African FHE

Last night, we went over to our good friends home, The Jenkins, for a FHE about their Africa trip.  Dr. Chet Jenkins is the dentist who works with Hope Arising (hope arising  click here to read about the organization)  to organize dental care over in Ethiopia.  Hope Arising is the organization that helped to bring water to the village of Dera.  They have raised over $250,000 (two LDS moms!) to help build the pipeline that brought water to their village.  Incredible!  They also organized the service opportunities, along with LDS Charities, for Kohler to help build the gardens and build watering systems for several families.  
     For Family Night, we started out playing a game of Jeopardy.  It was really fun!  They have a huge movie screen and the questions would flash up on the screen for everyone to see.  They were fun and factual questions about their trip---stuff that I hadn't heard about.  Everyone was laughing and re-living their experience there.  After the game, Jennette (Chet's wife) put together a very touching movie about the trip and put it to some beautiful African music.  It really was inspiring for me to see my husband and son in action through video and to hear them talking about what they learned the most through this experience. 

One of the dental assistants who went on this trip emailed this photo to me this morning.  Isn't it great to see Kohler working beside his father?  I love it!

Here is Tom with Dr. Dave Poelman, another dentist who came.  Unfortunatly, Dave is wearing the wrong shirt!!!!  

Here is Tom, in a pose I see quite often.  He will take kids by the chin and ask them to "open" ---then he takes a good look inside!


There are more photos to come.  I think Tom is still filtering through them to find the best ones he wants to keep (he took over 200 or so!).  This is an experience that will be ever present in our lives as Tom and Kohler continue to remember and reflect on what they were able to do over there.  To see the joy in everyone faces last night truly was a testimony to me that they each found happiness in serving others and doing for them, that which they cannot do for themselves.