Today is the last day of re-entry camp and we have been state side for about 3 days. It is still a very surreal feeling and I do not know whether I like it or not. God did some amazing things this summer and I do not know the half of what he was trying to teach me yet but I am excited as he continues to reveal himself to me through my experiences.
It has been a good and difficult 3 days here in El Paso, TX with re-entry camp but today was by far the most difficult yet. We had to say "Good-Bye" to Cassie and Brian this morning at 4:30 am. It was really difficult to say because we all have grown so close this summer. "Good-Byes" are never ever easy and they always seem to come at the worse times...
The things I have learned this summer are going to change and shape the rest of my life! God taught me one vital thing this summer...To ALWAYS follow him, NO matter what the situation is and how difficult the situation might be...HE KNOWS WHAT IS BEST FOR YOUR LIFE! Also, to never compromise on anything or my beliefs...there is still so very much more but I am going to process all of these things a little more slowly because I am already overwhelmed by the whole situation of being back in the states and saying "Good-Bye" to my friends.
Sunday, July 27, 2008
Monday, July 21, 2008
Well time is short...
My time here in Africa is drawing to an end and this will probably be my last post while in the country! All of this makes me extremely sad!
Although my last couple of weeks in Africa has been amazing!
I just got back from CONGO DR. It was amazing and so eye opening! My whole world view in now under question and thinking.
Honestly, I have been to Burundi, Uganda and Congo in the last 2 weeks...all of these places have left such a unique impact on my life that I do not know where to start in processing all of the things I saw or learnt. So instead I am going to post pictures and let the pictures speak for themselves. My words would not give any of the pictures justice, so I am going to wait and write about my experience when I get home...
Although my last couple of weeks in Africa has been amazing!
I just got back from CONGO DR. It was amazing and so eye opening! My whole world view in now under question and thinking.
Honestly, I have been to Burundi, Uganda and Congo in the last 2 weeks...all of these places have left such a unique impact on my life that I do not know where to start in processing all of the things I saw or learnt. So instead I am going to post pictures and let the pictures speak for themselves. My words would not give any of the pictures justice, so I am going to wait and write about my experience when I get home...
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
My Heart is going to be left in Africa
The more I travel in this wonderful contient the more I fall in love with every aspect of it! We just returned from Uganda and it was amazing! There are so many stories and things I want to share but so little time. My time here in Africa is running out and I wonder where the summer went!
So highlights from our trip...
-Border crossings are no fun and people seem to love bothering the white people
-Our hotel/hostel was really nice and had wonderful food
-Children are possible the greatest gift God has given to his people
-Uganda is a dirty city with too many white people
-Men love trying to pull us girls aside but Brian is a good protector
-Uganda at night is crazy
-Daniel needs our prayers
-Agnes has a great need for her family, which are refugees from Congo in a camp in Uganda
-I don't shower very often
-Laxatives work
-Food gets kind of old after a while
-I don't want to leave Africa
There is so much I could write but not enough time! I miss everyone at home but part of me wants to stay in Africa even longer!
So highlights from our trip...
-Border crossings are no fun and people seem to love bothering the white people
-Our hotel/hostel was really nice and had wonderful food
-Children are possible the greatest gift God has given to his people
-Uganda is a dirty city with too many white people
-Men love trying to pull us girls aside but Brian is a good protector
-Uganda at night is crazy
-Daniel needs our prayers
-Agnes has a great need for her family, which are refugees from Congo in a camp in Uganda
-I don't shower very often
-Laxatives work
-Food gets kind of old after a while
-I don't want to leave Africa
There is so much I could write but not enough time! I miss everyone at home but part of me wants to stay in Africa even longer!
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Top 10 Ways to Die on a Road Trip to Burundi
1. Be stupid enough to get on a public charter bus.
2. Flying off seat and into uncovered metal pieces on other seats (crazy turns and no seat belts don't help this at all).
3. Smelling the puke of the carsick person next to you.
4. Get hit in the head with falling luggage from overhead racks.
5. Get into a fist-fight at the border with the people who cut in front of you.
6. Fall into squatty potty at the border crossing that you paid 100 francs to use.
7. Self-inflicted wound due to being forced to watch African music videos for hours on end (they're all the same, and they're all TERRIBLE!).
8. Snap spinal cord from 3 hours of giving the "I don't care" nod to the African next to you who wants to practice their English.
9. Stepping on live chickens napping in the back of the bus and getting feet clawed off.
10. Have your eardrums be blown out by bus horn that sounds like a dying elephant.
2. Flying off seat and into uncovered metal pieces on other seats (crazy turns and no seat belts don't help this at all).
3. Smelling the puke of the carsick person next to you.
4. Get hit in the head with falling luggage from overhead racks.
5. Get into a fist-fight at the border with the people who cut in front of you.
6. Fall into squatty potty at the border crossing that you paid 100 francs to use.
7. Self-inflicted wound due to being forced to watch African music videos for hours on end (they're all the same, and they're all TERRIBLE!).
