50 DAYS!

Can you believe it’s only 50 days until we fly to Africa?!  It seems like we just yesterday we went to the Visiting Orphans leadership training.  We are getting more and more excited each day!  I think what I’m most looking forward to is seeing some of the same kids we saw last year.  We can’t even imagine how much it means to those orphans that someone came BACK to see them, and that they were not forgotten.  I’m so pumped.

I just wanted to give y’all a little update about our lives and our preparations for the trip.  Many of you probably already know this, but I want to post it on here so that each of you can be praying for us…I have quit my job as a choir teacher.  My resignation has been approved by the Board, and my last day is May 24th.  I am so excited about what God has planned for me.  But I’m also really nervous because I don’t know what that plan is yet.  I know I want to do something to serve “the least of these,” particularly orphans.  But I don’t know how…or where.  Should I use this time to go back to school to get my Master’s in something more practical on the mission field?  If so, how can we afford it?  What job could I get to support going back to school?  Should I move to Africa?  Should I stay close to home?  Where would Blake work?  Where would we live?  All these questions seem very overwhelming at times, and I have to remind myself that God is always in control, He loves us, and He will provide for us.  Please pray for us as this is a very stressful and important time in our lives!  We want to be in the center of His will, glorifying Him to the best of our abilities.

So anyways, We have officially started preparing for the trip at this point!  We have a team of 14 super awesome people (most of whom were on our team last year), and we have begun having conference calls to go over trip details.  I seriously just get giddy when I think about reuniting with all those crazy kids from last year!  Plus I’m so excited to make new friends and experience the amazing relationships that are built in Africa on a mission trip.  It’s like none other.  We are also learning what it means to be team leaders, and what all that entails.  So far we are really enjoying it!

I also want to give you an update on our fundraising progress.  When we first decided to return to Africa this year, we were a bit worried about asking people for money a second time.  Plus we just did a big fundraising push for Best Family Rwanda in December, and we were a bit worried people would be sick of hearing us ask for money.  Well, thankfully right when we first decided to go, we had a couple of large donations which took care of the majority of our costs!  We felt super confident that in the following months, we would get more than enough and have additional donated money to take to the kids in Rwanda.  Well…it’s been a few months and so far not much has come in.  We are still about $2000 short of our goal, and ALL of the money is due by June 3 (only a couple weeks away).  If you would like to give, please click on the green button that says Donate on the right of the screen.  It will give you all the instructions. Thanks so much for your continued support of missions!  Please pray for us as we prepare for our trip: that our team would be unified and that God would be glorified!

Summertime

Hello all!  I just wanted to give you a quick little update about our lives.  There’s not really anything new or important to reveal about our Africa trip.  But now that school is ending, it feels like it’s getting so close!  This coming week is the last week of classes at the school where I teach.  Of course the students are rowdy (and sweaty and smelly) and the teachers are basically letting anything slide because we are SO CLOSE to being done for the year.  It’s a great feeling (way better than getting out for summer as a student, just FYI).   Summertime means it’s just about time to start creating activities for kids, buying supplies, buying clothes, and making all the necessary arrangements for our trip!  If you’ve ever been to Africa (especially Ethiopia and/or Rwanda) please let me know if you have any advice as we start preparing!

There is one thing I wanted to share with you this week.  As I’ve mentioned before, we are trying to research these places we will be visiting to have a better understanding of their history and culture.  The genocide in Rwanda has become a central focus for me.  It’s still just so unbelievable that these terrible killings occurred not too long ago and with such little worldwide concern (or even awareness).  To me, that’s a form of racism and self-glorification in itself, to just not care that there were thousands of people in Africa being killed.  As if our lives in America are so busy and so important, that when we heard on the news that the death toll was rising, we just said “oh that’s awful” and continued on our merry way.  Granted, I was 7 at the time of the genocide, so it’s not like I was going to do a whole lot about it.  But still, the majority of the civilized world in 1994 did little more than just shake their heads at this incredible evil.

During the genocide, churches became a refuge for many people trying to escape the killing.  In the city of Nyange, a priest welcomed hundreds of people into his church.  He even went into the village and sought out those who had not left their homes, encouraging them to seek the safety of the church.  Soon there were about 2000 people huddled together in what they thought was a place of refuge, the house of God.  Then that same priest, along with the mayor, and about a dozen other men, locked them inside.  They waited a few days to let them weaken from hunger and thirst.  Then they drove a bulldozer over the church, killing all 2000 people inside.  Two Thousand People.  Just as a point of reference, there were approximately 2600 people who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.  Isn’t that insane?  How could we have not known about that?  I bet there are few people in the world who were alive on 9/11 and don’t know about what happened in New York on that day.

How agonizing must it have  been for God to see his church used as a trap to murder his children?  It’s easy to see that Satan had a very tight grip on the country of Rwanda.  I’ve learned that there is a great deal of healing (physically, emotionally, and spiritually) going on there now, but we still want to be spiritually ready as we enter the mission field.  I pray that we will see God working in great ways to counteract what evil has done to the people of Rwanda.