When we forget that God cares

Sometimes I start to read into things that happen in my life in a way that seems somewhat absurd to the average person, and occasionally even me.  It usually starts off as something funny or unique that happened in my day and later on as I reflect about it, I think… this has to have a deeper meaning.  Who does that? Seriously, if you know anybody else who does that besides me, I think I should meet that person.  Because I find myself doing that a lot and it seems ridiculous, even to me.

Anyway, moving on to my story of deep hidden meaning.  Here it comes.  Can you feel the suspense?  If I were you I would have skipped this whole motivation section and just read on to the good part below.   

So this morning started out as a normal morning.  I woke up after my second alarm, rolled out of bed, got in the shower and washed my hair.  I slapped a whole bunch of shampoo on my head and lathered my hair up real good.  Usually, while my hair is soaking up the nutrients (or whatever is really in shampoo) I shave my legs if I have time.  Turns out this morning, I did.  But while I was taking my time shaving my legs, the shower head started sputtering.  Now, back in the States, I would have probably thought that someone was playing a trick on me or maybe even that girl from The Ring ( have you seen that movie? I haven’t been the same since) found her way to the plumbing in my house.  But since I live in Rwanda, I knew right away what it was.  We were out of water.  DUM Dum dummmm.  That just felt like the right moment for the dums.  The way the city water works here is… sometimes it doesn’t.  There is a water gage in our yard that, if it’s spinning, we are receiving water from the city.  If it’s not, then we are out of luck.  We have a water tank about the size of a smart car that collects that water.  Let’s just say, we haven’t been receiving water from the city in quite some time… long enough for us to run out of our smart car water.  So there I was.  Dripping with soap, halfway shaven, and already pondering how in the world I was going to rinse my hair clean of this mop of shampoo.  I prayed to God that he would be kind and give me some water to allow me to finish washing my hair.  Not long after that prayer, I yelled to my roommate to check the water pump who later returned with the news that the pump was on, but not running.  I put on my robe, fully prepared to have to walk to school to use the water from my sink in my classroom to finish cleaning up for a work day.  And then I heard it.  The pump started running!  I jumped back in the shower and was able to rinse my hair all the way through. Praise God!  About 10 seconds after my hair was rinsed free of shampoo residue, the water went out again.  Still as I’m typing to you 16 hours later, the water is still out.  I honestly could care less if I get to shower again before I leave in less than 2 days for the States because I didn’t even think I’d get to finish my last shower, and yet, I did. 

Now, there are many different ways I could go for an analogy to go along with this story.  But the one that has been plaguing me has been that God cares.  Cheesy maybe, but true.   Let me point out something to you that my story presented that you may not have caught onto.  My first response to my shower problem was to try to think of a way to solve the problem myself.  My second resort was to ask God for his divine water giving power to help me out.  My third action showed my lack of belief that God was actually going to help me in this soapy situation.  My fourth action was to try and handle it myself.  This all took place in about 3 minutes mind you.  It didn’t take me long to get to the fourth action.  The part about God caring comes in right after I decided the solution was up to me.  It was in my control whether or not my hair stayed soapy the rest of the day, but it was not in my control whether or not the water came back on.  This story could have been way different with a tale about me running in my robe to school and getting there and realizing I forgot my keys…  That would have been entertaining, but much less fun for me to live out.  When that water turned back on, it took me about a quarter of a second to receive that water for what it was- an act of mercy.  Sometimes I think that when God gives us little moments like that, he craves for us to recognize the ways in which he cares for us.  When I have water day after day, I don’t even think about the fact that it comes from God.  I think… it’s city water so it come from the city. Duh.  When the things I count on are given easily to me, God’s craving for recognition gets overlooked.  But when I am without these things, all of a sudden, it’s easier to turn to God to replenish my supply, even though I am still probably going to search for a solution on my own.  Regardless of my actions or faith, God still cares and shows us everyday how he cares, even when we don’t give him the recognition he deserves. 

Thanks for taking a part in the journey of finding deeper meaning in seemingly meaningless happenings in my life.

Jesus Tree

Have you ever tried to read through the genealogy of Jesus?  Usually, I skip right over those impossible names right on to something less boring.  It seemed to me that Jesus’ ancestor timeline might hold some importance, but that insight didn’t seem worth stumbling through an ongoing list of names that actually made me develop a stutter. 

In light of Christmas coming up, the genealogy of Christ seems to hold some weight on my heart.  We studied through the 2 genealogies mentioned in Matthew 1 and Luke 3 in my bible study group and I found it very enlightening.  I would like to share some of the things I found interesting and life-giving about those two genealogies of Christ.

