Step Into Africa

I have been absent from the blogging world for awhile on account of two reasons: 1. I have helped coordinate volunteers for the Step Into Africa exhibit that our church partnered with World Vision a couple of weeks ago and 2. Our computer had major viruses and we were unable to download anything on to our hard drive which meant no pictures!! So hopefully, I can now get back into the swing of things and will have more to blog about since I have been gone for so long. Below is our family standing in front of the exhibit or "the Village" as Asher likes to call it.

Asher and Jonas both loved for us to be at "the Village" which we were at about every day that the exhibit was open.

I highly recommend if you hear of World Vision being in your area with the Step Into Africa exhibit YOU MUST GO!! We had close to 2000 visitors go through the experience. You get to choose 1 of 4 African children's stories and how their lives are affected by the AIDS crisis. The AIDS crisis is the largest humanitarian crisis of our time. If you would like to learn more about this and take your own journey, go here.

Moving

We have been very busy the past few weeks packing up our home and getting ready to move. To make things a little more fun for Asher, we would let him color on the boxes with his crayons (one of us drew the mower, which is something he always asks us to draw). We also would let him play inside the boxes and he really enjoyed being pushed around in them. Tomorrow is our moving day! We will miss our sweet friends in our neighborhood but enjoy spending time with family and friends we normally don't see on a daily/weekly basis. Thanks to all who have brought us dinners, watched our kids, helped us pack, or brought us packing items. We could not have done this without you.

A Night Out

David and I attended the Labor of Love fundraiser last night and even met up with some of our good friends from OC (Jon Lee pictured above with us). (Thanks Nana and Grandpops for baby-sitting so late!)

Here we are in the far left corner talking to Sean Carasso who is heading up a non-profit organization called Falling Whistles. This is the guy whose blog I want you all to check out. David and I were immediately enraptured by his stories of passion for the children soldiers in the Congo that he met and is trying to help. We didn't want to consume his time but had a hard time dragging ourselves away from his table. He is an amazing speaker and writer (again, check out his blog :)) and hopes to share his experiences with as many as he can. I am hoping to find a way for him to speak at our church.

Below is an excerpt from the descripton of Falling Whistles on Facebook:

"Laying in Titu Prison, these 5 boy-prisoners first told me of the whistleblowers.

Abducted in Congo and too small even to carry a gun, boys were given merely a whistle and sent to the front lines of battle. The sound of their whistles calling together was meant to frighten the enemy away. Failing that, their sole duty was to receive the bullets with their bodies.With falling whistles, their only choice was to feign death, or face it. The whistle became a symbol of the level of injustice in Congo. The haunting image of whistles falling from palm sized hands pushed me forward. It wasn't until I returned home that I realized - there in Congo a whistleblower is a victim of injustice, but here in the West, a whistleblower is someone who calls out injustice. Possessed within this single symbol was both problem and response. Around the world, the sound of a whistle demands STOP. PAY ATTENTION. Demand the same from your friends and family. Become a whistleblower for the war in Congo. Injustice cannot exist when millions of people call it out. Together we'll stand even as they fell, and use what was once their only weapon as our voice to fight for their freedom.

FALLING WHISTLES - THEIR WEAPON, OUR VOICE"

Labor of Love

*picture from Labor of Love site on Facebook

Above is an event this Sunday night in Nashville, Tennessee to support Sisters of Rwanda, Falling Whistles, Dry Tears, eXile international, ArtStopsViolence, and Global Support Mission.

David and I hope that one of us is able to attend (we will proabably have to do rock, paper, scissors to see who will get to go). David actually met this past week with a girl who works with eXile international and learned about her work, including counseling children soldiers in Africa, displaced Africans in refugee camps, and even families affected by the violence from the Kenyan presidential elections.

We also came across this blog from the Falling Whistles organization. I highly recommmend spending some time reading through some of the exerpts in this blog to make yourself uncomfortable (so that you may find a way to make a difference) and more aware of the children being taken in the Congo and forced into becoming soldiers.