saying, “Good job!”
Of course, it was all brought to light (thankfully), and my two children were implicated in this scheme.
It definitely was one of the more humiliating experiences of my life.
Oh yes, the children of the missionaries stole money from a child who is probably a thousand times poorer than they are. At church. That made me feel really good.
We slunk away with our tails between our legs.
At home, Gil took one little thief and I took the other. We both extracted that each child knew exactly what they were doing. And each knew that it was wrong.
I wanted to shake that child and yell, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? And, WELL, THERE GOES CHRISTMAS!
But then I remembered: Christmas.
You know, we want our kids to understand the “true meaning of Christmas,” don’t we? That’s it’s not all about the presents and the parties and the cookies. And we tell them and we tell them and their eyes glaze over and they look over our shoulder at the presents under the tree.
This time was different. I looked deep into my child’s eyes and said, “This is why Jesus had to come to earth. Because our hearts are full of sin. Because it pops out of our hearts when we least expect it. Because our lives are broken. Because God loves us anyway and we need to be rescued. That’s why we celebrate Christmas!”
And the child looked back and me and I saw an inkling of understanding.
Long lay the world
In sin and error pining
Till He appeared and the soul felt its worth
A thrill of hope
The weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks
A new and glorious morn!
For two months, our attempt at another adoption has been at a stand still, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it.
Last week, I found out that there was something I could do, so I seized the day.
I left the house at 10:45 am, after my Swahili lesson. I got home at 4:45 pm. That is six hours, in case you are counting.
I traveled approximately 28 miles, round trip. However, four of those six hours were spent in the car, in traffic. For 28 miles. Welcome to Dar es Salaam.
I went to two social welfare offices. One social worker was incredibly helpful, though considering she had never been given a filing cabinet, had to search for my paperwork through a series of plastic bags. The other social worker was not very happy to see me, but grudgingly accepted my paperwork.
I got lost on the way home because road construction sent me down streets I was not familiar with. I accidentally drove down a one-way street…..right next to a police station. I got a ticket. They wanted to give me two tickets, but I managed to squeeze out a few tears and they only gave me one.
After all of that, finally, things are moving again. We still don’t have a final answer as to whether we will be allowed to adopt a fourth child, but at least we’re moving in the right direction.
I’ve never been through actual birth labor. But this kind of labor has got to count for something, right?
