Brandon na Hazina ya Afrika...: "I Have Not Forgotten You"

God's grace is always sufficient. Praise the Lord.

This weekend has been in a word, normal. I cannot tell you how much joy it brings me to tell you that. This is my life. This is my work. This is my home. I'm blessed.

This week was hard and so blessed. This week was busy and so joyful. The last few days have been so good and I believe they've given me my best picture yet of what life in Moshi will look like.

Let me run through the anointed normality.

Friday was my first day really doing hands-on education stuff with the kids and it was so much fun. I busted out the play-dough and finger paint and we went through eight different colors and trying to get the kids to memorize both the English and Swahili names for each of them. I love working with kids and the preschool age always seems to be the funniest. No matter what color I held up and no matter which language I asked for, half their answers were "yellow" unless of course I held up the color yellow. Justina has really taken the game on in normal life, anytime we're together, we ask each other "rangi gani?" ("which color?") and she's starting to get them down. After that I took the three older ones upstairs for computer time. Lucy and Justina did really good, but Jerry was in way over his head so I let him go back with the toddlers outside.

The hardest part since getting back to Moshi was on Friday afternoon, when Baba Pendo and I went to pick Awadhi up from his school. I was distracted enough during the week to not focus on the fact that he wasn't there, but it hit me like a ton of bricks when we went to get him. We got there and he walked up with his caregiver and he was so lethargic. He didn't smile until we got home and saw his friends, had a snack and got back into the swing of things at TOA. I don't know what to say. I wasn't able to talk to anyone really because only one person there spoke Swahili and the rest were deaf. Keep praying. I don't know what to say, but please do pray.

Friday night, I had a great time over at Lydia and Jodie's place. They cooked a bomb meal and we were able to talk about the kids, about our lives, share stories and so on. I am feeling more and more blessed to have them and Eli as my partners in this wonderful ministry.

Saturday was a good day, mostly. It didn't start off too great. I went and picked up Awadhi and then Jodie to go to a place where a lady was supposed to meet us and hook Awadhi up with a hearing aid, but to no avail. The lady had told Jodie to come Saturday and she never showed. That is not uncommon here. The rest of the day was great though. Playing with the kids outside, singing, teaching the older boys to play guitar, and so on. The best part was Awadhi's first skype conversation with Babu na Bibi (Grandpa and Grandma) back in Wisconsin. He really got a kick out of it as did mom and dad. You'd think a deaf kid wouldn't get much out of that, but the kid is so visually geared with facial expressions and everything that he was perfectly content to stare and make faces at these wazungu on the screen.

Today was special. I had a very anticipatory sense throughout the morning and God was faithful to speak as well as give me new things to pray about and remember. I went and picked Awadhi up from TOA and then him and I went to church together just the two of us. I had heard good things about the community at this Anglican church (shout out to Scott) so him and I went there. I doubt he's ever seen so many wazungu (white/western people) in one place. He was so so so good! I didn't feel comfortable taking him to the children's service, but he did a great job sitting next to me in service, cuddling, coloring and playing with my sunglasses. The service was good, I certainly enjoyed the sermon and there was a time where the guest speaker had us hear from the Lord. It was hard to focus on her prompting with Awadhi by my side totally clueless, but in the brief moment I closed my eyes, the Lord took me back to the time when I first held Awadhi in that hospital and to think that He has brought me all the way to where my son and I are sitting in a church service together. With that came the words "I have not forgotten you." All the worries about being here not knowing what I'm doing, being single, having so much to do in a culture that is not my own, waiting on Awadhi's healing and being frustrated with his schooling, and any lack of money, all these things fall by the wayside as I remember that He remembers.

Praise the Lord. I'm not forgotten, God knows my name. Awadhi's not forgotten, God knows his name. You are not forgotten, God knows your name.

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The Rundown (SPECIAL HOME EDITION): As I said above the week was good. Progressively getting stuff done and next week will be even more normal. All the most important stuff was put above and the only other things were that had a good time in worship at Ryan and Stacy's on Thursday and we had a rad drum circle going on at the end. I took my first spill on the pikipiki on Friday. Nothing serious, just glad to have gotten it out of the way. I played indoor soccer a couple times this week with Noe at ISM which resulted in the biggest blister of my life. I was astounded and it gave me a limp for two days. And that is pretty much all I can think of.

Since this is my home, you may want to see it (or you might not, in which case, thanks for stopping by!) so I've got some pictures of life here and the places I am daily. The most important pictures were posted on Facebook this week. All the Treasures' pictures are in the album "January and February," but here are pictures of my house and my office. This is my home...