Little boys will be ninjas, no matter where they are from.

We just got home from having supper at our friend’s house. In our bedroom, my thermometer tells me it is 36.8 degrees. Wow. Driving home from hut class this afternoon my steering wheel was so hot I considered putting oven mitts in the car for the rest of hot season (good idea Beth!). Yikes!

SO hot season has truly hit with full force. 

So besides all this talk of hot, which will last months now, I thought I would make you smile with pictures of Bennett and his buddy Souliman, and the kids playing. Souliman is the little boy who has terribly bad eczema on his feet, so bad that they crack and bleed and look scaly like a lizard. So we happily keep them stocked with imported “Georges” cream which works wonders and we are happy to report his feet look the best we have seen them in a long time! Bennett and Arielle ran around with 4 other little children (none of them sharing a common language with ours) and had a blast. The got involved in some pretty serious WWF Goat Wrestling which was pretty hilarious to watch. I got video, but sadly can’t upload it. So instead you will have to enjoy some pics!

This is our friends house. Not the mammoth cement house being built in the background, but the small grass shack with black plastic for a roof. See their metal bed with wooden sheet for a mattress next to the door? What a dichotomy.

Bennett and Souliman hamming it up

and giving us their best spontaneous ninja poses! (this was taken seconds before Souliman peeled away to spin and kick and make terrific warrior noises!)

Arielle gets in on the goat wrestling

 

These two little ones were having their own conversation. Their body language totally says it all. The little boy saying something like “Hey…are you going to put that bowl back in there with the others?” And Raichatou (the little girl) saying “What, do you think I was born yesterday or something? Come on!” Another funny observation. Back home if the little kids run around half naked, it is usually with a pair of underwear and nothing else. Here, it is always a t-shirt and nothing else!

Paul got in on the fun and provided a one man circus by flipping all the kids over and spinning them. They loved it!

One of my favourite little girls, Raichatou. Her parents call her “trouble!” Which was my nickname as a kid too! Isn’t she precious!

   

So I hope wherever this finds  you, it is cooler than here! Take care!

 

-Chantelle

Visitors from home !

Recently for two weeks we had the pleasure of having visitors from home! As part of an initiative to have people visit the “fields” of the Alliance after a large bi-annual conference in Turkey, our team received 12 people here in Niger. 6 of those people were tied to us and our church in Calgary! Our Pastor Shawn, his wife Gini and his two small children AND his parents (a three generation group!) came to spend two weeks with us here in Niger. (check out the giraffe in the background!)

I have asked Shawn to write a guest blog here on his perceptions and experiences of Niger, so hopefully in the next few weeks you will see that here. But for now I thought I would post a few pictures of their trip and some of the highlights of what we did with them!

Shopping for African necklaces with Gini

We took them several times to our outdoor markets where we buy lots of our food and household items. They were amazed that you could buy veggies, carpets, backpacks,  shoes, underwear, tea, plastic basins, cloth and everything in between all in one aisle!

*picture not taken by me. I’d love to give credit..but I don’t remember who did take it.

We put Shawn to work building tippi-taps with Paul

Gini came to hut class several times. (You can see her in the back here)

Everyone came to visit the first day of our Grain Aid distribution.

Gini looking so stylish!

 

There were always kids around us. They love seeing other little children, so our “white” kids always drew attention from other children. But it was never in a negative way, they just wanted to play!

We hosted a Tuareg music and cultural evening for all our Canadian visitors. It was at the home of a National just out of town. There was a rice and sauce meal, millet/milk cold porridge drink and dates to eat. There was a traditional drum played and a good group of local Tuareg guitarists. I think all of our visitors had a great time, getting up and dancing, trying the drums, playing with the kids and sharing culture. Many of our Canadian visitors spoke French so they were able to interact directly with our National friends, which was a wonderful way to connect and talk and learn.

The kids kept asking to have their pictures taken and then would look at it with glee on the display screen after.

Shawn got a turban given to him by this man Saidi. Shawn gave him his hat in return.

We went to the giraffe reserve. It never ceases to amaze me there. And our visitors always find it equally amazing! It was a very dusty day so it was hard to get crisp pictures, but I managed to be standing by ready when a group of them took off running and got a whole series of them running across the savannah.

Here is Kiam checking out his first ever giraffe, sitting calmly 30 feet in front of him. “Dad – I know it’s just a giraffe but he’s scary!”
 

 

We also went to the sand dunes, one of our favourite places to take visitors.

I had fun taking some photos of Shawn and Gini. For some reason I really loved this one :) Gini might kill me, but I wanted to show it anyhow. I didn’t even edit it in Photoshop! I like to call it “Divine Conception” !

