The Final Post

Our time in Rwanda is up, in fact, it has been up for almost a week. I am very grateful for this experience God gave Brook, Lauren, Darian, and me. The people of Rwanda, the missionaries, and my co-interns taught me more than I ever expected to learn during this internship. God used these 6 weeks to teach me the importance of disciple-making and not only reading his word, but putting his commands into action. He taught me how to love tenderly, patiently, and without judgement. On each step of this journey, I let God fill more and more of my heart with knowledge and faith.

A song that was constantly running through my mind the last couple of weeks in Rwanda was Father God. The majority of you probably know this song, but here are the words in case you do not:
Father God, just for today, help me walk your narrow way. Help me stand when I might fall. Give me the strength to hear your call. 
Jesus Lord, from day to day, help me love in your own way. Let your faith in me be known. Let your will to be my own.
May my steps be to worship, may my thoughts be to praise, may my words bring honor to your name. 
As simple as it is, this beautiful prayer sums up in 5 lines a lot of what I have learned about my own faith while on this internship. I have sung this song my entire life and it has never meant as much to me as it does today. In Rwanda, I saw people living out the words of this song and I experienced the love they have for God even though they have close to nothing. It has always been hard for me to fill the void in my heart with Jesus because I stuff it full of material things that only fill it temporarily. Even though some of these Rwandans do not know if they will have food today they trust that God will provide for them and they are happy to be alive. I believe this is the faith that the sick woman in Mark 5 had and I pray that mine will one day be that strong.

I miss Rwanda already, but I am excited to take what I learned in Africa and put it into my everyday life here in America.

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Here are some photos from the last leg of our adventure. We went on a survey trip into Uganda to see what additional opportunities may be there for the future. To end the week we were blessed to go on a Safari. When we returned we only had 2 days left in Kigali before returning to America.

Above is the group that went to Uganda on survey. There were 9 of us stuffed in this land cruiser and 8 of us were women so you can imagine we had quite a bit of luggage.

The Miller's friend, Safari, joined us for most of survey trip. He is from Congo and used to be a Baptist pastor, but he now travels between Congo, Uganda, and Rwanda to work with the local people and help plant house churches.

Darian already wrote a post about the center for vulnerable and abandoned babies that we visited. We spent lots of time with these babies and they definitely melted our hearts.

We also visited the local Baptist church and its school. There is a Compassion International center in Kisoro, Uganda that is co-run by the Anglican and Baptist church. We got to speak with Rose, a woman who works with the Pre-natal through 3 year program. It was neat to hear about the work that Compassion International is doing locally and see how it works from the inside. Rose also told us about local issues, such as alcoholism, prostitution, and divorce, and the other needs of the society. It is evident that there are many opportunities here for mission work.

It was awesome to end our trip with God's beautiful creation. We saw lions the day we arrived at Queen Elizabeth and were the first ones to find them the next morning. We also saw a leopard, which is an incredibly rare siting, especially one that is close enough to photograph. Other animals we saw included elephants, hippos, monitor lizard, water buffalo, cob, water buck, wart hog, crocodiles,  baboons, and several kinds of monkeys. We were told that we were lucky to have seen all the animals we did, but I think God was just blessing us.

Thank you so much for the love and the prayers while I was away. It was the experience of a lifetime and hopefully I will have the chance to return someday.

Also, happy 4th of July! This is a day of remembrance and freedom for both America and Rwanda. As it marks the day of our national independence it also marks the end of the 100 days of genocide. So, as you celebrate the freedom of our country, I ask that you also pray for the continued healing and liberation of Rwanda.

Blessings,

Becca

BABIES!

I updated the Genocide memorial post titled "It was a long, sad day" with photos from the memorials. If you want to go look at that. Then you can come back and read something much lighter and yet another example of how Rwanda is growing and changing in community every day...

One highlight of the survey trip to Uganda was going to "Potter's Village." Potter's village is a center for vulnerable or abandon babies. This post will be heavy on the pictures, YAY!

 A view of the outside of potters village.

 Sleeping room for the infants.

 Feeding room. 

 Above and below are pictures of Brook with a special-needs boy named Jackson, who lives at the village. 

Below is a picture of the premature baby ward. The baby in the neo-natal unit was born at 8 months and there was another baby there born at 6 months. 

 We got lots of time to hold the babies. 

