Monday, November 18, 2013

Information overload

Being in the States these three months (how has it been so long already??), we have received and had access to endless amounts of information about everything: 
  • Billboard advertisements.
  • Email reminders.
  • Mailed sales alerts.
  • Internet commercials on Youtube and almost every webpage (how do you make them silent?!). 
  • More emails. 
  • And internet news. 
We have known we can research anything online and find it. The problem is, sometimes we feel found by the information. 

There is no doubt that it can be overwhelming at times!


One thing lately that we haven't had to spend time much digging to find, is news about our beloved Congo. 

Finding so many articles about Congo is easy, although finding the truth in the different perspectives and often sensationalized views, can be trickier. And as we read these titles of just a handful of articles (Congo is in the news, y'all! This is a good thing in a way...), nothing sounds new. We've heard it all before. Is this the real thing at last?

We hope so. But we don't know. And like our family and friends in Congo, we continue to pray for the country. We pray for the eastern region of Congo. We pray for the leaders and decision makers. We pray for the people who live with the consequences of war, or fought-over resources, or power-struggles.

Can't get fruit like this in Illinois

We pray. We hope and ask that you will continue to pray for the country in this time. Pray that God will do something incredible in the story of the Democratic Republic of Congo. We pray that one day you too will get to see this beautiful place that we are blessed by, because it is one of our homes.

God bless you.

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Journeying with Joy!

 Well, our world has been turned upside down by (in our non-biased opinion) the cutest and sweetest baby girl... And moving to the other side of the world. But first, meet our little Joy Mary Kasali.


After Joy was born... Things were a pretty busy as we were getting closer to wrapping up this time at UCBC and heading on to graduate school for Noe...

We left Beni on July 23rd, and spent over 2 weeks in Kinshasa.
We left Kinshasa on August 9th - and arrived in Chicago on the 10th.
We've been in the States for a month now!
We've been in Wheaton for about three weeks.
Noe started classes on August 28th - and it has been nonstop reading!
Joy has adjusted fantastically.
Her parents... Well, we could use a little more sleep but we love all of her little smiles and sounds... She's starting to laugh and she lets us know when she misses us!

We wanted to share some photos of Joy and our journey to get here... It's in no way complete. It'd be better if you let us print them, put them in an album and then come over for some tea and we'll tell you all about it!
But for now:

These had been in order when we uploaded them... Why they aren't now...? Ah. 
August 7th - Kinshasa, DRC

August 8th - Kinshasa

August 9th - with the family who hosted us in Kinshasa!

August 9th or 10th - Brussels!

Aug 10th - Becky found us in CHICAGO!

August 10th :)

August 10th - Joy's first experience with a car seat...

Aug 10th - not too bad at first...

Aug 10th - we made it! :)

Aug 10th - Not liking the car seat, and she's hated it since we arrived!

Aug 10th - meeting cousin Alexandria

Aug 11th - With her grandparents, yay!!
 
Aug 11th - family time!

Aug 12th - wearing pink!

August 14th

Aug 14th

May 27th - one day old

June 18th

June 22nd

June 28th

July 7th - trying to take her passport photo...

It was fun...

But not easy! 

July 6th - got her official birth certificate!

July 7th

July 7th

July 8th - learning to laugh!

July 10th - more practice

July 11th - round two of passport photo attempts!

Look straight! 

And AT the camera, please! :)

July 14th - baby dedication at our church

After the dedication service... 

With Daddy!
July 19th - pretty new dress! 

July 23rd - leaving Beni

August 6th - Kinshasa, by the Congo River

Aug 6th

Aug 6th

June 10th

June 15th - trying to get her to sleep

June 16th - Father's Day

July 26th - Kinshasa

July 27th - studying with Daddy, Kinshasa

July 28th - breakfast, Kinshasa

July 30th - Making sure her thumb stays in her mouth! 

Friday, April 19, 2013

Files uploaded!


Hello from Beni!

We have some great news! After being unable to upload these files to our blog (for a while), things miraculously worked this morning! So if you are interested, or if you didn’t get our latest updates via email, attached are our most recent reports and updates.

