Wednesday, the 27th President Mabishwa brought 10 would-be missionaries from Uvira, Congo  to Bujumbura to apply for passports.  We flooded the Congolese Embassy and spent 4 hours filling out applications and getting photos taken.  Afterwards we took them all for lunch at Silhouette.

                                       Here we are at the Embassy filling out paperwork.

We dropped them at the location where they were to meet their transportation to go back to Uvira and headed to a branch presidency meeting.  While we were waiting for the meeting to start, we got a frantic call from the Uvira group.  Their driver had not appeared at the appointed time, and they needed us to drop everything, come quickly and take them to the Marché de Sion to catch transport back to Uvira before the border closed at 6:00pm.  We rushed them to the Marché and then hurried back to the presidency meeting.  Another 12 hour day today.

        Thursday evening we got word the orphans had arrived in Bujumbura.  It was 5:30pm when we got the phone call, so with darkness closing in, we made arrangements for them to spend the night at Gian Franco's hotel and hurried to the location where their transport had dropped them.  They are such cute kids.  The older 2 boys had such a pleasant attitude about them, and the 2 little girls had easy, hopeful smiles.  Names and ages are:  Meshack, 20;  Gilbert, 18;  Odette, 12;  Anna, 8. 

They only speak Kirundi, so we took Remy with us to translate.  When we pulled up at Gian Franco's hotel, he was all spiffed up and awaiting us at the curb.  They seemed genuinely delighted with the rooms, and we ordered dinner for them, leaving them in Gian Franco's capable hands for the night.

The next morning, Friday the 29th, we picked up the kids and their belongings at 8:30am.

We rendez-vous-ed at  Branch 2 with two branch presidents to place the children in members' homes.    President Dieudonne offered to take both girls into his home, which is quite amazing when you consider he has a 3 year old son, a 17 year old orphan girl he is raising, and his living room is about the size of my bedroom closet at home.  We thought the 2 boys would be split between 2 different families, but as that was about to happen, the oldest boy was emotionally distraught and began to cry.  SO  we offered to let the boys move in with our candidate missionaries in the little house behind our house so they could stay together.  We were curious about what their little sister, their dad, and their mom died of, since they all passed away within the last few months.  The brothers told us it was because neighbors, who wanted their property, cast evil spells on them, causing them to die.  O.K.  Wonder if that is listed as the cause of death?