Imana nziza.

(Translated: God is good.)

Yes, I know. I already have a post with that title, but it’s completely different ’cause it’s now in Kinyarwanda. And just to throw it out before I begin the actual update, I’m using a laptop with a German/Austrian keyboard layout (meaning the z and y are switched, and there are all these umlaut-ed vowels randomly placed on the right side of the keyboard), so half the time writing this will probably be spent rewriting ys for zs and searching for the apostrophe or other common punctuation marks(?) and symbols.

 

It’s already the new year here in Rwanda, and I’m in the corner of the base lounge, lit only by the back-light of this laptop and an anti-feng shui Chinese lantern-like light fixture hanging from off the wall, updating this blog for friends and family to read.

 

“What to do, what to do”

As outreach teams began leaving Kona throughout the send-off week, the halls got quieter, the food lines were no longer bustling with YWAMers, and my room no longer ranked of man. As the second-to-last team to depart, the campus was, by then, a ghost town, and creativity was key to the enjoyment of the remaining hours on base. We had no choice but to live off of microwaveable food items, as the mission builders who worked the kitchens all went home earlier in the week. On top of that, teams would often head for the airport between 4-5am each morning, so many of the remaining DTSers would get very little sleep if they wanted to be at the flags to send off their friends or roommates.

 

I always get the middle seat

The 3 day journey to Rwanda was an interesting adventure. My whole family met up with our team during our layover in San Francisco. My parents made breakfast burritos for everyone, my brother prayed for me, Johannah baked cookies, and Danielle told me all these instances in which she got owned (i.e. soccer ball to the face, sprained finger, etc.). And they brought me stuff I needed for outreach which was perfect. After all the hassle in the Heathrow airport, a group of us were finally able to get on a Pickadilly line train to the city, where we didn’t get to do much except walk around, eat McDonalds, and experience red telephone booths. But the weather was nice and cold. I missed that while I was in Kona. For the flight to Kenya, I pretty much slept the whole way, only waking up for meals when the food carts came down the aisles (my teammate would nudge me). It was beautiful.

 

First glance

I’m not sure what I expected Rwanda to be like, but it’s been a wonderful experience so far. In many ways, it’s very similar to any other third world country–there’s very little running water, most of the nation is filled with dirt roads, and the streets are filled with hand-me-down cars–yet I feel like this small nation has so much to offer.

 

Rwanda never received much international attention ’til the genocide of 1994. It was tragedy that put Rwanda on the map. Even today, those gruesome three months are all it’s really known for. But as my Rwandan team leader has been sharing with us, there’s been so much growth in the last 15 years (and even in the last 3 years since he’s been here). Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, is considered the second cleanest city in all of Africa, justice is continually being brought to those involved in the genocide, and there are so many Rwandans up and down the streets that consider themselves as born again believers. And if anyone in the world understands forgiveness and reconciliation, it’s these loving and friendly people.

Umuzungu
On a lighter note, it’s amazing how much attention you get as a non-African walking the streets. For many of them, it’s not even a slight glance or a polite stare-when-you-aren’t-paying attention. It’s a full on, no shame, drop-everything-you-were-doing stare. I guess I’ve kinda gotten used to it already, but it still amazes me how intently they can gaze at us. They call all pale-skinned foreigners umuzungus (ooh-moo-zoong-goos). The locals love to stroke blonde hair, they love when you take pictures of them, and they get a kick out of a foreigner greeting them in their language. It’s hard to memorize, but I’m trying to learn as many useful words as I can.

Campus life
Because it’s the holiday season, there are no ministries working out of this base at the moment, which would include a widows ministry, orphan ministry, HIV/AIDS ministry, and other community ministries. So to sum up my experience here so far, I’ll just keep it to phrases: bucket showers, hot dog buns, work duty continued, mosquito nets, and taxibuses.

I don’t know yet exactly why I was called here. I have a feeling for a few things, but I’m just expecting God to surprise me with awesome experiences for the short time I have here. It would be awesome if you all can just continue with your prayers for our team, ’cause it’s a comforting thing to know that there are others interceding on our behalf. Yeah, and to anyone who’s reading this, have a happy new year.

 

Picture update

Sitting atop the luggage on a pick-up from the airport to the base.

 

The Kigali YWAM base. It’s the biggest set of buildings on the street.