First off, Matthew and Luke’s letters had two different audiences.  Matthew was writing to the Jews and Luke was writing to the Gentiles.  This explains why their lists of ancestors look different. Matthew started with Abraham and worked his way to Jesus whereas Luke started with Jesus and worked his way to Adam and even back to God.  Since Matthew was writing to the Jews, he was aware that they were looking for a Messiah to come from the relatives of Abraham.  He didn’t need to go back any further because all he needed to do was prove that Christ was the son of Abraham.   The Gentiles were not as informed about the Messiah’s lineage.  Luke, knowing this, pointed them from Jesus all the way back to God.  This could paint the picture to these people that Jesus was related to all human beings. 

In Matthew’s lineage of Christ, he includes women (in parentheses).  That wouldn’t be that interesting except that the women that are included are very prominent women because of the controversy they represent. Tamar, Ruth, Rahab, Bathsheba, and Mary are all mentioned in the Bible having gasp-worthy stories told about them.  Tamar tricked the father of her child into having sex with by pretending to be a prostitute on the side of the road.  She preceded by snatching his seal so that later on she could prove that he was the father.  Ruth was a Gentile but married a Jew.  Rahab was a prostitute who helped lead some of God’s men to safety during a war.   Bathsheba was a married woman when King David decided he wanted to have her for his own.  She conceived a child out of an affair with a King, the same King that had her husband murdered.  Mary was an engaged virgin when she mysteriously became pregnant with God’s son.  Becoming pregnant out of wedlock was considered worthy of a stoning back then.  Needless to say, these women were not mentioned just because.  Matthew seemed like he was trying to make a point about the lineage of Christ.  God used messy situations to lead to the coming of the fallen world’s savior! 

I was reading a devotional not too long ago that said that both Mary and Joseph are descendants of David.  I remember being confused about that because in both Matthew and Luke’s record of Jesus’ lineage, neither of them seemed to be traced back to Mary.  Not that I was doubting that Jesus was the awaited Messiah, but I was confused because Joseph was not a blood relative of Christ, yet it was his family tree presented in the Bible, not Mary’s.  Well, come to find out one of them DOES trace back to Mary.  Luke’s audience was the Gentiles and it was tradition not to include any female names in their genealogies.  This means that when Luke started the genealogy off by saying “Jesus was known as the son of Joseph” he is recognizing that Joseph is not his biological father.  Right after that he says, “Joseph was the son of Heli” which is a different father than is recorded in Matthew where it says, “Jacob was the father of Joseph”.  How did I miss that?  Probably because I always skipped over this section of the Bible.  So, clearly Luke was talking about Joseph’s father-in-law, which means it’s true!  God’s promise was fulfilled two-fold.  That’s just like God, isn’t it?  His promises have been and will all be fulfilled in time.  Praise God for sending us a Savior and for promising us salvation and a resurrection of the dead through Jesus Christ! Amen!

Time for some visuals

I have this magnificent camera and a scattered mind.  That is a bad combination when all you want to do is take pictures everywhere you go, but that doesn’t happen when you always forget your camera.  Anyway, I haven’t completely neglected my camera which is why I have some to share with you today.

 

At a staff retreat, we saw a memorial church that many bodies were buried after the genocide. 

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                

I flew to Tanzania in September for International Young Life training and saw the tip of Mount Kilimanjaro from the plane, but could not see if from the ground because it was too massive and blended in with the sky.  

 

 

 

These are the folks that I met in Tanzania who are all doing International YL in East Africa.  We went on a bike ride to the restaurant we ate at for lunch. 

 

 

 

 

This is the beach in Gisenyi which is a small city in Rwanda near the border of the Congo which lies on Lake Kivu.

 

 

 

  

Just walking around my neighborhood at dusk taking pictures of the “Do not enter” signs. 

 

 

 

 

We have spirit days at school where kids and teachers dress up… that day was wacky tacky day.  Can’t you tell?

 

 

 

 

Kindergarten shape birds

 

 

 

 

Grade 1 Picasso’s 3 Musicians

 

 

 

 

  Grade 2 Aboriginal Dream Painting

 

 

 

 

Grade 3 Ink Drawings

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grade 4 Cartography map designs

 

 

 

 

Grade 5 Canopic Jars

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grade 6 Still life drawing

 

 

 

 

 Middle School Artwork 

 

 

 

 

 

  Lovely artwork by my high school drawing students.                 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Noticeable differences

        Do you have a routine?  Not a gymnastics routine… although that would be really spectacular if you had one of those.  Do you live by a scheduled routine for each day or each week?  I used to hate routines because they usually required me to wake up early or to be on time.  I would say I haven’t been the best sport about either of those things in the past.  When I was in high school, I set 3 alarms for myself.  One at 6am, one for 6:15am, and one for 6:30am.  At each alarm, I woke up a little bit more until I felt awake enough to successfully step out of bed.  My family learned that I wasn’t worth talking to until I had been out of bed for at least a half hour.  It’s safe to say, I’m not a morning person.  Timeliness is another thing I have had a bad track record of back in the day.  Who am I kidding?  I still don’t have the best track record with timeliness.  Everyday I try to leave my house at 7:05am so I can get to school by 7:10am.  Almost every morning as I’m leaving my house I look at my watch and quite often will moan, “Seriously? Come on Mick!” as I notice somehow I burned 10 minutes trying to grab a “quick” breakfast on my way out the door. 

