Hi everyone. I recently had an article published at MereOrthodoxy.com on the subject of Lamenting and Rejoicing at the Same Time. I'm glad for a chance to share it in that venue, and here is the link for any of you that would also like to read it.
by Jenn
Before moving to Burundi, I would say I had a black thumb and knew nothing about animals. If I had read a book in the past 10 years, it was likely about the developing fetus, NOT how animals develop.
Three and a half years after moving here though, I can say that I have become a budding gardener, and have successfully watched the process of chicks hatching. I phrase the latter that way, because it's truly magnificent how LITTLE I contributed to the process of chicks hatching.
Maybe not all of you know, but about a year ago, just after arriving back from home assignment, I had a hen house constructed and brought home some cute 3-month old pullets.
Two terms I learned at that time : pullet - a young female chicken who will grow into a hen. Cockrel - a young male chicken who will grow into a rooster. The girls named him Handsome.
Sadly, he became too lound and so he .... well, let's just say he's not around anymore...
The seven ladies grew like weeds and started producing eggs around 5-6 months of age. Which is pretty typical. Good job ladies. We have been enjoying lovely eggs for the past year. They produce 4-7 eggs/day.
One day a few months ago, I noticed one hen having some odd behavior. She was not leaving the coop and sat on all of the eggs all of the time. She would leave the coop maybe once to eat, drink, and poop, but otherwise didn't move much. I wondered if she was getting sick, but then a lightbulb went of... she's brooding!
Another term I learned - brooding - when a hen spends most of her days and nights sitting on the eggs in order that they may hatch. She wanted to be a momma.
This is great IF you have fertilized eggs and want chicks. I didn't think I had time or bandwith at the time so I tried to break her habits. Note, she does not lay eggs when she's broody, so we weren't getting any from her during this time. I gently took her off the nest multiple times a day and encouraged her to NOT brood, but to no avail.
Enter Issac.
A teammate was gifted a rooster one sunny Friday afternoon and he asked if he could "store" his rooster in our coop until....well, let's just say the plan was to have him go to the same place Handsome went...
I said sure, and another lightbulb went off. CHICKS!
I won't go into details, but suffice it to say all of the ladies produced fertilized eggs for at least 10 days, some for two weeks!
Another thing I learned - the momma hen actually doesn't produce fertilized eggs. Well, maybe she was fertilized, but she wasn't producing egs... therefore no fertilized eggs. She was already in broody mode, so her little hen body had stopped producing eggs when she went into "I want to be a momma" mode.
How do I know they were fertile? Well, I did a lot of reading (because - see first paragraph - I had NO idea what I was doing) and realized you could look in the yolk for a white dot with concentric circles starting to form. So that's what I did. Here's an example of one of the eggs I cracked 24 hours after Issac's arrival.
You'll see a tiny white dot - the egg is fertilized!
Since the ladies produce tons of eggs, and the momma can't sit on dozens, I marked some with a sharpie and let her continue to sit on those, while collecting and eathing the others that the other ladies were laying.
Something else I learned, you CAN eat fertilized eggs. They don't develop unless they are incubated.
I also read about candeling - an essential step to see if your eggs are developing, or if she is just sitting on eggs that will become rotten. I didn't get a good picture of me doing it, but here's what candeling an egg each step of the way should look like.
Also - clearly I need more experience in this... see later in the story.
Twenty-one days went by (that's how long... or SHORT it takes for a chick to go from the picture you see above to a fully developed chick that can stand, eat, and drink just after it hatches! God's design is amazing!)
I let the momma incubate her eggs in the coop becuase I really didn't have another place to put her. Not ideal, but it worked.
The first chick "pipped" (made the first crack in the shell) one morning but when I came back it looked like the other ladies had started to peck at the chick in its egg. Not good - they will attack it and kill it. So I moved the momma, the hatching chick (who I didn't think was going to make it) into a bin and put the bin in our half bathroom with a space heater. Well, the chick made it! And was named Cookie. Then another one hatched the day after! They huddled under their momma and they were SO cute.
