We had a wonderful day today at Tumaini School. It was great to be back and to see all of the students! We saw a good number of our sponsored students and were able to distribute their letters from their sponsors as well as getting some good pictures. It is incredible how much they grow in one year! Carolyn and I state here and now that the students are getting older but we are staying the same!!! Along with getting bigger, these students are maturing so beautifully. We were able to get some video clips of the students giving their testimonies about how being sponsored has changed their lives. It was so good to hear how well they are doing. 

Pictured above:  Faith, Rachael and Polly - who coordinates all sponsored students!
As well - Johnstone - who popped in today to see how we were doing so we grabbed a 'student' photo of the chairman of the board!

Today was a lovely day! We got up and investigated the neighbourhood where we are staying with a run. 
After that we had a wonderful breakfast cooked by a chef where we are staying. He is very talented!

We arrived in Mathare North around 10:30am for the service at the Living Word Church where our good friend Pastor Oliver is the leader. This congregation knows how to worship!! We are always in awe with how they raise the roof with their singing and dancing. It does motivate one to get in the middle and start dancing away until we realize that we really do not have any rhythm compared to the Africans!!

Pastor Oliver introduced us and told the congregation that Rachael was the type of doctor that eats her patients!! He, of course, was referring to the Food animal side of veterinary medicine!  After a good chuckle, Carolyn gave a very inspiring sermon from the book of Ephesians. 
The service was lovely and it was our first time being in the new church.

After church, we went to one of the local malls to get a bite to eat. Their malls are starting to look very similar to our North American malls except the security is extremely tight- we had to enter through a detector just like at the airport!

Here we are in Nairobi, Kenya! It has been a busy but fun 24 hours. We arrived at the Nairobi airport at 11am and found the airport had changed, yet again. It is always interesting navigating through that airport. Apparently, they have had to make huge changes to the airport in order to satisfy the United States government. They are going to have a direct flight to the US (Washington, DC) and so they had to step up security considerably to be able to fly directly into the US. They even took our temperature before we even hit the passport/visa control centre and, for the first time since we have been traveling here, asked for our yellow fever vaccine certificates! Never a dull moment! Fortunately, we did have ours!
 
It was a nice surprise to see Johnstone waiting for us at arrivals! It was great to see our old friend! We then had a longish drive through Nairobi traffic to the Balozi guesthouse where we are staying. It is a very nice home in the area where we have stayed for the past several years. We had a quick stop in downtown Nairobi to exchange some money for Kenyan shillings. 
 
We settled in to the guest house quickly and then embarked on another adventure. We went back downtown to meet up with Esther and grab some lunch at a nearby Java house (it was great to have cold drinks again). Then we went to the Masai market to do some shopping. Esther joined us, but, Johnstone elected not to (smart man!). We always have fun shopping at the market as there are many sights to see and every year new items. So, keep your eyes out for the craft sale in late fall/early winter in Sechelt!! The fun part is bartering with the people selling the items – they enjoy it as do we! 
 
Today we shall go to Church in Mathare North. There we will get to see more of our Kenyan friends. In the afternoon we will have a Kids for Kids Meeting with the Tumaini School board. Stay tuned and thank you to  all of you who are reading and commenting on the blog! 

This is always the day that we dread when we come to Rwanda- saying good bye to our friends who are truly our family. It was a bitter sweet day. 

We started the day doing a work out in the house as it was pouring rain!! This is the most rain we have seen in the dry season in all the years we have traveled there. This is good news for the farmers and for the Milk Collection Centre! The Milk Collection Centre has had to get their water from the valleys far below which is taxing and time consuming. God bless that rain!

We had a lovely breakfast with Dr. Felicien who joined us. We had a good conversation about the future of the Food Security Program and of the Rwandan people. We were all filled with hope and excitement.

After that we packed our bags and visited with people who came to say goodbye. We had a quick lunch and, after a sad goodbye, left with Dr. Viateur, Chretien and our driver, Prosper.
It was a lovely drive up to Kigali and we stopped on the way to visit the retired Bishop Augustin and Mrs Bishop. The Bishop was not there but we sent a lovely time with Mrs Bishop and had a tour of their new house!

We arrived in Kigali by 6:30 and, after more tearful goodbyes, we settled in at the guest house. To bed early as we had to be to the airport for 6am.
​
Currently, we are writing this blog entry in the Kigali International Airport awaiting our flight to Nairobi where we start our new adventure.

Thank you to all our wonderful Rwandan family. Even though we may be physically apart from you, you are always in our thoughts and prayers!!  God bless you all!

Today was a full and very good day! We visited one of our favourite Food Security Sites today. Cyivugiza Parish, led by Pastor Vincent, is one of the most productive Food Security Sites. When we first visited this site in 2010 it was an area filled with desperate, hopeless people. Pastor Vincent came in 2011 with such vision and he saw the hope in the hopelessness. Since then, the Parish has grown and flourished, each year we come we find a new project being started. This year, the Pastor took us down into the valley that was once thought to be useless. It is quite the area to behold now with every space being used to grow crops- mainly iIrish potatoes. There is also now an area where tea is being grown. Tea plants are expensive to plant but, they yield a very good profit. We were amazed at the vast expanse of the cultivated land and the fact that there is even more land being used from last year. Many, many people will be able to be fed from the fruits of the Parish's labour. 