8. Snap spinal cord from 3 hours of giving the "I don't care" nod to the African next to you who wants to practice their English.
9. Stepping on live chickens napping in the back of the bus and getting feet clawed off.
10. Have your eardrums be blown out by bus horn that sounds like a dying elephant.
Ashanti!
These past few days have been wonderful and full of excitement/frustration/laughter/anxiety/rude African people and wonderful servants of God!
At the beginning of the week we went to Ngenda, which is a rural area about 3 hours away from the city where we have been most of the summer! It was an extremely frustrating ride and it made everyone a little angry because Africans do not travel like we do! They manage to fit about 24 people into a little "Scooby Doo" van that is supposed to hold 18 people...so you can imagine how cramped we all were...plus the roads were not like American roads at all...plus the drivers drive at insane speeds while nearly missing people in the roads! It is always an adventure to travel in Africa!
Upon our arrival into this deserted shanty town we managed to attract at least 30 kids just because we are white! It is always comical for us to just walk down the street and manage to draw huge crowds of children...feel like the "Pided Piper"! It was crazy!
We went to the housing facasilties and managed to get attacked by a very LARGE spider! African plants and bugs are always HUGE and DEADLY! The plants here...really try to eat you! Okay, not really but a lot of them do have really BIG thorns that you would not want to tangle with at all!
After dropping our things off at the housing, we took another short bus trip to the church we would be ministring at the next morning! It was once again a bumpy ride to say the least! Once we got there we went through an awkward round of greetings and silence with a few of the church members who had showed up to greet us! It is always a guessing game as to how the actually greetings will go!
We only stayed for a short period of time to meet the people and leave! After returning to the town where we would be staying the night we put on an impromptu VBS. It actually turned out poorly but not due to our team just the overall situation. Not only do we attract kids but we also attrack several creepy adult males because there are 4 white girls on our team! We had about 50 kids and about 70(+) creepy adult males who kept trying to encircle us. It was really scary and they keep getting closer and closer. One of the guys thought it would be funny to walk up to me and slap my butt really really hard! It hurt and it made me mad!
The situation was getting out of control and so we decided to go inside because the crowd was going crazy and grabbing at us girls and Brian could not do anything to stop it. Then as we are walking back inside trying to fight our way through the crowd, another guy comes up and hits me really hard on the butt again! The first one really made me mad but the second one made me furious! It was not a good situation at all! The authorities actually had to come out and tell us to go inside so the crowd would die down a lot!
Once inside everything was pretty normal for the rest of the night, it was just dinner and then bed with a little journaling and reading! No one slept well that night!
The church service was good the next morning but a little overwhelming because the pastor seemed really frustrated with us being there! She was a little moody but she has been through a lot in her lifetime! She lost all of her family in the Genocide including her husband and 8 children, her mother and father and several other family members...then she also had another death in the family just recently!
There were about 100(+) kids and about half as many adults in the service!
After leaving Ngenda we returned to Kigali to prepare for our travels to Burundi the next morning!
Bujambura, Burundi!
We were to leave the compound at 7:30 in the morning but did not hit the mark at all...we almost missed our bus...and then the real fun began...
it was so difficult to not get sick on this bus trip because the driver was crazy and insane...the roads were really really windy and things just kept getting worse. we get to the board and everything goes well until they tell Agnes and the kids that they have to stay in Rwanda and can't cross with us. It was such an awful situation and made matters worse for us!
The 5 of us made it to the bus but Milly was late and teh bus driver almost left without him...we all made a big comotion to try and kept the bus there! It was a great effort!
After getting into Bujambura, after an 8 hour ride, it was such a long day! Once we got there...Milly thought he had malaria because he had been sick for a few days and had been sick on the bus about 6 times...so we went to the hospital where his cousin worked to get medicine.
we would be working at the same hospital later on in the week! It was not your standard American hospital but it fulfiled at least part of the needs of the Burundian people!
His cousin was extremely nice and stayed with us for the 3 days we were in Burundi! His cousin Chrispin has 17 kids and would have had 18 but 1 died after being poisioned at school one day with a birthday cake. Africa has many terribly stories about death and devastion.
We went to Chrispin's sister's house for dinner and had a lovely meal! It was wonderful! After dinner we went back to the place we would be staying only to be greeted with a grenade a couple of blocks down. None of us got hurt at all but the noise did scare us. No one got hurt at all when the grenade went off...Burundi has be engaged in a civil war for the past 14 years and is just now at peace. So there are still many rebel groups who are trying to cause problems for the people of Burundi.
