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!