Lately in Rwanda

Hello all you people,

So I have been cramming in lots in my short time here in Rwanda which explains why I haven't written. OK an update...

On Saturday we had a mini reunion with some of the students from my DTS . It was a lot of fun to hang out with them. About five of us met at Jean Paul's new house which was perfect because then we got to meet his new wife. He just got married on June 6th and they are adorable. It really cracks me up at these type of get togethers because people here really like formality. There were a bunch of people we didn't know who would get up and give speeches in Kinyarwanda and then while we were eating one of the guys there whipped out a huge old camera and started taking snapshots of everyone. It was fantastic!

Monday was not as much fun although just as important. Robert took Laura and I to see the memorial in Nyamata. There is a catholic church in Nyamata where a hundreds of people were killed during the genocide and as a memorial to them the government has left the church almost untouched. When you walk inside all you see are piles of ragged clothing laying on all the pews. The bones have been moved to an area behind the church where they are respectfully displayed. There are so many skulls. The ceiling of the church is still riddled with bullet holes and the white cloth draped across the altar table is covered in 15 year old bloodstains. It is disturbing to see. What struck me the most though is that as we walked out of the burial chambers where we had been surrounded by skulls and femur bones, many of them children, there were these three little girls waving at us and laughing from the other side of the fence. You see, the church in Nyamata is smack dab in the middle of all the other buildings. People walk by it every day going about their business. It was just an intense reminder of what you can't always see in Rwanda as an outsider; the people here carry out their lives with constant reminders of what happened right next to them. You just can't go anywhere that something didn't happen there that has bad memories.

Other than that I have been visiting friends and helping Laura with her classes. I will be leaving this time next week to fly to South Africa and start my school. This weekend, however, Laura and I are going to Butare to visit the National Museum and spend some time by the pool. It will be a good break for her. Hopefully this Sunday I will get to visit Selassie's mom which I am looking forward to. Talk to you all later!

Isimbi Johanna

A holy God who answers prayers

Muraho!

I am sitting here at Ninzi Hill in Kigali, one of my favorite places to go and hang out with friends, talking with Laura about the challenges of having your first official teaching job be on another continent. I got to visit her classes yesterday and it is clear that God gifted her to teach but all the same God can gift us to do something without making it easy to do.

The two things that I have been learning a lot on the past week would seem to contradict each other when you think about. But then I guess that is part of what makes God awesome; that He can be both. Some of my friends are in a book group together and I am going to join in while I am here. So I decided to read the book they are studying right now. It is called 'The Holiness of God' by R.C. Sproul. I would warn you to read it and be prepared to get scared and uncomfortable. As the book talks about God is absolutely holy; that is to say He is utterly pure and wholly set apart from us. So much so that we can not ever fully know Him or look upon Him as a result of our sin. Any relationship between us and God must be initiated by Him. It just seems incredible to me that He does initiate with us.

Which bring me to my next topic. This holy God who could very understandably choose to have nothing to do with us actually invites us into direct communication with Him and then He even answers us. He has answered my prayers far beyond what I deserve. On Sunday I got to visit with Selassie! He met me after church and we came here to Ninzi and talked for hours. When we left he said he would accompany me back to the base but that he didn't want to go in. Last year when he left the school he was not on the best terms with everyone and he has not been back to the base since that day. Well he came back with me and he stayed all evening to attend Heart of Worship. HOW is a group of young Rwandans who meet every week just to worship God for who He is. They sing mainly music from Hillsong so it is mostly in English. They recently began meeting on base. Selassie had such a wonderful time that he is coming next week and he said he never wanted to miss another one. I am happier than I can say to be able to see God redeeming him in this way. He has seen deep and wide hypocrisy in the church here and it has distorted his view of God so for him to be able to tell me that our God is amazing or to be able to lift his hands in worship is a true renewing of his mind. God is reinforcing in my mind the truth that He can heal all hurt.

Well, I am leaving for the book group soon so I will say bye for now. Talk to you later!

Isimbi Johanna

Muraho!

Hi there!

So I am in Rwanda after my two days of traveling. I am so very happy to be back in this wonderful country with the people I love so much.

Unfortunately, I have not been having all that much fun yet as Laura has been quite sick the past few days. I was looking for her at the airport when I arrived but it was just Robert there to pick me up (not that I wasn't very happy to see my Rwandan big brother again). Laura was getting over a case of amoebas when I got here and we thought she was recovering. By Wednesday morning though she had a fever of almost 102 so that day we ended up taking her to King Faisal Hospital here in Kigali and she just got out last night. Thank the Lord she does not have malaria or typhoid; probably just a viral infection. We had to do battle for them to let her out of the hospital last night and we waited for a doctor to release her for hours. They have still not returned her deposit which she is supposed to be refunded on so Robert is going back to fight for her money. He is very protective of her. She is still weak although the fever finally is gone. I am going back to the hospital with Robert today to join forces in making sure they do not try to take advantage of her. So in short it has been an exciting first couple of days!

