Post #1 for a second time. :)

Why the Jungle?

Well the biggest change going on in the Briney's life is our son that will be here in November!
We are so excited, blessed & honored to be given one of God's children to take care of & shepard here on this earth. The responsibility & weight of bringing up a christian boy is very heavy & I know we will have our work cut out for us with the world weighing so heavy against us. But we are so excited about this!
This is just a silly little thing to talk about but I wanted to share how we got the jungle theme idea for his room. This is actually a VERY sentimental experience to me and it all branches from this lady and her family. While I was in Uganda a year ago next month. I met this widowed lady & 3 of her 5 children.





What you see of this room is their house. No bathroom, no kitchen, just simply a room that holds this 3 story bunk bed & 1 twin size bed. Her 4 boys sleep on the bunk beds and her and her daughter sleep on the full size bed.
In the pic on the right they are standing outside of their door & window. The curtain to the right of them is someone elses house. The boys go to school during the day and her daughter sales these amazing mobiles that her mother makes by hand in the busy streets of Uganda. (girls are last priority in schooling so the majority of the time in big families girls will never be educated)
At the time of meeting this family the girl was not able to sale the mobiles in the streets due to an injury. Her foot had been ran over by a Boda Boda (this is a dirt bike that many use as transportation around the city, it's like a taxi to them) This lady had 2 mobiles that she had made but had no way to sale. She gave me a bag and explained to my translator that it was a gift for coming all the way there to visit them. Tears filled my eyes knowing that she was giving me a gift that she was going to sale & make $ on so she could feed her family but instead gave to me for nothing. One thing I learned in Uganda is that they will give you whatever they have cause you are their special guest when visiting. I got eggs & avocados just for visiting people at church. And yes they were tasty! :)

anyways.. I am hanging this mobile & a picture of the lady & her family in my sons room so he will look back at pictures one day and wonder why there is a african family on his wall & maybe wonder why his mobile doesn't match. (which i bought used from a church consignment sale for $2! SCORE!) (oh, and the turny music thing is not on yet. I just hung it from the base to take a picture of it) I then can tell him why his dad & I went to africa. It was to help the widows & the orphaned cause this is what God calls us to do in James 1:27 & Isaiah 1:17.
I told the mother I could not take this for free when I knew that her & her children had no money for food until they sold another mobile. So i asked how many she had. She had only 2 put together so I told her I would pay her 3 times the worth of them and hopefully that would give them enough money to get by until her daughters foot could heal.

thus... how we came up with the jungle theme for our sons room.