We visited the site of one of the Chapels where over 1,000 trees were planted 2 years ago. It is coming along well.  They will let them grow for 10 years and then sell the wood. 
​
We also visited the site of a potential new guest house that would serve the community. The area is located near a fairly large catholic church that was built due to historical sightings of Mary. The guest house can be used for those on a pilgrimage. 
 
After visiting the sites around the Parish, we had lunch with Pastor Vincent and then traveled back to Kigeme.

​We had a meeting with the Food Security Team where we discussed what Carolyn and I saw on our various visits around the Diocese. We discussed the Milk Collection Centre and how we can partner together (The Udder Project and the Food Security Program) to get the Center to a point where it is able to support the Food Security Program.  We were all very excited at the end of the meeting at the thought of what this could mean for the projects and self sustainability of the Food Security Program. 
 
Tomorrow we leave Kigeme. We will spend the morning tomorrow packing and visiting with our friends. Then we will travel to Kigali in the afternoon. We fly out for Nairobi on Saturday early morning.  We will likely not be making another blog entry until we reach Kenya Saturday.

​Today was another adventure filled day! We started the day with another run- no, they are not getting easier! 
​
We then met with the APAP Committee members. APAP is the agriculture group we have been working with since 2006. It is a group of farmers who have a common goal of improving their animal husbandry and milk production in their cows. We chatted about how they have been over the last year and what changes they have made. They are now a group 50 strong! They only had 25 members last year. We chatted with them about many of their activities. They have formed a savings and credit scheme where they save money as a group (they all contribute 500 Rwandan francs a week) and this money can be used to fund activities for the group or a member can borrow from the account to help them when they may need financial aid. One of the gentlemen said that, due to some of the profits made by APAP, he has been able to build a house, pay school fees for his children and get heath care for his family. 
 
APAP is seeing much improvements in the health of their cattle and the milk production of said cattle. They say that the training by Dr. Viateur, Dr. Felicien and the paravets (specifically Assinapol) has been what has helped make the difference. They have gone from an average milk production of ~2-3 Litres/day to 12-15 Litres/day. They said that they are committed to improving even further and contributing their milk to the Milk Collection Centre. 
 
The APAP Committee did say that they are still in need of a bull to help improve the milking genetics of the area. We had discussed this last year and we asked them to do up a proposal where we could partner with them to help buy a bull. I was pleased to let them know that we were able to secure funding for our part of the bull. This was achieved by the donations of many generous people in the town of Sechelt, BC. APAP was very happy at the news and very appreciative to all those who donated money for the purchase of the bull. 
 
In the afternoon we visited about 4 APAP farms. We did a lot of walking to these farms but that was a great time to catch up with some of the APAP members and our Rwandan friends. The farms themselves are showing improvements. It was a good opportunity to make some suggestions to the individual farmers about ways they can improve their husbandry. As usual, they took the suggestions with gratefulness and a promise to implement the changes. 
 
 
On our way home we encountered a torrential down pour with thunder and lightning. We got sufficiently soaked but we had fun all the same! We questioned our Rwandan friends, however, that this was truly the “dry season”. 
 
Tomorrow we visit one of our favorite Food Security Sites, Cyivugiza to see what Pastor Vincent has been up to! Stay tuned. 

​Today was another full and adventure filled day!   We started the day with another run through Kigeme. I thought we were supposed to be acclimatizing yet my lungs are telling me a different story (Carolyn actually thinks she lost at least one of hers!).  We huffed and puffed through the run and were grateful when we saw our house!
 
After we recovered from the morning run, we went to a ceremony celebrating the graduation of the new paravets (43 in total). These are the paravets being trained to assist the farmers who will be contributing their milk to the Milk Collection Centre. The older paravets who we trained a few years ago were there to celebrate with their fellow Rwandans.  The graduates were very happy at their successful completion of the course. The Bishop was present as well as a number of the Pastors from the different Archdeaconries. There were a few sector veterinarians present and, of course, the food security team.
 
We encouraged the new paravets to continue their learning and encouraged the older paravets and the veterinarians to be mentors to their new charges.  These new paravets will indeed make a big difference in the Kigeme Diocese for farmers and their livestock. It will be exciting to see the changes as time progresses.

​After the celebration, we met with the majority of the students in the Post-Secondary program, some presently studying and the rest have completed their program.  We updated each other on what has happened in our lives since we last saw each other. We were encouraged again by the work ethic of the group.  Not all of the graduated students have found employment in their field of study, but they are all working at something, their own small business, or for someone in a different field.  Two are working with international NGOs towards community development/ improvement. 
 
The conversation progressed to discussing how to help each other, and encouragement - to not just wait for the perfect job but to set goals and work hard in smaller projects to reach them.  One of our most senior students, Alexis, stated that he was discouraged by the low salary of his first teaching job.  So, he started with three chickens to supplement his income. He is now married with one child and living in his own home.  He encouraged all of the other students to not just stick with only one job – to work hard and use their time wisely.  He has focussed on establishing his family and home. He has reached that goal and now wants to focus on giving back to his community.  As we left, the group was exchanging contact information and are going to try to form an association to support each other.  What a powerful group of young men and women – very encouraging for the future!

In the evening we met with the Bishop to discuss the trip thus far. He wanted to know how we found Kigeme Diocese this trip and to give him our thoughts on progresses in the Diocese. It was a lovely conversation and we all felt encouraged by the changes in the Diocese and the prospect of the continuation of a strong partnership between the Kigeme Diocese and Kids for Kids/ Udder Project.
​
We then had another delicious meal at the Bishop’s home. Rwandan hospitality is second to none!