We've been talking about Nehemiah in our Bible lessons lately, and the boys' favorite part was a part I didn't even remember. Go figure. This photo shows why probably every boy loves the story of Nehemiah.
Nehemiah is not a book of the Bible I've read much. So, teaching it to the boys was educational for me too. I was reminded of many things and learned some new things. Namely, about the weapons in the story.
When Nehemiah and his builders encountered opposition that threatened their lives, they took action. They first of all prayed and posted a guard day and night, then they continued the work of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem.
Oh, and they carried weapons everywhere they went, which is the part of the story our boys loved the most.
"From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armor..... Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other, and each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked.... So we continued the work with half the men holding their spears, from the first light of dawn till the stars came out.... Neither I nor my brothers nor my men nor the guards with me took off our clothes; each had his weapon, even when he went for water." (4:16-18, 21, 23)
In order to make this Bible story come alive, one day I told the boys to get their weapons. They were going to do their school work with one hand and hold a weapon in the other, just like the builders of the walls around Jerusalem. The idea was met with great enthusiasm!
They had to keep their weapons close all morning, and sometimes it was awkward to work around - bows take up a lot of space on the table and walking around with a sword shoved down your pants isn't the most graceful thing to do (and yes...I know, I know) - but they gained an understanding of what Nehemiah and the builders went through. It was exciting, but also a bit burdensome. They couldn't go anywhere without their weapon, not even to get a drink of water. They were persistent and it was fun.
When I was a kid, my idea of bringing the Bible to life was throwing a blue blanket over my head and pretending to be Mary, the mother of Jesus. I don't know if I ever chose to reenact stories like the conquest of Canaan or Gideon's army or David and Goliath. I wanted to be the most famous mother in the Bible. Leave it to my boys to teach me something new about weapons and battles in the Bible!
Asa turned 5 today. My heart can scarcely believe that my baby is 5. Then there's this photo that makes him look like a teenager and I find myself barely coping with the passing of time. My baby is 5! How have 5 years gone by since he came into the world???
The Bubba has been counting down to his birthday since September began. And this morning he woke everybody up, bouncing around and asking for presents. I guess you could say he likes his birthday just a little bit :)
So we started off with presents. And what better way to give our rhino-loving boy his first present than in a bag with a rhino on it? That was like a present all by itself :)
There was no rhino inside, however. Instead, Asa got what he knew would be coming for a long time: his own piggy bank! We've given each boy a piggy bank and let them start receiving an allowance when they turn 5. This poor kid has been watching his brothers get an allowance for a long time now and has been patiently waiting for his turn. Well, today was the day!
(I ordered this tractor piggy bank on Etsy about 2 years ago and hauled it over the ocean a year-and-a-half ago. It takes some serious planning ahead to prepare for some of these birthday moments!)
I was super excited to give Asa this safari jeep, and he was super excited to get it. I found it several months ago at a tourist shop and couldn't resist. Asa very much still plays with cars and trucks and tractors, and he loves going on safari, so it was the perfect gift. He immediately started driving it around and setting up animals so he could go on safari!
Kai made this note for Asa as his present. The king cobra in question is a brand new toy that Kai bought in Nairobi with his allowance money and which Asa desperately wanted a turn to play with but struggled to understand the concept of Kai getting to play with his own brand new toy for as long as he wanted. So apparently Kai decided upon this solution. Be still my heart.
Asa was blessed with a friend coming to play today too. Our househelper's daughter likes to come and play sometimes (especially since all the schools have been closed this year) and it's always a good time. They particularly liked playing with play-dough today.
When it was time to bake the cake, the birthday boy wanted to help, of course! He had picked out a cake mix at the store in Nairobi - dark chocolate flavor. Mmm...
Asa really wanted a dinosaur cake this year. When I asked what he had in mind, he specifically requested a suchomimus and a T-rex. I had no time to plan ahead for this cake since we'd been in Nairobi for several days and didn't get home until the end of the day yesterday, so I whipped up a design this afternoon and hoped he'd approve. Thankfully, he did!
He informed us that the battle between the suchomimus and T-rex ended in a "winner's tie" :) I like that concept a lot.