 Jessica Bailey holding a little girl. (above) Gender is never really determined by what the kids are wearing in Rwanda or Uganda, as you can see by the blue romper.  

 A beautiful baby girl! (above and below)

 Above and below are some of the cribs for the babies. 

 TWINS! (above)

She was such a sweet girl... even if she did pee on me! (below) 

Children are raised until 2 years old and then are reconnected with their families or are placed up for adoption. It was great to see what God was doing through Potter's Village in Kisoro, Uganda. This was just one of the great ministries going on there. As always..more to come!

xoxox,
Darian

I am so amazed and blessed by everything God has taught me so far.

I was reading over the blog today and realized there are some cool experiences we haven't really shared yet, so here is a quick summary of those as well as some random photo fun.

We did the memorial day with the two other interns who stay in the town of Musanze. The next day, we left and went to Musanze while the interns from Musanze stayed in Kigali. We stayed in Musanze June 4-6 with the Miller family.
The first night we were there we went to a Hotel and drank Rwandan tea (delicious, by the way). The hotel there has traditional Rwandan dancers that we got to watch and dance with. That was a fun and entertaining night.

Me with one of the traditional dancers...

Notice I am wearing a jacket..yeah. It is FREEZING up in the mountains there. Never thought I would be cold in Africa! (:

 The view up in the mountains here where we drak tea and watched the dancers. 

The second morning we were in Musanze we woke up and went to a Catholic retreat center that is way up at the top of the world. It was a great place to absorb God's beautiful creation. We talked with Matt Miller (one of the missionaries in Musanze) about our experiences this far and what they have gathered us to think about our future. We talked about how this experience is great if we end up in the mission field and is still great even if we don't. It is such an eye opening experience to have and if we as interns do not do mission work abroad we can still respect and see the sacrifice that it takes to be a missionary. We also get to see how much support is needed as a missionary both financially and in prayer. We got to reflect on what God has put on our hearts and also verbalize those feelings which is so important. As of now, I strongly feel that God has called me to mission work abroad to be a disciple maker and a worker in His harvest (Mt. 10:2). I am calling YOU (yes you) the one reading this, to hold me accountable as a sister in Christ to follow what God has put on my heart. Accountable in prayer, support, and Christian love. We also discussed things that should happen before then, finish college, get married, find church support, discover where God is calling me to go...ect. I also feel that God has called me to do those things before I go live abroad for a long-term period. 

Another great thing we got the privilege of doing in Musanze was teaching english to the Regina Pachis Secondary School. The topic of the day was "Cinema" and teaching vocabulary words that had to do with going to the movies, making movies, or watching movies. After running though some vocab with the kids we spilt them into groups where they had to make up their own movie ideas fit with a title, setting, plot, and character names. I got the group of rowdy boys and it was quite hilarious to hear them talk about their movie. It was called "Regina Pachis Love," the plot was about the two characters Jenny and Peter. Jenny loved Peter and he did not know, and so Jenny gave him a gift and he realized he did not love her back. But then he did realize later that he does love her....basically it was a romance movie that took place at their school. And yes, those rowdy boys came up with the whole thing. 

Afterwards I got to talk with some of the girls who were in the same class. They were pretty quiet and didn't like to speak up during class, but afterwards they had a million questions to ask me. It was pretty cool to see that one of them knows a Rwandan OC student and told me to tell her hi for her. 

As always I will update more as I get the opportunities! 

XOXOX,

Darian

Bind Us Together, Lord.

This past weekend we lived with 9 Rwandan girls that live in Kigali. We arrived at the XMM girls house late Friday afternoon and stayed with them until late Sunday afternoon. The weekend was full of new experiences, friendships, and food.

