Life Goes On

As some of you may already know, most of our time here will be spent working at the Peace House. There are many wonderful programs that have been started through ATN (Africa Transformation Network) and the Peace House ministry.

One of these is the Street Boy program. This is obviously for boys that have been living on the streets and trying to survive day by day, whether they no longer have a family or their family could no longer take care of them. So, the Peace House takes in these boys and provides them with food, clothes,  shelter, and the opportunity to return to school. They are also expected to work and do their part in the home to keep it a sustainable living space. This serves as a transition house for them as those working at the Peace House work with the boys to help them re-integrate with their families or into a stable long term home. All of this is a large part of this program, however, the main objective is to help build a spiritual relationship and to help form a Godly community.

The other program we will be working with through Peace House is with ladies that have been living on the streets and in some cases have had to resort to prostitution. When they enter the program they are given a job where they make jewelry, bags, pillows, and blankets for a steady income, they are given English lessons, and are taught about God. We have spent several hours with these ladies the past two days and I think I can speak for all four of us interns when I say that these women have already made a huge impact on our hearts. After helping them make some necklaces and bracelets, we spent a couple hours listening to these young ladies stories. Most lost one or both parents in the genocide, several were the oldest and had to take care of their younger siblings, one was sold to a man and forced into marriage, some ended up in prostitution, and most of them had children by the time they were 16 or 17. When these women were introduced to this program they felt worthless and now through the love of God they have hope and talk about how God has blessed their lives with friendships and opportunities. Even through the language barrier it is crystal clear how passionate they are about God and how thankful they are that He brought them to the Peace House. It's amazing how we have already began to form friendships, even though we speak different languages.

These girls are beautiful from the inside out

and so incredibly funny! Good thing laughter is a universal language.

Here's Brook and Josie Ann

and Darian and Josie.

Other things we've been up to:

• Kenyarwanda language lessons (We know all sorts of greetings and different kinds of foods and drinks!)
• Bible studies with Chris
• We were a part of the monthly ATN prayer meeting
• We went to dinner at the Des Mille Colline Hotel (This is the famous hotel that you may remember from the movie Hotel Rwanda)
• Helped teach english at English Club
• Spend some of our down time with our crazy host families and their crazy children

Blessings!

-Becca

Heaven on Earth

Our Father who art in Heaven, 

Hallowed be thy name. 

Thy kingdom come, 

Thy will be done, 

On earth as it is in heaven... 

Growing up I remember frequent mentioning of the Lord's prayer in different classes, sermons, and discussion. I remember always being taught that the part about "Thy kingdom come" alway being taught as something we don't really pray for because He has already brought this kingdom when He sent His son. Yesterday the girls and I had a bible study and discussion with Chris Shelby about how our job as followers of Christ is to bring the kingdom of heaven down to earth.

Could you imagine?

In Acts 4 starting around verse 32 Luke writes about the early church. These people sold everything to the church and took care of each other. The first half of verse 34 says:

"There were NO needy persons among them."

Imagine a world without need or poverty. 

Wait..what IS poverty?

We got to discussing in our continuation of our bible study today what exactly poverty is. We also watched the following VIDEO that summed it up pretty well for us.

In Leviticus 25:35-43 God gives us the key to poverty and he tells us how he feels about poor people within His community.(You'll have to read that one for yourself) Though it is cliché, faith without works we know to be dead. I felt very moved today to share this with you, yes these are my thoughts and my ideas, but I think that after studying the word today it is what we are all called to do. Jesus didn't hang out in a synagogue saying "Wow, I really hope they come around here one day, maybe I will invite them to come to church on Sunday," and he didn't see people hurting and in poverty and think "Wow... I should really give them some shoes." Jesus went out and connected with people and taught them The Word. In Mark 8 Jesus fed the four thousand. These people were with him for three days before in verse 2 he noticed, "Wow these people are hungry we should probably feed them so they don't drop dead on the way home."(My modern translation) He was SO focused on sharing his word and walking through the crowds that he did not even realize they hadn't eaten...in three days! Yes, it is good to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit those in prison, Jesus did that. But we should not lose sight that the only thing that will remove people from poverty is the love of Christ and the community of friendships that are only found in His kingdom. 

His word. His kingdom. His community. 

Bottom line.

xoxox

Darian

Life of the Muzungu

Today the four of us interns were thrown out on the street to find our way around town and learn the ropes. Rebecca Amos, one of our missionary hosts, had come up with a photo scavenger hunt for us to get to know Kigali better and learn important things like how to get a moto-taxi and how to negotiate with our money. Even though we were exhausted and our feet were killing us by the end of this 5 hour scavenger hunt, it was a great day. This activity was an awesome way for us to experience this new culture and get familiar with its people.

Everywhere we go, everyone is staring at us. Rwandans are so friendly! Yes, they stare at us a lot and don't know what to do, but when we wave at them they get very excited and wave back. It may wear off by the end of our six weeks here, but I must admit, I kind of like the attention we get. At lunch we stopped at a restaurant called Mr. Chips and while we were sitting there eating we would wave at the little kids that walked by on the sidewalk. One little boy, probably around 3, was walking with his mom and when we waved at him he stopped and excitedly exclaimed to his mom, "It's Mzungu!" (For those of you who don't know, Mzungu means 'white people') He probably stood there for a minute just smiling and waving at us. The four of us thought it was pretty funny because it was as if we were an exhibit in a zoo. We had so many of these humorous and wonderful moments today.

Here are some things we had to find on our adventurous outing...

We had to find two of the main roads and the main roundabout in the Kicukuro area.

There were several things we were told to find in the local grocery store.

We found a couple restaurants, this was Mr. Chips. 

Along the way we found several places with great views and scenery, but honestly this does not give the beautiful view any justice.

We had to find the homes of the other missionaries on the Kigali team. Almost every home here has a wall and a gate, so car horns pretty much act as doorbells in Rwanda.

We start working at the Peace House tomorrow, so we will be sure to keep you updated!

-Becca

twenty four hours and two days later...

We are here!!! I thought I would kick off our blog with a quick synopsis of our travel experience. Lauren and I met up at DFW early yesterday morning. Our flight took off just before noon. We met Becca and Brook in the Chicago-O'Hare airport where all of our flights overlapped. It was so nice to finally meet Brook after all this time of knowing about her and knowing we will be spending so much time together.

In the Chicago airport we also met Florence. Florence is from Uganda and she told us that she was going back home after being in the states for a little over 2 years. She said that she has a son in Uganda that is only 3 years old and she hasn't seen him since she left to live in the US. I thought that was heart breaking and I wish I could have been there to see Florence and her son re-unite.

Every airport and airline was so different. DFW and Chicago airports were the usual big-city US airports. The Brussels airport was very spacious and I was surprised about how much was in english. Kigali's airport was tiny. We had to walk on the tarmac from our final flight into the airport. There are only 2 baggage claim terminals there and both were used for our incoming flight. It took us some time to find all of our luggage and load it into the cars, but we were just thankful it all made it to Kigali. Especially so, because Rebecca had emailed us about a week before to inform us of the baggage worker's strike in Brussels.

Gonna try and keep this brief because I know we have much more interesting things yet to come!

xoxox
Darian Russell