        Like I said before, I used to hate routines.  I’m not much of a planner either.  I would much rather live by the seat of my pants, whatever that really means.  The lacking planner in me can really relate to African culture because I don’t know many Africans who are thorough planners.  Although I admire the fact that Africans live life by the seat of their pants day by day, week by week, I have recognized that the absence of routine in my own personal life has been detrimental to my effectiveness in loving people and in living a balanced life.  The one thing that has motivated me to live a life based more on a routine has been God.  Seems vague, and it is.  Let me explain.  Of course my school day already presents one type of routine; 8am-3pm Monday-Friday I’m teaching.  But, after that, who’s to say what I’m doing?  If I don’t have something scheduled, I will probably do one of three things: watch a TV show, surf the net, or just chat with whomever is also just bumming it.  I will spend time with God whenever I feel like it, which, if I’m honest, is not that often.  I will be productive with planning lessons whenever is convenient, which you can argue convenience is a state of mind.  I will do what I want when I want to do it.  Yikes.  Is this really how I lived when I didn’t have a routine?  Afraid so. 

        Not to say my life is this miraculous transformation that when I look back at that routine-less life I lived all of 3 months ago I become ill with regret.  It’s not all from my past.  I’m still working on it, as I will be for the rest of my life.  I have just noticed this unexpected change in many areas of my life because I have chosen a scheduled life this year and consistency has won me over.  Let me take you through my week:

Sunday: Breakfast at 9am- my roommate Natalie makes pancakes. Delicious. Church from 9:30-11:30.  Lunch with friends after. Work at the school for the remainder of the afternoon (includes skyping with family). Zumba class at 7:00.  Pray with Heather and Kelly from 8-9pm.  Go to bed!

Monday: School from 7:15-6pm  School doesn’t last that long… but I’m at school working that long.  Family dinner with friends at 6:15pm.  Free evening!

Tuesday: School from 7:15-6pm. Dinner after school.  Bible study from 7:15-9pm. 

Wednesday: School from 7:15-6pm. Family dinner at 6:15pm.  Zumba at 7:30!  (Soon to be filled with YL CLUB!)

Thursday: School from 7:15-3pm.  Campaigners 3:15-4:30.  YL team meeting 4:30-5:30pm. Language lessons 5:30-7pm.  Quick dinner.  Game night 7:30- whenever we get tired of playing games. 

Friday: School 7:30-5pm. Usually we teachers are exhausted on Fridays, so a low key evening.

Saturday: African Bagel Company to get doughnuts from 9am-11am.  If I’m being honest, I will most likely work on some lesson plans in the afternoon.  Evening is up for grabs!

        I just let you in to the details of my day to day life.  That was a dangerous thing I just did.  Now you know where I am at any time during the week… Oh wait.  That would only make a difference for those of you in Kigali with me :)  Okay, so I’m on a week break from school this week.  I purposefully went away to Gisenyi (a city situated at the coast of Lake Kivu)right after school got out so I could leave my productive schedule and relax.  I also purposefully did not bring my computer or any other electric devices so that I would not waste my mind on them.  I read an entire book in 2 days.  I read 390 pages in 36 hours actually.  Usually it takes me weeks, maybe months, to finish a book.  In my scattered puzzle of a life, I lack the focus it takes to complete a task or even a book.  I have learned how to juggle many tasks, but to complete one takes much longer than it would if I just saw one at a time.  Through living out a routine, I have noticed it allows me to focus on one thing at a time.  I’m not doing zumba thinking, man I have so many more lessons to plan!  I’m not lesson planning thinking, I wish I have more time to exercise.  I’m not at church worrying about what I need to get done for school on Monday… I know I will have time.  Maybe you are ahead of me wondering how in the world I hadn’t figured this out until now.  Well, I don’t blame you for thinking that!  My time with God has been more purposeful and meaningful than when I would say, “yeah, let’s open up the Bible for a few minutes to see what God has to say to me.”  When I’d do that, I’d probably nod in agreement and then walk away and forget about it minutes after.  God has much more to say to me when I give him my undivided attention.  As I’m typing this I realized that I have not spent time with God today and the thought crossed my mind that I need to make time for Him.  I hope that the lesson I learned about how to spend my time with purpose and focus will not stop here. 