We invited just a few friends over for a taco supper and birthday cake. It was a really nice, relatively quiet birthday evening. It was perfect.
Asa wanted us to sing "Happy Birthday" for nap time and for bedtime, which makes me smile. He really enjoyed this day, which makes me happy. I love that he loves his birthday.
Asa is a beautiful and precious son. He is our goofiest kid, making silly faces all the time and laughing at his own jokes. He is outgoing and social, unafraid to try new things or meet new people, and he fully tries (and usually succeeds) at keeping up with his big brothers. He is active and has boundless energy until right before lunch when he tends to noticeably slow down, and he still naps every other day for a solid 2-3 hours. He loves snuggling and being read to, always with his snuggle blanket shoved in his face. His snuggle blanket is still an absolute necessity, and whenever's he's tired or needs comfort, he grabs that blanket and shoves a corner against his nose which is just how he likes it!
Asa is a smart kid. He's starting to read and loves doing school alongside his brothers. He knows a lot simply because he picks up knowledge from hanging around his brothers during school time. His attention span is small, however, because he's still such a little boy at heart. His tractors and construction machines and dinosaurs and superheroes and bow and arrows always seem to be calling his name. He is so playful and we love it.
More than anything, we love how much Asa loves the Lord. He loves to look through his Bible and learn new stories. He memorizes Scripture. He prays with confidence and sincerity. He astonishes us with his faith. We continue to pray that he will be like his namesake, King Asa, who "did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord and had a heart fully committed to Him."
Last week while I was reading to the boys in the afternoon, we heard loud whimpering and whining from outside. It sounded like a puppy and it went on and on. We finally decided to investigate. We followed the sound to the Webbers' house (our friends' and next door neighbors' house), and sure enough, there was a puppy! She was all alone and clearly in distress. She was madly trying to squeeze underneath the gate but couldn't quite fit. I opened the gate so she could get to wherever she wanted to go, but instead she laid down and froze in place. This poor pup wasn't sure what to do or where to go and was obviously, totally lost.
The boys were enthralled, as you might expect, but I found myself in a quandary. This puppy was a duka dog. That's what everyone calls the stray dogs around Kenya. They're everywhere and often hang around the dukas (shop stalls) looking for scraps to eat. They are usually a nuisance and are usually treated rather poorly. There are many duka dogs that find their way into our compound and raid the trash pit, and some have even gotten aggressive with people, so they are viewed with distrust and disdain and the general consensus is to get rid of them somehow.
So there we were, with a beautiful and lonely and scared duka dog puppy, unsure of what to do.
The boys great idea: adopt her!
My great idea: call Eli and make him decide what to do!
In the meantime, we created a little bed for her and tried to make her comfortable. We gave her milk, but she didn't want anything to do with it. She was timid and fearful and didn't do anything for quite awhile. The boys were kind and gentle with her, watching over her and working hard to keep their voices calm and quiet (as opposed to the excited shouting they did upon first discovering her). It was so sweet to watch them take care of this pup!
Shortly after discovering her, we suddenly heard more whining and whimpering from somewhere else on the compound. This time it was not a single voice but a chorus of voices that we heard. I tasked the boys with splitting up - some searching the compound and some watching over the puppy at our house. After a brief search, the boys discovered four more puppies! They were tucked away in a small ditch behind the community trash pit. And they were very vocal. Clearly the first puppy belonged with this litter and had somehow escaped and wandered off.
We made a final decision to leave all five puppies there, even though the mother was nowhere to be seen or heard. Someone else advised us that the mother would probably return later in the evening when there weren't so many people around. In the morning, everything was quiet and all the puppies were gone. The boys were bummed but we reminded them that the mother probably came and moved them somewhere else.
Caleb wanted to remember them always, so he painted this picture of the first puppy that we found.
Kai also wanted to remember them always, so he painted all five puppies where we left them in their hiding spot.
Asa chose to paint a suchomimus after it defeated and started eating a T-rex. Apparently he didn't need a memento of the puppies :)
Well, a few days passed and then we had an experience of déjà vu. We were sitting in our house reading a book when we heard loud whimpering and whining from outside. It again sounded like a puppy and it again went on and on. And again we found a puppy at the Webbers' house! This time it was a different puppy, but it was also all alone and clearly in distress. So we repeated our actions from earlier in the week and took it back to our house for safekeeping until we could decid what to do.
