Wild fun.

Some days of fun to share plus some thoughts!  (I wrote this Friday night but couldn't post it until today- Saturday- so it might be a bit confusing)

First was two days ago, when Kassi, Ross, Lindsay, and I, decided to go on a walk throughout Kigali during our off time in the afternoon.   We walked down our road and found a little dirt path that brought us pretty far into the valley of the area near us.  We walked down a little neighborhood area, where we were quite the sight to be seen.  People were much less used to seeing muzungus in their neighborhood, so tons of kids and adults were coming out of their houses to see us.  We found this little shop where Ross wanted to buy a water bottle, but the two women only spoke primarily French.  SO I got to have my first translating experience, as I was the only one with any French knowledge.  It was pretty hard to know what she was saying, but I got most of it.  She actually ended up typing me what she was saying on her phone, which was worlds easier.  It was really interesting, I would give myself a B- for the translating, but we were successful.  There were also two little girls who started following us up the road, and we shared a little half English half Kinyarwanda conversation with them.   They ended up holding Lindsay’s hands at the end, which was super adorable.
Then yesterday we had "Per Diem" lunch, which means that we are given money to eat lunch off the compound when our cook Aidah goes to the market.  I went to this place called Meze Fresh with two other girls, Cosette and Kat.  We had an hour before our next class, so we leisurely walked there to eat, which was about a 15-20 minute walk. The outside of the building is bright lime green, and we were super excited when we got there.  It's basically the equivalent of Chipotle but with more African decor, but the menu was in English which was super!It was absolutely delicious, but we had to digest it pretty fast since we ended up having to power walk through Kigali and then run down our road in order to get back in time for class. A wonderful first Per Diem lunch- can't wait to explore more of Kigali's culinary masterpieces! I think we're trying a Chinese place on Sunday. mmm....

Today, our 1-3 class was rescheduled to tomorrow morning AND it’s Friday AND we had a delicious lunch, so the recipe for success was already there!  We decided to walk to the market in Kigali, which is absolutely crazy! We went to the jewelry/trinkets section, and the women and men just come up to you and say “Sister, come!” and show you everything they have in their little booth of the market.  I’m learning the art of bartering, which is not my specialty.  They definitely give you the muzungu price, so we were told to break it in half or even more, and definitely not to pay what they tell you from the start.  I got a necklace and little wallet thing, for 3500 rwandan francs, which is around $5.70.  (615 Francs to 1 American Dollar) I suppose I could get better at my bartering skills, but pretty good for day one.  Then we decided to go see a soccer game at the Stadium.  Feeling lazy and being the only ones who still wanted to go to the game Kassi, Lindsay, and I jumped on a mutatu.  We passed the rest of the girls on the way, who were still walking, and waved from the bus, which was hilarious.   The three of us were planning to ride the mutatu to the front entrance of the stadium, but Kassi spotted a stop right by the back of the stadium.  So, we only ended up riding the mutatu for like a half mile and paying 200 francs- making us look like stupid muzungus for riding it for so short and overpaying for our ride (apparently we should have paid like 100 or less). We were just being lazy for riding it in the first place…So we got off behind the back of the stadium and followed this group of people through this rugged dirt path around until we got to the side of the stadium.  It was pretty crazy because we didn’t even really know where we were going, and people were like jumping over and going through fences to get into the arena without paying (which we didn’t do…), and we passed through the middle of the drivers education place where people were practicing driving (which I can’t imagine any real rules being taught based on their driving…) .  We then waited for Mitch, one of our student life coordinators, to meet us because we weren’t super comfortable being the only muzungu, or female pretty much, for as far as we could see.  We then bought the 1000 franc cheap tickets and watched the game.  We had some trouble figuring out what team Rwanda was, but it was good after that.  Although we saw no goals, but we saw a full on tackle and a brief injury! WOO!

