Returning Home

We are Stateside now. We left Gemena two weeks ago today and after three plane rides, a couple nights in a hotel and a van ride...we arrived in Rockford. We were greeted at the airport by 3 out of 4 parents...or should I say grandparents.

Hannah was strapped into a car seat for the first time. She thought nothing of it for the first hour until she got tired and cranky. When she realized mom would not take her out and hold her, she cried. She has cried in her car seat almost every time since as well.

We spent six days seeing family, a few friends and resting. Then we drove up to Minneapolis to attend debrief meetings at the ReachGlobal office. It was nice to spend a little time with ReachGlobal staff who gave us the opportunity to share our experiences from the past two years. It allowed us to take time to reflect on what we walked through during our time in Congo. We also had the opportunity to meet with some people from one of the churches that supported us. We thoroughly enjoyed spending time with that group of people and reconnecting with some of those who were part of a team we hosted in Congo.

Hannah has meet grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and great-grandparents. We have had the opportunity to meet with a handful of friends as well. We look forward to connecting with more people over the next several weeks. Please email us at our new email addresses sarahsnyder329@gmail.com or samsnyder127@gmail.com if you would like to set up a time to meet with us.

Meeting Great-Grandpa Tennant

Our first four generation photo

Reunited with our good friends the Warrens

Saying goodbyes...

We have officially begun the process of saying goodbyes. Sigh. There are always mixed feelings with saying goodbye. For us, it is sad to say goodbye to people we have grown to appreciate so much here. At the same time, we are anxious to say our goodbyes so we can get back home and be reunited with people we have not seen for two years. We are so looking forward to those reunions.

Last Saturday we attended our final English Club. We hosted it here at the Elikya Center and surprised them with a movie, Cokes and popcorn. We watched Kung Fu Panda in English and the group thought it was great.

The English Club that started last year.
Pray that they keep it going even though we will be gone.

One of the most difficult goodbyes is with Mowa's family. We spent last Saturday afternoon at their home sharing food together. We brought some special gifts for each of the kids and for Luta, Mowa's wife. Their family has been through so much in the past year and we have walked through very sad times with them before and after Mowa's death. We will see them again to officially say goodbye before we fly out on Saturday, but this was a very special, tearful time with them.

Luta, Jim, Joseph, Tresor, Sam, Hannah and Sarah.
They have four other children who are studying in Kinshasa and another son who was
out playing soccer when we took the photo.

Yesterday we attended a meal with the Elikya Center staff and were surprised that they set aside time to thank us and say goodbye after the meal. So many people said such nice things to us and we were all a bit choked up as we shared our appreciation for the friendships we have built with those who work at the Elikya Center. We also ate dinner with the President and Vice President of CECU.

This afternoon our local church is coming out here to have a going away service for us (if it doesn't rain!). Tommorow we will spend the afternoon fellowshipping and praying with the Hospitality Team. In the midst of all of these goodbyes we are finding time to pack and clean. Whew!

On a completely different note, we want you to check out these fantastic photos that were taken by Ben McMullen when he and his wife, Karen, were here in Congo last month. They are beautiful photos and we had to share them with you.

This is what Hannah was doing to keep busy...

while we were doing this.

Packing Up

Here we are…our final days in Gemena. It does seem like such a long time ago that we were packing up our home in Rockford to come here. But, about two years ago, this is what we were doing. Now we are doing it all over again so we can go back home.

Sorting through our items and deciding what to pack and what to give away.
We are giving away much more than we are taking home

Only two years have passed, but it sometimes feels longer because so much has happened and changed over the past two years. We know that a lot will happen in these final 10 days in Gemena and we have barely made a dent in all the goodbyes we need to say.

So...pray for us as we wrap everything up, pack our bags and say many goodbyes.

There's a new baby in town!

Simplice, one of our four Hospitality Team members is now a momma!! She got married last year and found out she was pregnant a few months later. Her pregnancy has been a difficult one and the past two months or so she has mostly stayed at home because of doctor's orders. Simplice's baby was due at the end of June and we were really hoping she would give birth before we returned to the states so we could meet her baby. Two weeks ago she had malaria which is very dangerous for a pregnant woman and baby. Simplice went into early labor and at 2 AM on Monday, May 21st she gave birth to a healthy baby boy! She was only 7 1/2 months pregnant, but the baby is in good health and weighed close to 3 kilos (a little over 6 lbs). The baby's name is Samuel (after his grandfather, not Sam).

