What a week!

Last week was quite a week for us!  It was busy and beautiful, just the way I like it.  I have learned that it is quite easy to be busy and not beautiful or fruitful.  It is easy to feel like being busy equals being fruitful but I have learned that is not always true.  I want to be the kind of person who is not always busy but is always fruitful.  I want to be the kind of person who always has time to stop and chat with those I meet along the path, time to hug the neighbor kids, time to hug my own kids, time to play with them and read books, time to make homemade bread for my family and neighbors.  Sometimes I wonder if our definition of success and fruitfulness is quite different than God's?  Just some food for thought this morning.


Last Tuesday we had a Children's day at the church.  It was a blast!  We had about 150-160 kids.  It was hard to count because they did not stay in one place long enough for me to get an accurate count!  We had so much fun singing songs, telling Bible stories with the felt board, playing games and eating lunch together.  It was chaotic of course but a lovely mess!  I did not want to create even more chaos by taking too many pictures (if you have ever been to Africa, you will know what I mean) but here are a few I managed to snap while they were busy eating :)

Then on Wednesday I took Ivan to Kigali for his little "reunion" get-together with the kids he used to live with in the orphanage.  He had such a great time reuniting with his buddies and I could tell that he really misses them.  Even though I know that orphanages are not ideal, good places for children to be raised, you can not deny the companionship and "brotherhood" that these kids have with each other.
Thursday was spent attempting to pack up our whole house!  I was expect to have a little more time but I was suddenly told by my wonderful husband that there was a truck coming to help more the large items on Friday morning!  Welcome to Africa, where we don't plan we just wing it!
Friday morning, early, the truck came and our "helpers" started throwing things in the truck.  Meanwhile I was rushing around still trying to pack things and praying that they would not break anything!  Oh and doing all this with a 15 month old in tow!  Wow, it was an exhausting day but we got everything over to the new house, mostly in one piece.  Of course the huge and wonderfully helpful wardrobe that we had in our bedroom (that we purchased from the landlord) did not fit through the door.  But in the midst of that and other frusterations, everything got done and we are getting settled in our house.
It is such a good feeling knowing that we are here in our own house and we can really feel at home and make it our own.  I love putting all my little"homey" touches on it.  We are having fun trying to get organized and trying to figure out how to keep the tiles in the kitchen and living room clean!  On top of that, we are at the beginning of rainy season and as we discovered yesterday during a huge downpour, we will need to fix some things.  I stood in my kitchen during the storm watching the outside building filling up with water and seeing my pots and pans floating around!  So we need to work on the drainage situation but we had a good laugh about it (though the tears were not far).  God has been so good to us and we are thanking Him for His provision!  Here are a few photos from moving day!

Yes my child is drinking Sprite...with everything everywhere we had no drinking water and we were all parched!

Nap time for Benjamin

Unloading the car

Our guestroom in the new house which is storage until I get organized...hope we don't get any overnight guests for a little while!

August 2012

Ntiganzwa News

Dear Friends and Family,

We hope this newsletter finds you and your family well and enjoying your summer!  Our family is doing very well here in Rwanda and we thought it was about time to give you another update.  Once again, our family has grown!  I am now a proud and busy mother of three!  Muhorakeye Sandrine, who is actually our niece, is now living with us as our daughter.  Her mother, Appolinaire’s sister, passed away unexpectedly a few months ago and God put it in our hearts to ask Muhorakeye if she wanted to stay with us.  God has really bound our hearts together and she seems like the perfect addition to our family.  She is thirteen years old and very sweet.  She fits right in and loves playing with Ivan and Benjamin.  We are thankful that God keeps on forming our family to be what He wants it to be and gives us the grace that we need as parents.  It is a challenge for me especially, now having two children who don’t speak English, but I know they will begin to pick up some English soon and it helps me in my continued language learning.

The building of our new house continues and is almost complete!  We are getting really excited to move in and though we don’t know exactly when that will happen, we hope within this month.  Even though the new house is not far from where we live now, we still have our work cut out for us in getting everything moved and organized…and clean for that matter!  We are coming to the end of dry season and everything is very dusty!  But as soon as the rains come, everything will be mud!  I am not sure which I prefer, either way, keeping things clean (including my children!) is a daily battle for Mommy!  We look forward to being settled into our new home and pray that it will be a blessing to all who enter! I am especially excited about having a sink in my kitchen and the kids are looking forward to their new rooms.  We have learned a lot in this process of building and God has been so faithful through it all.  We praise Him for the way He cares and provides for His people!

Things continue to go well at the church.  We are looking forward to our upcoming youth seminar and children’s seminar in this month.  The building of the nursery school continues and we are praying that we will be able to start school with the new year beginning in January.  There is still lots of things to finish up in the building not to mention finding teachers and helpers.  I plan to help in the administration aspects of running the school. 