Amazing Grace

When I was home in the states this summer, I knew that something needed to change in me and in the way I chose to live my day to day life in Rwanda. I couldn't put a finger on what that was exactly, but now that I'm here I have realized what I was lacking last year. Pretty simple really... vulnerability. I let people in to the problems and struggles I was having that I felt could be fixed by prayer, advice, and etc. but I failed to let people in to this inward struggle that I ultimately thought was my own responsibility to fix, yet I could not. My struggle, even still, is feeling beat down by my own shortcomings. Back in the day I fought against pride. Now, I feel as though I fight against the opposite. It's all based on the idea that what I do is more important than what God has done. This is a lie that I don't always recognize when I am in the moment of being more critical of my actions, thoughts, failures than anyone else. 
Recently, I started to realize that I was a walking example of what it would be like to live without experiencing the life-giving grace of God.  I was constantly disappointed in myself and it seemed like I went back into my old ways of thinking that I had to earn some sort of favor with God in order to be saved.  I would be reminded of God’s grace, and be thankful, but still strive for the unattainable perfection that only Jesus himself could maintain.  As I kept disappointing myself, I lost motivation to spend time with God because, quite frankly, I was tired of being reminded of how I had fallen short.  These things I had fallen short of were things like having regular quiet times studying the Bible, praying consistently, having good thoughts about people, caring for others, etc.  In my mind I was not pulling the weight I should have been.  This vicious cycle left me weary and discouraged for months. 
Since then, I have been focusing on God’s grace and what a difference it should make in how I live.  I have been living as if Jesus depended on me to make myself right with God.  “Hmm…” Jesus probably thought, “Why is she struggling so hard to be perfect for God when through ME she is made perfect in His sight?”  Wow, the gospel sounds so sweet to me right now.  It is freeing to know that I do not have to perform well to be loved by my Father.  When approaching Him, I do not have to pretend I have my life put together in a neat organized way.  He knows I’m a slob and even still sees me with untainted eyes.    









To sum up, I have two photos of monkeys.  Yes, I really love taking pictures of monkeys because they are cute and very interesting creatures.  I wrote a blog last year about the monkey on the left being in a cage in Africa and how wrong that is.  Guess, what?  He is still in that cage.  He represents how I was living… caged by my sin and my guilt while looking longingly for some hope and encouragement outside of my caged mindset.  The monkey on the right represents who Christ made me to be.  This monkey was in Tanzania walking along the top of a restaurant building.  Although he doesn’t look that happy, he is free.  He climbs trees, buildings, walls just like he was made to do, right? He doesn’t have to eat the leftover scraps that were fed to the caged monkey.  He can eat fruit off of trees, but also can still choose to eat the table scraps if he wanted to.  The thing about the grace of God is that it’s there for us always.  We may choose to live the way God intended for us to live, or we may choose a different route.  What we choose does not change who God is and it does not change whether or not His grace is available.  Whether or not the monkey eats like a king or like a rodent doesn’t change the fact that it’s a monkey.  Whether or not we follow the law of God perfectly or fail at every instance does nothing to change how God sees us.  He sees us as his walking, talking, loving, breathing creation and KNOWS what we are like.  God knows I want to do good, but end up being a hypocrite and falling through.  He understands our shortcomings because he allowed sin to enter the world.  He was there and lived among a corrupt generation of people who nailed His innocent son to a cross.  We don’t have to tell God what it’s like to battle sin.  We also don’t have to tell God that we need grace.  He had a magnificent gracious plan set up before we even committed our first offense against him. 

Timing

God’s timing is divine. Do I really need to elaborate on that? No, but I will anyway. 

My patience level is constantly challenged by God’s seemingly slow-like-molasses timing.  Have you ever tried to pour molasses out of a jar? I’m not sure I have either, but I can imagine it to come out annoyingly slow.  I mean, is it considered a liquid even though it resists the aquatic quality? That is a debate we should have some other time.  Going back to the God/molasses analogy… The concern with timeliness is definitely a cultural crutch for us Americans.  I imagine people who aren’t taught that “you can get what you want when you want it” don’t struggle as much with God’s timing being characteristically slow. The longer I keep living this life God has given me, the more I realize that God is actually not slow at all.  He is thoughtful and strategic with how He acts and how He shows up. 

 

Four years ago…

God put Rwanda on my heart for the first time. 

I was just beginning to really live my life around the ministry of Jesus Christ. 

I struggled with knowing who I was without my friends and family. 

I learned that forgiveness is a lot harder to offer when you have a deep wound. 

Four years later…

I have a home in Rwanda where God is doing miraculous things in my heart and using what I learned during my time in Bloomington to glorify Him here.

I wouldn’t even want to live a life for anything/anyone but Christ… what would be the point?

I have moved far from friends and family knowing that my identity did not rest upon their shoulders, but on God’s.

I am now quicker to forgive even with deep wounds because of the gradual realization of how much I need forgiveness.

 

I could go through a lot of “if, then” scenarios to illustrate that God’s timing is perfect in all aspects in life, but I think a better way to describe it is to just say, “He knew better than me.”  He knew better than me that I needed 3 years to wrap my mind around moving to a third world country.  He knew better than me that in order for me to find my identity in Christ alone, I needed to go only with Him to an unknown place and in unfamiliar company.  He knew better than me that I needed serious lessons in humility.  Boy, was that lesson awaiting me in Rwanda.  He knew better than me that I needed a full year in Rwanda before I could handle a full load of Young Life ministry.  He knew better than me that I needed to hear a sermon during last week’s church service that shouted “GO. Make disciples of all the nations.  Start in Kigali.”

