Photos of Bekah and Lauren

 I wanted to share some photos with you of what we are doing here in Burkina Faso. We have been able to upload several photos to Facebook, but it is much more difficult to upload them here. While I have good internet in the capital, I would like to share some pictures of Bekah and I so that you can see some of the specifics of what we are up to! 

Bekah working with Harouna, the 2 year old boy who is both blind and deaf. Bekah feeds him twice a day and uses her speakers to help him feel the vibrations of music. Harouna has developed so much with the extra attention that Bekah gives to him on a daily basis. 

Bekah and I get to enjoy some great scenery here in Burkina Faso. Here we are at the Barage, which is a man made lake. We enjoy spending time with the older children, and day trips like this allow us to spend some extra quality time with them. 

I spend my mornings in the secondary school where I assist teaching Bible with our Pastor. Since I am not fluent in French, Pastor Valentin translates for me and sometimes gets a smile out of my explanations that don't quite make sense. 

The Good and Bad of Living in Africa

In the past month and a half, we have had a lot of changes occur.  We have experienced some really amazing things.  We have been able to go on some really awesome trips and experience our first African Christmas and New Year.  We have also had some really tough times in the last few weeks.  There have been some illnesses in the house and deaths in the orphanage.

One of the biggest changes we went through was the repairs on the house we are living in.  Mike and Amy Riddering have great plans with how they want the orphanage to look and operate.  They have been focusing partly on the house that interns live in during their stay at Sheltering Wings.  We had a drop ceiling added, which is a definite blessing to those who come during rainy season, since the rain on the tin roof sounds similar to rhinos tap dancing.  We also had dressers added to each of the rooms, so that interns have a place to put their clothing and personal belongings.  With the new additions, we were also put to work on organizing the house.  Bekah and I have been going through each of the chests, baskets and dressers to find things that will be useful to future residents of the house, and donating the others to the kids or tantes that live and work here.

Before Christmas, we had some struggles with sickness.  Bekah and I both got severely sick at different points, which made it hard to continue with our daily activities here.  We had to accept that we should take a couple of days off without any work so that our bodies could heal and recover before resuming our work.  Now, we are both feeling completely better, and are taking extra care to stay healthy.

During the past month and a half, we also had several babies arrive at the orphanage.  We continue to play with all of the babies and toddlers, and are enjoying getting to know the new infants.  In the past week, we experienced something we were hoping would not happen to any of the children here.  Baby Omalie, who arrived when she was two days old in November, passed away on January 6^th. This was particularly hard for us, since we had spent nights with her in our own beds so that she would not wake the other babies up. Today, we also experienced another death.  Baby Ibraham, who arrived on January 11, died this morning at the hospital.  We know very little about his story.  We did not even know his age; however, we believe that he could not have been more than three weeks old.

Bekah and I experienced our first Christmas away from home this year.  I know I was particularly worried about how I would cope with being away from family during this time, but things went very well.  It was very nice to experience Christmas in Africa, where the focus is solely on Christ’s birth, and not on presents or decorations.  We celebrated by going to a long Christmas Eve service, that went from 9 at night until one in the morning.  On Christmas day, we went back to church for the Christmas day service, and spent more time worshipping and praising God. It was a lot of fun to celebrate in an African way and spend most of the day really focusing on Christ.

On New Year’s Eve, we got to go to Nazinga (which is about 6 hours away) and go on an elephant safari! We went out before sunset, and saw about 10 elephants, two warthogs, a couple of waterbuck, a crocodile and several baboons.  We were very excited that we got to see some new animals, and we enjoyed celebrating the new year at a nice resort.

We got some very exciting visitors (and gifts) on January 5.  My dad and brother came to visit with a group from Messiah College for three weeks.  I was beyond excited to see part of my family after being away for about 4 months.  The Messiah Education ladies arrived early in the afternoon with Lynn (who lives in Burkina and is working with them for the two weeks they are in Yako).  Angela (the Messiah group leader), dad and Matthew were coming by bus, and they arrived an hour and a half later.  When we went to pick them up at the bus station, we had a tearful hello (ok, it was really only me that was crying, but I am pretty sure the guys might have had tears in their eyes as well) and it was almost surreal that they were actually here.  We spent the first night catching up and going through the suitcases of goodies that they brought for us.  Bekah and I were so happy to receive several things from our families (and Taylor) that will help us make it through the remaining time here in Burkina Faso- candy, movies, crackers etc.  We were also very excited for all of the books, clothing and games that were donated. We cannot thank you enough for all that was sent along, and the children have already started to enjoy some of the items that were sent.

Finally, this past weekend we had the opportunity to travel with the Messiah group to Banfora and stay at a resort.  We left early Friday morning and arrived at 3:30 in the afternoon- it is a total of 9 hours to get there from Yako.  We were very excited that there was a pool at the resort we were staying at, so we immediately changed into our swim suits and went for a swim.  When we jumped in, we realized just how cold the water was, and even though we are in Africa, we only stayed in the water for 20 minutes because we were pretty cold.  We enjoyed our time that we could spend in the pool though.  On Saturday, we went on a short hike to a waterfall!  We took a lot of pictures, and were able to enjoy an hour of swimming and hanging out at the waterfall.  Unfortunately Sarah, one of the Education majors, got pretty sick, and we decided to head back down a little earlier than we had planned so that she could get back to rest.  That night, we had the opportunity to go on a hippo adventure! We went out into the lake with tour guides, who canoed us around to look for pods of hippopotamuses.  Sadly, we did not see any hippos, but we were able to enjoy the beautiful sunset out on the lake.

With all of our new and exciting adventures, we apologize that we did not blog sooner.  We are going to go to another village this upcoming week, Mahadagha, to visit with the other half of the Messiah team, and we are looking forward to spending time with our new friends.  We will appreciate prayers over the next two weeks as we travel quite a bit, and then for the Messiah team when they travel home on January 24.