 

First Rwandan wedding. The pastor and others praying over the newlyweds. For some reason, they allow anyone to go all the way up to the front and take pictures. I didn’t want to miss out on the opportunity.

 

We were invited to the wedding because our leader is friends with this man. At the reception, this guy shook hands with all 18 of us and repeated “God bless you very much” each time. I guess the literal English translation never works out too well.

 

The hotel featured in the film Hotel Rwanda (and Sometimes In April).

 

Kigali Memorial Centre. The main memorial for the genocide. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, which housed the history of Rwanda, detailed information about the genocide, and photographs of hundreds of people killed. There was a section upstairs dedicated to the children, with some specific accounts of the causes of their deaths.

 

The names of only 2000 of the estimated 1,000,000 victims of the genocide.

 

Under these large stones lie piles and piles of the bones and bodies of the victims.

The Audience of One.

It’s hard to believe that Team Cambodia from our DTS is already leaving on the 15th. I’ve grown quite close to a handful of them, and I know that they’re going to have amazing testimonies to share with the rest of us come March. I’m truly excited for what God has in store for them.

I’ve been here for over 11 weeks now, but I’m experiencing one of those all-too-common “wow—already?” moments. Once I was familiarized with the routines and the surroundings, time seemed to have quickened its pace. Only a week left before I head off for central Africa and hang out with the gorillas.

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Oh, how ridiculously undeserving we are of this sacrificial love of Christ, when we ourselves constantly attach conditions with the love we disperse in small amounts, and only to those who are so easy and painless to love. How can I even claim to go to Rwanda on a mission to love the people when there are people back home I have difficulty loving… or even tolerating? We fall into this trap of thinking that it’s possible to just love Jesus and not the people around us (that one really annoying student who relentlessly you, that immature, irresponsible co-worker, or maybe that guy who shows absolutely no respect for women), and that our hearts will still be in good health; but, we love Jesus only as much as we love the person we love the least (1 John 4:20-21). That revelation is a bit unsettling when I think about individuals (or even types of people) I have difficulty getting along with, but it’s also challenging to then work towards rejecting my impulse to judge or neglect them.

Oh, how ridiculously deserving He is of our love—and our lives. How could we ever forget the cross? The cost of the Father to give His son for us; to willingly give up His only son for a people that turned away from Him, rejected Him, despised Him; to break that pure, flawless union between the Father and Son by carrying the weight of the filth of our sin and the refuse of our souls—a pain that was unimaginably more excruciating than any physical pain He endured on the cross—the same symbol some wear so casually around their necks without understanding or realizing its importance. I feel like I’ve been in bed for a while, quite awake, but unwilling to take off the covers and get out to the place where I’ll feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. Sleeping in or even the “just 5 more minutes” mentality doesn’t cut it. I need to start being so much more undignified and quit dwelling on what others think. Focus on pleasing the audience of one.

It’s all or nothing. He deserves it all—the reward of my suffering and my success—and it’s not acceptable to pick and choose what I want to give up to the Lord. I can’t worry about reputation or pride, constantly living in the fear of man or the fear of failure. I want to live in each day and not merely exist. No reserves. Here I am, Lord, send me. I want to be so selfishly in pursuit of the ability to love unconditionally, which can only come out of intimacy with You.

Yeah. On a side note, everyone was able to somehow scrape together all the money they needed at the last minute to get to their outreach destinations. God is extremely faithful though He may not work in our own timing. So everyone who’s endured and stuck with the program is still here and ready to see God work in amazing ways these next three months. For those of you who are interested, I’ll try my best to write one last entry from Hawaii before I get on that plane.

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Some recent pictures:

Road trip. This is the “8-passenger” (hah) PT Cruiser that took us to the Hilo side. Another group met up with us, and I got to drive that one back to campus. It was a glorious 4-hour drive. Ah, how I missed driving so.

The stop before Akaka Falls where we were offered free pastries and beverages by Mr. and Mrs. Ed themselves. They heart Jesus and YWAMers.

Eyvind (Norway) and I conquered the burning hot Hilton rhinoceros. Had to be done.

A snapshot of a waxing moon through the lens of a telescope at the Visitor Information Station on the way up to the Mauna Kea observatories. We didn’t quite make it to the top…

The warriors of Compassion DTS 2008 at Love Feast. Definitely the most delicious food I’ve had while I’ve been on this island.

