Let the pruning begin

God is working wonders on my heart in ways that I'm not sure I knew existed.  I feel like I've been going through things that are familiar struggles.  So, although they are hard, I've already seen God take me through these same storms before.  Therefore, I know I will come out stronger and encompassing more faith because of it, so I rejoice!  God has urged me lately to spend more time with Him and less time on things that have become pretty big distractions in my life.  So, I've set a part one evening a week to be with Him and to leave all my work at school and all my troubled thoughts with Jesus.  I've only done this twice, but I have already seen God respond by speaking truth into my heart and I'm so thankful! 

Last night at bible study, we went over John 15, talking about how Jesus is the vine and we are the branches.  An analogy was mentioned about why you would prune a tree.  One type of pruning is to cut off the new branches because they will require many nutrients which will be taken from the branches that are already bearing fruit.  Another type of pruning is to cut off really big branches that look like they have potential to bear fruit, but are blocking the light from coming into the tree (which feeds the tree through photosynthesis) and not allowing birds to nest and eat all the insects that will inadvertently feast on the tree.  (This was all explained by a guy who helps people grow coffee trees.)  I had never really thought about the practical reasons to prune a tree before, but it all kind of clicked.  Like the tree, sometimes there are things in my life that seem like they have potential to be good, but all they end up doing is blocking the light and not producing any fruit!  God calls us to cut these things off before “insects” start to make a home in our “trees”.  It’s never easy.  When a coffee farmer has to cut off a huge branch that looks like it has potential to grow coffee beans, I’m sure they aren’t singing praises of joy… because they can’t see the ultimate outcome of this painful act and for all they know, they just threw away precious produce.  But after pruning many trees, it might start to get easier to be confident that the tree will later grow more fruit because of it.  In the same way, that is why I am more confident that God will use this time of pruning to help me grow into a more fruitful follower of Christ. 

YOUNGLIFE TRAINING… buckle your seatbelts

This has been an extraordinary week.  I really got to know the heart of God more this week… and more about why the heart of God brought me here to Rwanda.  I have had the privilege of helping to train about 25 younglife leaders that will be serving the local youth community in Kigali.  They met everyday for a week from 10am-6pm to go through the same training material it took me a whole semester to go through when I trained to become a YL leader in Bloomington.  INTENSE!  I spent all of Monday with these kids (ages 15-22) and then the rest of the week I came after school or during one of my breaks.  In such a short amount of time, I saw what an impact this training had on these young adults’ faith.  I am more sold about the mission of YoungLife than I have ever been.  To see the same principle applied to a totally different culture confirms that YL hits the core of what people need on the head.  Jesus and deep meaningful relationships.  By the end of the week, the general response from these newly enlightened young adults was gratitude that they were given the opportunity to learn and be stretched in their faith in this way.  It is such a unique opportunity considering the general consensus of churches around here.  It is nearly impossible to find a church here with sound biblical teaching coming from the pastor.  Most of the local church pastors are not even trained and they go about preaching things that don’t entirely match up with what the Bible says.  Therefore, the validity of what they preach is questionable.  This is in the works of changing as there is a Bible college here that is training loads of pastors as we speak!  Praise God for that! and for getting YoungLife started here only 2 years ago to create more and more followers of Christ! 

YoungLife is SO meant to be in Rwanda.  Rwandans are generally private people.  They don’t talk about their feelings and rarely share anything deep about their life with others.  For instance, it is shocking to have a Rwandan share anything about their experience with the genocide of 94.  And you know ALL of them were affected by it one way or another.  During the training, of course they were challenged to break that cultural boundary and care for these kids by offering them a deep meaningful relationship.  God is bigger than cultural normalcy! 

God keeps surprising me in the ways he has shown his love for me in Rwanda.  I have to admit,  this last month has been especially hard.  I haven’t been able to update my blog until now because I literally didn’t have anything positive to say.  I was resentful of the fact that I felt trapped here when the symptoms of homesickness were creeping in.  I’ve been here over 3 months, and I’ve been told that’s about the time when you realize you aren’t on vacation and you won’t be going “home” anytime soon.  It was true for me!  I’ve also had a really busy few weeks which helped and hindered my attitude.  It helped get my mind off missing home, but also overwhelmed me and I again started forgetting my mission and purpose for me being here.  How quickly I can forget!  Thankfully, through this training, God has opened my heart up to see the amazing opportunities out there that He has planned specifically for me to take advantage of!  I was able to share my heart and passion for youth ministry with these kids and through that, it’s like God was reigniting my passion I had forgotten about while I wallowing in negativity and self pity.  Seriously, every where I turn, God has been there first, and instead of continuing to walk in front of me, he turns around and walks through it again with me.  I’m reminded of this time and time again when there’s no way to explain the events of my life except through God’s reign over it. 

Rwandan Dancers

This is a video of the entertainment provided at an ice cream social that I went to this weekend.  It’s only one of many dances they performed.  They were awesome and very dramatic! Check out their facial expressions and the bells attached to their ankles :)