Psalm 28:7: OoOoOoOoh, We're halfway there...!

A waitress walks up to a table. “What will you be halving?” she asks. Confused and assuming they heard her wrong, the customers just order what they were planning on having, which was peanut butter and apple slices. In a few minutes, the waitress returns with apple sauce and places it on the table. Confused, they ask, “We didn’t order this, we ordered apple slices and peanut butter!” The waitress responded, “Right, well the apple slices we half, but peanut butter, well we don’t half that.”

Welp, here I am, halfway through practicum and halfway through my time in Africa. (If you couldn’t tell, which I’m sure you could, I just wrote that lil joke myself. I really wanted to start out with a joke or pun using the word “half,” but that’s surprisingly harder to find than I expected. As a result, I wrote my own. I thought it was funny...) I left for DC 60 days ago, and I’ll be flying back into DC in 55 days. So insane to think that this journey is already halfway over, but when I think back on what I’ve experienced and think ahead to the absolutely amazing people that are waiting for me to come home, I feel incredibly at peace with it all.

But anyways, back to Africa. Before I talk about this past week, I wanted to make some clarifications to my last post because some people asked questions. One, my job as Evangelism Intern was going to be about organizing chapel services for the catch up students, church for the boarders, bible studies, choir, stuff like that. Not all the students that come through the center are Christians, so that job really is about evangelizing and both reaching out to them, and encouraging the students who are already following Christ in their walk. But, I’m really happy where I’ve found myself instead over the past two weeks. Also, the staff, like the students, pretty much only speak Kinyarwanda. Carrie, the director, and Melissa, who has been there for three years but now only works two days a week at the Center, are both from America, so obviously speak English, and then Andrew, a Rwandan, speaks very good English and serves as our translator most of the time. Also I realized I never stated that I'm here working for the month with two other girls from my program, Aleaha and Madi.

Alright, so week two! This week we welcomed Mikey, another Go-Ed student, to the Center, which has been a lot of fun. Something that hasn’t been fun, has been working through sickness. All four of us have, in different intensities, found ourselves sick, and as a result have placed ourselves on a very strict “toasted bread and fruit” diet. Thankfully, we’re all back to not cringing at the site of food and eating things that aren’t just the color yellow. Fortunately or unfortunately, feeling sick has stopped me from desiring to go to sports time, which, due to the insane rainy season here, has been off site soccer and indoor basketball all week. This means I had two more hours a day to spend in the library, and even more than that if I skipped out on going to COCA or recess time, which I did often (Jonas and Jonathan, the German interns, run all three of those things, so it’s no necessity to have any of the four of us attending as well). This means, drumroll please, MOST OF THE LIBRARY IS DONE! I’m very proud. All the textbooks have been labeled, inventoried, and put on shelves (over 900 books total!), as have the teacher resources in the teacher's lounge (432 workbooks, overheads, lesson planners, etc.), and the topical books, fiction books, and children books have been relabeled if need be, organized, and shelved. Strong boys, as we tell them we need, have helped me move shelves full of books to where they should be- but let’s not ignore the guns that I’m getting from toting books and textbooks and shelves throughout the room! It’s been incredibly encouraging to watch the library progress, really satisfying to know I did all that work myself, and also humbling to know that I can complete the work of two years of interns and workers before me. As much as I love working in the library, some days spent in there alone have been, well, lonely. But when students poke their heads in asking for books, or thanking me for working on their library, or when Carrie tells me that she’s been praying for someone with a heart for the library to come along, it really makes it all worth it. So that’s been the bulk of my week. I’m really happy to attach some updated shots of what the library looks like now, and I’ve added some more “before” shots to my last post along with clarifying the descriptions so you can really see the difference so far. This week I’ll finish labeling shelves and start decorating, and soon the library will be open for business! Yahoo!