The beautiful and refreshing women of Compassion DTS. Some of the coolest people you’ll ever meet.

Zach Feezel, staff extraordinaire. 1.) you’ll never guess his age, 2.) he happens to be my music soulmate, 3.). he’s all ears. I’m thinking there might be a correlation between the last two.

Grace noo-nah. Prayer warrior. Bible warrior. Biggest mother heart ever. God loves to give out bible verses for everyone through her. And that’s Daniel in the back. For some reason, I can do an impression of his rather… unique voice. Just one of my really important and useful giftings, I suppose.

So we finally had a thunder storm Friday afternoon RIGHT after the lecture, and it rained down hard for at least 5 hours. Our classroom is in this Pavilion which is an outdoor gathering place conveniently located by the food lines. When it rains, what happens is that the water comes from the back down of the classroom where the ground is slanted and accumulates in the front half of the room in front of the stage. We added soap, used body boards, and we even hosed it down a little when the rain was dying down. Basically, we had a slip-’n'-slide set up in our classroom and it was the craziest thing I’ve done in a while.

God is good.

Yesterday was Thanksgiving Day, and it’s the first time in my life that I’ve spent it away from home. While the rest of my family was at my aunt’s house eating a dinner prepared by the kids, I was here in Kona at my DTS leaders’ wonderful house celebrating the day with my international ohana. One of the students in our school was talking with a member from another school, and the latter was getting so excited that they were finally taking a group photo together as a class. I think our class has taken over 10 pictures together over these two months.. so I’m posting another one.

There are always groups of Compassion DTS students eating together, sitting together in the corporate gatherings, and spending every weekend together. You’ll always find a few strays wanting to be a part of the pure, unadulterated awesomeness of our DTS. Beautiful people, beautiful smiles, beautiful hearts.

Dawn Heres (front right of me) is our school leader along with Pieter who’s not in this picture. She challenged me to a game of Speed Scrabble (Take Two), and let’s just say.. thank goodness I don’t have to wash her car, and I’m really excited for some freshly baked brownies.

God is good.

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Oh, and one more very important thing.

I now have all the funds for my outreach to Rwanda, but there are others in my school that are still in need. We had a Wednesday morning session of giving; and within our DTS alone, over $11,000 was freely donated in a matter of 30 minutes. People who didn’t have much were pledging more than they had, and others were giving away money when they still didn’t have enough for their own outreach. In faith, people were being abnormally generous with something that this world esteems with so much value. It’s definitely been a humbling and challenging experience for me to give in full faith that God will provide.

So to anyone that reads this, I just ask that you could give to the cause of DTS students in my class that I’ve come to love and grow so close with, by freely giving money with a generous heart. You can give the money to my parents so they can transfer the money into my back account, from which I can just deposit the money for people who still need to pay their outreach fees.

To clarify, the money is not for me but so that you may give to others in my class who are going out to Thailand, India, Philippines, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Vietnam to share life with the native people groups and extend to them the chance for a life-changing relationship with Jesus.

Robin Hood was a communist.

Well, he was. Last week our class had lengthy lectures all week on prevalent worldviews that exist today (including the Enlightenment, Islam, communism, post-modernism, etc.), and contrasted them to the Kingdom of God worldview laid out for us in the Word. No other major worldview bears the fruit of compassion, only tolerance at best, and that’s only most recently with post-modernism. But what can be next in this chain of “social evolution” when all things are permissible because individuals are allowed to create their own truths and construct their own ideas of reality?

Post-modernism is arguably the most depressing philosophy ever to spring from the western mind. It is difficult to talk about post-modernism because nobody really understands it. It’s allusive to the point of being impossible to articulate. But what this philosophy basically says is that we’ve reached an endpoint in human history. That the modernist tradition of progress and ceaseless extension of the frontiers of innovation are now dead. Originality is dead. The avant-garde artistic tradition is dead. All religions and Utopian visions are dead and resistance to the status quo is impossible because revolution too is now dead. Like it or not, we humans are stuck in a permanent crisis of meaning, a dark room from which we can never escape.

- A Malignant Sadness

That doesn’t sound too promising. The Italian medievalist and semiotician, Umberto Eco, characterized “the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, I love you madly, because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland.”