 

I get the sense that God is no longer being silent in Kigali.  He keeps pulling at my heart and showing me ways to reach out to find more hands to serve Him through Young Life.  Even though we got the ball rolling with Young Life last year here in Kigali, I haven’t felt like it has truly gotten started.  There’s no telling how long God will patiently wait before there is fruit from this ministry in the works, but like I said before, “God is not slow…. he is thoughtful and strategic.”  I’m not as bothered about the timing of things when I am reminded that God knows WAY better than me.  

Is there a right way to love Jesus?

Why does God tug on hearts… sometimes in opposite directions?  It seems one tug must be from God, the other, an illusion of the heart?  This has been a mystery to me for years.  What if God actually does do the tugging on both ends?  What does that say about God?  As Christians, it seems we all have our own ideas of what God is asking us to do for Him.  Are all of us right?  Are all of us wrong?  I know it’s not a matter of right or wrong, but sometimes it seems there has to be a concrete truth and either one person or the other is just missing it. 

How can God speak to me so clearly and defined about Jesus’ love and grace being the central and only aspect of my faith that actually matters and then, to another Christian, speak just as clearly about other aspects of faith as holding just as much importance?  The fact that God is sovereign is my only comfort in this dispute.  I could pull out bible verses from all over the Bible to try to prove what I am certain is true.  I could tell my testimony about how I was once arrogant about my beliefs and then the Spirit of God humbled me and showed me the way.  I could stand strong in my beliefs and argue profusely against any other ideas.  But then again, couldn’t someone with the views I would be disputing be able to do the same things?  What if it’s not about the doctrine or the manner in which we approach God?  What if it’s just about the fact that we do approach him?  What if it’s just the posture of the heart that tells whether or not we are actually God’s adopted children?  Who can see into our hearts but our Father, our creator?  Those who are God’s children inherit more than just eternal life; they inherit the attributes of God himself. 

We as people can do many things out of selfish pride and ambition.  None of us are good enough motive-readers that we can judge a person’s heart with as much accuracy as God.  In many of the stories of Jesus, the people he butted heads with most were the ones who thought that since they did all the things God expected of them, they were righteous even without the awaited savior.  Although they were righteous on the outside, their hearts were prideful and self-seeking.  We can be fooled quite easily that all that God wants from us is to do “good”.  Without the answer to the question, “What is good?” we are left with this standard that absolutely nothing will be good enough for God.  Nothing we do, say, or accomplish makes up for the fact that our natural tendency is to serve ourselves.  What God really wants is our hearts.  He doesn’t want anything from us; he only wants to be with us.  He wants us to know Him intimately, because he already knows us and decided we were worth suffering and dying for. 

I fall in this category as much as the next person.  I want to think “I’m right”.  But I’m too aware that a lot of the times, I am not right.  All I know is that I don’t have the power to convince anybody of anything that they aren’t open to accept.  That is ok.  I’ve seen God work many miracles and the only way they are recognized as miracles is when He is recognized for all the glory.  Praise God for being the judge and for being truly the only One to reveal truth to our hearts. 

“It is not possible”

… is a phrase used quite often in Rwanda.  Really, what it means is a simple, “No”.   To the average American, “It is not possible” means “You are out of your mind.  That will NEVER happen.  You live in lala land." etc etc etc… Say you are sitting at a restaurant in Kigali.  You ask the waiter, “May I please have a beef brochette (kebab) for my meal?”  He will either respond, “Yes” or sometimes with the occasional, “It is not possible.”  Now, I get confused about this because more often than not, I order off the menu given to me, so for him to declare that my order of a simple beef on a stick is not possible I can’t fight the laughter over how absurd it seems.  It took me a while to understand that phrase to translate as just “no” since that phrase evokes this nagging optimism that “YES, it is possible”.  It has to be possible!  I have come to realize that some things really aren’t possible here in this beautifully charming country, but for some reason, I am still hopeful and expectant for some these impossibles to become possibles. 

Examples?  Sure. 

1. It is not possible for my feet to stay clean for a day.  It really doesn’t matter what shoes I wear, my feet are brown by the end of the day.

2. For the last month, it has proven impossible for me to be able to shower everyday in my own house.  We have had a very helpful plumber in and out of our house and (cross your fingers) the problem was attempted to be completely fixed today!

3. It is not possible for my clothes to feel soft or smell fresh. You know that mildew smell that stays on your clothes if you leave them in the washer for too long…. forever the smell of my clothes here.

4. It is not possible to hate the weather or the scenery in Rwanda.  I have never met a person who has complained about it… ever.

