A wedding, a graduation and housing

Annika and Rudi

Quite a lot has been happening in our family these days and we wanted to share a quick update.

A Wedding - Annika and Rudin will have their first little wedding on May 27th to be followed by a larger celebration at a later date. We are thrilled that they've made this decision. We first met Rudi at their graduation from Goshen College and he has become a very much loved member of the family. Phil and I had the opportunity to get to know Rudi's family in Albania, when we spent 2 months there in 2021. Annika moved to Akron, Ohio while Rudi was finishing up his Master's degree at Kent State, and both have been working for a local nonprofit Asia. In mid July they will move to Atlanta, as Annika will start her Masters in Public Health at Emory.

D&Y,  Anna, Lydz and Bri celebratring with Nathan

Nathan and Anna

Graduation - for the past two years Nathan has been doing a Masters in Development Practice. On May 13th he graduated from the U of MN's Humphrey School of Public Policy. As many of you know, Nathan is well known for 'collecting surrogate parents' in the absence of his own. Nathan invited our dear friends Dan & Yvonne to his graduation, and they so willingly came to support and encourage him, as they did so often while we all lived in South Africa. Nathan and Anna will move to Boston the end of August so that Anna can start her Masters of Divinity studies at Boston University. 

Housing - affordable - For the past year and a half Lydia has been working for Urban Home Works, a nonprofit focused on providing safe and affordable housing and encouraging home ownership opportunities for low to moderate income families. On the personal home front, Lydia and her partner, Bri, asked us if we'd be willing to have them move into our home (affordable), which we've been renting out, and test out their home renovating and design ideas. Bri works as an HR Coordinator in a company that provides HR Services to organisations looking to outsource this support.

 

Lydia and Bri

            

    Today, the 24th, Phil and I start the long trip back to the US to join the wedding celebration this weekend. We'll be in Akron for about 2 1/2 days before heading back to Kigali to recover for a couple of days before heading back to work commitments.     

We are looking forward immensely to this special occasion this weekend and the opportunity to be together as family as we welcome Rudi officially into the LD clan. We would love to stay longer but will have more time with family at the end of July when we'll have a month of leave. 

We ask for your prayers as we travel. And most especially we ask for your prayers for Annika and Rudi, as they make this commitment to each other in the very small gathered community of family and close friends. Yes, Rudi's parents will be coming from Albania!  A&R have chosen Micah 6:8, as their couple's verse, and were quite surprised to see a banner with that verse on it, hanging on the wall of the church where they will be married. Apparently it had been hidden behind something else. A beautiful confirmation for them of the verse they make their couple's verse as they embark on a lifetime together.                                                                       

What if you were an internally displaced person?

What is it like to be an internally displaced person (IDP) in Eastern Congo? Are IDPs like you and me? Do they have the same hopes and dreams that we have? Do they hope that their children will grow up to change the world? We love this story written by the Medair Comms Officer, Daniel: Vainqueur must live! The name of the child, who was treated in a Medair facility, is Vainqueur in French, which translates to winner, conqueror or overcomer! He has already had to overcome a number of things in his short life, due to ongoing conflict in his country. This story brings out the aspirations of his mother, Aline, for her children. 

The Bushagara IDP camp where Medair provides Health Care
@Daniel WAKANDU, Medair

The article contains this picture of the one-of-its-kind IDP camp in Bushagara. Officials in charge of managing the large influx of  IDPs saw the deplorable conditions in the informal camps where Vainqueur and his family were living. They planned this organized camp and then relocated IDPs from various informal camps. The health sector then chose Medair to provide health services in the camp. Bushagara is about 10 miles outside of Goma. 

Life in this and other camps isn't all rosy. Medair also supports a health center in Kibati. The blog post we wrote on the 9th of November described people fleeing to Kibati, where we have been working since that time. Last weekend, gunfire was heard right next to our cholera treatment center, on the outskirts of Kibati. The government staff, as well as the IDPs receiving treatment for cholera, all fled. Thankfully the fighting ceased, and the landlord of the treatment center got community members to protect the facility from looting. Those who fled returned over the next 2 days to finish treatment. This is the fragility of the situation that most IDPs live in. 

When we meet together as the Goma team on Tuesday evenings for devotions, we always look back at our prayer concerns from the previous week. Here are some of the answers to prayers we have had over the last while: 

A gathering with IDPs, to listen to their concerns and see how Medair
can best support them. 

1. Access to more sites here in Petit Nord Kivu (the province Goma is in) due to the security situaton improving;
2. Protection of the health center in Kibati;
3. Successful evacuation of Medair staff from Khartoum, given the situation in the Sudan;
4. Nutrition supplies being released from customs so that they can be used in our projects;
5. A Medair staff member successfully returning from his work site (Pinga), where he had been stranded due to insecurity stopping UN helicopter flights; 
6. Safety of Congolese staff who found themselves in a very insecure situation in Ituri province; 
7. A truck leaving Goma with supplies, passing through Rwanda and Uganda, before successfully reentering Congo to take supplies to our Butembo base; 
8. Provision of essential medicines, which are banned from importation into Congo, but which are in short supply within the country.

You can see that we rely on the Lord's providence on a daily basis for all that we do here (even if we don't find the time to always communicate these prayer concerns to you). We are humbled by the expressions of concern and prayer that we get from you through social media or email. And it means all the world to us that you support us, our colleagues, and our programming in prayer! Thanks from the bottom of our hearts!

Just one last story before we leave you. This morning one of the Medical Supervisors, who's currently in a very difficult to reach remote location, sent a photo and a caption to show that he was hiking 20 mins to the top of a hill to find cell phone coverage to check in with the team and send in weekly statistics. Our staff out in the field, are doing their best to support health facilities, in locations where other organisations do not go, demonstrating Medair's vision to 'reach the most vulnerable'.