Taking the Long Way Home . . .
Buckled in and waiting for departure to fundraisers with Tuchifo Belgium and Tumaini Holland and then down and home to Tumaini! Whew! What a whirlwind European visit on our way back to Tumaini! Dada Holly and I have been joined by my Tanzanian brother and Tumaini partner Oddo who is on his first ever safari outside of Tanzania! We began our tour with a choral performance celebrating Remembrance Day by the Abadabukileyo Choir with proceeds going to help us at Tumaini! Dada Tine of Tuchifo Belgium with host Tom VanDriessche welcomed more than 150 people to our Kaas en Wign (Cheese and Wine) evening where Oddo and I were invited to share the story of Tumaini!
Enroute from Belgium to Holland we stopped to say thank you to Wereld Missie Hulp (World Mission Help), an organization who collects gently used clothing, either donates or resells it as fabric and uses the proceeds to help mission projects such as Tumaini. They donated almost six months of beans and maize to our kitchen and we stopped by to say “Asante”! Last night we attended a dinner evening in Eindhoven, Nederlands at a “teaching hotel and restaurant” in Eindhoven called, “De Rooi Pannen”, where secondary school students learn to professionally cook and serve in the restaurant and to operate a hotel.
Guests at dinner included sponsors, donors and friends of Stichting Tumaini Nederlands and all of us enjoyed a wonderful dinner and evening! And today! Kaka Wil Van Der Linden took us on a tour of D’n Bolle Akker, an incredible retirement and care center, a combined residence and farm for retired persons AND learning challenged younger people where they are taught how to manage animals, gardens and themselves, coexisting and thriving together. Enormous thanks to Stichting Tumaini Nederlands director Harry Wenting for guiding us on our tour where we acquired some wonderful design plans for our own Tumaini home!
Will invited us on a tour of Vencomatic Group, an Agro supply company providing the most animal friendly innovative methods in poultry production. Vencomatic’s building has been recognized as the “most sustainable building in all of Europe” and we thoroughly enjoyed our tour!
We leave in the morning for a visit with Dada Minke and Dada Kim and their church family and then on Monday we are off to Tumaini to prepare for Raymond’s graduation ceremony and Mary and Frank’s wedding!
And thanks are needed to Minke’s family for hosting us overnight, to Baba for sharing a tour of historical Wageningen (some patriotic pride is involved here), where, in 1945 German occupying forces surrendered with a little help from Canada!! We are enroute to Tumaini with hugs and love from our European families (plus a little chocolate and cheese)!!