Sam, Hannah and I went to visit the new baby this morning. It was such a joy to see Simplice holding her new baby with that motherly glow on her face. So, I had to share some photos of the newest arrival.

It has been fun to help Simplice walk through her pregnancy and learn about the different practices in each other's culture. Michelle and I have had many conversations with Simplice about being pregnant and caring for a baby. We are so excited she now gets to experience motherhood! Congratulations to the new parents!

Installation Service

Yesterday was an important day for CECU (Congolese Free Church). In March, the CECU President and Vice President were re-elected for another four-year term. Yesterday was the instalation service and it was a big deal. There was even official fabric people could buy and wear for the service. So...we joined the club, bought the fabric, hired a tailor and wore our uniforms to the service.

Dressed in our official installation clothing

Even the babies matched

The service began around 9:30 AM with special choirs and ended around 3:15 PM! Michelle and Sarah left earlier with the babies but the rest of the team Ben, Karen and Rachel) stuck it out until the end. At least they got fed afterwards! Here are a few photos from the service...

Hannah and Great Aunt Rachel watching the special dancing

President Bosokpale and Vice President Badi in the processional

The President of ECC (oversees the protestant churches in Congo) came for the event

Bebe translating for Karen during the service

Pastoral line-up

Unexpected Reunion

On Thursday we traveled out to Karawa, another village, to visit some of the Global Fingerprints orphans with the team that is here from the States. We were all received with a huge welcome party and lots of food at almost every place we traveled.

While we were visiting one of the churches, I (Sarah) was surprised and pleased to see Elizabeth, one of the former Elikya Center students. Elizabeth was one of the sewing students in 2009 that we met when we came to Congo to study Lingala for 7 weeks. Michelle and I sat with the women while they sewed on most days and tried to use the Lingala we had learned to converse with them. Even though our Lingala was very broken at the time, we tried hard to build relationships with the women.

During that time, there were two women that we talked with the most...Elizabeth and Mama Lili. They were always willing to teach us new words and they were patient with us. When we came back to Congo in 2010, I couldn't remember which village Elizabeth and Lili lived in. I thought I would probably eventually run into them again. Just a few weeks ago I was thinking about these two women and came to the conclusion that I probably would not see them again because we were leaving Gemena in June and I didn't know where they lived. And then to my total surprise...there was Elizabeth right there at the church in Karawa! I was so excited to see her and she told me that Mama Lili would come the next day to see me. So, yesterday afternoon I sat with Mama Lili, Elizabeth and Elizabeth's 3-year-old daughter, Esther. Esther was only about a year old in 2009 when they were at the Elikya Center and I so enjoyed seeing her now as a little, chubby girl. Mama Lili and Elizabeth were excited to meet Hannah and I told them about Michelle's daughter, Soleil.

I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to see both of these women again. I thought of them often and had given up hope that I would ever see them again. God knew my desire to see them again and he allowed that to happen at just the righ time.

Elizabeth and Esther in 2009

Mama Lili (left) making soap in 2009

Reunited in Karawa 2012

Passing the Torch

Michelle is on her way (hopefully she has arrived already) to pick up the last short-term team we will host. But, this time around WE are not actually doing all the hosting. This is the Hospitality Team's first opportunity to do all of the hosting. Michelle is on her way to pick up the team, but Bebe is with her and will do all of the hard work. We will be around to observe and offer a hand when needed, but we are really "passing the torch" this time around.

While we were in Kenya, the Hospitaility Team initiated having a meeting together to create the schedule for this team and to talk about how they will move forward as a team when we are back in the States. It delighted us to hear that they did this on their own. We met with the CECU (local Free Church) President and Vice President along with the Hospitlaity Team to discuss the details for the short-term team's stay in Congo. The Hospitality Team led the meeting and everything went so smoothly.

We already know there will be some challenges for the Hospitality Team while they are hosting the next several days. Mandaba is attending a training in Kinshasa and will not return until a couple days before the short-term team goes home. Simplice is 8 months pregnant and her doctor wants her to stay at home because of some complications she has had. So, that leaves Benjamin and Bebe with the main hosting and translating responsibilities. Simplice and Mandaba were still able to help with some of the preparations, but will not be hands-on. So...please pray for Benjamin and Bebe as they jump into their work. Sam, Aaron, Michelle and I will be available to help them when needed since they are "short-staffed".

Luckily this is a small team and they are all ReachGlobal staff members. They are just three people coming for the same purpose which will make hosting them much easier than teams we have hosted previously.