Our Hands For Hope sewing school continues to be a blessing.  Our first students finished up their year of studying and had a beautiful graduation ceremony at the end of June.  I was so proud of them and all that they have learned!  Here is a picture of them at graduation where each of them is wearing something that they made themselves!

These women were all able to receive a brand new sewing machine because of the generousity of many of you!  In order to receive the machine, they were required to purchase a goat for another member of our congregation as a way for them to give back and multiply the blessing that they received.  They are now able to use their new skills and sewing machine to help themselves and their families earn income.

August first we began our second Hands For Hope sewing school class!  I am very excited to see what God will do this next year.  Many of our new students are young women who are not married with families yet but I know that this is a good way to help them to “get a good start” in their lives.  For various reasons they were not able to finish school but learning the skill of sewing can give them a good future to build upon.  We also have our first male student, which I did not expect but it seems that God had a plan for this young man to study as well!  Pray for these students as they study and for us as we give guidance and counsel to them.  On the right side you see pictures of three of our ten new students.                                                                      

We thank you all so much for your continued prayers and support.  We want you to know that God is using you to accomplish His work here in Rwanda.  If you would like to give monthly support or a one time special gift to help us continue our work, simply send your contribution with an attached note “Valerie and Appolinaire Ntiganzwa in Rwanda” to:

Commission To Every Nation                                                                                                                                                     

 PO Box 221307                                                                                                                                      Kerrville, TX 78029-1307  

To give online go to: www.cten.org/valeriepeters

Email us: valerientiganzwa@cten.org

Mailing Address:                                                                                                                                         PO Box 2954                                                                                                                                                     Kigali, Rwanda

Visit our blog: www.ntiganzwafamily.blogspot.com

Hospitality...Rwandan style

Allow me to paint a little picture for you.  It's about three o'clock in the afternoon and Benjamin just woke up from a nap that, in my opinion, was way to short!  I hear a knock on the door and take a deep breath.  I never know what or who I am going to find when I go to the door or the gate of our compound.  Sometimes I find a neighbor who has come to ask for help...again.  Sometimes I find a little old man carrying a dirty sack, collecting whatever anyone is willing to give him.  Sometimes I find a familiar friend stopping in to say hi and chat.  More often than not, I find a little, or big, group of children who want to come play at Mama Benjamin's house (everyone here calls me Mama Benjamin).  This particular day I find a couple from our church who have come to visit.  They are a welcome surprise and I quickly extend the Rwandan greeting of a hug followed by touching our cheeks together, right side, left side, right again.  I ask them to come in and as they do, they give me a large bag filled with four beautiful pineapples!  We make small talk for a bit and I try to call Appolinaire, who has gone over to the new house we are building, to let him know we have guests.  Of course his phone is not working and I am out of prepaid phone minutes so I have to get creative and keep the visitors entertained until I can send our worker, Oliver, over the neighbor's house to tell my son, Ivan, to go tell Daddy (all of this done only in Kinyarwanda, of course).  After that, I quickly send Oliver to a nearby iduka (small shop) to buy some fanta (soda) for our guests.
Visiting is very important in Rwandan culture.  It is an extremely relational culture and visiting is seen as a sign of caring or loving someone.  It is quite different from the American culture that I was used to and I had to quickly become accustomed to this new way.  Visiting is typically not something that is planned ahead of time, it usually just happens and you drop whatever you are doing and visit with those who have come to your door.  Sometimes visitors come and stay.  I am learning how to try to be as prepared for this as possible.  The fun part is that sometimes they come and stay and don't even tell you how long they will stay (this is usually only true of those who come from a distance, not neighbors).  I try to guess by whether or not they have a bag with them and what size bag, but that is hard to judge because sometimes they come with very few clothes and just wash them while they are here.  And I have been told by my husband that it is not appropriate to ask how long they will stay so they just stay and we adjust what is needed to make them comfortable until they decide they have stayed long enough, usually not much more than the weekend or two to three days.  This is what I call hospitality, Rwandan style :)  It means being flexible, opening my home, feeding lots of people, attempting to hold conversation in another language, and serving tea...lots of tea!
This day our visitors from the church stay and chat for awhile and finally, just before dark, we escort them part of the way to the taxi station.  Escorting, is also a big thing here.  You rarely just say goodbye at the door.  It is expected that you will walk at least part of the way to whereever the person/people are going, whether to a nearby house or to the taxi station.  Sometimes you are even expected to give the person the money they need to get home, though I have found this to be sort of an unspoken rule.  After our visitors leave we sit on the porch for  few minutes as a family just taking in the cool evening air.  Soon the gate opens and reveals some neighbors who have come to visit.   And soon after that some other neighbors join the "party".  I quickly fall into my role as hostess and go to the kitchen to make tea.  Finding that we have no hot water in the thermos (we try to keep it full exactly for this reason) I start heating water right away.  Benjamin is not happy and wants to be held so he follows me around the kitchen whining.  He tries to sit on the little bar between the table legs and fallsbackwards, hitting his head on the cement floor.  Can I just say how much I don't like having a toddler and cement floors!  So now I am holding my crying boy and pouring hot tea at the same time (I don't recommend that) and the electricity goes out, which it often does.  At this point I start to laugh because it is just getting kind of funny and I know that if I don't laugh I might start to cry.  We scramble around trying to find some candles so that our visitors don't continue to awkwardly sit in the dark. 
I have to say, it turned out to be a fine evening after all of that and we enjoyed a nice visit.  God is constantly teaching me how to be a gracious and flexible host and I am so glad that people sense they are welcome in our home.  My prayer is that our home will always be open and always be a blessing to all who enter!

