Hello everyone! Somehow it has been over 2 months since our last update! We are continuing to settle into our new home here at Kibogora as well as into our work. We wanted to share some of the highlights from the last 2 months. Apart from a short amount of time in the surgical ICU/PACU, Olivia has been working Monday through Friday in the Neonatal ICU. She has had some discouraging sad days as you can imagine, but lots of good ones as well. God's power and love for each of His children is on display; He heals babies every day and we are thankful to witness it. Olivia has been working on comparing US policies to Rwandan policies in place in the NICU. She hopes to update/improve some of the processes and refresh nurses on correct nursing procedures to provide the best care possible to babies. Gabe has mostly been working together with the staff here on maintenance both at the Mission and at the hospital. We are thankful that word has gotten around about Gabe's availability and he has had much more to do on the mission compound and at the hospital. He has frequently joined the biomedical engineer in the hospital to help him get to all the broken equipment faster. Last month a group of nursing students from Liberty University visited the hospital for a few days. We really enjoyed showing them around and hosting them. Olivia was able to take them to the NICU for some hospital experience as well. The travel restrictions between districts were lifted the week they arrived, so we also enjoyed accompanying them to a city one hour east called Kamembe and seeing more of beautiful Rwanda. We still are taking Kinyarwandan lessons from the local church youth pastor, Pastor Alain, twice a week. He is a great friend and we are looking forward to meeting some of his students this weekend. Hopefully this will lead to more friends for us! We also have joined a bible study for the next 6 weeks with the visiting surgeon and some of his long time Rwandan friends. We will be studying the book of Galatians. We're grateful for all of the new connections we are making and pray they grow into meaningful friendships! We also got to have some fun over Easter. A large group of expats from Kigali came to vacation in Kibogora for the week and they were kind enough to include us in many of their activities. They had an American Easter dinner we joined them for and an English church service. We went boating, water skiing and tubing with them at Kumbya, the mission campground on a peninsula nearby-- something we didn't think we'd ever do in Africa! It was a lot of fun and we enjoyed getting to know them all. Another fun highlight from a few weeks ago was visiting a tea factory. It was very interesting to see the process, engineer Gabe appreciated it very much!! We had the pleasure of meeting Ephaste, the national director of International Childcare Ministries last week. Both he and ICCM are doing amazing work in Rwanda. We are looking forward to Olivia's sister coming May 29th. She is a nursing student and will be here for 2 months working with Olivia. The construction on the maternity site and surgical building continues. It's amazing to see them progress. The maternity project still needs to be fully funded, and if you would like to donate, here is the link. Please be sure to identify your donation as going toward "Kibogora Maternity Ward" when contributing. If you have any questions/problems please let us know and we can help!
Newly completed retention wall at maternity building site
Visiting Gatare Tea Factory. White hats and coats required :)
Kibogora NICU nurses at our house
Liberty University and Kibogora Polytechnic nursing student getting to know each other after a presentation