The Hardest Thing

 by Jess Cropsey

Our life in Kibuye is pretty comfortable. We have a nice house with appliances, indoor plumbing, and tile floors, all luxuries that most Burundians don’t have. We (now) have relatively reliable power, water, and internet. So when people ask me, “What’s the hardest thing about living in Burundi?”, my answer has always been pretty immediate — being away from family. Yes, for sure there are a host of other challenges including cultural and language barriers, limited resources, and conflict. But the hardest for me has always been missing out on time with family and sharing special events like birthdays, holidays, and family vacation. We’ve had nieces and nephews that we never got to hold as babies. While I appreciate how travel and communication are much easier than they once were, that separation has always felt like the biggest sacrifice, only now the scope has widened.

Last weekend, 3 Kibuye families dropped off their kids at Rift Valley Academy (RVA) in Kenya, a boarding school for missionary kids. The Watts were the first brave souls from our team to embark on this venture. Faders and Sunds sent their oldest girls there last year. This year, it was our turn too. For 4 years, I have watched these parents grieve sending their kids away and navigate parenting from afar. I’ve listened to their pain and watched them weep. I don’t know why it surprised me how incredibly hard it was to leave our daughter Elise (8th grade) last Friday. 

Of course it didn’t help that we faltered on our final decision multiple times in the days leading up to travel due to a rapidly changing situation with new information from the school about online options, rising covid numbers in Burundi & Kenya, land borders closing in Burundi, changing test requirements for travel, and increased mandated quarantine times, all of which made us second guess this decision.

And yet as our family considered the situation, we remained convinced this was the right choice for Elise. In her 7 academic years in Burundi, she’s had an age mate twice for less than a total of 1-½ years and both were boys. Over the last few years, one after the other of the older kids she was grouped with have gone away to RVA. She’s longing for friendship with others her age in her heart language and we can’t provide that for her here in Kibuye. She needs discipleship, social interaction, extra-curricular opportunities, and a larger community.

Elise with new classmates

RVA is an amazing place with staff who are dedicated to loving and serving students and their families in a wholistic way. Yet as a parent, it feels like such a big loss to send her out of the nest 5 years earlier than most people have to. The cost feels immense and I’m so jealous that other people are going to be the ones to hug her when she’s sad, to make her birthday cake, to help her with a problem, to answer her questions about homework, to make special memories with her, etc. 

Elise's dorm parents who, I hear from many people, are amazing!

Elise's dorm, complete with a really nice yard and beautiful view of the valley

Getting settled in her new room

I know the time always comes when parents relinquish those roles, but it just feels too soon right now. And while I know in my head that RVA is a good place for her, my heart is broken and so very sad. I now really understand the feelings that my teammates have shared over the years.

Getting some final snuggles in during orientation

Lord willing, tomorrow I’ll be getting my 4th covid test in 12 days (technically 5 since one guy decided to give me both throat & nose tests in the same sitting) and after a negative result the following day, will be released from a 7-day quarantine at a hotel in the capital city. I’m looking forward to seeing John and the boys again but I know that grief will linger as I walk by Elise’s empty (and now always clean!) bedroom, set 4 plates on the table for meals instead of 5, or realize that I don’t need to order as much produce each week or do as much laundry. 

Please pray for Matea (11th), Anna (10th), Micah (9th), and Elise (8th) as they transition to a new year at RVA (and the Sund kids too). While Micah & Elise are the new ones this year, even returning students have adjustments to make as school is so different with masks and social distancing. Pray that they would grow academically, socially, spiritually, and emotionally. And don’t forget to pray for their parents too.

(left to right) Anna, Matea, Piper, Elise, Ella, & Micah, 

all current or former Kibuye Kids now attending RVA

Loss Upon Loss

by Jess Cropsey

The last day of school is supposed to be full of great joy, but as we drove away from the school that my kids have come to know and love over this last year in Michigan, I listened to two of my children weep tears of deep sorrow.  Yet again, they are being asked to leave behind a piece of their hearts as we get ready to return to Burundi in early July after a year-long sabbatical in the USA. 

