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