5. It is not possible for me to sleep soundly in Africa without a mosquito net.  I went a couple weeks without one when I first got back and the only night I slept well was the night I took a Tylenol PM and could have slept 12 hours with that sedation.

6.   It is not possible  for a muzungu (white person) to get offered a reasonable price for anything bartered the first time around.  Sometimes not even the second time around.

7. It is not possible for me to continue naming off impossibles without saying that I love Rwanda even when things are not possible :)

Home… and then home again

June 2011 I returned to my homeland of Indiana.  August 2011 I returned to my homeland of Kigali, Rwanda.  Two very different homes, two very similar emotions upon returning.  It’s hard to explain the hardships and the joy that go along being a part of two cultures and having to leave both just to return to the other.   When I arrived in Indiana this summer, I breathed in the hot humid summer air, and gazed over the many cornfields and felt as if nothing had changed since I left.  Indiana was still the Midwest, although I have come across people who have disputed that fact.  Most of the people I associate with home were still there, living life as usual.  Some things changed like that Subtaco place that went up in Jasper.  Although that has actually changed twice since it also shut down this summer right before I left.  Go figure. 

It was good to come back to familiarity and comfort.  I find it amusing the amount of people I have in my life that I can go a year without speaking to and am able to pick up a conversation with them as if we had just talked on the phone the other day.  I was reminded that I have a great home in Indiana, which includes but is not limited to many great communities of people, restaurants, and parks.  It became normal again to go to a store to find whatever I needed, to go to a movie theater, to have a hot shower whenever I wanted, to drive a car, to watch TV, to have fast service, and to eat delicious American dishes.  It didn’t take long at all for me to slip back into living like the average middle-class American.  Being surrounded by all the good things I missed about living in Indiana, I only really missed the people and the weather of Rwanda this summer. 

Upon returning to Rwanda, I was greeted by my new roommates and old friends at the airport.  I walked onto Kigali soil and felt like I was coming home.  Last year at this time, my feelings were vastly different!  I wasn’t coming home.  I was not coming anywhere.  I was leaving.  Leaving everything behind to start anew in this place that I have come to love so much.  As soon as I got to my new house, it was clear that America was far behind me.  However, the funny thing is, I am ok with dealing with plumbing issues, a broken refrigerator, the lack of a mosquito net, never ending dirty feet, power outages, etc. because it’s Africa.  Those inconveniences have become an endearing quality of my life here.  Sure, I don’t always see it that way after going 3 days without a shower, but I have learned to accept it as a part of the journey.   

When I was in Indiana, I was so happy to be in Indiana.  Now that I am back in Rwanda, I am so happy to be here.  God has given me two homes, two places to return to.  There is no competition between the two, as some would like to think.  I would say they are pretty good friends actually.  At least I know they both have worked together to form a global community for me :) 

10 months

I could have gotten pregnant and had a baby all in the time I’ve been here and none of you would have seen me at any stage… this is not my way (a horrible way at that) of telling you I’ve had a baby.  To clear the air, I’m baby free, but I have become an aunt twice while being in Rwanda! 

Meet Grady Michael Schmitt

And Layna Jane Terrell

These are both pictures I have taken on Skype while chatting with my seriously technologically advanced niece and nephew!  Praise God for video chat.  I can’t imagine what it would have been like to be a missionary 5-10 years ago and have to rely on email to correspond… even further yet, snail mail!

I have moments, even still, when I experience sadness over being on another continent when even the most minor of changes are happening back home, like the birth of two beautiful babies. Jokes, that was a BIG wonderful change.  I will be back in the states in less than 2 weeks! Woo!  It will be so refreshing and life-giving to spend quality time with people I love, but I am figuring out that lots of stuff has changed since I left on August 1, 2010.  Sisters got pregnant, sisters had babies, friends got engaged, friends got married, people got sick, people passed away, people moved on with life.  It’s not like I live in this fantasy world where I think time stands still in the States because I’m not there.  I’ve experienced a lot of change myself this year that many of you can’t relate to because you didn’t see it as it was happening. My best analogy for this feeling is that change hits like an atomic bomb when you’ve been removed from home for so long.  If I was there during the changes, it would still affect me, but I think it would feel more like a gradual growing flood.  I still am not sure which one is easier to deal with—and the short answer is that both are difficult, but you can see a flood coming, so in my mind, you have some time to prepare for its entry to your life.  A bomb?  Well, I’ve never actually experienced a bomb explosion, but I can’t imagine having any time to process how life will continue after the explosion.  All I’d be able to focus on is the bomb itself.  So, as I think about coming home for a limited time, I am working on preparing myself to process all the changes that have happened without me. 