We’ve gone through this good-bye process countless times over the years (every transition from one continent to another; the constant comings and goings of visitors, interns, short-term workers; etc.) and our kids seem to feel it more acutely each time.  It’s heart-wrenching to watch and exhausting to experience.

Elise & Anna (2015) comforting each other after saying good-bye to some good friends

But my biggest fear is that one day there won’t be any tears or sorrow because they’ve learned how to protect themselves from the pain of loss.  I dread that one day the pain of their many good-byes may cause them to keep people at a distance as they ask themselves, “How long will this person actually be around?  Is it worth investing in this relationship?”  Instead of diving deeply and quickly into relationships like they do now, I fear that their hearts will grow cold and wary like my own at times.

Loss can come in multiple forms and many TCKs (Third-Culture Kids) like ours experience more loss in their developmental years than most mono-cultural adults do in their lifetime.  As one writer puts it, 

“The layers of loss [for TCKs] run deep:  Friends, community, pets.  Family, toys, language.  Weather, food, culture.  Loss of identity.  Loss of a place of comfort, stability, a safe and predictable world.  Home.  These children are losing the worlds they love, over and over.”    

During our cross-cultural training, the adults learned about paradox while the kids learned about a pair-o’-ducks:  the “Yuck Duck” and the “Yay Duck”.   

We’ve been talking about the pair-o'-ducks lately.  The "Yay Duck" about leaving the USA soon is that we get to go back to our home in Burundi and be reunited with our friends.  The "Yuck Duck" is having to leave behind our family and friends in the USA.  It’s confusing and hard to feel happy and sad at the same time!  Yet, I’m reminded that every transition (and there have been many!) is accompanied by loss, no matter how many Yay Ducks are waiting on the other side.  

So how do we help our kids (and ourselves) cope with the loss and grief that they will experience during transition?  We give them permission and space to mourn.  We weep with them.  We seek out ways to remember — photos, special mementos, journals, etc.  We acknowledge the losses and try not to minimize their grief by reminding them about all the good things they have to look forward to.  Certainly, we don’t do this perfectly and we are always open to other suggestions, so feel free to comment with any thoughts you have on this topic.   

As I reflect on this past year in the USA, my mother’s heart is deeply grateful for the many people (adults and kids) that have reached out to my kids (and us too) this year and loved us well, knowing that we would only be here for a short time.  We will cherish our memories with you long into the future.        

Thoughts on Returning to Burundi

(from Eric)

Having accomplished the rare “just before departure” blog communication a couple weeks ago, I have been wanting to follow that up with some initial thoughts on returning to Burundi.

It is the rainy season here in Burundi, and today was a sunny day.  What that means is that the rains still come, but they come quick and sharp and are followed by period of bright equatorial sunshine.  Within a half an hour, the temperature drops fifteen degrees, and this has happened multiple times today.  As soon as the big dark clouds pass, the sun comes back out, and I take my jacket off.  Again.  I have some bread dough rising, and I have pulled it onto the porch and then back into the sunshine multiple times in the two hours since I made it.

It struck me that today’s weather is a pretty good image for what it’s like to come back to Kibuye.

After a long series of flights, we arrived ragged and exhausted to stay at a guesthouse near the airport.  I slept well that first night (having slept zero during the journey) and when I awoke, I heard birds.  It’s the sound of the year-round six o’clock East African sunrise, and I’ve grown to love it over the past six years.  I walked out onto the back veranda and saw palm trees and bright flours.  I heard the distinctive ibis call.  After a while, we wandered over to breakfast and had a scalding cup of chai and a mediocre (but distinctively Burundian) omelette.  It was all wonderful, and I realized how much I had missed it.

I’ve had a lot of moments like that.  The kids running around the neighborhood, playing outdoors for hours at a time.  The return of Friday night homemade pizza.  The green hills all around and warm greetings from friends.  I was walking up to the hospital in the rain yesterday to round.  I was carrying my umbrella, and a lady that I passed was hurrying along with a mid-sized banana leaf over her head.  They are the warm and sunny moments.