Some things I’ve been thinking about this week.  In our development class, Dwight Jackson was talking about how one of the characteristics of God is vulnerability.  He opened it by saying the time he felt the most vulnerable was when he asked his wife to marry him.  He said in that moment, he was putting his life into her hands and basically asking what she would do with it, and he used that to explain God.  God puts all of Him in our hands and His entire life, literally through Christ, and asks what we’re going to do with it.  In that moment, God is completely vulnerable to us, because we can choose to say yes to Him and accept the life that comes with knowing Him and loving Him, or we can reject all that He has planned for us and turn away from Him.  I know that the metaphor of marriage is used often when talking about the church, but I had never heard it in this aspect.  Just thought it was interesting and worth sharing!

Here's some shots of Kigali from our walk the other day, starting here at
our road and then travelling down the valley more:

Me in Kigali! (Ignore my awkward hands- I was holding onto the strap
of my bag)

Kassi, Lindsay, and me at the soccer game! PRESH.

Muraho!

Muraho! or Hello in Kinyarwanda! So, a lot has happened in the past few days, and our internet has been down so I haven’t had the opportunity to share any of it yet, which is super sad! So here goes:

We flew into Africa on Sunday, August 19th from Qatar.  First we landed in Uganda for people to get on and off, and then we took off for a quick flight to Rwanda.  It was terrible waiting for the plane to start up again- we were all so excited and waiting felt like forever. But finally, we landed in Kigali International Airport!  The airport is super small, so we got all our luggage quickly and headed outside and loaded up some trucks and piled into our first mutatu (more to come about that later).  Then we drove about 10 minutes to our house.  Since Kigali is the capital city of Rwanda, it’s pretty developed (like most roads are paved and such).  But our road is probably the worst kept in Rwanda, which is pretty funny.  We drove superrr slow down this uneven dirt road until we came up to our house.  We buzzed the bell and waited for Celestine to open the gate for us and the first thing we see is this straight up hill.  But, our little van full of 16 people chugged right on up it and we made it! Our compound is awesome!  There are two houses, the big house and the little house, and then in between them is a little garage type place that serves as our classroom.  The 16 girls live in the big house, where there’s a sitting room, a dining room for our meals, the kitchen, three bathrooms, and a porch with a table.  I’m in a 6 person room, which is a two person increase from last year!  We unpacked, had a little orientation, and then walked to a pizza place called Sol E Luna for dinner, which was delicious. They had over 80 pizza flavors.  It was my kind of place. 

The next day was our first full day in Kigali, which was incredible.  We went on a walking tour of the city, where we got to see some important landmarks, but the real exciting part was later.  After a delicious lunch by Aidah, our cook, we headed out for “Muzungu Mutatu Madness,” tagline: Shoving disgruntled foreigners into vans since 2012.  Muzungo is the word for foreigner and it literally means “aimless wanderer,” but basically it means white person.   So, let me try to explain.  A mutatu is basically a 15 passenger van that you use to get around. They’re supah cheap and really easy to find, so everyone uses them.  They basically go either downtown, which is “mumungo” or towards the other direction where our house is, which is “kimironko” (chimee- ron- ko).  So we had a scavenger hunt where we had to find these places in Kigali and get around by walking and mutatu.  Quite an adventure.  It’s really hard to find things with no map and barely being able to speak the same language as anyone else (most people speak Kinyarwanda).  Also, everyone stares at you and lots of people say Muzungo when they see you, which is strange getting used to.  On the way back, two girls and I jumped on the right mutatu by saying “KIMIRONKO!” which was our first victory.  Feeling good, we told them we needed to get off in front of the Justice Building, but the conductor had no idea what we were saying.  But instead of freaking out, we decided to do what we saw someone do and what we were told to do, which is knock on the inside of the van before your stop.  So we did it and the conductor turned around and smiled at us and a bunch of people laughed with him so surprised we knew what to do.  It was awesome. We found our stops and had a ton of fun, and feel a lot more comfortable getting around here. 

