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

Urban Grain Aid begins!

Wednesday morning was the launch of the Urban Grain Aid program for our team here in Niger. With partnerships from CFGB, Alliance Women and Alliance churches, and work specials we have put together a program that links food aid with education on health, hygiene and other pertinent topics, as well as a strong focus on building relationships with the recipients as we spend time with them. Holistic teaching and Food Aid- hand in hand!

We were a little unsure what to expect this morning. Would we get tons of angry people from the surrounding area who wanted as well? Was the communication (done by our local partners) well done and people would arrive with their money and oil containers in hand, or would there still be confusion? Overall we were so thrilled with how well it went and how many opportunities we had to talk with people. God is good – all the time!

Paul and Youssouf Al-Farouk. Youssouf is an old man who helps guard the facility with his family who live in a hut across the street. Paul and him spend a good chunk of time together getting the facility ready, etc and they always have fun. He is hilarious and we love his whole family. Maybe they will adopt us!

Just to recap quickly- we are targeting 60 poor households in our community. Their families will receive 100kg of millet and 4 packs of milk at well below market rates. They will also receive 10L of free oil. This program lasts 7 months and each month they can pick up their food.

Men start to arrive to pick up their food.

There is something that really struck me today. We were able to help 60 families get access to food today. It is not a huge number, but we are so thankful for each and every one of these families. Every family received 100kg (220 pounds) of millet. Some of the sacks would leak out small kernels of millet. In this case below, maybe 1/4 cup of millet spilled onto the ground. The man put down the sack and carefully scraped up the millet- sand and all- into a little baggie. Every single kernel was precious. His 220 pounds was not enough to make him forget the value of a handful of kernels. I saw this happen 3 times this morning and each time they carefully gathered the handful that fell. Nothing is taken for granted. It was truly humbling.

Scraping the spilled millet carefully onto a bag to be used.

Zeinaboo- volunteering with us the whole day to distribute the oil into containers.

And of course- how many hands does it take to open up a spout and pour out oil?

The donkey carts begin to show up to take all the millet and oil and milk home.

This donkey cart was loaded down with about 1200 pounds of food.

Poor donkeys!

The education portion

Our April education sessions talk about hygiene, germs and hand washing. Many of them don’t understand WHY they get sick so often. Diarrhoea runs rampant and many children are seriously ill. Much of this could be improved if they would wash their hands and keep the flies off their food that just landed on their latrine! We also link biblical teaching on water and cleanliness. Many of the men invited us to come to their homes to teach their families the same thing! Praise God for open doors and open hearts!!

Below is Paul’s improved design for a tippi-tap hand washing stations. We talked about them to all the recipients today and starting next Wednesday we are giving one out to every family! Many thanks to those of you partnering with us to make these hand washing stations and soap a reality to give for free!

We went through almost 600L of oil today. Since there is not a lot of nutrition in the diet of the poor, oil becomes very important. It is fortified and full of nutrients and amino acids to help make them stronger and healthier.

Rebecca and I working. SO much fun to be able to work almost daily with Rebecca!

Our pastor Shawn and his family are currently visiting in Niger (blog later about all that!) and it was a joy to show them the launch of this program. Shawn thought it would be fun to lift some of the sacks. Each sack weighs 220 pounds!

We got grain!

Arielle turns 4!

 

Yesterday was sweet Arielle’s 4th Birthday (the 28th of March!)! Well not actually yesterday now- but my internet has been almost completely non-existent for a few days! While we had the kid’s joint party a week ago, we still celebrated and sang to her yesterday! We even have friend’s visiting who she is really enjoying playing with.

In this past year, Arielle has blossomed in so many ways.

For those of you who don’t know her story, you can check out this blog:

http://chroniclesofourjourney.blogspot.com/2007/07/introducing-arielle-mciver.html

Those of you who know us and follow our blog know many of the hard times we have had in the past 3 years with this beautiful little girl. We are so thrilled that this last year has been one of major emotional healing for Arielle and we are seeing her personality sparkle like never before!

 

Arielle’s two best friend’s here in Niger : Ophelia and Lily

 

Her forever best friend however is her big brother Bennett. The two of them are often inseparable and get into so much trouble (and fun) together! They snuggle, read stories, make inventions, chase each other and create wonderful sand art. They also take care of each other. Bennett has such a soft spot for Arielle and is very protective of her.

 

Arielle loves to read books. She especially loves the “Paper Bag Princess” by Robert Munsch. She also likes to comb the hair of her new doll and put clothes on her soft doll Piper. She loves playing games like “Uno” and anything with dice or cards. Here she is trying the egg race at the birthday party.

She likes pretending to me a mom and to make food in their play kitchen too!

 

I think Arielle has strengths in language. She listens for a long time without saying much, and then comes to us using full sentences in French! While she is still shy talking to adults, she is doing so well rattling along in French with her little friends!

Arielle is also a great snuggler. Often in the mornings when my alarm goes off she crawls up into our bed (most months while it is hot the kids sleep on mattresses on the floor next to us so we only use one air conditioning unit). She snuggles in right next to me and takes my face in her hands and nuzzles my face. She doesn’t say much, but her actions speak volumes about her love.

Happy Birthday Arielle! We are so pleased with how well you have grown up this year and how happy and content you seem everyday. You are a joy to be around and you love people genuinely. We can’t wait to see what next year holds for you!