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First Safari: September 2010

Four years ago I arrived in this beautifully strange land with a thousand hills and a million possibilities.  Everything was new and scary but I was starting an adventure, just me and God.  There was no trace of my prior life here in Rwanda.  It was exhilarating to step that far out of my comfort zone.  Even whilst living here, my reality has changed over and over again when waves of people come and go I'm left behind trying to adapt to my new normal.  Comfort zone... what even is that anymore?  

Friends in Kigali: April 2011

Friends in Kigali: May 2013

Friends in Kigali: April 2014

I spent a month in the States this July and I was shocked by my own inability to adapt back to my prior life, my prior self, my prior understanding of home.  The question of "what is home?" kept circling my mind.  I always thought of it as my safe place where I am understood and can be at ease.  My physical residence has changed several times in my life, but home has always seemed sturdy until now.  It has nothing to do with anything or anybody but me.  I have changed.  I have become conflicted of where I fit best; in the place I grew up? or in the foreign place I have come to reside?  The thing is, neither of those places are really home to me.  I can't go back to not knowing the things I now know from living outside of my own culture.  I also can't pretend I really fit in to a place where I'm consistently stared at because I'm so "exotic".  In one sense, I'm stuck in this place of misunderstandings.  But on the other hand, I have been given a huge gift!  This dilemma makes me rely on God's promise to provide an everlasting home for me and to be evermore thankful that whilst I feel like a nomad on this planet, God placed a desire in me to be at home with Him.  He is the only place I could reside in which I would be completely known, understood, appreciated, loved, safe, and comforted.  Why search anywhere else to provide that for me?  It would be second rate!  

Friends in Kigali: July 2014

While I was in Indiana this July, my beloved uncle, Ron Seger, passed away and left us for this eternal home promised to him.  He was an incredible man of faith and I admired the way he did not waver when his illness steadily got worse.  He knew that this life on earth wasn't all there was.  Anxiety of dying didn't follow him because he sought after God to provide the security that his best days are ahead of him in a place that will fulfill his every need and ache in his heart for complete union with his loving and gracious Creator.  I thank God for Ron's life, legacy, and example of the inexplicable peace we can have when we abandon all fears of the unknown and trust in the LORD!  Home isn't a place, time, or even a group of people.  Home is forever in the presence of a loving God who calls you His.  

"For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. ² We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. ³ For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies.⁴ While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. ⁵ God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit. ⁶ So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. ⁷ For we live by believing and not by seeing. ⁸ Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord. ⁹ So whether we are here in this body or away from this body, our goal is to please him. ¹⁰ For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body." 2 Corinthians 5:1-10