The main point of our speaker, Don Stephens, was that Christians always remember to teach and preach about salvation and the importance of getting people to heaven, when Jesus has placed a greater emphasis on the Kingdom. In the Gospel, “the Kingdom” is the most talked about concept in Jesus’ three years of ministry than anything else (love, heaven, money, sin, etc.) except “the Father”. He tells us to pray for His Kingdom to come (Matthew 6:10), He tells us to seek first his Kingdom (Matthew 6:33), and all of Jesus’ parables were about this Kingdom (Matthew 13). The Kingdom is neither heaven, nor is it the church: it’s every place on earth today where the will of God is being fulfilled. The Kingdom story was written into our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11), and is the reason why there is so much beauty to be found in nature, music, art, and films, and why themes of weakness transformed into glory, restoration, and sacrificial love strike some chord in our hearts.

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Monday through Wednesday of Thanskgiving week (week 9) was a discussion of spiritual warfare with Kristen Williams, a hilarious Kiwi who was on fire for God. It was a great balance between the Word and the Holy Spirit working in the pavilion (our classroom), as the Asia Pacific DTS joined in for the lectures. There were so many great things that went on in the class that it’s hard to pick out what to share, so I’m just going to list off some things Kristen mentioned:

• what’s going on is not normal, but we were made for this turbulence
• your life reflects the things you most focus on (1 John 3:2)–focus on Him
• respond in the opposite spirit
• don’t open up doors in your heart–there will always be consequences to your actions
• it’s about looking so much like Jesus that people start wondering about our God and how wonderful He is–don’t become so much like those around you that no one can tell that you’re different
• get so hungry and so messed up that ordinary is out of the question
• don’t take me to a place my character cannot hold me
• focus on pleasing the audience of one
• you are as close to God as you want to be
• God’s in the business of restoration–he doesn’t hold people constantly accountable for the things of the past; He looks to the future with hope and expectation for us

He finished the week’s lectures with a detailed description of the Armor of God and the significance of each piece in the spiritual warfare we’re engaged in daily. We can tap into God’s power and quit relying solely on our own strength and might. If God’s given us this armor, it has to be more important than a filler for a Sunday sermon.

Itinerary.

Don Gillman was one of my favorite speakers so far. He has a very unique testimony that you could never have guessed, and all week, he constantly (and intentionally) sought out Compassion DTS students to just hang out for conversation and games.

Though Don did not have a specific topic he was invited to speak on, the whole of the week became about general foundations–things like empiricism, culturalism, and authoritarianism–and how we subconsciously base our “truths” on these personal foundations, when we should be basing our truth on the Word. Overall, this week was grood. Yes, grood.

With Don as our speaker this week, applying to a 9-month SBS program in Taiwan sounded rather appealing. It’s ridiculously cheap there, the program is one of the top in YWAM, and the biblical knowledge coming out that SBS would definitely be worth it; but that may be later in the future.

We played two rounds of Mafia with Don Gillman on Thursday night after the corporate gathering. After playing, I remembered why I avoided playing the game so much. But anyway, during the first game, the mafia killed him within two rounds, and in the second game, the narrator inaccurately killed him off when the mafia had actually chosen a student sitting next to him. Though he was a great player and loved the game, he had very little luck and had very little playing time. His presence will definitely be missed.

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Today, I finally received the intinerary for the flight to Rwanda. We leave on the 21st and we arrive on the 24th of December. Yes, a very, very long flight. We will be flying from

(1) Kona, Hawaii (KOA) at 9:45pm and arriving in
(2) San Francisco, California (SFO) at 4:48am the 22nd, where we will kept for an 8-hour layover (all Los Angeles people should come up and visit me at this time. Just kidding). At 12:30pm we fly all the way across the United States and the Atlantic Ocean and head to
(3) London, United Kingdom (LHR) and arrive at 6:33am the 23rd. I’m definitely dreading this flight, but we have a 12-hour layover in London, where we’ll get to visit the city for a bit before travelling due south and arriving to our next stop,
(4) Nairobi, Kenya (NBO) at 6:30am on the Christmas Eve. After 6 hours of wandering around the airport, we take a 25-minute flight and finally arrive at our destination,
(5) Kigali, Rwanda (KGL) at 12:55pm the same day, where our first full day spent on our outreach will be Christmas.

The country-hopping on these first three days, albeit long and tiring, will be an awesome experience. The flight home, interestingly, will only take us a day because of relative time zones: we leave on the 14th of March and arrive back home on the 15th.