February Update: Click Here

March 1st Quarter Report: Click Here

April Update: Click Here

About Studying at Wheaton: Click Here

Congo Initiative donation form (this was incorrect on the CI website, so to help, if you wanted it – we’re uploading it here as well, in the correct version): Click Here

We are amazed to realize that April is flying by… It has been a full and fast month. We’ve been busy, Noé working long hours at UCBC, Bethany working most of the day at Dr. Kasali’s home (power, occasional internet, and closer to home!), and trying to manage things at our own home as well. It’s been good. But as we look at the calendar and see that today is the 19th… We’re amazed. Where did the month go?

But it means we’re getting closer to May… And to meeting our first child! We cannot wait. Thanks for prayers and love and support. We love you all.

Blessings and love,
Noé and Bethany 

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

a skinned knee and a happy birthday


Oh my gosh, has it been over two months since we've posted on the blog?! Wow... Where does the time go? 

written April 8th, 2013, Monday
For the past week or so, we’ve had a niece and nephew staying with us at home. They had Easter vacation and wanted to spend it at our home. The niece is 11 and nephew is 7. It had been a joy to have them in our home – their laughter, messes, play, desire to be with Noé and I… It was so sweet. They left early this morning to go back to their home, since classes started up again today.

Well over the weekend we celebrated Noé’s birthday. Turns out that April 6th is also Asleme’s birthday. So we celebrated both of them. That Saturday morning Noé and I went fishing. At 6am. After being there for several hours, we didn't have anything worth keeping (we caught several very small fish). But it was a great, relaxing way to start the morning.

So Saturday afternoon I was cooking dinner for that evening, and a cake! In spite of cooking on a charcoal stove, I was able to successfully bake a cake. I put the batter in a smaller pan (ok it was one of my sauce pans but I didn’t have anything else!), inside a much larger pot. The large pot I had about 1/3 of the way with dirt from the garden. Once that got super hot, I put the cake pan on the dirt in the large pot. The lid went on the top and hot coals on top of that. Surprisingly, the cake was cooked in about 30 minutes! It nearly burned, the fire / dirt / coals were so hot. I didn’t expect it to cook so quickly.

Anyway, while cooking or baking that afternoon, I was sitting near the fires with our nephew, wearing a skirt that was showing one of my knees… He looked at my knee and asked me, while pointing to it, “what is that?”

He wasn’t asking about my knee, but about the huge red wound on it!

The day before, Friday morning, Noé and I went for a walk before work around 6:30am. It was great! But 5 minutes into the walk, I stumbled on a stone in the path and went onto one knee. It took the skin off pretty good, but it really wasn’t too bad. Noé cleaned it out with alcohol when we got home (that hurt), put some antibiotic ointment on it, and sealed it up with a bandage.

So on Saturday after cleaning it I decided to let it air out a little. And our nephew saw it.

When I told him that I got it from falling the day before, he looked at me in disbelief. “You fell?” he asked me with a tone of total surprise. Yes, this newly 30-year old, pregnant, woman fell in the dirt just like he does on a nearly daily basis.
Getting ready to cut the cake! 

He’s young. It’s ok for him to fall.

I’m old. I’m not supposed to do those things!

But, he doesn’t know that I’m clumsy.

His expression though, of shock, that an adult was capable of falling and skinning her knee, was precious. 

We had the cake that night, and Noé loved it. I didn’t give him a piece with the burned part though :) To top off the cake, we had some chocolate frosting that I had begged our family to bring with them when they came last year. It made the cake fantastic. And Noé was happy. 

Friday, January 25, 2013

December & January Updates

Hello friends!

We hope that you are well where you are... And if you're in the upper midwest of the United States - stay warm!! We know you don't want to hear about if it's hot or sunny or even unbearable at times here on the Equator... So we won't tell you. But we do hope you stay safe and warm!

While we were in Kampala, we forgot to upload our December quarterly report. Which is a shame because the internet was much faster there!

At any rate, we got to UCBC about 10 minutes before 8am this morning, and we were able to upload our reports at last! Hooray!

So if you click here: You'll be able to see the last quarterly report from 2012. December's Quarterly Report - if you haven't seen it yet, it's a good one! :)

And if you click here: You'll be able to see a brief update that we sent out in the middle of January... Something we want to do this year is to send even short updates each month. This will help us keep you better informed about what's happening at UCBC and in our life here in Beni. So this is our January Update.
New Years Day in Kampala

We hope that you have a good day and an enjoyable weekend!

With Love,
Noe and Bethany