Today we had our first day of classes, which was great.  The morning 9-12 class is about peace building with Pastor Anastace, who seems awesome.   The afternoon class from 1-3 is “Social context for development” and is very focused on poverty; it seems difficult but interesting.  They both sound pretty hands on and very discussion based, which I will definitely like.  A few of us went into town during our free time from 3-6 and exchanged money, had an interesting pharmacy experience, and went to our first clothing store where they wanted us to pay way more than it was. Overall, very good day! Welp, hope everyone is doing well, talk at you soon!

This is the big house, where I live.  Can't see much, but it gives you a
general idea.

This is the guest house with the awesome hammock
swings in front which are perfect for relaxing.

PURPY! Bubbles, one of the dogs that lives on
our compound.

Our classroom! It has three walls and then where I'm standing to take a
picture is the open wall with a view of...

THIS! looking out over Kigali. So beautiful!

Off to Qatar!

So today has been super incredible! We started off the day in D.C. waking up, getting our luggage all set, and having brief orientation.  Michael, our current leader, told us a lot of about the philosophy of the Go-Ed program and aspects of living within the program.  One topic he touched on that I thought was so thought provoking was the “Spiritual Leprosy” of our church today.   As he explained, Leprosy is a terrible disease that was very prevalent during Christ’s time, and it’s characterized by losing feeling in certain parts of your body and disfigurement due to that.  For example, if your arm was slammed in a car door, there would still be injury, but you would have no feeling from it.  He explained how we always talk about the church as the body of Christ, but we don’t even take into consideration the implications of such a statement.  If we are truly a body, shouldn’t we feel something when our brothers and sisters in other countries are persecuted and in danger?  We, as a body, have developed Leprosy.  When our arm in Sudan gets slammed in a car door, we feel nothing.  But the damage is still there.  We need to wake up to what’s going on and do something.  This whole notion got me so super excited for this trip.  To go and meet more of the body of Christ and learn from them and hopefully be able to teach them something is so exciting.  More to come there I’m sure!

Then we grabbed some lunch, picked up last minute belongings, waited around for a few hours, and headed to the airport.  We arrived at Dulles International Airport at about 5:45 for our 11 pm flight, so we had quite a bit of downtime.  Lots of time for good conversation and plenty of time to go through security (which we needed since some people forgot they had Swiss Army Knives in their backpacks… love you Lindsay).  We boarded our plane a little after ten, and took off right about at midnight because of slight weather delays.  The plane was fantastic.  We flew on Qatar airlines, and it was about a 12.5 hour flight.  We had supah fancy TV things in our seats, which has tons of movies, shows, games, and music, and got two meals (Chicken and pasta and stuff with chocolate mousse for dinner and Apple Pancakes and other things for breakfast- we obviously ate both meals even though we weren’t really hungry…).  I watched The Lucky One (eh.) and The Lorax (two thumbs up!) in between music and sleeping.  We landed in Qatar at about 7:30 pm here, which was 12:30 pm our time.  It's pretty sweet because I never would have thought I'd be spending any time, no matter how little, in the Middle East- but it’s so hot here.  We landed at it was already completely dark outside, but it was one of the hottest days I’ve experienced in a while.  Also, some of us had shorts on coming off the plane, which was really interesting.  We felt so immodest compared to everyone else’s dress, which is strange when I think that these are the long shorts I bought to wear at camp all summer.   Perspectives change I suppose.  We then got a delicious dinner of who knows what here at the hotel.   So right now I am in a beautiful hotel in Qatar before leaving tomorrow morning at 5 am to head to Doha International Airport for our 7:30 flight to Kigali! So far it’s been quite the adventure, especially trying to navigate through the Doha Airport… Well, that’s all for now! Here’s some teaser pictures, and I added some to the last post too:

Yay! There's our flight to Doha! (at least I think so... I thought we were
actually in A19, so this might be wrong. Butttttt, let's pretend it's right!)