The grenade was aimed at two UN vehicle because the UN has really been causing problems in Burundi! They are taking away jobs and making people work for less money! It is not a good situation and these individuals were mad so they decided to blow up 2 of the UN vehicles in protest!
On Tuesday morning we got up and had breakfast then took a drive out to the Children's Nutrition Center where Chrispin works. Chrispin is a busy man and works many jobs! Mostly dealing with the health of the country. He is a nurse by trade!
At the children's home, I fell in love with several of these hungry little children. All of them just took a small part of my heart! There were about 78 children and their mother's staying at the facility! So about 150 in total...all of them suffering from some form of malnutrition or HIV.
One little boy Noah, had AIDs and was not expected to live much longer but his smile warmed my heart and made me just want to take him home and love on him for however long he had left! It was good to just sit with him and read books and watch him laugh as he popped bubbles...
He will forever have a piece of my heart!
It was nice to tour the facality and just help feed the children! We spent about 4 hours there before going to the local national park!
At the park we saw hippos and crocodiles...it was so much fun and the hippos kept getting closer and closer to us, so our police officer who went with us to keep us safe (mind you he had a very large machine gun...very large) told us to go! It was a neat opportunity!
The rest of our time in Burundi was spent at the hospital and at different markets! It was interesting to see the hospital and help clean the facalities! Stacie got to play nurse for the afternoon, she is a nursing major from Mount Vernon.
We went shopping at a few of the local markets and we manage to attract attention no matter where we go! The venders saw 5 WHITE DOLLAR sign walking into the shopping market and we actually had to fight a few of the men away...they wanted to drag us into their shops and then they would corner us and not let us leave...we were rescued by the guys a few times...
We had a lovely dinner with Chrispin and the drivers before we had to go back to the housing compound and prepare to leave really early in the morning! After dinner, Chrispin gave each of us girls a dress that was typical Burundi style and Milly/Brian got a shirt, which was also the local style. It was a beautiful gift and a really special memory of a wonderful time with wonderful friends in a wonderful country!
So much happened during our time in Burundi that my update does not really give it any justice at all! God is truly doing wonderful things in the countries here in the Centeral part of Africa!
Please continue to pray for our team and the work we have to still do while we are in Africa! It is only TWO short weeks and we will be back in the states...2 of those days will be straight travel and so our time in Africa is not too much longer! It makes all of us really sad but we really want to experience all that God has for us before we leave!
At the beginning of the week we went to Ngenda, which is a rural area about 3 hours away from the city where we have been most of the summer! It was an extremely frustrating ride and it made everyone a little angry because Africans do not travel like we do! They manage to fit about 24 people into a little "Scooby Doo" van that is supposed to hold 18 people...so you can imagine how cramped we all were...plus the roads were not like American roads at all...plus the drivers drive at insane speeds while nearly missing people in the roads! It is always an adventure to travel in Africa!
Upon our arrival into this deserted shanty town we managed to attract at least 30 kids just because we are white! It is always comical for us to just walk down the street and manage to draw huge crowds of children...feel like the "Pided Piper"! It was crazy!
We went to the housing facasilties and managed to get attacked by a very LARGE spider! African plants and bugs are always HUGE and DEADLY! The plants here...really try to eat you! Okay, not really but a lot of them do have really BIG thorns that you would not want to tangle with at all!
After dropping our things off at the housing, we took another short bus trip to the church we would be ministring at the next morning! It was once again a bumpy ride to say the least! Once we got there we went through an awkward round of greetings and silence with a few of the church members who had showed up to greet us! It is always a guessing game as to how the actually greetings will go!
We only stayed for a short period of time to meet the people and leave! After returning to the town where we would be staying the night we put on an impromptu VBS. It actually turned out poorly but not due to our team just the overall situation. Not only do we attract kids but we also attrack several creepy adult males because there are 4 white girls on our team! We had about 50 kids and about 70(+) creepy adult males who kept trying to encircle us. It was really scary and they keep getting closer and closer. One of the guys thought it would be funny to walk up to me and slap my butt really really hard! It hurt and it made me mad!
The situation was getting out of control and so we decided to go inside because the crowd was going crazy and grabbing at us girls and Brian could not do anything to stop it. Then as we are walking back inside trying to fight our way through the crowd, another guy comes up and hits me really hard on the butt again! The first one really made me mad but the second one made me furious! It was not a good situation at all! The authorities actually had to come out and tell us to go inside so the crowd would die down a lot!
Once inside everything was pretty normal for the rest of the night, it was just dinner and then bed with a little journaling and reading! No one slept well that night!
The church service was good the next morning but a little overwhelming because the pastor seemed really frustrated with us being there! She was a little moody but she has been through a lot in her lifetime! She lost all of her family in the Genocide including her husband and 8 children, her mother and father and several other family members...then she also had another death in the family just recently!
There were about 100(+) kids and about half as many adults in the service!