This time around the puppy was not timid and fearful. This time it was incredibly active and playful, and the boys had a blast letting the puppy chase them in circles around the house, over and over again. The boys decided to name him Gold.
Gold was a hungry and thirsty pup and did not want to be left alone. And the mother was nowhere to be seen or heard. This time, however, there weren't any more puppies in the litter to reconnect this one with, so our only option was to put him back where we found him and pray the mother would come back for him.
Or so we thought.
By God's grace, as we wrestled with what to do with this poor lonely pup (because there was no way we were adopting this guy despite the pleas of our children), my friend Lauren sent me a message that she knew of an animal shelter in Nairobi. She didn't know the name of it or where it was, but she knew that it existed. Which was beyond my imagining but came as a huge relief and source of excitement for us. Never in my wildest dreams did I think an animal shelter existed anywhere in Kenya. Animals are not viewed as pets here (except in rare cases), and so the idea of rescuing them and adopting them out is quite literally a foreign idea. But apparently there is a place in Kenya that does just that. I could scarcely believe it!
A quick Google search later and we called the Kenya Society for the Protection and Care of Animals. We were told we could certainly bring the puppy to them, so we called a Family Meeting and asked the boys what they thought of the idea. They loved the idea of rescuing Gold and it was officially decided - we were embarking on our first ever Animal Rescue!
(As a side note, we were already planning a trip into Nairobi the very next day. If that hadn't been the case, I'm not sure we would've been able to rescue this pup. But God's timing was perfect, and we are so thankful it worked out this way!)
We brought the puppy inside to clean him up a bit. He was covered in bugs and there was no way we could get them all off, but we did the best we could and explained to the boys that the bugs were yet another reason why taking Gold to the animal shelter was a good idea - the people there could give him medicine and make sure all the bugs were cleaned out so he could be healthy.
After cleaning him up and drying him off, we made a little bed and put him in the shed overnight. He whimpered and whined most of the night but thankfully that made him sleepy for the car ride, which was quite convenient. We tucked him in for the 4-hour drive and he promptly fell asleep!
Gold was a great traveler overall. He was a bit restless toward the end, but I can't begrudge him that. Everyone is a bit restless toward the end of that drive. We made a quick stop before reaching the animal shelter, which turned out to be a good thing since the poor little guy apparently needed to be sick in a parking lot, but he didn't have any major problems inside the car and we are thankful for that!
We arrived at the animal shelter and then it was time to say goodbye. It was tough, I won't lie. Caleb's tears were pretty strong even before the puppy was taken inside. His tears provoked Kai and Asa to cry also, and all of their tears combined led to mine. It's not fun watching your kids grieve another goodbye, even though it's just a puppy we've known for 24 hours and even though we always knew we couldn't keep it and even though bringing it to the shelter was absolutely the best thing we could've done. It was tough. Especially because our family has a special place in our hearts for the animal kingdom. And because our boys desperately want a pet and I'm basically the Crusher of Dreams as far as having a pet goes. (But seriously, hellooooo pet allergies and routine international travel!)
So we said our goodbyes through tears, and we prayed together for Gold and the future God has for him, and we decided to get straight back to the guest house and order pizza (as is our routine whenever we get into Nairobi) and hope that routine and comfort food would help. And since then we've left space for unexpected moments of sadness when any one of the boys are missing the puppy, and providing hugs and comforting words that are needed in those moments.
I'm so thankful for the experience of finding and rescuing a lost puppy, and of loving it while it was with us, and for giving our boys the chance to think about and decide what was best for him and then to follow through on that decision even though it wasn't what they wanted the most. This was a great life experience and I hope they will always remember this. And I am so proud of these boys - for their kind and caring hearts, and for their love of all God's creatures, and for how well they walk the difficult parts of life and pour love and encouragement onto each other in the process.
As I whisper to them over and over again, I felt in my heart deeply: "I love you with a fierce love, and I am proud to call you mine."
