Help Kivuli Come to Canada

Sunday lunch time at our home today was hilarious. We normally do not allow drinking of pops at our dinner table. We drink water, and lately soya milk Mom prepares from scratch and that thing tastes better than real milk! Only when uncle Victor visits does mom get out Coca-cola. Today, though, Emmanuel got the better of Mom with his nagging request with unending plea of "please" for Coca-cola. So Coca-cola was served with lunch. Well, after lunch Ben washed the dishes. Bef...ore lunch Ben had shovelled snow today, and he is really trying hard to play the big brother, tough son role. With full belly, Emmanuel the playful, picked up his guitar. He has been learning how to play guitar on YouTube. Sounds like we are settling into a normal ordinary family quite fast.

From our kids to your family this Christmas and Happy New Year

Boys are having good time at Halloween Alternative moment at the Church.

Safety and building confidence can be two conflicting concerns for a parent concerning their child. When they dare to overcome their fears and conquer a challenge, they begin to build confidence they need to face challenges in life. But in attempting to do so, they risk accidents and getting hurt. And for parents letting go and releasing control over them to their precarious instincts which make them tell you boldly that they can do it can be nerve racking. Such was the case when Ben and Emmanuel wanted to ride their bikes down a steep hill yesterday. I had to trust God and grant them the permission to challenge themselves. And so they did.

Ben is harvesting from his first tomato garden. He had been watering them faithfully and now it is time for the fruitful harvest!

All of sudden the things we thought were of the distant past came crushing in our present. It has been 3 months now since Ben and Emma joined our family and there has not been a dull moment in our house ever since. They each have colorful personalities that are coming out constantly in their daily interactions. Dinner time has become particularly both entertaining and therapeutic. Entertaining because we all love good food, thanks to an excellent inhouse cook that is my wife.... Everything she touches tastes good. Early at their time of arrival I had come up with a moto for the family when I found out the boys had quickly become very discriminating in their culinary preferences, and were starting to despise vegetables: "You eat what I eat". It became a law at our dinner table and enforcement of it got them to take in their fair share of vegetables. But it quickly clue in on them that nobody should be above the law and so when my wife gave me a choice treat at dinner one day and not for them, they reminded me that they are to eat what I eat! Of course the law is the law and so I had to share my treat with them in order to comply. They felt triumphant but it was important that I also put on my seatbelt each time I get in a car if I expect them to do the same. This was something similar. There was pleasurable humor for us all in these change of roles as enforcers of the law for a change. Dinner time on occassion has become very therapeutic also. One day conversation drifted to what they could remember from their time in the village when they were little. Ben, the older brother, shared how he missed his mom who used to wake up early in the morning to make him breakfast. That was even before he went to the orphanage before age 3 yrs. Then tears rolled down his cheeks as we all also welled up except the little brother who had absolutely no recollection of his mother. He was bewildered why everybody was crying. I walked over and hugged Ben, and Lydia did the same. She then went and pulled an old picture of their mother which Ben immediately clutched onto even as his teary eyes blinked rapidly to clear his sight to get a better look at his mother's portrait. I believe this was the first time he really saw the face of his mother again after they were separated by his mother's mental illness and he had to go to the orphanage before he turned 3 yrs. He is 11 now. After that, we have had a few such trips to the past around our dinner table and shed a few tears togerher each time. Many years ago l learnt, also during my own therapy, that tears shed mourning a loss contain certain special enzymes with emotion cleansing properties. That is why I know these boys are, and will, heal soon and well. I did.