Pretending

I can’t pretend very well.  I think I used to be really good at pretending because I remember playing by myself a lot as a kid.  That statement could raise a lot of questions… to settle it I will just add that there was a large age gap between my sisters and I and so I had to come up with creative ways to pass the time without annoying my teenage sisters.  So yea, I think I was good at pretending.  Whether it was creating a soap opera with my Barbie dolls or playing against myself in basketball—do not judge—I liked creating a world that wasn’t a part of reality.  And by the way, every time I played myself in basketball, I won.  Just sayin’.  Somewhere a long the line,  I sadly lost this magnificent ability to pretend. 
Playing pretend as an adult is really frowned upon.  More or less, people think you are crazy.  This doesn’t mean that adults don’t pretend… but as an adult, pretending can more so be defined as lying or over exaggerating the truth.  We pretend to be people we are not.  We pretend to know all the answers.  We pretend we can handle more than we actually can.  We pretend to be more busy than we actually are.  We pretend that things don’t bother us when they actually do.  We pretend that life is worse on us than it actually is. 
Scratch what I said earlier about not being able to pretend.  I might be the guiltiest person alive when it comes to adult pretending.  My first thought and reason why I started this entry was to say that “I can’t pretend that physical pain doesn’t hurt” but now I think that I go the opposite way and I do pretend that it hurts worse than it really does.  Ah, caught. 
I recently have come down with a virus… one that I never expected to reveal itself in me until I was at least 78 years old.   Chicken pox has come and found me again, but this time in the form of shingles.  Out of all the illnesses I thought I would have the unfortunate contact with while living in Africa, shingles was never on my probability list.  But alas, here I am, 24 years old, chillin’ with my leftover pox.  I don’t know what you know about this virus, but it’s very odd.  It’s one of the only rashes that don’t itch and is painful.  It actually does nerve damage and can hurt years after the rash goes away.  The break out is on my right shoulder and chest and man it hurts (Not to over emphasize my pain).  The first day I learned that it was probably shingles, I cried a lot.  To my knowledge, the chicken pox virus was contagious, so shingles seemed like it would carry that characteristic as well.  My worst fear was that I would not be able to come to school the last 3 weeks (arguably the most important time of year) because I would be “untouchable”.  I got a miniature taste of what lepers felt like.  Take a deep breath.  Turns out, I am contagious, but only to people who have never had chicken pox and only if they come into contact with the infected area.  Solution- stay away from pregnant women and wear shirts that cover the grossness.  Done. 
If the worst case scenario would have come true (allowing my contagiousness to make me untouchable) I think I would have wallowed a lot more in my shingle skin.  The one thing that helps me to be positive is the fact that the pain hurts much less when I can be around people and not be seen as a huge virus.  So praise God for that!
My friend Hannah said very gleefully that there are many words that rhyme with shingle so I should write my blog as a poem!  This was her example poem in honor of my condition:
I decided to write a jingle
because I felt a tingle
and to my absolute horror
I found it was a shingle

Awkwardness… turns out I like it

When I first thought about teaching, middle school was the dreaded age of students for me.  I always thought of that age as being really stressful because of the many many changes occurring within each student going from being a kid to being a teenager.  I did not expect that 7th-8th graders would be my favorite grades to teach by the end of this year.  Maybe it’s just the particular class I have, or maybe I assumed too much of how I am incapable of relating to these kids.  I love them for many reasons, but mostly because they are still kids trying to be funny and dealing with the whole fitting in thing.  They still want to do kid stuff like play tag, jump rope, pretend they are in gunfire(boys are weird), do special hand claps, etc.  However, they are to the point where they want to fit in more with what the older “teens” are doing so they usually hold back their childlike behavior.  This combination makes them really awkward, which I like. 

For Young Life, a couple of weeks ago, we played Capture the Flag at the school.  Tons of kids 7th-12th grade showed up, but almost ALL 7th graders were there.  Their presence was known, mostly because they literally had no clue what they were doing, but you’d see them just running around screaming or hiding behind walls (usually on their own side). 

A few days ago, I had one of those days that at the end of it all, I couldn’t put to words all that happened.  I just looked at people dejectedly if they asked me how my day was.  Most of the craziness of my day happened with my middle school class—but I can’t blame them for everything.  First thing in the morning, I walk into my classroom, after being away for a long weekend and trusting a sub to tend to the kiddos, to find a tornado had hit and my desk had thrown up all over the floor.  I stood in shock at the mess because I had to teach in less than 40 minutes and was not expecting to spend half of that time playing clean up.  I realized later that my window latch was broken and there was a hazardous storm that weekend while I was away. 