ReachGlobal Africa Conference

We left Gemena on April 19th to attend the ReachGlobal Africa conference in Nairobi, Kenya. It took us a truck trip, a plane ride and a couple extra days staying in guest houses to get us there...but we made it. And, we are so grateful that we went.

We arrived in Nairobi three days before the conference began because of the limited flights from Bangui to Nairobi. But, we decided to use those extra days for a mini family reunion. Sam's dad, Jim, came a few days early from the States. Sam's older brother, Ben, and his wife, Lauren, who live and work in Tanzania also came to Nairobi a few days early. Ben and Lauren had not met Hannah yet and we had so much fun introducing them. We stayed in a beautiful guest house in Nairobi for three nights, went out to eat at nice restaurants, visited shopping malls, went to a movie in an actual movie theater and soaked up all the family time we had together.

The yard at the guest house in Nairobi

Half of the Snyder family

Then we headed up to Brackenhurst, a Christian retreat center outside of Nairobi, to attend the 6-day ReachGlobal Africa conference. Last year we were not sure if we would be able to attend this conference because of the amount of financial support we had at the time. We are so grateful that we had enough money in our account to attend the conference. We were extremely blessed during our time in Kenya. The conference had over 100 attendees who were ReachGlobal missionaries working in Africa, some of the US ReachGlobal staff and many of the African leaders who partner with ReachGlobal in various ministries. A pastor, worship team and prayer team from the States also came to lead us in coorporate worship and offer prayer ministry. It was so refreshing to fellowship with so many different people and to experience times of coorporate worship in English again.

All the conference attendees

We attended several workshops and were able to reconnect with many people who helped us come to Congo in the first place. Hannah had her first experience in childcare and, to be honest,  she had mixed feelings about it. But she was so well-taken care of by a mother-daughter team who came from the US for the sole purpose of caring for our babies. We were blessed by their care and all of the special things they did with Hannah and the other babies.

Kenya is a beautiful country and it was rainy season during our stay. It was actually cold! We were delighted to bundle up in sweatshirts and fleece jackets. It was so refreshing after spending almost two years in constant heat. It was amazing to see the differences culturally and developmentally between Kenya and DR Congo. Both countries are in Africa, but they seem worlds apart. We are happy we got to experience a different side of Africa.

View from one of the hills at Brakenhurst

After another plane ride, a few days in transit at a guest house and another truck trip, we are finally back home in Gemena. And now we have less than 2 months in Congo before we come home. This time away was a great refresher for us and for the Larsens. We felt that God used this time away to refresh our hearts and speak to each family about the things to come.

It was so fun to watch Hannah experience all the wide open space and see her interact with so many people. Here are a few shots to show you some of what she experienced as well.

A big yard for crawling around at Brakenhurst

First bite of lemon

She LOVED the swings!

Tickets are Purchased

As of this week, we officially have tickets home to the United States! We will be flying into Chicago on July 3rd and we can hardly believe it! It is hard to believe that we have been here for almost 2 years and we have an actual return date.

In the mean time, we have a lot to fill our schedules before returning home. Currently we are in Bangui, CAR in transit to Nairobi, Kenya. We will be attending the ReachGlobal Africa conference in Kenya from April 24th-29th. We are really looking forward to this time away from work to fellowship with other missionaries and ReachGlobal staff. We are mostly excited to spend time with Sam's older brother, Ben and his wife, Lauren. Hannah will get to meet her aunt and uncle and because we are flying to Kenya a few days early we should get plenty of quality time together. Sam's dad will also be attending the conference and spending some extra time with us.

When we return to Gemena on May 4th we will kick back into work mode as we prepare to host a team in mid-May. This is the final team we will host before going home and we are actually handing over all of the hosting responsibilities to the Hospitality Team while we observe their work.

Please pray for us while we are at the conference in Kenya. As we are wrapping things up in Congo and preparing our minds and hearts for transitioning back to the states, we want to hear God's voice. Pray that this time away will be refreshing and that the Lord will clearly guide us into this next stage in life for our little family.

Will you also please pray for Simplice, one of our Hospitality Team members? She is 6 1/2 months pregnant with her first baby and it has been a difficult pregnancy. The doctor has ordered her to stay home and rest and we are concerned about her health and her baby's health. This also hinders her from attending English classes and being involved with the team we are preparing to host in May.

