A New Home in Burundi

Allie writing...

Our new home in Burundi!

This is our biggest piece of news: we have a house to move into in August :0)

It is quite near both primary and secondary school sites, and near to several other families we already know with children of a similar age to ours.

The house is a detached bungalow with 3 bedroooms, 2 bathrooms, a lounge/diner and kitchen. It has a large covered verandah and a small garden/washing area around it, all enclosed within high walls and gates. We have been able to visit the house before as a British missionary lives there at the moment.

It is a huge relief to already have accommodation set up, and to have visited before. The house also comes with a dog, which we hope will compensate a little for leaving ours in the UK.

Departure Dates

Tickets have been reserved for August. Ticket prices for when Jeremy needs to travel to Burundi to prepare for the start of term are nearly £500 more expensive per person than one week later.

So it now looks like Jeremy will fly out on 18^th August (with all the extra luggage) and Allie with fly out on 28^th August (with all the children!)

Although this was a difficult decision, apart from the money saved, an advantage is that Jeremy will be able to sort out the house and a lot of practical things. We were also a bit worried about the kids getting bored whilst waiting three weeks for term to start.

All part of God’s plan!

Studying

I have completed my 13 week course with All Nations. I have learned so much and it has been an incredibly valuable experience, both from the lessons themselves and from being part of an online community of people in a similar situation to us, all asking God to show us where he wants us to work with him.

Although the course was excellent, it was very hard fitting 8 hours of study into my week, especially over school holidays, and I’m quite glad to be back to ‘normal’ now.

We also went to a really helpful day at Redcliffe College near Gloucester called ‘Preparing Families for Life Overseas’. It was great to meet lots of other parents heading overseas soon, and we learnt lots about the BENEFITS and CHALLENGES of moving a family abroad. We had an idea of many of the challenges already, but it was great to look at the all the benefits to our family :0)

Fundraising

Our Stewardship account has started to show the early signs of life….hooray!!!

Emotions

 We are all really looking forward to being in Burundi, and are excited about new schools, friends, home and opportunities, and a lot more sunshine (especially as it’s so wet in the UK at the moment!).

However each of us is struggling in different ways with this transition period. My course covered transition, and it was a relief to see a chart of typical emotions/feelings during transition and realise that the feelings we’re experiencing are ‘normal’, phew! But it is tiring, and we’re all a bit up and down. I’ve been doing an outstanding crocodile impression this week – snap snap snap :0( but having the children all back at school after the holidays should help a bit.

Selling ‘stuff’

Anyone who’s friends with me on facebook will have seen my favourite method of selling things! Friends also helped us with a bring and buy sale of children’s clothes and toys and, including some ‘gifts’ given to us on the day we raised about £430!!

The children have generally been really good about selling/giving away some of their things, though I did promise them each a new DVD, as it’s one of the few things we can definitely take with us ie. small and light.

Moving forward, coming together

It is quite amazing how God keeps showing us the way forward, every step of the way. We don’t have all the answers yet as we don’t need them yet. But I can guarantee that when we need to know something , God will show us the way forward, he does every single time without fail :0) I don’t believe in coincidences!!

Some of the questions we have at the moment are:

• Can we take the children’s play kitchen with us?
• Where do we buy school uniform (do we buy some here and some there?)
• What’s the best way to say goodbye to the dogs?
• How will we get to the airport with all our suitcases? Who do we want to come to the airport with us – what’s best for the children?
• How do I buy 10 months shoes for the children? How will I know they’ll fit in 4 months time?
• Do we need to re-write our wills  (something we have been advised to do)?
• ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

Listing these things makes me panic until I remember that the last 12 months have seen God address each question PERFECTLY when we have needed the answers. I know he will again!

These verses have come up either at church, cell group or in quiet times 3 times in the last week which made me think God was trying to tell me something!

1 Corinthians 12 v 25-26 (The Message)

 ^25-26The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don't, the parts we see and the parts we don't. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.

When people think of ‘the church’ they think of a building, but the Bible says that actually ‘the church’ is God’s people (Christians)! That’s all God’s people everywhere, and, as the verses above say, we depend on each other, we need each other, like a HUGE family :0)

We could not be doing this without ‘the church’ – for us this means our Christian brothers and sisters in Crowborough, Tunbridge Wells, Thame, Long Crendon, across the world thanks to the internet, and in Wick, right at the very tip of Scotland, whom Jez visited this weekend. Thank you for praying for us and supporting us in lots of ways, it makes an enormous difference! As the verses above say, we share in each others’ struggles, and celebrate with each other too – YAY!!!