Yet there are other times.  On Wednesday, three out of my eight hospitalized patients died in the space of twelve hours.  For at least one of them, I kept wondering the entire next day whether I could have avoided his death if I had done something different.  One of the others was a young mother in her thirties, dying slowly from liver cancer.  We would go and see her every day, watching her waste away, being cared for by her ten year-old daughter.

The overall transition has been more than we expected, which is probably just a sign of misplaced expectations.  But much has changed.  It took several pretty full days to move back into our house.  We have met lots of new teammates.  There are some solutions to old problems, but now there is a whole new set of problems to navigate.  It felt like we had been gone a long time.  However, a couple weeks later, that time seems to be quickly shrinking.

I’m thankful for the cloudy moments as well.  Being back in the hospital has been a good reminder of just how worth doing this work is.  These problems are worth working to solve.  It is, in fact, a joyful thing to be able to be a part of it.  There is a lot of goodness happening all around us.  Yes, there are many things we have to put up with.  Yes, the power can go out for 3 days at a time.  Yes, I have to keep bringing the dough under the porch eaves, because it is raining for the third time in three hours.  But in the end, the dough will rise, and the bread will be made.  It may just need a little more time.

“The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.” - Matthew 13:33

On the Eve of Returning to Burundi

(from Eric)

In two days, we will board the plane to return to Burundi.  This is when you normally don't hear from us.  Normally, there is at least a few weeks of radio silence, then we reappear saying that we're OK and that there is a lot to tell and that we'll tell it to you later and then we don't.

It's a busy time.  Busy with packing and prep.  Busy with cherishing some last days with family prior to another long absence.  We've done it before.  Several times.  Rachel has become an expert packer.  (I have become an expert at realizing that I'm just getting in the way.)  This is the first time that we're going back to a place we already know and have a home.  Maybe that's why I'm actually finding a moment to talk about it.

It has been a good nine months.  We have connected with our families, our friends, and our home church.  We have worked.  We have updated our licenses and spoken at conferences.  We saw two newborn nieces and one newborn nephew.  We celebrated my mom's 60th birthday.  We've had our hands in dozens of little Burundi projects that are a lot easier to effect stateside.

But nine months?  Really, it's been that long?  Nine months that we've been away from the main thing we do.  We're excited to go back, because being in the US means being in a kind of limbo, and that's a long time to be in limbo.

All of that aside, here on the eve of departure, I'm feeling an unexpected anxiety.  What will we find? Burundi has been through a lot since we left, and so has our team and the community at the hospital.  In addition to that, there are new teammates, new medical staff, new buildings that weren't even started when we left.  I'm sure there are new problems, and new nuances to the old problems.  I sort of had a bead on things when I left.  Now I feel rusty, but maybe it's changed so much it will be more like starting over.  

That's all the things we know about.  What do we NOT know?

***

I know what I'm forgetting, and it is precisely this:  God is with us and he is working.  He has ordered our steps here in the US, and he has ordered Kibuye in our absence.  He has prepared the way and called us to walk forward in it.

I resist trusting.  I want confidence and surety based on what I can see by myself.  So, I am anxious.    However, there is hope in repentance.

Pray for us.  For our travel and for our readjustments.  For the kids and the jet lag.  Pray for my ENT appointment tomorrow (Toby accidentally rammed the end of a pair of sunglasses through my now-ruptured eardrum on Monday, but that's another story...)  But our biggest need is the same as it always is, whether in the US, Burundi, or somewhere in between.  We need to turn our hearts to our loving God, hear his voice, and trust in him.

Once again, he has laid out a road for us.  Let us follow him and see what he has prepared.

Home Cultures and Misfits

(from Eric)

Today was my last day of work at Kibuye for 2015.  We are headed back to the US in a couple weeks, after a Serge East Africa retreat in Kenya (the preparations for which are probably the reason for the recent radio silence on the blog).  We will return in January.  Our families are waiting for us.  Our nieces and nephew that we've been longing to meet for over 2 years.  Our hearts are full in the waiting.