Sharing meals

Over the past year we have been meeting with the Hospitality Team to teach them recipes and eat together. We wrote a post about that about a year ago and much has changed since then. The biggest change is the actual Hospitality Team. The original team was five members, 2 men and 3 women. One woman had to move away because of her husband’s work and one man was offered a job that required him to travel. So, those two people were replaced and now we have a team of four…Benjamin, Simplice, Bebe and Mandaba. Another change since last year is that Simplice got married and is expecting her first baby this summer (!). 

The Hospitality Team

Last week we all went to Simplice’s house and made a meal together: Spicy Potato Soup. All of the recipes we are teaching the team can be made with local ingredients. There is no need for short term teams to bring out special foods or spices when they come to Congo, because the Hospitality Team knows how to make delicious, Americanized meals with the food we can get here. Using just local ingredients, we can make tacos, spaghetti, hamburgers, a variety of delicious soups, beans and rice, grilled & fried chicken…and the list goes on.

So we talked and cooked and played with Soleil and Hannah and shared a meal together in Simplice’s yard along with her new husband. And the meal was delicious. We plan to do this a few more times before coming home this summer so that most, if not all, the dinner recipes have been taught and eaten.

Cooking

Al of us together

Hannah gets excited to see her friends from the Hospitality Team

What have we been up to?

It has been several weeks since we have written an update on here, so we figured we probably should do that. Our normal, weekly schedule has become more full since our last team went home in February. Michelle and Sarah have completely taken over our English class and teach three mornings a week. Before, all four of us were sharing the responsibility. Last month Sam and Aaron started teaching a computer course that meets every weekday afternoon for two weeks at a time with a one-week break in between. The members of the Hospitality Team are in the computer class as well as other students who were chosen by CECU. Our days are more full now as we balance teaching and parenting.

We are expecting another short-term team from the States in May. So the four of us are beginning to plan for that team and this time we are handing over all of the hosting responsibilities to the Hospitality Team. This will be a good chance for them to take the reigns while we observe them (and help them, too).

Next month, we will be going to Kenya to attend the ReachGlobal Africa conference. We are really looking forward to this time to get away. We will be staying in a nice retreat center with other missionaries and ReachGlobal staff for about a week. Sam's brother, Ben, and his wife, Lauren, will also be attending the conference and we are excited to spend time with them and introduce them to Hannah. We are actually going to Kenya a few days early so we can hang out together and Sam's dad will also be there.

Since our last update Hannah has started to pull up to stand, crawl, wave hello and goodbye, give high-fives, dance, give kisses and even do some baby sign language. She is growing quickly!

Update on the last few weeks...

January 20-February 11 was a whirlwind for all of us! We had two teams in Gemena during those weeks. Yesterday, Sam, Hannah, Mandaba and I returned home from taking the teams back to Bangui, CAR where they flew back to the States. Whew! We so enjoyed our time hosting these two teams for many reasons. It is a lot of hard work for us to prepare for a team and to host them when they are here but this group made our work so worth the effort.

The teams were working on a few different projects that were all very exciting and important to the ministries here in Congo.  Jerry and Jeremy from Nebraska and Chicago teamed up with a group of five Congolese men to train them how to drill a well with the well-drilling rig that finally arrived last year. The well-drilling was a great success! The Elikya Center now has a working well with fresh water!!! They also had time to drill a well behind the CECU office and there is now a group of Congolese men able to drill wells in the area and they have already been in conversation about drilling more in Gemena for other organizations.

A group of five people from Constance Free Church in MN also joined us in Gemena. Constance Free Church raised some of the money for the well rig to be purchased and shipped a few years ago and they were able to send their Senior Pastor and a few others here to see the well rig in action. A couple nights before the teams returned to the states, we hosted a dinner celebration with the Congolese well-drilling team, Mambo, his wife, the CECU President and his wife. We ate delicious grilled pork (prepared by Sam’s dad) and rejoiced in the Lord’s provision of fresh water.

Jerry J. greeting some of the guys he worked with on the well-drilling team

Pouring water from the well

Raising our glasses

Sharing a delicious meal together

The team from Constance Free Church spent a couple days at the Tandala Hospital with the staff there assessing the current needs of the hospital. Constance will be donating money to the hospital to get clean, running water and electricity to the hospital over the next three years. Pastor Randy also taught a course at the Protestant seminary in Gemena. Jerry spent time with Mambo creating a business plan for the well, the soap factory and the future restaurant. The two women, Nancy and Debbie, taught a women’s seminar and also worked with the two new Bible teachers for the Elikya Center. Dan is a counselor who spent time training 3 of the Elikya Center staff to counsel students and also held a one-day seminar for pastors. The well, counseling and Bible class program are things we have talked about, prayed about and waited for a very long time and they are now in motion. It is a huge blessing to see all of this finally coming together!

