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!