Showing posts from April, 2023

13

Apr - 2023

Road to Rwanda----Peace's Placement

 The following poem was in my devotions this morning. I did not understand it at first, but it was paired with the Scripture about Thomas's doubt. The poem is a poignant reminder that we think we need religious trappings to communicate with God....or He needs them to communicate with us.  But He is all around us and speaks in every circumstance, detail of nature, prayer fulfilled.  Yesterday we received an email from Peace's supervisor for receiving her funding: " Peace is a 'pending participant', which means she will be assigned an MFP-RS slot soon as well as a service coordinator from DDS."  This means that soon, hopefully very soon, Peace can leave the nursing home after almost 9 months being there.  When we started the process of moving Peace to Massachusetts I talked directly to one of the head supervisors for DDS. I was told she would never qualify for the resources provided through DDS in MA, and that we could not even apply. We would need to apply f


07

Apr - 2023

Road to Rwanda----Rwandan Genocide against the Tutsi

Starting today we have the next week off from school.  You might think that it is Easter holiday, and that is certainly one factor, but more basically here it is a week (really 100 days, until July) of remembrance for the Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi in 1994.  When we started to hear about this in the wider international community in 1994, we were utterly horrified....but delayed any response until almost a million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were massacred.  I remember.....and the mourning I felt particularly because of its relationship to the  people group in my beloved Zambia, where we lived and loved from 1981-1984.  Today, now, it is a moving factor in what modern Rwanda is.  For most of the year we are forbidden (it is actually illegal) to concentrate on the genocide or to identify tribal connections.  But for the next month, every April, the nation is to mourn and commemorate the genocide victims.  Rwanda is recognized as a nation that has successfully grown past or perhaps in