Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Jumping for Joy






The team of ten scaled down to a small intimate team of six. Our team members, Dan, Bunny, Fran and Ron departed on Monday. We miss their energy and support.

Today, we made our way back to the Kayonza village to the New Life Academy, where we were greeted by approximately 720 students. Our Northface duffle bags were filled with 850 jump ropes.

Robert (Spsonsor Son), Carol (Esther Home Facilitator) and Rebeka (New Life Academy Staff) assisted us to each classroom. We were greeted in unison by the students in English. The preschoolers and early primary grades were the first to receive the jump ropes. After about an hour all the jump ropes were distributed. The lunch bell rang and as soon as they were out in the open school yard the ropes were swinging high in the air. The excitement was contagious – children were laughing, singing, and moving about the school yard.

Before our departure, we distributed balloons and interacted with the students. They gathered around the van, wished us well and thanked us for the jump ropes. It was truly heart warming to be able to gift a jump rope to each student.


As we made our way to the main store in the village to buy food and essential supplies for our sponsor family visits we noticed several children with jump ropes in the hands and many still wearing the You-Are-Beautiful buttons that were distributed last week. It was wonderful to see this through out the village.

With much joy in our hearts, we traveled back to Kigali. We found ourselves singing, laughing and trying to learn Kinyarwanda. Once again it was a great day in Beautiful Rwanda.

1 comment:

John V. said...

What a cool way to have fun and get exercise. Great idea!