After leaving Ngenda we returned to Kigali to prepare for our travels to Burundi the next morning!
Bujambura, Burundi!
We were to leave the compound at 7:30 in the morning but did not hit the mark at all...we almost missed our bus...and then the real fun began...
it was so difficult to not get sick on this bus trip because the driver was crazy and insane...the roads were really really windy and things just kept getting worse. we get to the board and everything goes well until they tell Agnes and the kids that they have to stay in Rwanda and can't cross with us. It was such an awful situation and made matters worse for us!
The 5 of us made it to the bus but Milly was late and teh bus driver almost left without him...we all made a big comotion to try and kept the bus there! It was a great effort!
After getting into Bujambura, after an 8 hour ride, it was such a long day! Once we got there...Milly thought he had malaria because he had been sick for a few days and had been sick on the bus about 6 times...so we went to the hospital where his cousin worked to get medicine.
we would be working at the same hospital later on in the week! It was not your standard American hospital but it fulfiled at least part of the needs of the Burundian people!
His cousin was extremely nice and stayed with us for the 3 days we were in Burundi! His cousin Chrispin has 17 kids and would have had 18 but 1 died after being poisioned at school one day with a birthday cake. Africa has many terribly stories about death and devastion.
We went to Chrispin's sister's house for dinner and had a lovely meal! It was wonderful! After dinner we went back to the place we would be staying only to be greeted with a grenade a couple of blocks down. None of us got hurt at all but the noise did scare us. No one got hurt at all when the grenade went off...Burundi has be engaged in a civil war for the past 14 years and is just now at peace. So there are still many rebel groups who are trying to cause problems for the people of Burundi.
The grenade was aimed at two UN vehicle because the UN has really been causing problems in Burundi! They are taking away jobs and making people work for less money! It is not a good situation and these individuals were mad so they decided to blow up 2 of the UN vehicles in protest!
On Tuesday morning we got up and had breakfast then took a drive out to the Children's Nutrition Center where Chrispin works. Chrispin is a busy man and works many jobs! Mostly dealing with the health of the country. He is a nurse by trade!
At the children's home, I fell in love with several of these hungry little children. All of them just took a small part of my heart! There were about 78 children and their mother's staying at the facility! So about 150 in total...all of them suffering from some form of malnutrition or HIV.
One little boy Noah, had AIDs and was not expected to live much longer but his smile warmed my heart and made me just want to take him home and love on him for however long he had left! It was good to just sit with him and read books and watch him laugh as he popped bubbles...
He will forever have a piece of my heart!
It was nice to tour the facality and just help feed the children! We spent about 4 hours there before going to the local national park!
At the park we saw hippos and crocodiles...it was so much fun and the hippos kept getting closer and closer to us, so our police officer who went with us to keep us safe (mind you he had a very large machine gun...very large) told us to go! It was a neat opportunity!
The rest of our time in Burundi was spent at the hospital and at different markets! It was interesting to see the hospital and help clean the facalities! Stacie got to play nurse for the afternoon, she is a nursing major from Mount Vernon.
We went shopping at a few of the local markets and we manage to attract attention no matter where we go! The venders saw 5 WHITE DOLLAR sign walking into the shopping market and we actually had to fight a few of the men away...they wanted to drag us into their shops and then they would corner us and not let us leave...we were rescued by the guys a few times...
We had a lovely dinner with Chrispin and the drivers before we had to go back to the housing compound and prepare to leave really early in the morning! After dinner, Chrispin gave each of us girls a dress that was typical Burundi style and Milly/Brian got a shirt, which was also the local style. It was a beautiful gift and a really special memory of a wonderful time with wonderful friends in a wonderful country!
So much happened during our time in Burundi that my update does not really give it any justice at all! God is truly doing wonderful things in the countries here in the Centeral part of Africa!
Please continue to pray for our team and the work we have to still do while we are in Africa! It is only TWO short weeks and we will be back in the states...2 of those days will be straight travel and so our time in Africa is not too much longer! It makes all of us really sad but we really want to experience all that God has for us before we leave!
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Travel
I will begin traveling soon and do not know how often I will be on the internet! So please pray that God will keep us safe and that he will prepare his will for our lives while we travel. The people we come in contact with as well will need to be willing for whatever his will may be in our lives and theirs!
My summer here is drawing to an end and it is actually very painful! The friendships and relationships I have built here will carry over into the years to come! It is nice to know that no matter where i am...I have friends who I can turn to!
Hope all of you have a wonderful 4th of July! Eat a lot of bbq/picnic type stuff for me!
Much love!
My summer here is drawing to an end and it is actually very painful! The friendships and relationships I have built here will carry over into the years to come! It is nice to know that no matter where i am...I have friends who I can turn to!
Hope all of you have a wonderful 4th of July! Eat a lot of bbq/picnic type stuff for me!
Much love!
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