A Nile Adventure; Plus Meet Some Kids

Whitewater rafting on the Nile
This weekend, I was able to join two friends from AIM (Dayna and Julie) to go whitewater rafting on the Nile. Let me also clarify that it is considered Class 5 rafting..... from my understanding the highest is 6 and that generally is considered unsafe! The last time I went whitewater rafting was in 7th grade with the team that went out to the Navajo Reservation in Arizona. I do not remember much from that trip except Steven Angelos (Now my cousin-in-law) holding me in the boat when we got stuck on a rock and me being terrified!. All that being said, I was TERRIFIED about going rafting. I told Julie I wanted to do the family rafting trip - and basically she informed me that if we were going to do this, we had to go big.... so we did!!!!

After not dying on the first rapid, I had so much fun! There were 8 rapids in total on our course, and our boat flipped on 3 of them. The company we went with, made me feel extremely safe. They had 5 kayaks along with a rescue boat that would grab you right away if your boat tipped! I was never left to float down the Nile and meet a crocodile! (For the record, we did not see any crocodiles or hippos where we were.) Also, before each rapid, our guide would tell us what to expect as we went through the rapid, and what we needed to do if we fell out. This took away my fear of the unknown making it so much more fun! If you are ever in Uganda, I definitely recommend rafting the Nile... and this is coming from the biggest chicken ever!!!

Life jackets - Check; Helmets - Check; Water - Haven't made it there yet! - With Julie Matthews

This is the first rapid... I think it is about an 8 foot drop. But... I picked this picture because see the girl in the front with the yellow helmet and her terrified face. That is my friend Julie who got me into this adventure. See me behind her all smiles :) Thats right Julie :)

At the bottom of our large drop!

No clue what is going on here... except we are being blasted by a large wave.... I cannot even tell you where I am sitting!

I think this is the first time we flipped.  I am the one in the red helmet hanging on for dear life!

Meet the Kids
Sorry I have not introduced you to more kids in awhile! My new goal will be to every week introduce you to two more of my kids! But this week you will meet three :)

Sunna
Sunna is one of my favorite kids to work with. Not only is he unable to walk, but he also has no speech. He uses hand gestures and noises most of the time. He loves coming to therapy AND he LOVES my matchbox cars! Yesterday, I got him up standing in the standing frame, and he immediately started acting like he was driving a car indicating he wanted to play with my cars. He knows a small amount of sign language, but he mainly makes stuff up as he goes using his own gestures. This is great for me since I know very little sign language, and I just make up gestures back to him!

Sunna reaching for a puzzle piece in therapy

Ethero

Ethero and Sunna are best friends. They are almost always inseparable. Except every once in awhile when another student has taken Sunna's wheelchair, Ethero leaves his friend to try to get to the dining hall or class by himself.  Ethero and Sunna are perfect for each other in that Ethero also has no speech. So they communicate with their gestures and noises perfectly together! Ethero is one of the few students that does not live at the school. His family owns a little store just down the road from the school, and Ethero lives there.

Ethero & Sunna

Maria

I absolutely love Maria. She is quite a hard case to work with. She had cerebral malaria as a young child and now has severe cerebral palsy as a result. Even her facial muscles are involved. To add to her complications her tight muscles have dislocated one of her hips making her leg quite painful to move. However, even though she has no speech and has difficulty moving any of her limbs, she finds ways to communicate what she is thinking. When we do art projects, she is VERY particular about how it is put together. We are working on using her mouth to write (which is VERY difficult since all of her muscles are affected). But, I wrote her name and then we traced it together. She was SO EXCITED! She recognizes her name, but to be able to "write it" was something new to her.

Maria in her new wheelchair

And a bonus picture just because Jeremiah is so cute :)

Jeremiah looking into the therapy room

Oh and one more picture.... I had Mexican food for the first time in 7 months last night!!! I was sooooo excited! BTW, the plate was burning my hand as we took this picture

Well, that is it for this week. Please be praying for patience this next week. I have realized more than ever how much I need God to help me control my emotions. I am going to try to update my prayer requests on the right with a date, so you can tell when I updated it last!

As always, thank you all so much for your love and support!