pure Excitement!

Let me just start witht his statement: I absolutely love Rwanda!! And now let me restate it: I absolutely love Rwandans! I have gotten the questions "what do you like most about our country?" so often and I never get tired of answering it because I love the reactions I get when I tell people that what I love most is the people themselves and why. The people here are very loving, hospitable and happy. I love talking to Rwandans, hearing their stories, visions and learning about rwandan culture and every day life. Most people here describe life with their spirituality and relationship with God being a big part. I especially love how easy it is to get into a spiritual conversation with people here. Those are almost non-existent in Europe...and yes I admit, thats my fault....I should start them. Rwanda is helping me to have more courage to start those kinds of conversations.
This past week, at our Guest house there have been many visitors who are all so awesome to talk to. Yes it has been great to have a few sports teams to watch the worldcup games with (one football team has been here three times now), but my favorite people to communicate with has definitely been the 'pastor folk'. There is a group pf pastors and young people who work in the church who have been here for a seminar type thing. I have yet to meet one that speaks a language other than kinyarwandan! That's the exciting part!! I have actually managed to have lenghty conversations with a bunch of pastoral people in Kinyarwandan!! We usually start talking when I arrive at the guesthouse and go to the tv room to watcht the game and we talk until about 30 minutes after the game...which means Ive been getting to bed realy late, but its totally worth it!! these conversations are such treasure. Of course, you will realize that I am far from fluent in this language and our conversations consist of much repitition, tecahing new vocab words (usually concrete words, but occasionaly an abtract word that takes for ever for me to understand, lol) and pointing, saying in both kinyarwandan and english, me repeating in Kinyarwandan and them repeating in english and each of us writing it down. ITS great!! I love it!!

Another super exciting thing thats been going on is that we have finally been able to meet the 10 rwandan students who will go to OC with us this coming semester!!! I dont know how much you know, but we have been in the process of selecting these students for a while. They were chosen out of 800 000 secondary school students who took their national exam. The giovernment initially chose the 25-ish with the top score on the exam and then some of our OC representatives conducted interviews to choose 10. They have now finally been officially selected by the ministry here and we have the whole next week planned to spend time with them to get to know them and prepare them for going to america and being at OC. Please pray for these students in their preperation to leave their home. This comes with a lot of responsibility for them because they are signing a contract saying that they will come back to rwanda to help the development of the country! not only their family, but their whole country depends on them!!

Like I said....my time has been a time of pure excitement!! God has blessed me with much...which means I am responsible for much. Please pray that I will be responsible with what God has given me and continues to give me!

starting to feel a love-hate relationship with my airplane ticket

Two more weeks. Not enough. And yet, I cant say I'm sad to go back to Oklahoma because I am really excited to see my family again! Mom and dad and jesse will be in OK, as well as matthew and adam, so our family will be together! This happens maybe twice a year...Xmas and summer. SOOO, as much as I hate knowing that my time in Rwanda is winding down and as much as I say that I wish to say, I also have this realization that I will be happy whereever I am.
ANyway...Rwanda has been just as amazing as always. I dont want to spend too much time now, so I'll continue to save the funeral story for another day so I have time to get all the details down.
This past week we've once again enjoyed teaching english conversation and having really amazing spiritual conversation with our students! one of our classes kept asking us questions and we talked a lot about heaven and what happens when we die and what rwandan traditional culture believes about death and ghosts and spirits and how those traditional beliefs compare to and/or combine with Christian beliefs.
Some of our students, Nelson, Vedaste and Aimable, took us on a walk up to the top of one of the hills from where we could see most of the city and even as far out as they're planning to develop the city. Nelson pointed out everything he could of! Even all the different plants we walked by and all the different buildings and disctricts we could see. The hill is called Rebero, and at the top they are in the process of building a very nice looking resort. We stopped up there to have some drinks and good conversation with the boys.
yesterday there was an open house for the international school that the Jenkins are starting. It was the first time I had ever seen the very beginning of a school, so it was really exciting! So now I'm gonna use this oppurtunity to advertise: if there is anyone who might be interested in teaching at an international school in rwanda, let me know! They are still looking for teachers, mainly for secondary school, but they will take anything they can get...qualified of course.
well, I have so much to tell and too little time to write it all, so i'm gonna go now and hopefully find more time later to write more.
God bless you all! Imana iguhe umugisha!

