This blog is coming a month late per usual, sorry. Month 6 has been a whirlwind of events right from the start. BUt oh what a sweet month it has been. Rwanda is nothing like what I expected. First of all you would never be able to tell that a horrible genocide occured only 17 years ago here. Wipping out about a 1 million people in just 100 days. We got the chance to visit the genocide memorial with Pastor Moses, who was 23 when it occurred. His story of those 100 days is truely amazing and seemed at first to be just that, a story. But the longer we walked through the halls with him it became so much more. The walls with pictures and videos played his past, his memories over and over again. We were watching his real life right before our eyes. It was heartbreaking and you could see the day was painful for him.
Secondly, The city is so well developed and clean, it feels more like being in Atlanta in the US and resembles nothing of Africa. We have gotten to explore all of Kigali by motorcycles and it is beautiful. The city is called the city of a thousand hills, and it should have been a warning for me for the month to come.
While in Rwanda we worked with Christian Fellowship Church and lived with Pastor Innocent and his wonderful family who loved us and served us so well. we had our own little arpartment home with a fridge and a fan! God is good! We preached at the church everynight and on sunday mornings. One of the coolest things I got to do this month was preach on the radio. I got up around 4:30am and headed to the radio station to preach not only to Rwanda, but Uganda, Burindi and parts of Tanzania as well! It was awesome to get to speak truth over so many people at once and declare freedom and love over all those countries! Declaring that Africa is not the "dark continent" but a place so rich in love.
The last week we also taught at the nursery school in the mornings, the kids were a hoot! They love to not pay attention and stand and dance for you instead. so the last day after riding motos through a serious rain storm, we started playing Waka Waka on the guitar and sang our hearts out. We also got to attend another African wedding and wore the traditional get up,which was essentialy a floral toga. The traditional tribal dance crew that preformed at the reception picked me out of the crowd to come dance with them. keep in mind I have no idea whos wedding im even at and yet I find myself dancing in the middle of the celebration, it rocked!
Rwanda brought on many challenges throughout the month. About half of X-Squad returned to America over the course of the four weeks for various reasons. The holidays came and went and I had to walk myself through the start of alot of tough questions. Month 6 took me further into a place of trust with the Lord. Trust that this journey is still the plan for me. Trust that he still has work in me to be done over the next 5 months. Trust of the unknown ahead. But the Lord has been leading me into this place of trust in such a gentle way. Letting me make the choices and decide for myself when im ready. Growing my dependance on Him more and more everyday. Im thankful for the hard months like Rwanda. The months where everything seems to be falling apart, because it makes it all the more clear that the only thing that remains is the Lord. I can feel Him preparing me for something new, something bigger, something better,. but we are not there yet. In order to be made new you must be broken. And so I grasp to the promise that "Even the darkness will not be dark you You" Psalm 139:12.