And there will be also be the joy of entering our "home culture".  Sometimes I wonder to what extent the US is still my "home culture", since, as the years pass, I'm not sure I fit in there the same way I did before.  I forget what normal is.  Glimpses of US life strike me as foreign.  Maybe hanging out with my fellow Serge missionaries in Kenya will be a type of "home culture".

But, a couple days ago, a brief conversation reminded me that yes, the US culture is still very much home.

Rachel said something about the days when she is at home with the kids, that she has to change out of her pajama pants before the Burundian guy that works in our house arrives.  Why is that?  It's not that she is trying to dress up to a certain extent for someone who is not family.  And it's not modesty.  She can wear pants at home here with no one getting offended.  It's because any Burundian is likely to think that it's weird to stay in old pajama pants, when you could spend the day in nicer (and more formal, and less comfortable) clothes.

And we know that.  So, you get out of the pajama pants.

(aside:  many of the more village Burundians don't know pajama pants from normal pants, and thus wear them to church.  But the point stands.)

This is an example of the long-term "strain" of living cross-culturally.  Because, in the US, everyone agrees that it's just nice sometimes to spend the morning relaxing in your pajama pants, and few of us would begrudge that to our neighbor or friend.

In fact (and I think this is the point), the question would never even come up because, living in your home culture means that your values and preferences are those of the culture around you, and therefore you can just glide along with what is already ingrained in you.

And that makes my heart yearn, here at the "32 months since leaving the US" mark.  A yearning for it being easier.  A yearning to not have a subtle, but daily and persistent, tension between what seems "right" to me, and what seems "right" to the culture around me.  I would just like those things to automatically be the same, and so not have to think about it sometimes.

There are probably those in the US that constantly feel like what they want is always at odds with the culture around them.  I think we might call them "misfits".  They don't "fit".  And that must be terribly difficult.  And in a sense, that is what you become when you live cross-culturally.  The good news is that, for the most part, people expect you to be weird, "foreign", or in the best of times "exotic".  But even with that extension of grace, it is still grace extended to the "misfit".  

Wendell Berry writes:

The frog with lichened back and golden thigh

Sits still, almost invisible

On leafed and lichened stem,

Invisibility

Its sign of being at home

There in its given place, and well.

I am not that frog.  Because we don't fit, we stand out.  We are always the furthest thing from invisible.  And if invisibility is a "sign of being at home", then we are not at home.

And when you know that there is a place where you could be invisible, where your heart is not a "misfit" in the same way - it's out there, but you just haven't seen it in a very long time - that can be both a comfort and a further challenge.  

Or maybe it's just a good reason to be thankful on the eve of your return.

What's in the bag?

By Jason

Heather and I have been in the States this past month.  We came back to be with family after my grandmother passed away.  We also used this opportunity to get a breather from the never-ending responsibilities at Kibuye, to attend a medical missions conference, and to stock up on some supplies.
After being at Kibuye Hope Hospital for a year there are some things that we found we needed/wanted at the hospital and at home, so being back in the States (with an Amazon Prime trial) gave us a great opportunity to acquire many of these things.  We are taking back quite a smorgasbord of items in our suitcases and it causes me to cringe thinking of trying to explain to the TSA agent the various items we have in our bags.  Here is a sampling of what we packed in our suitcases.

A huge monkey wrench to do maintenance on the water system

Contact paper to make the Operating Room windows opaque

A new biography about a Burundian runner

Various medical textbooks for me and for students

A nail gun air compressor to run the anesthesia machine

Air hose and other things to hook up the air compressor to the anesthesia machine

A flower box which will be used to soak long instruments in sterilizing solution.  I also got some catheters that aren't available in Burundi so that I can do prostatectomies.

