Rwanda Rewind: Day Two and the Weekend, Part II

That post was just getting way too huge. Go here for Part I. On with the show.

We spent most of Sunday at the orphanage as well.

(the first four families to arrive)

(See her mohawk? When we went to the hospital on Friday, they had shaved the sides of her hair in order to try to put in an iv. Later, the nuns shaved the back, leaving a little fluff of hair on top.)

(from the courtyard)

(I love this picture because it's taken from INSIDE the blue gates, the place we so wanted to be all those long months.)

And made another visit to the hospital (not for Laina). There, we waited outside and played a little soccer with these handsome fellows.

(wow!)

The weekend was long, because we knew that while we had already been gone for five days, we weren't even supposed to be there yet. Meaning for all intents and purposes, we hadn't even started the trip yet. We couldn't wait for Monday, not only so we could welcome the rest of the team to Kigali, but so we could finally start on the mountains of paperwork we had to get through in order to bring Laina home.

Other weekend pictures:

(At Nakumatt, the grocery store/everything store.)

(the road leading to the orphanage)

(Rwanda is beautiful.)

(lovely little restaurant above, with the tree below in the courtyard)

(also the restaurant where Jeremy got his first taste of goat, the dining adventure mentioned at the end of this post.)

So the retelling of the weekend is done! Laina woke up once in the middle of me writing this post, and I went into our room at the beach cottage to hold her. As I sat in the chair with her falling back to sleep on my chest, and the boys sprawled all over the floor, I was able to think for just a minute about why we took this trip. Looking at these pictures and remembering the details brings back a lot of memories--some good and some not-so-good. While it was a beautiful, amazing trip, it was also a very difficult, overwhelming, stressful trip. But we look back on it with awe in what God did, bringing us through the final leg of the journey to bring Laina home, with us and her brothers, where she belongs.