 

As I talked about in my previous post about the great care package they brought, their visit was a huge encouragement to us. We are isolated here, and it means so much to have family or friends come to see us and share in what we are doing. Thank you so much to the entire Vickar family for coming to Niger!

 

BIG love

 

These past few weeks I have been thinking about the way that God loves us. And we had one things happen to our family that is a good illustration of that concept of God’s big love.

This past week we had a family come from Calgary , Alberta from our home church. The pastor and his wife came all this way with their two toddler children and their own parents. So the 6 of them arrived and we had a wonderful time. Blog coming about that soon! However, they also brought us a care package and greetings from one of the main churches who support us back home.

So how did this remind me of God’s love? Well…God doesn’t just love us half way.  If we were to ask him to love us just a little, he would still blow us away with the amount of his love. If we ask a hundred times for grace and forgiveness, he is standing by to offer a million. We see ourselves worthy often of only small amounts of love and small amounts of blessing. And yet God wants to offer us everything – his undivided attention, his unfailing grace, every bit of love inside of Him. And this expression of over-whelming, unrequested and unexpected love is something we are blown away by each time we experience it, and this is something that our church did for us.

Before they came out, they asked for some ideas of things we would love in a care package from the church. Like any international worker, I have a list on my computer with things I want to pick up when i go to a country that has access to more items than Niger. So I sent them that list to give them some ideas. I told them by no means should they consider getting it all! However, i think they were purposefully hard of hearing in that area and filled every single item!

Here are a few things on our list that we asked for as an example for you:

A box of Ziplock bags

a few packs of nacho cheese mix sauce

some flavoured oatmeal cereal packs

whole coffee beans

honey

vanilla extract

some macaroni and cheese sauce mix

cheddar cheese

some grocery twist ties

some dress up clothes for the kids (especially Bennett since he only has princess stuff here so far!)

Also, We give out some basic medical supplies to the poor around us. When they have wounds and cuts we like to give them a little tube of polysporin and talk to them about keeping it clean. All too often have we seen nasty infected messes here and one little boy almost died last year from this exact problem. We like to give women who are pregnant some prenatal vitamins. Their own nutrition is bad enough that I would like to be able to help their baby get some of the vitamins and nutrients it needs to grow healthy! I also give out childrens tylenol to sick children (with information and not in excess obviously!) when they are sick with fevers. So we asked for a few bottles of each of those items to be able to hand out.

---And wow did they respond! We got 26 tubes of polysporin, 30 bottles of prenatal vitamins to give out and around 40 bottles of children’s tylenol! My mini-pharmacy is re-stocked! 

Some other numbers? I counted up a bit (even though some things had been put away) and we got roughly 350 Ziplock bags, 35 packs of mac and cheese sauce mix, 50 packs of nacho cheese sauce mix (wow I better throw a huge Mexican food party now!) around 80 packs of instant flavoured oatmeal and a huge bag of twist ties (from which I hear one man raided Safeway’s whole stock!)

Now the reason I write this isn’t just because it is exciting to get all this stuff. Don’t get me wrong, it was like Christmas day! You can’t see it in the picture (because I had already put it away!) but there were also books, kids dress up clothes, lego, cheddar cheese, two great thermarest camping pads for when we are sleeping in villages, donated small cameras to use for a ministry, coffee beans and many other things. It was so much fun. There were letters and cards from dear friends and family and their words touched my heart and brought great encouragement. But the greatest gift of all was the support behind it. This is our church family and friends who all got excited about sending something tangible our way, to help our ministry and encourage us. This isn’t one family or a small group. As a whole community they chose to get involved in a “BIG LOVE” way with our work here in Niger. We opened a giant hockey bag full of things you had sent to love us and the people we work with. This gift was indicative of a connection to us and our work. We are the hands of those who are back home, yet we are still connected and working together. That is the greatest gift of all!

To those of you out there who know people working far away from comfort, family and home – why don’t you send them an email? a letter? a package of goodies? or pick up the phone and just call. Nothing means more than knowing you are loved and cared for and still connected even when far away. And for yourselves- know that God loves you in a BIG LOVE sort of way. He has a whole giant hockey bag just waiting to open up with blessings and love for you. His nature is overwhelming, unabashed love.

Thank you so much Rockyview  and the others that dropped things off – for being the feet to my hands, the grocery cart to my grocery list and the pack horse for the luggage! To each of you who have ever loved us through care packs, letters, emails and phone calls- we appreciate you so much. And to those of you who are now eating many boxes of plain macaroni noodles without their cheese packs- we thank you!

You blessed us in a BIG LOVE way!!

- Paul, Chantelle, Bennett & Arielle