Some spices not found in Burundi

Various homeschooling/ESL books

Pictures from a Burundian refugee family we met in Pittsburgh - to be delivered to her family in Bujumbura!

Some plumbing putty and goop for various persistent water leaks

Intramedullary nails to replace the ones we have used already

Skin graft meshing plates (it is amazing what you can find on e-bay!)

Spray bottles for prepping patients in the Operating room with Betadine

Wire clippers for various orthopedic procedures

And more...
Tums, Iron, Bowel prep pills (some medications aren't easily accessible)
Asbestos repair kit (leaky roof in the hospital)
Nail brushes (for cleaning hands before surgery)
Fuses for our van
Drawer sliders for a desk I am building
Speakers for the Operating Room (its nice to listen to music during long operations)
Foot pedal to operate the endoscope
Ultrasound machine which was repaired while we were back
Table Saw blades for various construction projects
Headlight (it's hard to operate when the lights go out)
Transformer (to convert 220v to 110 volt electricity)
Humby knife (used to remove skin to use for skin grafts in burned patients)
Nasal Canulas (for giving oxygen to patients)

Please pray that we'll just breeze through customs. : )

Big Rig Send-Off

By John Cropsey

The McCropders have finished packing a forty foot, metal clad box with what remains of their earthly possessions mingled together with "essentials" for their work and ministry . . .  generators, welders, motorcycles, drill presses, axes, six foot steel pry bars, sledge hammers, indestructible Kevlar soccer balls . . .  OK, we even let the girls put a few things on too.  However, given the shear amount of testosterone contained with in this shipping container, it was only fitting that her sendoff be performed by two beastly wreckers and a maxed-out big rig chassis.  Feast your eyes on the video below of nearly 40,000 pounds being dead-lifted off the ground and onto a semi chassis as my son Micah and I revel in the music of big diesel.

(click this link if you have trouble playing the video above)

Credits: background music "Green" by Kissinger.

The McCropder men take our hats off to the ladies of the team who have been willing to say "au revoir" to homes, goods and the financial security of a higher tax bracket.  Instead, they risk losing that which remains to the bottom of the high seas or into the hands of brigands by land as our metal box journeys from the shores of the USA to the landlocked interior of Africa.  As we bid "a Dieu" to our container and its contents, we rest knowing that our Heavenly Father knows exactly what we do and do not need to minister His Good News most effectively in Burundi.  If these mere earthly things would hinder us or our brothers and sisters in fruitfulness, may they come to rest at the bottom of Davie Jone's locker.  

Coming Home

by Rachel

I have heard that the least favorite question a missionary kid can get asked is one of the American standards: "Where are you from?"  Um, do you want the 2 second answer or the 10 minute answer?  Where do I live right now?  Where was I born?  Where did I live most recently before right now?  Where does my family (i.e. parents) live?  We McLaughlins have a hard time with that question, too.  And at any point in time, the answer could be Michigan, Nashville, Phoenix, or France, until recently.  Now I am wondering if it's ok to say, Africa.  We're not really FROM Africa, but I think that in some ways, we are from here.  Eric and the kids and I arrived in Kenya on July 8.  Other than 3 pieces of missing luggage (now found), it was awesome.  The sights, the smells, the experiences.  I didn't even mind the exhaust fumes (I'm sure that won't last long).  Staying at Mennonite Guest House...the breakfast bell, the Imperial Leather soap, the giant tree swing.  ABC Place...the 2 well dressed Indian men at Gilani's Butchery, the cheap bill at Zucchini's, the ginger lemonade at Java House.  The drive to Tenwek...escarpment views, baboons by the side of the road, the Kenol station bathroom stop.  I turned to Eric at one point and said, "It's like we're returning after three months instead of two years."  I can't even explain all the emotions inside me right now, but they are mostly those of joy.  It's like we're coming home.