On Tuesday of this week though, I did leave the library during sports time to watch the boys play soccer. They check out cleats from the center and go off and play at a dirt field about a ten minute walk away, since their field isn't ready to be played on yet. When I got there, I couldn’t help but laugh that there were four cows grazing right on the edge of the field, but I guess that’s Africa for ya. Madi and I brought along a football to throw around, and attracted two adorable little kids, Sylvie and her brother (I never asked his name… oops). Every time I’d get the football thrown to me, I’d toss if over to both of them, and they’d toss it back, and they started getting fancy/funny as they got used to the football and my funny faces and expressions. Soon the little boy came up to me and grabbed my hand and said ball, pointing to the unused soccer balls. So I grabbed it and we moved down the field and kicked it around, which they loved much more. The boy came up to me again and motioned that he wanted to dribble against me, which was hilarious. He absolutely schooled me, except when I’d scoop him up and take the ball away from him. I then played a version of money in the middle with some older neighborhood boys, which again, I got schooled at. I took out my camera after, which the kids loved, and got some fun and adorable shots of them and funny pictures taken by them, a few of which are below. A little girl held my hand the whole way home, even though she had to wipe the sweat off when she left. Oh well.

On Friday, Sabatto (that’s what his name sounds like, hopefully that’s how it’s spelt too…), one of the boarders, invited Madi and me to come to his school to a church service they were having where he was preaching. We went along with him, and enjoyed a really nice walk, filled with conversations of my favorite parts of Rwanda, questions about life in Rwanda and school, and as we passed countless cows and goats, questions of if we have the same animals in America. Finally, we reached the school, which is a secondary and primary school combined, so it was swarming with children. They were very excited to see a muzungu and as we followed Sabatto to the classroom, we had quite the mob of children following us. That will never get old, and when I get back to America, I’m really going to miss having kids like me just because I’m white- I doubt I'm going to be able to make a baby instantly stop crying when it sees me, like I can here. When we got to the classroom, Sabatto had us sit up in the front on the side, as we were visitors and also for easy translation purposes. We listened to, and participated in, tons of absolutely beautiful songs by the choir. Again, Madi got a recording that I’m definitely going to have to take and share when I’m back home. Standing in that classroom looking outside at precious kids and banana trees, listening to beautiful Kinyarwandan songs and clapping along, I felt so full and just had to thank God. After some songs, we took a break to pray, which just insists of everyone praying out loud at the same time. How beautiful and powerful! Then back to singing, including “Hosanna,” which is one of the songs we actually know a few words of and the dance too, which was really fun! After that was visitor introductions, where you stand up, say Hallelujah, and talk a bit about yourself. Now let me tell you, Rwandans love their Hallellujahs. Anytime someone says it, everyone responds back AMEN! and the louder and more frequent it happens, the more they love it! Madi got up and gave a powerful Hallelujah. Mine, not so much. We all laughed. Thankfully, that’s on the recording too. Then more singing, some preaching from Sabatto on Romans 12:4, and then more singing. It was such a beautiful and fulfilling service, and a ton of fun on top of that too. When we left, we were already late to dinner, so we hopped on bike taxis. They’re just bicycles with big seats on the back to sit on, and they only cost 100 francs, so they’re a good deal too. It’s something I’ve wanted to do since getting to Rwamagana, as they’re everywhere, and I was excited to finally be able to. Sadly, we were riding at night, downhill, and my driver was on his phone for part of it then decided to race the other bikes, so it wasn’t as fun as I was expecting. I think I was either praying or cringing the whole time, which must have been a sight because when Sabatto saw my face, he burst out laughing. I yelled to him “IS THIS SAFE?! THIS ISN’T FUN!” but he wasn’t holding on and I was holding on for dear life, so I think I just have much to learn. Thankfully we made it home safe and sound and back for toast and bananas.

Other highlights (not of the good kind…) of the week include- waking up at 2 am to a giant bug on my head that had gotten into my mosquito net, watching a cow walk down the street and fall on the pavement, getting caught in countless rainstorms, and not having running water for many days (when I skyped my parents yesterday they said they could smell me from America…). But thankfully, Africa is still beautiful and amazing, and we still have hot chocolate every day for breakfast.

So yeah, another long post, but I’ve heard that people enjoy reading about my adventures, so hopefully long is okay! Check out some sweet pics below, and have a fantastic week! Still sending lots of love and prayers from Africa!