August- What a month!

I scrolled through the August pictures this morning, and, wow, what a month.

The first pictures are of the last days at Samaritan's Purse training in Boone, NC.  That was a month ago?  First, it feels like I've known these people for years, and secondly, it feels like Boone was at least months and months ago.

                                                  Our Post-Residency Program "class"

Next should be pictures of the "last supper", our last night in Maryland.  Any Oswalds have pictures from that?

                                                            Ki-Ki and Mia this summer

Then are pictures of the flight and the layover and the second flight, followed by the first pictures of our house when it was brand new to us.  You always see these differently when you see them for the first time.

Soon after are pictures of the Hoffmans (friends from our church in Virginia) and their 2 boys they had just adopted from Uganda.  We got to see them the day before they flew back to the States.  I haven't done a post on that yet.  I will this week.  In short, the boys are 5 and 7 and adorable.

                                                   The boys were happily playing together

                                     April and her little dude riding a boda boda to the Embassy

There's first day of school pictures and pictures of Esther and Kianna making chapati, finished off with Heart Camp.  

Joel will blog more about that, but he was an hour away all week staying with a "summer camp" situation (kids in the Ugandan system are on their school break) with kids who have been with the Children's Heart Project and had previously gone to the States for heart repair.  They ranged from 6 years old to 20.  The most touching thing, to me, is the video of them running races.  Kids who, previously to their surgery, could barely walk more than a very short distance at a time, were running, happily, speedily, and healthy.  I'm not a crier but it made me tear up.  Then there was a video of the kids singing about the Joy of Jesus and I was, again, so struck by it.  This, I though, is the point of the Children's Heart Project.  For kids to be healed from their congenital heart problems, and their spiritual ones.  

Whew.  We're in a routine now, and life is getting a sense of a new "normal".

By the way, the new french press for my coffee is working amazingly (as I'm on my second cup this morning).