Family of 3 early in 2010 in front of our building

2 children on the porch of the same building - summer 2011

The joy continues at Tenwek.  Everywhere we turn, there are familiar faces.  Kenyans, missionaries.  Hospital staff, house helpers, passers-by. Some faces are missing, but most are still here.  Hugs, greetings, exclamations about how the kids have grown.  Some things have changed, but most are familiar.  The buildings, the trees, the dogs and turtles and chameleons.  I worked in the hospital 2 days last week, after two years away from clinical medicine.  It's like I stepped back in time, like no time has passed.  Rounds are the same problems with the same treatments.  Scrubbing in to a C-section (or four) required no extra thought...my hands slipped into the gloves, draped the patient, held the needle drivers,  tied the knots.  Four beautiful, healthy babies born, a grace from God.

Rachel with baby Ben in front of the Tenwek waterfall - 2011

family of 5 in front of the same waterfall, July 2013

I know that life at Tenwek was not and is not all joy.  There is tragedy and sadness and frustration.  But for now, for this time, I am so blessed to be here.  I feel like it's a perfect stopping point before diving back into the new and unknown, a chance to communicate and feel my gifts at work before going back into a situation with new languages and cultures.  So I look forward to these next weeks, and I pray they would continue to be a blessing to my family, as we hope to be a blessing back to Tenwek.

Are we Overweight?

By Jason

The US Department of Transportation has decreed that no vehicle should weight more than 80,000 lbs on the roads.  Some exceptions apply, but what that means for us is that our shipping container (which is currently in Michigan, and is almost ready to be sent to Burundi) had to be under 40,000 lbs, so that the truck, which weighs 40,000 lbs, could take it to the ship when the time comes.

So how in the world do we figure out how much 40,000 lbs is?  Well, as we packed things into the container, we weighed them - either in bulk, by driving a trailer filled with our stuff over one of the CAT weigh stations you might see at truck stops, or by stepping on a bathroom scale as we carried each item into the container.  There is obviously a lot of wiggle room in these weights, and so it was with much intrepidation that we had our container weighed the week before we flew to France.  Based on what we had added up, I was estimating we were between 36,000 and 42,000 lbs of gross weight (including the 8,400 lbs of the container itself).  If we were over, it would mean unpacking part of the container and filling it in with a frame of wood to keep things stable and tight since we had packed it to the brim already (3 days before our departure for France, to boot).

Container packed with 1/2" to spare

So a truck driver came one morning to pick up the container, which he had trouble getting on the bed of his trailer.  The winch that was supposed to pull the container onto the bed was somehow not strong enough to do so (hmm...not a good sign for being overweight).  The driver patiently tried a number of ways to get the container on the trailer, and eventually he was able to get it half way on, teetering on the edge of the trailer, but there was too much friction to get it further.  So we enlisted the help of the farmer who owns the farm where we are storing the container.  He came in with his front loader and pushed the container on from the back end, which ended up pushing the whole semi-truck forward (hmm...maybe the container weighs 60,000 lbs).  The driver applied the trailer and the truck brakes in order to allow the container to be pushed on the trailer by the front loader and pulled by the winch.

Front-loader pushing the container onto the bed of the semi.

After all that sweat and angst, we weighed in at a mere 36,200 lbs.  So it's official, the McCropders are not overweight :)  Thank God!

Visa Sagas: The Bio Chapter I Appreciate More and More

(from Eric McLaughlin)

Missionaries have a thing for autobiographies.  As in, for writing their own autobiography.  And it must be said that they have some great stories, so more power to them.  I have read several of them, including this one on the hospital we visited in 2007.  Tenwek has a pretty popular one.  

After you've read a couple, you will realize that there seem to be a few, unwritten, formulaic elements.  One of them is that there will be a chapter where the missionary describes how God answered their prayers by giving them a visa for a longer period of time, say four years or even (in the case of one I read from Rwanda) for a lifetime.

I have always found these chapters particularly hard to engage.  I mean, the people are entering foreign lands, starting new hospitals, treating exotic diseases, hunting large game animals, riding motorcycles, and getting trapped in civil wars.  Just to name a few.  I mean, can't they just skip the immigration office and get back to the part where they have to stave off dehydration by drinking milk from the mammary glands of the wildebeest they just shot? 