Slipping Through My Fingers

Last night at Benjamin's much needed bathtime, he discovered a new game.  He fills up a small cup with water and hands it to me.  I hold the cup up about a foot or so and slowly dump the water while he tries to catch it in his hands.  It was so precious to watch him try so hard, over and over again to catch the water.  He kept looking up at me with those big brown eyes as if to ask why the water kept slipping through his fingers.  In that moment, as I looked down on that sweet little boy that I love so much, I knew exactly how he felt.
My life feels a lot like that these days.  At times I can hardly believe that I have been married to my best friend for two years, living in Rwanda for nearly three, am raising two beautiful Rwandan children who have stolen my heart and a precious, active 14 month old! Wow!  Not to mention all the other exciting things that fill our daily lives, from building our new house, to running a sewing school, to church ministry, children, neighbors, cooking, language, laughing, and loving.  Life is full and beautiful. 
Allow me to "catch you up" on our family that has grown much faster then we anticipated!
Benjamin turned one in May and is quite a lot of fun...and work!  He is on the move constantly and keeps all of us on our toes.  He absolutely love being outside, playing in the dirt and chasing the chickens.  He is really trying to start talking and it is such a joy to hear him try.  He says "dada", "koko" (close to the Kinyarwanda word for chicken), "mama", "cow" and lots of other babble that we can not understand!  My baby is hardly a baby anymore but still loves to snuggle.  He is very expressive and loves laughing and playing with his older brother and sister.

Ivan has been a part of our family since the beginning of April.  He is such a great addition and we all love him so much.  He had been living in an orphanage in Kigali since he was a baby.  He is now an active 10 year old boy who loves to play football and all sorts of games.  You will usually find him outside covered in dirt from head to toe.  All boy!  It has not been without its challenges (perhaps I'll write more about those later) but it is all worth it to have him in our family!

Muhorakeye is our beautiful 13 year old niece who is now living with us as our own daughter.  It is so fun for me to have another girl in the family!  She has really been the perfect addition and we all enjoy having her around.  Her mother (Appolinaire's sister) passed away a few months ago and, long story short, we fell in love with her and were delighted when she agreed that she wanted to stay and live with us!  It is so neat to see how God is forming our family to be what He desires for us.  Muhorakeye is a huge help in watching Benjamin and loves her two little brothers.

It is a process to continue to bond together as a family and I can not say that it is an easy one.  But all things are that worthwhile take work and God's grace is sufficient.

A Book?!

So, I'll let you in on a secret dream I have... I want to write a book.  I have wanted to write a book for almost as long as I remember.  When I was younger, I can remember many times sitting down with a pencil and paper (remember the days of pencils and paper?!) and trying to dream up an exciting fictional story that I would make into a fantastic bestselling novel.  Haha!  Obviously, I never got very far with it.
More recently, I have been thinking about writing again and even sat down at the computer to start...where to start?  That is always the question.  I never know where to start.  I suppose I never really thought anyone would want to read what I have to say.  And though my life seems quite "normal" to me now, after living here in Rwanda for nearly three years, I recently had the "revelation" that the life I am living is pretty far from what most of my family and friends know to be normal!  Living so far away can sometimes make a woman feels pretty isolated, but maybe as I share my life, struggles, joys, and sorrows here, we will be brought just a little bit closer together.
This morning I stumbled across a beautiful blog written by another missionary mom and I am absolutely inspired! After all, if I can't even keep up with a blog, how will I ever finish writing the book I dream of writing?  And who knows, maybe my blog could one day become my book!  So once again, I am going to try to blog.  I know I have said that before, but seriously, I am really going to try to keep up with this, as a step to reaching my goal of writing my book and as a way to chronicle this crazy, beautiful life that God has given me!