At Doha International Airport! It's a little bit empty,
don't ya think?

Lindsay and my hotel room in Qatar- Crazy!

From the hotel- outside on the 6th floor by the
 pool.  Check facebook later for more of these
pictures, it was absolutely beautiful!

Beginnings

Hello there!  I wanted to make this blog in order to keep the people that I love and the people that love me, updated on my adventures coming up.  In case you don't know, I'm studying abroad in Rwanda for this semester.   A lot went into me getting here, so I'll being you up to speed in case you need it...
This year, I spent my summer being a camp counselor at a fantastic Christian camp, Camp Hebron, in Halifax, PA.  I showed up on June 5th for a week and a half of training, and then had 8 amazing weeks of camp, finishing August 11.  Eight weeks of slippy slide, cabin devos, Gold Rush, amazing conversations with campers and staff, fantastic new friends, campfires, prayers, and smiles.  God did some incredible things throughout the summer, both in my own life, and in the life of my campers.  I could write for pages and pages about that experience, but that's not what this adventure is about.  On August 11 I was picked up from camp and then spent the 12-16th in the Outer Banks with my family for vacation.  Today I woke up at 3:45 am, hopped in the car, and arrived at 11 am here in Washington DC for Orientation. So basically, since June I've only been home for one day and won't be back til December. Crazy... anyways!
Like I said, God did some incredible things in my own life this summer, and one of them was getting me ready for this experience.  He showed me over and over this summer how He provides for all our needs, and more abundantly than we could ever imagine.  I showed up to camp not knowing anyone or anything, and having no expectations- and God showed me one of the most incredible and fulfilling summers I could have ever asked for.  One week, I was placed as a counselor for Ultimate Adventure camp, where we went caving, rock climbing, canoeing, and on a ten-mile hike.  I spent the weekend before in so much tears and prayers worried about the week and wondering why God wanted me in that camp.  A few days in I had a conversation with a camper where it was so obvious that God placed us together in that camp to have that conversation.  Another week, I was having a terrible time not knowing what I was supposed to be doing, and the opportunity arose to help bring one of my girls to accept Jesus as her Lord and Savior.  Basically, God showed me countless times over this summer that He has plans for me and that He will always provide for me.
And that's where I got the title for this blog.  Psalm 28:7 reads: "The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song."   So much goodness in that verse. My heart trusts in Him and I am helped.  God always helps us when we trust in Him.  But there's the important part- that we have to trust in Him.  That's what I've been learning all summer, and that's what I'm going to keep learning and working on all semester.  Trusting that God will keep me safe, happy, cared for, loved, comforted, focused, and whatever else I may need.  As the verse says, the Lord is my strength.  He will be my strength through the bad times, and I will give thanks to Him for this opportunity in all the times, amazing or rough.
So today, after a day of saying goodbye to family, meeting new friends, visiting the Lincoln Monument and the Holocaust Memorial, walking for miles in D.C., I am going to sleep remembering Psalm 28:7.  It's what I'm going to be clinging to this semester.  Tomorrow, we get on our flight at 11 PM to fly to Qatar, which is near Saudi Arabia, where we'll have an overnight lay over, and then the next day we head off to Kigali! Prayers are greatly appreciated, and I am thinking of you all in my prayers as well.  Next time I write I'll be in Africa! AHHHHH YAYAYAYAY!


These first two are from summer camp! The first one is one of my greatest friends Laura and me for dress your roommate dinner during orientation.  The second one is a bunch of summer staff on our last day trying to get into meals like we have to do with campers.  Every meal during cabin/shabin camps as a counselor, you line up your cabin and stand on the steps, sing a group song, have someone pray, and then have to sing and be crazy until you get called in to eat. It's crazy.

This is a fabulous one of my boyfriend Timothy and I
at the DC Zoo, one of our many weekend adventures
 from this summer in the midst of my job.

Here's a picture of a bunch of my family in North Carolina
on our vacation! Hello everyone! :]