Special visit to our sponsor child

Recently a friend of mine travelled to Uganda. She told us about her plans well in advance and offered to take with any gifts we'd like to send to our sponsor child, Joseph. Of course we jumped on that opportunity! So, not only did we send gifts, my mother-in-law and her neighbor did as well. They are sponsoring Joseph's brother and sister. Since we knew so well in advance about this trip, we had the gifts ready to go in our home for nearly a year already! We bought Canada shirts for the whole family just before Canada Day, last year!

So, after a few complications my friend finally managed to deliver the gifts to Joseph's school and she met Joseph in person! She didn't have her camera with when she met him, so I don't have any pictures of that. But she does have video for us, which I haven't seen yet. Thank you so much Leah for doing all this for us!

Then another friend, whom I got to know through our choir hosting experiences, just happened to also be in Uganda and met Joseph by chance! Joseph happened to be at the choir training centre wearing his brand new Canada shirt when Jenny got introduced to him and she realized that he was our sponsor child. Pretty amazing how that all worked out! Jenny works with the African Children's Choir and we hosted her and two girls from choir 30 in our home in 2008. She had the pictures below taken for us. Thank you so much Jenny!

Jenny and Joseph are pictured below. I can't believe how tall Joseph has gotten and how mature he looks! He's now 16! I love that the shirt fits him perftectly!

Below, Joseph is with his little sister, Grace, age 7. Grace is my mother-in-law's sponsor child. Grace is training to be in African Children's Choir #38! I would really, really love it if we could see her in concert and if Wayne's mom could meet her! She's such a sweetheart!

Below, I'm pictured with Joseph when we visited him in 2008. He's 13 here. He's holding the gift that was purchased with our christmas donation.

The picture below was taken in 2005 when we hosted Joseph and Martie from African Children' Choir #25. Joseph was 10 then. We began sponsoring Joseph about 2 months later. Joseph is the one holding the cat.