Takes A Whole Village: When it rains, it pours

We spent an interesting day with the Tanzanian immigration department as we have just been informed, now that we have 10 days left of volunteering at Cradle of Love, it is mandatory for us to apply for $120 work visas. So we went into town and had to go have passport pictures taken, filled out applications, and took a letter from our director. When we got there, turns out we need five pictures...not four like they had originally told us. We also need a resume, our college diploma, organization constitution and a bunch of other useless paperwork just to give us the run around. It took forever, we missed lunch and when we got back to the baby home, our director comes to the gate and warns us "brace yourself the whole apartment flooded"

We go upstairs and our sweet new roommate, Emma, and our gardener, David, are mopping water outside the door...all of our bags are on the porch. Unfortunately, Emma's computer was ruined but the other three computers along with cameras and journals all survived, thank you Jesus. Here in Africa, the water often shuts off and we can go hours without it. Apparently, Emma had tried to turn the water on and there was none and she just forgot to turn the knob back off, so when the water came back no one was in the apartment and it flooded about 1 inch deep.

A lot of our bags and clothes got wet, but all

in all things could have been so much worse. When we got home from our porch we looked out on to the backyard where all the babies and nannies were sitting outside watching us go through our wet stuff...they all shouted "Pole Sana" (I'm so sorry) It was a great reminder to be thankful for what survived and not be upset about the things that didn't because what we have is so plentiful. So even though we sit in our apartment with clothes hanging everywhere and bags, books, and papers below fans trying to dry everything out...I will look to him and say Your grace is sufficient for me.