Two Muzungus I couldn't have done without

My Favorite People II

The first person I must talk about is, my housemate and companion 24/7, Carmen. To most people we interact with, it is shocking that Carmen and I just met. In fact, about 60 days ago, we were complete strangers. Now, we could write the other's autobiography. Carmen claims Ohio as home, but she also grew up as a missionary kid in Costa Rica and Venezuela. She has been an absolute delight to get to know and to spend time with. As we work together, live together and walk everywhere, we spend almost every waking moment of the day together. Not only have I never wanted to kill her, but I have never even been annoyed with Carmen in the slightest. This is remarkable considering how annoying I know I can be. Seriously, Carmen has a huge heart for the world, a strong and beautiful burning spirit for Christ and is incredibly dedicated to being great at whatever she does (which she does effortlessly). Clearly she and her fiance are guided by God because they are getting married just seven days after we get back to the United States. For this alone, she may be a bit crazy, but she is just crazy about following the call to do good work, which is exactly what she's been doing in Rwanda. I am amazed by her zeal, her ability to laugh at just about anything, the fact that she never complains, her intelligence, and the wonderful stories she has to tell. I think it's pretty cool that two very well traveled Spanish speakers ended up in Rwanda hanging out. Our first weeks in Rwanda all we did was exchange travel stories. Although we've both been to over twenty countries, we have only actually been to the same two or three countries, excluding Rwanda. I think that's pretty remarkable! I am pleased that I will be her last roommate before she is married, and I hope that she would say the same about me. What a bright future lies ahead of her, I can't wait to see where she ends up and whether or not she will hire me. ;) If we hadn't gotten along, my summer would have been tremendously miserable. But because we got along so well, my summer was greatly enhanced.

Shelley - Shelley left Rwanda two weeks ago but we miss her so much that it feels like she's been gone a month. Shelley first really amazed me in the big market called Kimironko. We were trying to decide how much we should pay for a pineapple. She picked it up, said about how much she guessed it weighed in pounds, stated about what the average price per pound of pineapple is in the US, converted pounds to kilos and then converted the price per kilo to Rwandan Francs and then spit out a price that we should pay for the pineapple that would be reasonable. Maybe this is lost on you, but this amazed me. Not only do I not know the price of any single item in a grocery store, I certainly could not convert dollars and pounds in a few seconds and then use it as an effective negotiation tool to then haggle over the price of a pineapple in Kinyarwanda which none of us speak. Shelley is so many things that I am not. She's athletic, humble, incapable of sitting for more than five minutes, gracious, and patient. But like me, she is always hungry for a little adventure. Shelley arrived in Rwanda a few weeks before Carmen and I so her first weeks trials became our knowledge. I will always be grateful to her and Lauren for showing us the ropes of living in Kigali and for being our friends in a city when we had none. The icing on the cake of Shelley's awesomeness is her beautiful heart for God and her receptiveness to where He is leading her.  She always had us laughing and she was usually our fearless leader for any activity. At least once a day someone in the house says "I miss Shelley." I am already looking forward to us hanging out in Malibu in January!

There's more to see than can ever be seen and more to do than can ever be done

I am off to KENYA! I will be there for 5 days, doing a 3 day safari sleeping in tents in the Masai Mara. Check it out here.
In anticipation until I get back, Read on about the Great Migration HERE: http://www.phoenix-safaris.com/images/news/Migration%20Update%20Mara%20Siria2013.pdf

But most of you probably relate to it because it was this migration of Wildebeest that killed Mufasa.




Wish me great adventures, can't wait to share photos and stories when I get back!

until God sends us somewhere else

One of the most popular posts on this blog from when I was living in Madrid, Spain was a series I did on my favorite people. And so, a few snippets of the amazing people that I have met in my six weeks in Rwanda. Meeting people is absolutely one of my top three favorite things about traveling. And this summer a few people I've had limited interactions with have had a BIG impact on me.

• Akagera Couple - a woman who developed curriculum for USAID and her husband, who have been living in Rwanda for one year but have been living in Africa or the Middle East for 27 years. When I asked them if when they got married they had any idea they would live overseas for most of their marriage, he responded, "We didn't know at the altar, but God made it pretty clear shortly after." And I just love that. When asked how much longer they would be in Rwanda, he chirped immediately, "Well, we'll be here until God sends us somewhere else." I just loved that. Aren't we all just somewhere until God sends us somewhere else?
• Mimi - Mimi lived in the DRC as a missionary kid for the first 15 years of her life. Then she went to boarding school in the US and didn't see her parents for many years. It could take a year for a letter to get to DRC from the US in the 50's, if it even got there at all. She told us some incredible stories and I could have listened to her talk for hours. I said to a friend of hers how impressed I was and that she should write a book! She responded plainly, "She has!" Click here for her story and devotional books. Her husband, a doctor and professor of medicine for the University of Colorado is in Rwanda working for the Clinton Foundation to help educate doctors in Rwanda to promote better family health practices. 
• Two high schoolers with such maturity and wisdom far beyond their years in Rwanda for several weeks to help Mimi with her projects and around the house. They have such bright futures ahead! 
• A girl who is here in Rwanda designing the sowing projects for a women's cooperative with her fashion design degree. SO COOL!!
• Missionary Family #1 - Gary has been here in Rwanda for 27 years. It goes without saying that he has an incredible story about coming here on a short term mission trip, and never leaving. Read on HERE.
• Missionary Family #2- A couple who have lived in Southern California and Oxford, UK and now have their two children in Rwanda. When they first met, they had no idea that he would chase a Masters in Divinity in Oxford, that would lead them to WorldVenture, that would lead them to Rwanda. These missionaries host a school for preachers. Since Rwanda's education system is built on memorization, the average Rwandan doesn't know how to use the critical thinking portion of his or her brain. This blows my mind, because as a law student, the ONLY part of your brain you use is critical thinking. So the preachers here start preaching to churches, only on what they have memorized or feel "called" to talk about, but have no formal biblical education. Very interesting the work they do, and how it can have such a huge impact on Rwandans whose faith is stronger than most faith, but whose biblical knowledge and spiritual foundation is lacking.
  Read MORE here. Really cool work, interesting people and this organization is the one who provided us a house to live in while in Rwanda.
• Devin - fluent in Kinyarwanda (I cannot overemphasize the impressive nature of this statement because this language is so impossible) from living in rural Rwanda for two years with the PeaceCorp. She is now in law school at Tulane, and is a delight to spend time with. 
• Mary Ann - a student working on her Masters in Counseling, in Rwanda for a few weeks to host a training session with our IJM counselors. Mary Ann is awesome. She came to Rwanda with open eyes, an open heart and dived right in. She asked some hard-hitting questions, and got us each thinking about God's plan and our futures as she was contemplating her own. Interested in using her gifts for counseling victims of trauma, I am confident that wherever God sends her, she will be a great asset to that community. We were so sad she wasn't here for the whole summer. She also boldly drank an entire glass of fermented milk. You may be thinking, "that's not so impressive," but I couldn't stand within 20 feet of the milk for more than 30 seconds until I got gagged and had to run out of the room. And she drank it! Then survived a three hour drive on bumpy, uneven, dirt roads in the back of the car. She is a champion. We miss you Mary Ann! 
• A girl who works for WorldVision, about my age. She is on a tour of East Africa, spending a few days in each country visiting WorldVision sites. After three sentences, I was green with envy for her job.

The people I have REALLY gotten to know this summer I will "teach you" (as you would say in Spanish) about in my next post.

"When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, 'The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."
-Matthew 9:36-38