We didn’t get the best pictures while the team was here because we were running all over the place translating, facilitating meetings, working with the hospitality team and caring for our babies. But, we are happy to share a handful of photos of the time we spent with this great group of people. It was a blessing to see this group in Congo because we already knew a few of them and Constance Free is one of the three churches that financially support Sam and me. They each had a great attitude about being in Congo and we appreciated watching them relate to the Congolese brothers and sisters here. They were all willing to jump into the work here and the lives of the people they worked alongside. We are looking forward to our lives slowing down a little bit now that the teams are back in the States…but we will truly miss each person who was here.

The team: Jim, Jerry H., Nancy, Debbie, Randy, Dan, Jerry J. and Jeremy

Hannah also made a few new friends while the team was here. Dan was one of her buddies.

Hannah and Debbie

We also got to spend three full weeks with Sam's dad who took advantage of every moment he could to hold his grandbaby. Hannah even started to crawl the day before he left!

The Beauty of Language

We have been teaching English for over a year now and we have also been part of an English club for several months. It is so nice and encouraging to hear our students speaking English. Some of them still have a long way to go, but we can carry on conversations in English and understand each other. We can teach an entire class only using English…no Lingala. We have meetings with the Hospitality Team in English with very little need for reviewing things in Lingala. Don’t think that you can come here and meet a team of fluent English speakers, but they can get by.

It is so interesting to me (Sarah) how we can express ideas, emotions, stories, etc. by just making certain sounds with our mouths. But, if you do not understand sounds from another language, those sounds strung together mean absolutely nothing to you. I can be listening to someone speak Lingala and be tracking with them or carrying on a conversation, but once they throw in a French word I have no idea what has just been communicated. The director of the Elikya Center, Mambo, speaks fluent English and many of our conversations and meetings are a mix of English and Lingala. I often wonder what prompts any of us to initiate a conversation in Lingala or English. Sometimes one sentence has both Lingala and English words…sometimes even a French word or two. And I can hear all of these sounds merged together and understand what is being expressed. It is quite incredible. Soleil has begun speaking a little bit and she can say both English and Lingala words. She has no understanding of the distinction between the two languages. She will clap her hands together if you tell her to do so in English or Lingala. She understands what it all means and it is just different sounds forming together.

Last week I ended up in a room with two people from our hospitality team and two other people who have been attending the English club and was pleased to see that they all chose to speak to each other in English. English is not their native language, and there are at least two other languages other than Lingala that they know better than English, but we were all standing there chatting in English. It felt very surreal to me. Sometimes it amazes me to observe these interactions and to notice the processing that my mind does as I take in what I am hearing.  The only down side of everyone speaking more English is that I am not using Lingala nearly as much, so I am forgetting some of it. Ugh!

Happy New Year!

Happy 2012! The last few weeks have been a bit busy since we just returned from Bangui, Michelle's dad was visiting and we had Christmas and the New Year to celebrate. And now we are busy getting ready for two teams coming this month. Whew! There is a lot to do.

We just wanted to say "happy new year" and share a few photos from our Christmas celebration. It is always strange to celebrate Christmas and New Year in this climate...but we did our best to make it "feel" like Christmas. We grilled hamburgers and made onion rings for Christmas Eve dinner and opened gifts. Hannah does not understand what gifts are or what Christmas is, but we did have a few gifts for her (most of which were gifts people sent us before she was born and we just hadn't given to her, yet). She at least enjoyed the colorful wrapping.

On Christmas morning we went to our local church for their Christmas service. We decided to wear our new African clothes for the celebration.

We spent the rest of Christmas day with the Smiths and Ekstrands, 4 other missionaries who live in the area. We ate a delicious dinner, sang Christmas carols and did a White Elephant gift exchange. We both ended up getting candy which is always a rare treat. We also brought in the New Year with the Smiths and Ekstrands. We even ate pizza on New Year's Eve!

It is hard to be so far away from family during the holidays...especially now that we have a baby. But we did our best to make the holidays special and we really look forward to being with our families again next year.

Now we are back to work. A lot of planning goes into welcoming and hosting a team. We will also be giving the Hospitality Team more responsibilities while the teams are here this month.

Please pray for all the details we must settle in the next week or so. We will be hosting these teams for three weeks and even though it is fun to have teams come from the states, the work can be exhausting!