No, they can't, and I must say that I think I'm coming to see their point of view.  Because the visa is so essential.  We have known multiple families who had to fly out of the country, at least temporarily, to deal with visa troubles, which is both expensive and disruptive to life and work.  Not to mention the time in going back and forth to the capital city's immigration office.

So it was that we trekked down to Atlanta for our French visa appointment, without which we couldn't depart for language school, just over a month away at the time.  Mountains of paperwork after streams of emails and trying to sift through confusing lists of requirements online.  We thought it went well, with only one more piece of documentation to send in.

And then we waited.  They would mail it to us when it was complete.  And it should be ready, though if there were further problems, it might easily encroach on our departure time.  We prayed, and remembered those under-appreciated biography chapters.

Yesterday we got the word:  Our four passports delivered with one-year visas to France.  In pretty record time, actually.  The work God has started, he is faithful to complete.  This means that Carlan is the only person still waiting on his visa, and his appointment is coming up soon.

We are not writing a book.  And though I still wouldn't include a chapter on God's faithfulness in the visa process, I do have a growing appreciation for it.  So, maybe just a blog post.

Crate Party

By Jason

While the wild fires seem to be slowly getting under control in Colorado, things are revving up here in Ann Arbor on the packing front.  The strategy is to pack everything that is small enough to fit into a wooden crate.  These crates are then stacked inside the container to keep things organized so that we can utilize the space to its greatest potential.  Items that don't fit in these crates (piano, large pieces of medical equipment, etc) will be packed on top of the crates.  One great thing about this packing system is that the crates can be disassembled when we get to Burundi, and then we will have all this good wood with which we can build things in the hospital and our houses.

 So we needed approximately 40 of these crates built so that when the rest of the McCropders come to Ann Arbor to pack their things at various times this summer, there would be crates that they could pack into.  To that end we had about 15 wonderful friends from our church who came over to our house a week ago and in the course of an afternoon and evening assembled all forty.  It was much like what I would imagine an Amish barn raising would be like.  Many, many thanks to Paul, Abraham, Phil, Ben, Josiah, Andrew, Peter, Shawn, Tim, Darryl, Andrzej, David, Truman, Kjell, Scott, and Steve who came and worked so hard!  I think a good time was had by all, despite temperatures in the 90s... what isn't there to like about building stuff with power tools.  Enjoy the pictures below.

Assembling the sides once the wood was cut

Building the Frames

Adding the plywood sides

Assembly line in full force

We finished along with the last bit of daylight

40 assembled crates, ready for packing

The Container Store

Since we plan, God-willing, to be in Burundi for the next decade or two, there are things that we all want to take with us from here. Some things are not readily obtainable in Burundi. Certainly medical equipment tops the list, but books, pots and pans, tools, homeschooling material, etc. would also be helpful. There are also some items that certainly aren't necessary, but would be great to have - like a piano, a fuse-ball and/or ping pong table for the medical students, and some good quality appliances. To that end, together we are preparing to ship a container to Burundi. I (Jason) volunteered to obtain the container, and I enjoyed hunting for one. The purchase was completed last week, and today it came into McCropder possession.

This morning I met a truck driver at a container yard in Detroit, and I happily met our container for the first time. It looks great.

A specialized forklift put the container on the semi-truck trailer.

The driver strapped down the container with some heavy-duty straps.

We followed the semi driver as he transported the container to a friend's farm close to our house, who has graciously allowed us to keep it on his property.

The container arrived safely at its new home for the next year.

It seems pretty roomy inside, but I'm sure that with 3 families and 2 single people, we will be able to fill this up completely.

We will be packing the container over the next few months, and then while we are learning French in France, it will sit here in Michigan until next spring. At that time, we will have it shipped to Burundi. This has been fun foray for me into a new world, learning all about the types of containers, shipping companies, etc. And what a great morning for this kid trapped inside an adult body to see some big trucks and forklifts and toys.