chachi's memories: Africa week! I am just a little excited about this week :)

I started this blog back in 2011 to share all my stories and what I learned from my mission trip to Uganda, Africa.

There is seriously not a day that goes by that I don't think about the kids and families we met there. The amazing staff of dedicated teachers and nurses, nuns and priest that strive everyday to make a better future for the kids of Uganda.

It was the most amazing experience and I still have to pinch myself to believe I made my dream come true of going there.

here is a blog post of all the links of all my stories

My new dream is to go back and visit but bring my husband and kids with me!

obviosuly I will have to wait a few years but I am so beyond excited for when that day comes.

For Home school Preschool we learned about Africa this week!

We started out by finding it on the map.

I have a tattoo on my wrist of Africa and so she was very familiar with what shape it looked like.

Then we drew it out on a paper and glued magazine clippings of what we could find in Africa.

Then we studied about tribes and all the different makeup and jewelry certain tribes wear.

We watched this slideshow

then worked on shapes and made our own tribal mask using shapes we learned and water color paint.

for the last 3 years we have been sponsoring a little boy named Joel.

He attends the St. Jerome Cove center boarding school (the one I stayed at during my trip)

He is a great student, top 10 in his class. He lives at the boarding school but when the school year is over he travels back to his home to help his Grandma in her garden. It is just him and his Grandma and the garden is what supports them.

I admit there have been many times that we probably should have stopped sending the money because times were hard for us and the $35 dollars could have helped us, but then again it's only $35 and our hard times are nothing compared to Joel and his Grandma. That $35 would have made a small dent in a medical bill or paid for a little extra groceries. But to Joel and his Grandma that $35 is life changing! It's giving Joel the chance to grow and learn and live! at Cove he not only gets the education, he gets health care, strong role models, chances to learn trades and skills, gets to attend church and build a stronger relationship with God and Jesus, he is safe, he has the opportunity to fulfill his dreams and become anything he wants. $35 is well worth it!!!

We get about 3 letters from Joel a year, the government there is very suspicious of mail and most of our letters never make it to him and they are very slow at getting mail to us. but only God knew we were having Africa week this week and he made it possible that the letter Joel wrote to us back in October would be put in our mailbox on the day I was teaching Belle about Joel!! it gave me goosebumps! so here she is writing him a letter back