Moving on… Surprisingly, the morning went really smoothly after that.  Ohhh but then 5th period came and in marched my beloved middle schoolers.  One student gave a PowerPoint presentation over the artist Van Gogh, which involved a class activity afterward in which he had placed a large piece of paper behind the Projector screen.  You know, for the sake of making a dramatic transition.  Well, I went up to help him put the screen up, but it wasn’t quite that simple.  As soon as I pulled down for it to go up, a gun fired!  Not really, but that is the sound that it made and the reason my students all screamed and some even paced the room because their hearts actually jumped from their chests.  Yup, the screen completely broke and would no longer go up and out of the way.   So then, I had a student help me hold up the screen so the presenter could move his class activity to another wall away from the screen trap.  During this class project, students came up two at a time to paint short brush strokes to mimic Van Gogh’s style.  This, being kind of chaotic already, became even more so when one student “accidentally” fell backwards off of his stool.    More uncontrollable laughter.  The aftermath was over after a few minutes and we seemed to have moved on from the silly crazy screams and laughter until the kicker came.  I was at my desk grading papers when I hear someone say, “What are you doing!?”  along with a lot of onomatopoeia that I can’t even try to recreate.  I look up to see the same student who fell out of his chair, holding up a HUGE falling wooden bookcase that, until that moment, held all of my students’ artwork.  He couldn’t push it back to the wall because he was a short 7th grade kid, so he just stood under its wrath letting everything pile out on the floor to get stepped on by 10 other kids who ran to rescue him.  By the time I got to his aid, another student had positioned himself to take the hero role and we were able to push the shelf safely back to its home.  I’m thankful to report that only a few pieces of art were stepped on enough to actually permanently harm the integrity of the art.  “How did that student get stuck under a bookshelf?”  Yea, I was getting to that.  The top shelf of that bookcase was reserved for their class to store their artwork, but since he was too short to see onto it, he stood on top of a stool to peak, but still wasn’t able to see.  He pulled himself up by grabbing onto the top shelf and so you have him loosing his balance and bringing the shelf with him. 

After the bell rang, students just ran out and left my class a mess.  I think they were in such a hurry to rid themselves of the dysfunctional  quality of my room, they jet as if there was literally a fire in there.  The debris was unbearable and I had never felt so defeated by clumsiness before.  The next class period, I stepped on two pencils, and a pencil sharpener twice—breaking it the 2nd time.  I needed a hug bad. 

Luckily, the next day 4 students were absent which made for an easy breezy class with very minimal drama.  I love those kids, even when their awkwardness causes a headache in the art room

Time Moves Faster in Africa

It is a common understanding that everything moves slower in Africa.  I’ll give you some examples of why people think this:

At a restaurant called Quickuku, a group of us waited 2 hours for fried chicken and fries. 

When walking down a street, I am always surprised by that occasional speedy Rwandan who would pass me walking. 

When we called someone to fix a plumbing problem of a faucet that was constantly in leak mode, we waited about a week for them to show up!  That was an expensive water bill month.

I went to a Rwanda birthday party, and little did I know that when they said it started at 6pm, they meant you will not eat dinner until 8:15pm.

Even though the day to day things seems to move in slow motion, my time in Rwanda has gone by lightening fast! I remember thinking it was going to be ages before my parents would come to visit… and guess what.  They’ve been here and gone already!  It was really great having them here, getting to experience life as I see it these days.  I tried to pack all the highlights of my time here into their one week experience.  We ate at an Italian Restaurant called Sole le Luna:

My parents went to bed early that night—my mom almost fell asleep in this beautiful scenic eatery.  The next day, we ate at my favorite and only donut place in Kigali, then headed to the market where my mom tried on some dresses.

Then we went to the Genocide Memorial.  Behind me is lists of recorded names of people who were killed in the genocide.

We had a get-together with most of my friends here and ate pizza and played cards!  I was so glad my parents got to spend time with the community I love so much here.

The next day we went to church and had lunch with some friends.  We also made it to the Orphanage and to town to buy some gifts at craft shops.  This is us in front of the orphanage gate.

We also ate at a restaurant where my mom ordered tilapia and was unpleasantly surprised to see that her fish… was probably just swimming in a lake only hours before.  Her appetite was ruined by the fish eye.

I also took my parents on an adventure to a Ugandan National Park where we went on a safari.  In this photo, they are in front of a village that lives inside the national park… right down the shore was a bunch of hippos that are apparently the biggest threat to humans.

The place we stayed had a great view of the flat safari.

We came into close contact with some lions—this one thought to have been a young male, with a snack in his mouth.

This elephant walked along side our boat tour for at least 5 minutes.  He was really happy carrying a sweet “stick” or log to us.

After all the safari action, we went to one of my favorite places in Africa, Lake Bunyonyi.  We stayed in a beautiful geo-dome and enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere and played cards, of course. 

My parents leaving was a mile marker.  With less than 5 weeks left, I am forced to think about leaving this place and the friends I have made.  I feel like I just went through this when I left Bloomington.  I realize I will be returning to Rwanda for another go, but I predict every year to be quite different.  This change of mostly people for next year reminds me of my primary purpose for being here.  It’s not for the community—it’s to serve God. The community is a big bonus, but it can’t be my main motivation.  That has to be Christ.  Pray with me about this unwanted change; that God would uphold me and that my eyes would be set on Christ alone. 

Student Artwork

Kindergarten

Grade 1

Grade 2

Grade 3

Grade 4

Grade 5

 

Grade 6

Grades 7-8

Grade 10