The first 5 chicks that hatched did really well and are still growing! Two other chicks hatched but they didn't survive, and three of the eggs didn't develop (hence my need for improving my candling skills. Despite the brief sadness of the two not surviving, we were thankful for the 5 that made it!
Once there were no more eggs to sit on, the momma hen was getting quite restless, standing up in the bin and trying to get out. So we moved them to the back portch. That lasted for a few days until they all started escaping the enclosure.
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| 2023 Kibuye Hope Academy Graduates |
Glory Guy, our Middle School teacher, served as Master of Ceremonies and dazzled us all with a colorful speech walking the graduates through all the books they have read in Middle School and the life lessons gleaned from each book.
Both Liam and Maggie gave speeches that were thoughtful, insightful, and even funny. The younger generation of Kibuye kids has been blessed by these two older ones who have taught them, played with them, and set a good example as diligent students.
Our three teachers – Glory, Erica, and Jenny – joined together to present them with their diplomas and be the first to congratulate them. Liam and Maggie were excited to officially move the tassel and be declared graduates of Kibuye Hope Academy!
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| May the Lord bless you and keep you... |
After a big thank you to our wonderful teachers, the entire school gave an amazing performance of So Long, Farewell. It was a perfect way to end our graduation, saying goodbye to our teachers who have finished their term with Serge, and goodbye to Liam and Maggie as they will go off to RVA in Kenya next year.
We know the Lord has great things for KHA next year and the years to come. But for now, it was nice to pause and praise Him for this year, this season, these teachers, and these kids.
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| Aunt Eunice bringing some California flair to the event! |
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| A trip down memory lane with photos of these kids through the years |
By Jason
A number of people on our team enjoy woodworking among their hobbies. Wood here comes very roughly cut, and usually half the duration of any project is just getting things flat and straight. The following project was no exception.
When the Cropseys built their house 10 years ago, a massive eucalyptus tree was growing in the middle of the plot where the house was going. I'm sure John tried to convince Jess to keep the tree and build a tree house in the middle of their new home, but alas, it came down. John did save the root and made a table from it, but it was so heavy that it was nearly immovable.
After the Cropseys moved, I asked John if I could try making something with the wood, and he agreed. So we towed it up to the workshop, closer to the tools:
I wanted to slice it like bread and make a coffee table. I thought the process would provide some exercise as well. We located a massive saw from a previous attempt at cutting wood, and we tried our hand at slicing the stump.
Many hours and sore muscles later, it was clear that this was going to need more expertise (Eucalyptus is HARD), so we contacted the local woodcutters, and they came and worked for 3 days and produced three slices of the stump.
I offered them our saw as payment, since theirs was nearly gone from years of use (as you can see in the picture), and they were overjoyed at the prospect (it was worth more than they asked for in payment), and I was pretty sure we were never going to be buff enough to make use of it. Win-win.
After wrestling the piece of stump into the shop, I started the long process of flattening it and making it smooth.
By Alyssa
(Feel free to scroll down to just look at pictures!)
It's my turn to write the team blog post and I thought about maybe writing about the 153 kids we saw in sickle cell clinic earlier this month or our process to revamp that clinic and make it more manageable for everyone or about other hospital-related cases, but I instead decided to focus this time on a "normal" Kibuye weekend. Ok, maybe this last weekend wasn't exactly normal, but do we really know what normal is here? I love our life, community, and beautiful surroundings in rural Burundi - and our version of "routine" - but I definitely don't struggle with boredom - always something going on! So here's a snapshot of a Kibuye weekend:
Friday at 5pm:
Nearly the whole team showed up to support Aunt Michelle (who in a prior life was a concert pianist) and her 5 piano students as they performed a piano recital. They all did such an amazing job and were well cheered and celebrated!
Friday evening:
After dinner, the adults gathered to begin a mini-team retreat time together. This nice thing about living so close together is that the little kids go to bed and then the big kids/teens babysit so the adults can have evening meetings! Lindsay Kimball, one of the leaders from Serge's Executive Leadership Team, came to visit us in Burundi over the past week, and she was so encouraging to us all both in leading the retreat time and in meeting with everyone over meals, walks, and coffee to listen, care, and pray for us.