God has already blessed my time here beyond anything I ever expected. He is so good to me. I have greatly enjoyed seeing and talking with old friends here at the base and today was the best day of all!!! I was walking outside my room when Noah stopped me and said he had a message for me. Noah is one of my former teachers. He said that yesterday in town he saw Selassie and when he told him that I was back in Rwanda Selassie asked Noah to give me his number so that I can get in touch with him. So just a few hours ago I talked to Selassie!!!! For those of you who have never read my blog before Selassie was I student in my school when I first came to Rwanda and we became very close in a short time. God created our personalities to be very similar and we both called each other 'my twin'. Selassie was the one who gave me my Kinyarwanda name, Isimbi. After only a month Selassie had to leave our school. He was dealing with overwhelming burdens at the time; things that I cannot imagine having to experience even one of and yet he was dealing with several. I lost contact with him shortly after he left school and he wouldn't return my or Laura's calls. That was a year and a half ago. I have prayed for him continuously since then. In fact, God taught me a lot about interceding for others through Selassie because I have never in my life experienced such a burden to pray for someone as I do for him. So for him to contact me was the most joyful thing I could have hoped for in Rwanda. He is suppose to come meet me at a church I go to this Sunday and then we will go talk somewhere after! I am hoping and praying that I will get to see him although just talking with him was an answer to prayer that amazed me. Yeah, it has been a good first few days!

I have to go fight with a hospital in a little while so I will talk to you later...

Isimbi Johanna

As I Go

Hello all of you,

Well it is somewhat difficult for me to write that in a few hours I am heading down to Boston where I will begin my flights heading to Rwanda and then three weeks later to South Africa. It is difficult because to be utterly honest I don't want to go yet. I know, that sounds odd coming from the girl who loves to travel but I am leaving with intensely mixed emotions this time. As most of you know I have been living in Montana since last summer which means I have only been back with my family for a month. Not very long. In fact I just had to say bye to my brother who is off to the camp he works at and my sister is leaving in an hour for work. I'll miss them so much. I'm also feeling a scary 'I don't want to leave my comfort-zone and head into the unknown again' sensation. Now you know where I'm at. So why go at all?

Because I will not be lukewarm. I will not be a comfortable Christian. I want my faith in Jesus Christ to consistently lead me to do things that are scary. I'm not talking about being stupid in my faith but maybe a little reckless. The times when I take steps to follow God's commands in the Bible that I don't think I can handle; that's when I know that God is all-sufficient. He has never ever failed me. And He is the best cure for a case of nerves that I have ever found. When I focus on who my God is my surroundings and circumstances don't change but they're sure not very intimidating anymore. He kind of dwarfs everything on earth by comparison.

I am spending three weeks in Rwanda and am tremendously excited for that. The purpose of this visit is simply to visit friends. My dear friend and sister Laura Mutesi, who was in the DTS with me in Rwanda last year, has moved back to Kigali to teach English in a school there. I will be staying with her at the same place we lived last year which means I get to see my teachers and some of my classmates again. On July 1 I fly down to South Africa for Youth With A Mission's (YWAM) Introduction to Primary Healthcare school.

I am not entirely sure what to expect from this school but what I do know excites me. I will spend 3 months of classes in Worcester, SA learning the basics of health care in a developing nation. The second half of the school I will go somewhere and work in a healthcare setting. This part could be in SA or it could be another country. I am something of a loner who tends to avoid responsibility so the thought of someone's health depending on me...yeah, I don't naturally want to go there. This is what makes me get over that tendency:

-Approximately 25,000 people die every day of hunger or its related causes. 9 million people per year. Think about that. The leading cause of death in the world is from a lack of food.
-1.2 billion people in the world do not have access to clean water. As a result 5 million people die every year from water-related illnesses and every 15 seconds a child dies from this. I wonder how long it takes you to read this blog?
-In the U.S. and Europe 2 out of every 1,000 children die before they turn 5. In Africa, 165 out of every 1,000 die before they are 5 years old. The highest percentage of these is from birth complications followed by pneumonia and on and on and on...
-Malaria kills between 1.5 million and 2.7 million people per year and one child every 30 seconds.
-There are 33 million people in the world infected with HIV. 70% of them are in Africa. 3 nations in sub-Saharan Africa have an infection rate over 20%. There are 15 million children orphaned by AIDS.

I could go on but I think you get the idea. I know that I can't save every person who makes up these statistics but those numbers drive me crazy. It pushes me past myself and screams at me so loudly that I can't ignore them. I don't even want to imagine how loudly it screams out to God who sees everything. Well, there you go. That is what I am doing and why I am going.

Some of you have expressed a desire to support me financially, which is greatly appreciated, and I will need a bombardment of prayers. You can contact my father ( a.k.a. my banker) if you would like to send funds along. I also am encouraged to hear from any of you while I am away. Talk to you later!

Isimbi Johanna