Day 18 – 14 July 2017

Today when we arrived at the village, there were still many people around. The family of the man who passed away. They stay together for a few days to help each other. I looked around, people were cooking, talking and spending time together. I love the way they live in community here, I wish it was like that back in the States.

I checked on my friend Patrick, he looks so tired. I just hugged him tight and told him I loved him. He got so happy when I told him that two of the kids got sponsored. That made him smile, and how I have missed his smile the past few days.

We headed out to do home visits….I’ll be honest after the last one yesterday, I was kind of dreading them today. But God knew what I needed, and the first home that we visited was the home of one of the girls Finah. I met Finah last year when she joined our program and she got a sponsor while I was here last year. Her father is very sick and is in the hospital with a heart condition. But her mom is doing everything she can to provide for the family. She received some chickens and a pig from our program, and she has grown that to many checkers and 5 pigs now. She has also planted a garden to grow crops for feed her family and to sell to raise money. I just hugged this sweet mama telling her how proud I was of her. That started my day off great!

We spent the next few hours going from home to home doing visits. It means the world to our families that we come and visit them, sit with them, and talk to them. The feel blessed that we come to see them. I love learning more about our families, hearing their struggles, but most of all hearing about their resilience and determination to make life better for our kids.

When we were done for the day we loaded my two boys, Kalvin and Elvis and their big brother Mark up. Because of the burial yesterday they came back from school for the weekend which means we get an extra sleepover and movie night! I’ll take it! We played basketball, and UNO, ate dinner, went for ice cream and watched Moana. I am blessed to get to do life with them…through the good times and bad.

Off to bed now….sula bulungi!