Our authentic Rwandan weekend consisted of:

• The four of us girls sleeping in a tiny room on 3 twin sized mattresses- 3 of us on the ground and 1 on the bottom of a rickety bunk bed
• A squatty potty aka. a hole in the ground infested with giant cockroaches (Thankfully, we've been spoiled with an actual toilet at the missionaries homes)
• Lots and lots of hot, homemade Rwandan tea, which we all loved! I have never liked tea until I tried the African tea here and I certainly recommend it.
• A 4 hour long church service all in kinyarwanda and complete with 4 choirs, lots of people staring, children pulling at our hair, and a lady who "received the Holy Spirit" and started prophesying.
• Helping to cook 2 Rwandan meals a day and doing lots of dishes
• 2 XMM Community Bible Studies

Things we will never take for-granted again:

• A toilet
• Filtered water
• Cold milk (The girls were very sweet and bought us some fresh milk, but we didn't realize it was going to be hot. I was the only one who finished my whole cup and I had to force myself to drink it)
• Motorized vehicles (We walked everywhere we needed to go and it was especially tiring because they live at the bottom of the steepest hill I've seen in Kigali)
• Insulated homes with very few bugs
• Food other than rice, beans, casava and potatoes (For one meal they served us mashed casava mixed with millet and it may have been the nastiest thing we have eaten on this trip, or ever)
• Fans/Air-conditioning

Overall, it was very eye-opening and we enjoyed it a lot. We also came out of it with lots of humorous stories to tell, most of which are better in person, so I decided to only give you a brief overview. It was awesome that we got to experience first hand the lives of the people that we encounter everyday. We were able to build a stronger bond with each other and create a new bond with the girls we stayed with. They are some of the sweetest, funniest, most hard-working girls around!

We miss you all. Thank you for the continued encouragement and prayers!

Blessings,

Becca

The Village

Wednesday was a day full of fun, new friendships, and hard work. Lauren, Brook, Darian, and I joined Becky Reeves, her daughter, and an older lady named Judy on a program called Azizi Life. This program is a co-op where ladies from nearby villages work together to help "foreigners"experience their way of life for a day.

So, our day started early at 6:30 am when Becky came to pick us up from our homes in Kigali. We drove about an hour to the Azizi Life center, where they explained to us what we would be doing and they introduced us to our translators. Then we drove about 20 minutes until we reached the little village of Kivumu... and let me tell ya, we thought people had stared at us like crazy in Kigali, but in this little village everyone gathered around the car and wanted to touch us. We proceeded to hike down this mountain about a mile or so until we reached our homes for the day.

The families in the village live in houses made of mud. The house we went to had their cow right in the middle of the living area.

When we first arrived we made introductions and got to know about the ladies we would be working with for the day. One lady was around 30 and the other 3 were just under or right at 50 years old, and it is amazing how much they are able to do for their families each and everyday. Also, as you can see, they provided us with the traditional African garb, a head-dress and a skirt wrap.

 We started out with the simple task of cutting and washing Casava to help them prepare for lunch.

They then took us another half a mile down the hill to retrieve grass for the cow. We were shown how to cut the grass, tie it up with banana leaves, and use a banana leaf to make balance to carry the grass on our heads. Then, believe it or not, we all carried our bundles of grass all the way back to the house on our heads. Mine, however, fell off multiple times.... I think I made my banana leaf balance wrong.

After we returned to the house we fed the cow and then set off on another journey to retrieve water from the nearest well. We probably hiked 3/4 of a mile to get some clean water. The ladies continued to amaze us by carrying their 2 gallon water jugs on their heads. They gave us 2 liter jugs, and we all struggled a little bit. We were told that the women and children in the village made an average of 4 trips each day to fetch water.

When we finally got back to the house lunch was ready. We had casava, sweet potatoes, giant avocados, and beans. I actually really enjoyed the meal, which was a pleasant surprise. 

We had such a wonderful day learning and working with the Rwandans in Kivumu. Everyone we came across were so happy to see us and ecstatic when we greeted them in their language. Our temporary mothers gave us Rwandan names at the end of the day. Mine was "Umutesi" meaning "beloved daughter," Darian's was "Muhorakeye" meaning "beautiful," Lauren's was "Umutoni" meaning "loving daughter and friend" and Brook's meant "beautiful homemaker."

We also helped cultivate the fields while we were there. We took turns listening to them sing their native songs while we worked and then we would attempt to sing them English songs. We also got to weave with them. We had our choice of making bracelets or earrings, both of which were made out of plant fibers and really difficult to make. At the end of the day, the women and children all gathered around and sang African songs while they danced. It was a great way to end the day.

After this wonderful experience I came to realize that even though these men, women, and children work sunrise to sundown to keep food on their table and a shelter over their heads, they love every bit of it. They are happy with the way they live their life and they certainly do not take life for-granted.   

Here are a few more pictures from Wednesday.

Blessings,

Becca