During the Friday evening session, we discussed Jesus feeding the 5,000 from Mark 6 from both the perspective of the disciples and the perspective of Jesus. The story begins with the disciples wanting to tell Jesus about all they had done and taught but being interrupted over and over and not even having time to eat. Jesus calls them to a desolate place by themselves to rest. But a great crowd meets them there - and Jesus has compassion on them although it seems that the disciples really just want to send them all away. And then there's the part of the story when they realize it's impossible to feed all the people and they only have 5 loaves and 2 fish and Jesus feeds everyone. "And they all ate and were satisfied."
We reflected on times when it feels like more is being asked of us than we have to give (like the busy sickle cell clinic!) and when our plans for good rhythms and rest have been interrupted. And we talked about how we often wait so long to look for Jesus' presence, care, and help, and we forget to deeply rely on him until we realize that we actually don't have the resources to do the work. We don't have any more than 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish to take care of a great crowd. But Jesus longs to bring both rest and satisfaction - usually in a different way than we expect! Jesus somehow fully satisfied the deepest needs of the disciples - and the crowd - in the midst of the chaos. He compassionately showed them their desperate and needy state and then he provided.
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| He even provided green grass for them to sit on - easy to imagine at the end of rainy season in Beautiful Burundi! |
Saturday morning:
We continued the retreat by moving on to the next passage in Mark 6 where Jesus walks on the water. The disciples are straining at the oars all night long - for hours and hours in the darkness. They see what they think is a ghost and they are terrified!
Logan shared a story of a time when he was walking to the hospital at night when the power was out and he forgot a flashlight - across the field in the picture above but in utter darkness. And then he heard footsteps in the night. So terrifying - until the person quietly said "Amahoro." Amahoro is a Kirundi greeting that means "peace" - similar to shalom. What a relief to hear that quiet peaceful greeting in the night! Similar to the disciples who Jesus brought peace and courage to in the night instead of straining at the oars and abject fear.
In our private devotional time, small group time, and large group time, we reflected on and discussed the applications of these passages to our lives here in Burundi. So often we feel like we are surrounded by overwhelming need - whether needs of patients, students, our families, or the community around us - and we feel like it's too much and we don't have the resources (either time, energy, or physical resources) to do it all. But we keep straining at the oars - trying harder, seeking to be more productive or efficient, hoping to help all the people and finish all the work. But Jesus reminds us that he sees us, he cares, and we desperately need him. He will ultimately satisfy our every need and calm every storm, and he cares about our hearts in the meantime - whether in the middle of the darkness alone or surrounded by crowds in a desolate place. And he also meets us in our labors in community and longs for us to remind each other to look up and see him.
I don't love seeing or remembering my own weakness, insufficiency, and incapacity to do all the things, but this retreat time was helpful for remembering that when I do see those lacks in myself, that's actually a good thing! Jesus shows me compassion and brings himself to my heart in showing me my need for him. Desperation drives prayer as Rose Marie Miller (founder of Serge with her husband Jack) likes to remind us! We would appreciate your prayers for continuing to remember these things as a team.
"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong." 2 Corinthians 12:9-10
Saturday afternoon:
Maybe we're lacking for some entertainment around here, but the construction team has been working on taking down an enormous eucalyptus tree over the last couple weeks - climbing up into the highest branches and cutting them off one by one, guiding the falling of the branches with ropes and physics - and it has been fascinating to watch the process. On Saturday it was time for the final step - bringing the remaining tree down into the garden and not into the school or houses nearby! There was definitely some drama as the tree rocked back and forth and they kept axing it at the base - towards the school and away from the school - and I wondered about my own house at one point, too! A team vehicle was used for leverage and pulling - until the rope snapped! We watched from a safe distance and cheered in three languages as the process unfolded over the course of an hour or so - better than Netflix! And in the end the entire tree came down completely with man-power - not a single chainsaw in sight!
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| And then everyone wanted their picture on the conquered tree! |
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| K-1st grade art class made flowers for their moms |
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| Official description of the falls: "5 cascading waterfalls, a cave, an impressive biodiversity, a beautiful landscape, an arial bridge and a very welcoming population will fill you with joy." Lovely! |
