If Home Is Where Your Heart Is. . . .

Today started out with a great worship service in our cafeteria.  It was so humbling to hear the staff of the college lead us in sincere worship as they are mourning the loss of their father, their leader, their mentor, their pastor.  I was in tears as I thought about different lives I know that have been well lived just as the pastor's had been.  The students and staff of the college are being such lights for all of us as they continue to serve us admits their mourning.  I am humbled beyond words. Hays headed to class today--he got to sit in on the Disaster Relief and Mitigation class.  What an experience!  He was surrounded by people who do that for a living and I'm sure he will take something away from it even though now he is just overwhelmed.  I'm thankful that he is getting these experiences because I feel like it will expand his option horizon.  The world is so big and there are so many things he can do with his life!  I could totally see him working for a great a

WHAT. A. DAY!!!!! Today started a little bit somber.  We got to the school to catch the bus to Kivu and we found out that overnight the pastor and president of the school had suddenly and unexpectedly died.  What a blow.  He was amazing (we actually were supposed to have a meeting about Gap Year this week).  He had a beautiful heart for Rwanda and the people of Rwanda and his vision for how the Lord was going to use him and the church and school was so pure and ambitious.  Sad for his family both family family and school/church family! But, we headed to Kivu (I'm sure they were glad to have us all out of their hair while they mourned).  It was a LONG ride, but so beautiful--we drove through the Rwandan hills I love!  They call Rwanda the Land of a Thousand Hills and I think we drove up and down nearly all of them today.  Kivu was beautiful!  We boated out to Bat Island where there are over 4 million bats living--HUGE bats!  It was so fun!  We hiked to the top and the view was

Today was only a half day of class (Saturday--thank goodness), so it ended up being much more eventful than the last few days! The country of Rwanda has a day once a month they call "umuganda."  It is a day where everyone has to do community service--the last Saturday of each month.  I love that!  I wish we had that in America!  Anyway, today was Umuganda and it didn't really effect us much, but I just loved knowing it was happening--I actually wish we could have been a part of it, but I'm not in charge of the schedule! After class the kids napped and then we headed to town with a bunch of my classmates.  We went to the market and then we went out for what ended up being a very nice dinner where many more classmates joined us.  And now we are having a sleep over with Shelley and Lauren (they are having a sleep over here with us--Dax says we're 7th graders.) The market was a great experience for the kids!  It was everything all at once!  Sights, smells, thi

Yesterday was a super day for Hays!  The "field day" that he was responsible for seemed to go off without a hitch.  He loved his time in the coffee farmers' village and he loved spending the afternoon with all of the kids!  They went extremely "muzungu" crazy wanting to all touch him and fist bump him and have their picture with him, but he was gracious and made the most of it.  I think he tried implementing the fun games he came up with, but when someone brought out a soccer ball, the entire day shifted to soccer! Meanwhile, the last two days I have been in my Marketing & Fundraising for Non-Profits class and I have been loving it!  I would love to be the professor for it someday.  My teacher has been extremely impressed with my knowledge and with all that KIVU does in regards to this area and I've had to give all of the credit to Andy.  He is so creative and he is so good at it.  It seems like nearly every point in the books or the lecture

Today.  Today was good. My advocacy class finished up and I am thankful for the mental break.  Tomorrow starts Marketing with the same teacher which is great because she is a wonderful teacher, but my mind will be fried again! The kids got measured for traditional Rwandan clothes today.  The school where I am studying has many programs to teach people skills and one of them is a sewing department.  So we all went there and they got measured and picked out their fabric.  On Friday we will pick up the clothes! Then we headed to Home of Hope.  Emotions overtook me on the road there that I wasn't expecting.  As we pulled up to the gates I just started crying. . . I'm not 100% sure what emotions were flowing out of my tear ducts, but there they were. The nun who greeted us was very nice, Sister Elena.  She was much nicer than the nun who was there when I picked Tiki up.  She was overcome by the flip flop story and just kept smiling.  She took us around the orphan

All is well here.  I started out a little tired this morning trying to get five kids and myself fed and organized and lunches packed, but I took my amazing XYNG (my all natural "happy pill") and the day quickly got better!  I may actually have my entire class hooked on them as well!!!  Yipee for my supplements! The kids were great today.  They behaved for Maggie (thanks for the prayers) and she was confident enough to take them home after lunch to nap and play at the house while I stayed at school! Classes were wonderful!  My brain is about to explode, but I learned so much about advocacy and human rights and politics.  Wow!  Tomorrow is our last four hours of that class before we move on to Marketing (each class is 20 classroom hours here in Rwanda). Hays said that today was an even better day at work than yesterday--and yesterday was great.  I got an email from his supervisor telling me what a great job he is doing.  That may have been the highlight of my dad--proud

Today was my first day of class, Maggie's first day with the kids and Hays's first day of work.  I would have to say that my first day and Hays's first day were both raging successes.  Not so much for Maggie (we'll get to that later). I loved my class.  This one is Advocacy and Human rights and it was wonderful!  The people in my classes are right in the middle of advocacy with their jobs and it was so interesting.  I loved hearing so many different points of views coming from so many different countries.  I feel like my worlview is so much more complete as a result of this program.  I heard a great term today--I was talking about how many Americans today feel like they are playing an active role in advocacy because they hashtag (#) something or because they like it on Facebook and someone shared with me the term "slacktivism."  I love it!  It so speaks to what I was talking about.  Anyway, that was a little bit off subject, but a word I don't want to