More on the wedding

The wedding: (sorry, its pretty long....but culturally interesting!!)
First we went to a catholic church and stood outside waiting for another wedding to get done. When it seemed to us that the other wedding party was finished and gone we went in with the other guests for this wedding and sat at the back as the wedding party was walking in. They all came in at the same time: bride and groom arm in arm. We knew it was going to be a long wedding when we saw that there were chairs for the bride and groom to sit in. It was also very interesting that there were barely any guests. Dave said it was normal for a wedding to start off like that and by the end the room would be full...which is exactly what happened. Throughout the whole service it seemed as if the most of the time the priest was was preparing for communion by reading from the Bible and and saying prayers. There was also a choir singing songs in Kinyarwandan. Half of te time people in te audience would stand up and then sit down again and they would keep doing this all the way through whether the priest was talking or the choir was singing. I dont think there was any rhyme or reason to it and that people just randomly stood and sat when they felt like it. After this whole religious ceremony we had a two hour period that there wouldnt be anything for us to do because e wedding party would be preparing for the reception with pictures and stuff. So we decided to have an adventure and go where Dave had never gone before. He's been wanting to find the top of MT. Kigali to see the city from up there, so we followed a dirt road in the direction we thought we would need to go. HA! That was awesome! We passed people who lived along those dirt roads and they all smiled at us and were excited to see a bunch of Bazungu (=plural of Muzungu= foreigner or white person). When we got pretty close to the top, the kids who were running after our vehicle were shakig their heads and waving their fingers telling us 'no' so we wouldnt go any further...so we assumed there was a military outpost up at the top and we probly should turn around. SO we turned around and went back down....part way down we took a different road down and came down on the other side of the hill (its not really a mountain). That was a ton of fun.
then we got to the reception, which is the coolest part of the day! When we arrived they led us to some seats that were in the middle of the front row. Across from us were places for he wedding party with a square space of about 10 by 7 meters. To the right of this square was the brides family section and to te left was the groom's. I assume our section was for other visitors and extra places for family. We waited for a while and after a while they served us bottled drinks...coke, fanta, water, maracuja (passionfruit). Then when the wedding party entered, they entered with an entourage of traditional rwandan dancers. When the party was seated, the dancers continued to entertain using the square of empty floor in the midst of all the sections. First the women, then they left and the men came out and danced. (there were also singers in the background.) After they danced, the traditions of the Rwandan wedding began. They brought a pot of what I assume to be banana beer out and put it in the middle with a seat on either side. First each spouses grandfather came out and greeted eachother, sat down and took some of the beer through a straw as they had a short conversation. Then the fathers did the same. Later at one point the bride, groom, maid of honor and best man also sat around and drunk from it. Then they also had the cutting the cake part, which resembled the way we do it. After the bride and groom cut it and feed each other they each take some cake to the other spouses family and then the rest of the wedding party serves it to the guests. After the cake part the dancers came back out and did some sort of 'mating dance' because both men and women were dancing, probly to show the life of a man and woman living together. It was very interesting. As they were finishing their choreographed dancing they went up to the bride and groom and got them to come join them on the floor. Then one of the girls also came over to me and invited me on the floor!!! AAaah! I guess I saw it coming though so I wasnt all that surprised and decided it would be polite to accept the invitation. So....I got up and danced with them! I followed on of the girls as she showed me how to do the traditional way of dancing...very interesting!! yes, (to answer the question you all have) someone did take video....no I havent seen it yet and no you cant use it as blackmail cuz I really dont care who sees it. I had fun and thats all that matters! later, the MC came and sat next to me and the first thing he said was "you're a good dancer". LOL! Then he explained the rest of what would happen which was basically members of the family getting up and saying whatever they want to say to the family and then the grooms family went and greeted the brides family at the end and offered them some drinks because "it is time to leave and they have a long journey ahead of them"...coming from african tradition where the wedding happens at the grooms home and te brides family must return home. After this, the family has their own personal traditional reception in the room where the new couple will sleep to introduce them to marriage with a 'drinking milk ceremony". I dont know exactly what that entails because I wasnt invited.
Anyway...thats the short story of the wedding day. Next time I post I will tell about the funeral.

a wedding and a funeral!

Hello all!
First of all I want to apologize for not posting in so long. Yes I am still alive...and doing great! It seems that every time I am at the Jenkins house, I get caught up in socializing with the people here, especially the Rwandans. Imagine that! Pretty weird huh!
Anyway, enough sarcasm. Last weekend the Jenkins took rusty and onawa out for a weekend to Nyongwe forest because they had to leave this past friday if she still wanted to have her job when they got back and they wanted to be able to see some of the country outside of Kigali before they left. So the 4 of us who stayed at the guest house were allowed to make our own weekend plans. Saturday we basically just walked around Kigali all day looking for places our students had told us about. I was amazed with how well i'm learning to know my way around the city...or at least down town. We really enjoy saying hi to people as we pass them on the street in their own language. They are amazed and usually very impressed by our knowledge of their language way before we really get a chance to show them all we know. Only two men Ive met have not been impressed. The two men who lived in between us at the guest house for a few days seemed to only talk to us in a way that was testing our kinyarwandan...kind of like the pharisees were constantly testing jesus. However, one morning one of the men passed me as I was jump roping and I think at that moment I started to sense impression and respect in his attitude towards me. He said that jumproping is the best type of exercize because it exercises the whole body and even the mind. After that I had a very good conversation with both of them late one evening. We were speaking a mix of English, french and Kinyarwandan. they taught me a lot about the rwandan language and culture and I felt ver happy to have had this conversation with these men. I havent seen them since then because they left the guesthouse.
So much has happened this week. I dont have the time now to type it all and you probly dont want to read it all, so I'll summarize most of it and spend a little time on the end. I got my hair braided again on monday. then Tuesday we continued the english classes at Kist and SFB, dicussing mainly the parable of the two men building a house, one on a firm foundation and one not. Then on thursday we went to a little independent orphanage of only 10 children! that was amazing! we will return there later so I'll write more about that in the futere.
Now for the title. Saturday we went tot he wedding of a nephew to one of the church members here with the Jenkins, Justin rudasingwe. That was amazing! It started off in a Catholic church and then the ceremony was a at a different place in town a few hours later. We killed those few hours by exploring on mount Kigali! the ceremony was awesome! I'll need to describe more later, but for now I'll tell ya that it was a very interesting mix between a traditional african ceremoiny and a more modern ceremony.
Today we went to a funeral. The body of a relative (who had died in the genocide) of Charles, also a member here, was found. That was also very interesting and Ill have to tell more later because I should start getting off the pc now.
Pray for Charles (and thank God for him because he's an awesome man!) and pray for our main taxi driver jean and a security guard at Novotel who both feel weak in their faith.
Praise God! Imana ishimwe!