We have yet to find out any concrete details of what we will be doing once in Rwanda, but regardless of whether that information is revealed before leaving, I think the most important thing is unity in the group. As the largest team with the most varied cultures, I know situations of dissension will present themselves in the three months, so please pray with me for this crucial part of outreach.

Oh, and I finally went to Mile 88 for the first time this weekend. And oh, how I miss driving so much. I got to drive a John Deere tractor on campus to transport boulders, but I have yet to drive a car. Actually, I backed up a Toyota Carolla 40 feet last weekend. That was a great day.

Untitled #1.

This last week, all four DTSes gathered each morning for corporate sessions led by Sean Feucht and company who had come from various prayer movements around the United States. The theme for week six was intercession and prayer for the nations, and this team of five happened to come during election week. When they were introduced on Monday, the leadership forewarned the students that these guys were extremely in-your-face and confrontational in the way they presented things, and yet I think many were just unprepared for their level of intensity and passion.

Instead of simply teaching, the week was more a time of.. undignified worship and dancing and jumping.. facilitated by a dozen djembes played at once.. resulting in sore calves.. as well as periods of intercession for global and local issues. Without getting too in-depth to the various conflicts that individuals had with the sessions (or the speakers themselves), issues arose as to whether the different works of the spirit being demonstrated were actually in accord with the Bible. So much so was this the case that our DTS has had to see some students leave this family. Though it’s been a bit difficult, I think it’s really made the students even more grateful for those who have remained and are continually blessing others with their service and love.

This last weekend, my former small group leader (he had other commitments to this base) took the five of out to Captain Cook in Kealakekua Bay where we kayaked and snorkeled for the first time on the island. Though my ankles were sore from kicking in the water with oversized flippers, it was worth it to see the sea turtles, eels, and different species of fish swimming in the coral reef along the coast of the bay. It’s amazing that you can just skim the surface of the water with goggles and a snorkel off almost any coastline on this island and see the countless ocean creatures you would never notice otherwise.

For the journey from the base to the kayaking spot and back, the only available mode of transportation was a Toyota Corolla that my small group leader drove around the island; and because he also brought a friend along, all five students in the small group crammed into the back seat of the compact sedan. It was a rather glorious time of male bonding.

This week’s been a nice change of pace with Don Gillman as our speaker for the week. He’s an American who’s been living in Taiwan for 16 years now, leading one of YWAM’s top School of Biblical Studies courses. I honestly still have trouble remembering the names of all the students in our DTS, but he took the time before getting to this base to learn the names of all 45+ of us (through Facebook) and has made an intentional effort to devote himself to our class this week, seeking out Compassion DTS students during every meal times, and finding us during work duty and free time.

So far, it’s been a great time of building the solid biblical foundation that I’ve always needed. It helped me realize how much I depended on second-hand revelation and teaching from church leaders and others to shape my truths, and how little I sought for truth in the Word, which has proven to have so many more answers than I ever knew. I think it was so much easier to depend on others to just tell me how I was supposed to live this “Christian” life rather than going straight to the source. I’m excited for the rest of the week and what else the Lord has in store for this last month before outreach.

The long, long-awaited update.

PREFACE
I just wanted to start off by apologizing for the lack of updates I promised everyone. I neglected to think how difficult it would be to set aside time to post a weekly blog. The busyness of each day was unexpected, and much of the little free time I actually do get throughout the week I spend resting or going out exploring the island with other students. The daily schedule is fairly demanding, with breakfast starting as early as 6:15am and lectures or activities sometimes running ’til 9pm. The purpose of this entry is to just provide a very brief, basic overview of the things I’ve been experiencing on this island.

DAILY LIFE
There is a very regular routine on this campus during the weekdays. Breakfast runs from 6:15 to 7:15am each morning. Worship time starts at 8am and ends at 9am, and the first classes of the day begin for each of the four discipleship training schools (DTSes) running on this campus (Compassion, Asia Pacific, Community Transformations, and International Korea). Morning lectures are split into two sessions, roughly an hour and a half each, and run into lunchtime at 12pm. There is a time period after lunch from 1:15 to 3pm where, depending on your class’s schedule for the week, you may have a small group meeting, a bible study session, or the deeply coveted free time before work duty. Work duty is a generally a daily, two-hour contribution from 3 to 5pm where you serve in the upkeep the campus grounds, public facilities, or assist in anything assigned to the leader of your work duty group. The work duty I am in happens to be the most physically demanding, where we sometimes dedicate the whole two hours to digging trenches, fixing beds, or most recently, moving boulders. Dinner follows work duty and after that, there may be another class or activity scheduled for the class, though the time from dinner ’til you sleep is often reserved for rest. Thursday nights of each week are corporate gatherings. Sometimes there are corporate weeks in which all four DTSes come together during each morning session to worship and listen to the guest speaker for that week. No mandatory events are scheduled during the weekend, so Friday nights, Saturdays, and Sundays are usually the times people leave campus and often go the beach.

