Bad Bad Blogger!

Hi all, I know I have been a horrible blogger as of late, but I do have good reason! Between hosting two seperate short term teams, finalizing Tendai's adoption, starting construction on our garage, having malaria (three times between the two of us), and numerous trips to town in attempts to get our documents for Tendai (thus far fruitless attempts), I havent had any chance to blog. Really. I havent. The one time i tried I got nearly all the way done and then Blogger shut down on me!  So... after all those excuses, i say... sorry. Ill try to not leave so long between posts. Hopefully I can make it up to you by showing you an assortment of awesome pics from Mike and Marie-Eve's month long visit.  They spent a week and a half up north helping with seminars and seeing what it is we do here, they helped with lunch time feeding at the school, lessons at the preschool, orphan meetings, delivering the Unique Christmas Gifts Orphan Care packs, and so much more!

Orphan children wait patiently for a meal and their care packs.

Mike plays soccer with the some of our school kids. I think they beat him soundly!

Empty plates waiting to be filled and handed over to waiting hands and hungry mouths.

Rick and I delivering a pack of game supplies, chalk, notebooks, and crayons to the Orphan Program leaders in Baue. The lady in the yellow is the community leader who came to see what the fuss was all about. :)

Mike and Marie-Eve hand out Toothbrushes. pencils and balloons to the orphans who were not recieving care packs.  (We had enough donations for 64 packs, so we decided to bless two groups who had roughly that amount of orphans who were "full orphans" of both parents. The rest received a small treat as well as the entire program received funds to help with their feeding programs, so all the kids would receive food each week.)

Marie-Eve tries out maize pounding and quickly realizes why the women do it at 4 in the morning and wake her up. (It is VERY hot, hard work!)

making friends :)

one of the girls in our community- such a quite beauty

Mike hands a very very happy orphan her Care Pack.

Feeding the hungry preschoolers at Mucombeze Interior Primary School.

Excited to see what is in store!!

Even Tendai got in on the "giving"- she had a lot of fun handing out the blankets.

Its hot hard work to scoop out the sudza and beans for the kids.

Preschool sticker fun!

Trust me she was happy- it was just realllly bright.

Reaching out for "seconds"- they love their sudza!

On our way home from up north we had a flat tire! Took all three of us (Mike, Me and Tendai) to figure out the strange contraption they had for lowering the spare tire.

MMMMMMM rice, goat and beans!!

At the Childrens Ministry Training Seminar Rick teaches about faith- this is even scarier here than it is at home, since the whole explanation of what these guys are supposed to do, can very easily get "lost in translation"

At the CMTS, Rick has the participants act out Noah and the Ark. Those are the animals trying to fit into the "ark" with Noah and his family... its a tight fit.

The kids are allways curious what we are teaching about... and find watching adults acting so "silly" very funny.

Rick gives Pastor Felix and Pastor Peticanso a soccer ball to use for their orphan program. A good quality soccer ball is like gold to programs like theirs. They can use it to bring kids in to play and hear the gospel. The entire time we were up there, we had children standing around our tents... almost all day (literally) saying... "balla... balla" asking to use our soccer ball.

And to end off this post.. a great pic of Tendai who is practically running these days!

I had so many good pictures from this past month, that I will most likely have to post another whole blog of more photos.

Thank you again for your prayers. If you would like to be included in our email updates that are sent out once a month, please send us an email at rhneufeld at hotmail dot com and we will add you to our list. We hope to be posting a video on youtube in the next week or so, so keep an eye out for a link to it as well. Blessings!

Rick, Heather & Tendai