By now, I am actually back in the States but trying to get these blogs completed since I promised to. I was trying to get up to date on everything that was going on Friday during our trip and blew out my converter.

Wednesday was the highlight of my trip! With only a few month notice, World Vision was able to coordinate a visit between me and my sponsor child, Elevanie. I have only been a sponsor since January, so this was an amazing blessing to me. I had chosen a child from Rwanda partially because I knew that I was going there to visit. At that time, I had no idea that I would be able to see the child, but knew that I would be able to see firsthand the poverty that they face every day.

The visit was short (only about 2 hours) but well worth the 6 hours it took us round trip to drive there. Elevanie and her 2 siblings were shy at first, but once the beach ball and handball games came out, they lit up. Since it was my first trip to the country, the team did not want me to come by myself, so Melissa came along and took pictures while I played with the kids. Antoin loved the beach ball and the girls kept playing basketball with the ball from the handball game (they have some great ball handling skills!). I think that next year, I will have to bring them a small basketball with a pump.

Towards the end of the visit, I was asking about their birthdays and it really hit me the cultural differences there were regarding celebrating. I was trying to find out what the birthday is of the sister and brother, but they had to refer to Elevanie's file for one of them and the other one I could only get the month and year. We take birthday celebrations for granted! They don't have a reason to celebrate (or the means). In Africa, time isn't as big of an issue as it is to the Americans, but it was hard to wrap my thoughts around not celebrating birthdays. I also asked each of the children what their dreams were. Elevanie (9) wants to be a doctor, Margaret (12) wants to be a nurse, and Antoin (6) wants to be a driver.

While talking to the translators, I was able to find out that high school and university is a cost that they are responsible for on their own and not required by the government. They usually finish primary school at the age of 16.

The visit was cut short because my sponsor "family" had a 2 hour walk ahead of them. I call them my "family" because I found out that no matter how many of the children are enrolled in the World Vision program, once one child is chosen then the rest of the family members go to the bottom of the list. They try to spread out the support so that one family doesn't have multiple supporters when the family next to them don't have any sponsors at all.

Other than the balls, I also brought pens, pencils, pencil sharpeners, coloring pencils, coloring books, paper, small notepads, and a set of 10 Scripture cards that were in English and Kenyirwandan. Once I had met their mom, I also gave her a stack of t-shirts to share between her and her daughters.

It was an amazing visit!!