PEOPLE
There is such an international group of students on this campus. Over 40 nations are represented here, including mainly Canada, United States, Scandinavia, and–the overwhelming majority–the South Koreans (there are over 90 in the International Korea DTS alone, while the other schools have about 50 each with a mix of nationalities). There are so many that a Korean translator is present at each corporate gathering. Building relationships with fellow Compassion schoolmates and staff members has definitely been a highlight of these first five weeks.

They say that the you get close to most of the people here than you do with people you’ve known all your life, and I can definitely see why they say that so confidently. Hearing testimonies of the past and testimonies of things occurring on this campus, and visibly seeing and spiritually sensing change within individuals in just five weeks is very much unlike anything I’ve experienced before. It’s been an atmosphere of constant encouragement and forward-marching together as a class. I am blessed and thankful for being surrounded by peers and leaders who are integrous, genuine, wise, servant-hearted, pure, and so hungry for MORE.

LECTURES
The lecture topic changes each week. We’ve discussed topics such as the fear of the Lord, relationships, and evangelism, each week with a different speaker that specializes on that aspect of understanding God more. But looking back to the core content of the lectures, they seem to always focus on two things alone: first-hand revelation that we are loved by the Lord, and maintaining intimacy with the Lord. In my mind, I’m realizing more and more that it’s just that easy. We were created to be loved, so the best thing for us would be to let Him love on us. And if we remain attached to the vine we will bear fruit. It’s my prayer that Kona will not be a memory of filling my notebook with biblical truths and great one-liners, but that I will really get this in my heart and spark a transformation affecting every other part of me. It’s great to see the speakers get fired up with such passion, shed tears from such deep understanding, and yell with incredible conviction. I’ve been able to visibly see how real this all is and how real it can be in my life.

OUTREACH
As many of you know, there is an outreach phase following the lecture phase. The focus of Compassion DTS is at-risk women and children and the countless injustices inflicted upon them. That is the issue that God had placed on the hearts of my leaders, Pieter and Dawn Heres, when they first started this DTS a couple years back.

This year, there were four outreach teams revealed to us: Cambodia/Vietnam, Thailand/Philippines, Thailand/India, and Rwanda. We were given 15 minutes to go and pray about which location we felt led to serve right after finding out the locations. I felt most compelled to the nation of Rwanda, despite the fact that there would be no running water where we would be staying. Of the 50 or so students in our DTS, 19 of them became Team Rwanda, led by our Rwandan family staff (Gabriel, Margret, and their son Hero) and James Choi, another staffer serving the students in Compassion.

I’m extremely excited to be going to Rwanda with this team. While the other three teams will be leaving December the 19th, our team will depart from the island on the 21st because of the busy traveling season during Christmas (we have a 12-hour layover in London, while the other teams just fly straight to their respective Southeast Asian countries). I know God has great things in store for us and I pray that we’ll just really grow into a strong community of faith by the end of the three months.

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If any of you got through this entire entry, I just want to thank you for investing the time to be a part of this important point in my life. I am truly grateful for the amount of support I’ve received from friends, family, and Oikos, especially for those who have monetarily supported me. I’ve been able to cover the costs of the lecture portion and the down payment for the outreach phase, but there’s still about another $2500 that I need to raise by the end of DTS, so if God puts it on your heart to give, then you can contact my parents who are organizing the donations back home. It would also be greatly appreciated if you continue keeping me in your prayers with whatever God may speak to you, or specifically for the following three things:

1.) a revelation of God’s love in my life,
2.) freedom in Christ, and
3.) preparation of the hearts of Team Rwanda to serve the people of Africa.

I’ve been able to witness just how powerful prayer can be, and I know your prayers can really make a difference. I’ll try my best to keep this blog updated weekly.