Walking for Food

While we were on the road the other day, I decided to get a job done that’s been on my “to do” list for a long time: sorting through the many photos on my laptop. I love old photos because they all have a story to tell, and this one I found is a happy one—all the better.

Year: 2003

This is Ernesto, one of our health care workers (right), with Liria and her (then) recently orphaned grandson, João (center). She walked for 3 hours this particular day to get help from the mission to feed João and his 2 sisters. They lived in a small stick hut at the time (I’ll post that photo too if I ever find it). Liria and her grandchildren have received monthly help from the mission’s Amigo Orphan program since then, and they now live in a brick house as well. She’s a hard-working woman who loves God and loves people—2 of those being neighbours who are partially debilitated and disfigured from leprosy. She’s taken them under her wing to help provide care for them, just as she did for her own family.

Year: 2008

This is João, now 7 years old and in 1st grade. Pretty picture, happy story. ☺

I didn’t get finished sorting through all my photos. There are SO many and our week was jam packed with activity. We started off by attending the mission conference in Grande Prairie (at Christian Fellowship Assembly) where Dwight was the keynote speaker. We thoroughly enjoyed connecting with all the good people there. I was pleasantly surprised when a couple, who is involved in orphan ministry in Uganda, helped us raise funds for the annual Global Care-a-thon that helps keep our school’s feeding program running. We’ll both be participating in the event and we each have our own sponsorship sign-up-sheet, so there’s a bit of fun competition going on there right now! Thank you, Ted, for helping me get ahead :D

What amazed me about Grande Prairie was the sheer number of pick-up trucks (bakkies) in the city. I have never seen so many pick-up trucks in the same place at the same time. Ever. It has to be the truck capital of Canada!



Another thing I was amazed by (Dwight jokingly described me as “fixated on”. Obviously I commented on this more than a few times, but whatever…) on this trip was the amount of water sitting in farmers' fields from the melting snow. Many fields looked like small lakes. I can’t imagine the ground absorbing all that liquid or trying to get in there with a tractor, but I’m sure both will happen in due time.

This is one of the flooded farmers' fields. (You can see why I commented so many times.)

Oh, and as a side note here, one of the hosts we stayed with this week has a "snow-making business", and get this, they make snow in the winter time. I kid you not. This machine-made snow is used to fill creeks (ie. a snow-bridge) so oil drilling rigs can transport their machinery across the creeks to wherever it is they need to go. 

All in all, we put on just under 3000 km during this week's travels and went as far north as Manning, Alberta (which felt like the far edge of Canada) then back to Edmonton again.

Our hosts were all absolutely wonderful, the food was far too yummy, and the beds extremely comfy, but still, it will be nice to be back in our own beds tonight.

In closing, I’ll put up a few more photos of the school feeding program, which is what the Care-a-Thon funds support, along with a plug for the Global Care-a-thon. Thank you so much to those who have sponsored us already. And for those of you who may be interested in sponsoring someone to walk, you have a choice. You could sponsor Dwight or you could sponsor me. (Pick me, pick me!)

A little competition is a healthy thing. ☺

Fernando, dishing up (above and below).

Pots on the fire in the school's kitchen. This is how it's done in the Mozambican bush.