We’ve been in Rwanda for two days now and I’m just as much in love with Africa as I was six years ago when I was in Uganda! This place will forever feel like home for me and I don’t want to leave! On our first full day here we spent over an hour playing with around 70 kids in the village square, we sang, played soccer, took pictures and had tons of laughs!
Our host is incredible and she is super inspiring. But, I want to tell you about John! John is one of the guys from the church and also our hosts’ spiritual son. He is 27 years old and lives at the school that is associated with our church here. He has so much joy and knowledge and loves to tell you about his country and also teach us how to say things in Rwanda. Before we went to play with the kids I was standing on the front porch just taking in the views and John walked up to me. He said “Good morning Ty, How are you?” and we had a little bit of small talk. He then asked me what I did back home for work and I told him that I worked as a manager, but eventually want to go back to school to be a doctor, if that’s what the Lord wants me to do. He then asked what I studied and I told him that I studied psychology. He asked more questions about that because they don’t have that as a degree here so I got to tell him all about why I love psychology and what you learn in it. Our conversation turns into what causes people to be shy or outgoing and what you can do to improve on being shy or soft-spoken. He goes on to say that he doesn’t have confidence in himself despite being a minister at the church and that he wants to be confident in his voice and feel like he is worthy to do what he does. So I got to spend the next thirty minutes to an hour just encouraging him in who the Lord says he is and that he is worthy and that he brings so much to the table. The people in the church LOVE him and speak so highly of him and how much he helps the church so I told him he needed to begin to believe that. This guy is super humble and he then says I don’t want to receive people’s praises because I don’t want to take away from the Lord. I told him it isn’t wrong to receive people’s compliments as long as you don’t allow it to cause you to be prideful, but there is also nothing wrong with using those compliments to become confident in yourself! It was so encouraging to me to be able to encourage him because the very thing he is struggling with is exactly what the Lord has been working with me on. That was just our first full day of being here so if that’s what Rwanda holds for us then I can’t wait! We are doing a social media fast as a squad this month so i won’t be posting a lot of pictures or anything on facebook or instagram but I should be able to post a bunch of blogs so be on the lookout for those! In the meantime please enjoy some pictures that I’ve taken while being here!
