Dear Friends,

Are you surprised to be hearing from us? The last update we sent was when Alex was 5 months old, which was…9 months ago!

A big part of the reason we haven’t been sending these emails is because we are now keeping a blog reasonably regularly, and post a lot of the bits and pieces of news there. But we do still want to continue the Matt-Ad updates, so we pledge to do them more regularly from this point!

So, without further ado:

•MATT MEETS LARA
•ALEX IS 14 MONTHS
•MICROENTERPRISE IN RWANDA
•CHRISTMAS IS COMING
•PHOTOS AND BLOGS


MATT MEETS LARA As many of you know, we recently acquired our first niece. The beautiful Lara Emmanuelle King was born on 16th September to Matt’s sister Julia and her husband, who is also named Matt! Matt Gow has just returned from 2 weeks of travelling in Europe and New York, having meetings with the United Nations about Global Hand, and he decided to visit Matt, Julia and Lara since he was in the area.

He managed 2 nights and 3 days with them in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, and has declared that Lara is very, very cute. Julia was quite pleased that Lara was able to meet someone she is actually related to, other than her parents, and we are all really happy that Ivan will also be visiting the King family and meeting his little granddaughter for Christmas this year!



ALEX IS 14 MONTHS

Quite unaware that he has a new cousin, Alex currently believes the world revolves around himself, as do all toddlers.

He is at the age where he knows what he wants, but doesn’t know how to ask for it, so we hear a lot of whingeing and shouting throughout the day, when he decides he MUST go into the kitchen and put things into the front-loading washing machine, or he MUST be allowed to eat a box of chalk.

Of course, the flip side of this annoyance is that he is also learning new things every day and this is a delight. It is always exciting for us to see him start doing a new thing that we didn’t teach him – that he decided he wanted to do all on his own. For example, he really loved watching the Teletubbies do a little dance on one of his videos, so he decided to try and imitate it. Now when he hears dance-worthy music he will get up and do his little jig, which involves walking backwards, squatting down and bouncing, and waving arms back and forth. All completely self-taught. He is a genius of course.



AN EARLY CHRISTMAS PRESENT FOR RWANDA

This is a story from a group in Africa who made the Christmas cards we will be sending this year!

Rachel was just 4 when her dad died and 11 by the time AIDS claimed her mother. Rachel now became ‘mum’ to her 8 and 5 year-old siblings. School was no longer an option for her as she scraped together what she could to feed and clothe her brother and sister. There was nothing left in the house, because her mother had gradually sold everything to buy food for them. The only things left when Rachel’s mother died were the mud walls of their home.

Life turned around, though. Now, Rachel has a job, a good job. It enables her to pay the yearly local health care fee, which allows her and her brother and sister to see a doctor and get medicine if they ever get ill. She is sending them to school. She has bought furniture and mattresses for her home, and they've started eating better food. They've been able to replace their old tattered clothes with some new ones and she's experiencing the joy and dignity of truly being able to provide for the needs of her brother and sister.

Rachel’s job? She is handcrafting beautiful gift-cards for sale around the world. Rachel could well be making your Christmas card this year! She and 42 other people in similar situations have been employed over the past few months to hand-make each of Crossroads’ Christmas cards this year. The group that employs her was so excited to hear that we were ordering from them. They told us this was just about the best Christmas present that Hong Kong could be giving to Rwanda.

Look out in your mail-box for Rachel’s handiwork when we send you a card in the coming Christmas season!

If you have never received anything in the mail from us before, perhaps it’s because we don’t have your address. We’d love to add you! Please hit reply and tell us your mailing address.



CHRISTMAS IS COMING

We just had a meeting with the other full-time staff to talk about Christmas mailouts and related tasks. An ice-breaking question to kick off the meeting was, ‘share a Christmas tradition from your country’. We usually have up to 17 different nationalities represented on our team, so this was bound to be interesting. Here are few interesting ones that people shared:

Zambia – “I remember we were always given new clothes to wear at Christmas”

Congo – “We don’t give each other cards. When we visit a family on Christmas we take a live chicken or some rice."

Malaysian Chinese – “We don’t give gifts at Christmas. We go from house to house and EAT!”

Zimbabwe – “In rural areas we kill a beast to celebrate with a feast!”

India – “We go out on Christmas and distribute sweets to other families in the town”

USA – “We always wake up early and then go and wake our parents up” (said by a 7 year old team member!)

UK – “We always watch the Queen’s address together”

Australia – “Prawns for lunch!”

What will you be doing for Christmas this year?



PHOTOS AND BLOGS

Bookmark our website, www.matt-ad.com to see regularly updated photos and news. There are some recent photos of Alex at this link:
http://www.matt-ad.com/photos/0610-alex-is-nearly-14-months

With love, and hope for more frequent correspondence (!),
Matt, Adelaide and Alex