Road to Rwanda---Christmas '24

  God’s richest blessings this Christmas Dear Friends, Family, and Dearly Loved, Merry Christmas!!   We have been blessed beyond measure this year!! Mainly because we have continued to be able to work and live here in the beautiful country of Rwanda and teach at Virunga Valley Academy-----look it up on your social media!   And in praying about our Christmas letter I feel like, rather than writing about our family…which overall is doing very well….I want to talk about the struggles faced by this country in which we live. First, I want you to know that Rwanda is listed as the safest country in Africa, the most densely populated country in Africa, and our town is one of the best places to see highland Silverback mountain gorillas.   We live very comfortably on our social security check. Every day (with consideration for the clouds and mist) we see the 5 incredible volcanoes that surround our town of Musanze. However, the struggles are also real.   We were j...

Road to Rwanda (via Indonesia memories)

  Do you remember our post during the time we were in Papua, Indonesia about the miraculous response to the preaching of the gospel in a remote village area? This was after years of preparation and  70+ individuals accepted the gosple message within a matter of a few days.  Well, this is an update that MAF is posting.  Praise the Lord To read the previous posts about the Dem people look here: https://asiabeatitudes.blogspot.com/2021/04/road-to-indonesia-dem-people.html Road to Indonesia---The Dem People https://asiabeatitudes.blogspot.com/2021/04/road-to-indonesia-spreading-gospel.html Road to Indonesia---Spreading the Gospel https://asiabeatitudes.blogspot.com/2021/09/road-to-indonesia-gospel-ii.html#:~:text=Road%20to%20Indonesia%2D%2D%2DGospel%20II Road to Indonesia---Gospel (Read back through some of our previous posts...you will enjoy them.)

Road to Rwanda---Created Equal

  “ We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness” .   I suspect that you are not going to like this post and are also going to be surprised (shocked). Yesterday in my AP World History class, I read the above beginning to the US Declaration of Independence.  I was just hurrying through it, assuming they had heard it many times (and I am SURE they have heard it before in many contexts, but obviously had not stopped to really "hear" it.) I was part way through, when one of the girls asked me to stop.  They could see the words written on the overhead.The phrase she was questioning was that we believe "all men are created equal".  She asked me to tell them again where this was written? I told them.  She said, "Isn't that ironic?" and the whole class burst out laughing.  I stopped, absolutely stun...

Road to Rwanda--Our Home

  A Google picture of the gate to our home in Musanze, Rwanda. There are 7 apartments inside the gate. It isn't locked, but does have a guard that opens the gate for cars and generally cares for us. We are very blessed to have such nice living arrangements about a mile from the school. I take a motocycle taxi to school every morning, and then walk (down hill) every afternoon. It is a good life. Like Comment Share

Road to Rwanda---Tying up Threads

 So many threads to try to give updates on: The Rwanda church continues to deal with extensive closings.  Although there are some buildings still available for worship, there is a significant number which are not opened, and very little projection that they will open again soon.  The Church, as a body of believers, continues to follow Jesus. Paul's mother-in-law continues in the rehabilitation facility, dealing with the aftermath of her Father's Day accident.  She asks for prayer as the pain meds are less effective. It is still unclear as to what future interventions will be needed.  She perseveres in Jesus. Paul's father-in-law's appentectomy is postponed to an indefinite date. The trees cut down in the forest beside our school is complete, but there has been no movement to implement the planned big vehicle parking area.  The State Department is evidently investigating and that is good.   Mpox (monkeypox) does not necessarily seem to be spreading...

Road to Rwanda---Grandbabies

 We deeply love and are so very proud of all five of our grandkids.  They are each unique kids with so many gifts.....just as their parents and aunties (our 4 children) are. Because we live the life that we do, our time with them is limited, but we do see them for an intense week or more at least once a year, when we live in their houses.  None of them have ever been to our house, unless you count our RV's. I soothe myself with the knowledge that there are grandparents who don't get even as much time as we do with their grandkids.  The Lord's words promise us that there will be rewards that we don't understand for the time we have sacrificed away from family. Not to single out one grandbaby, but Sophie's mommy posted this on FB, and I decided I wanted to share it. THIS is what being a missionary is all about:  As a Christian mom raising teenagers... I just want to share how proud I am of Sophie being a light to her classroom. She has connected with the girls in ...

Road to Rwanda---Church, Mpox, Forests

  So many things to pray about. The church situation here has not been resolved.   On the one hand, people are being encouraged/forced to speak directly to and learn from our Father, rather than having a “go between” that many are too dependent on.   But there are pastors who are suffering financially, but also because their God imbued mandate to preach, and shepherd is being stifled.   There are also congregants who really are lost without the guidance provided by the weekly church meetings. There are only 4 known cases of mpox (formerly monkeypox) in Rwanda, but not so in neighboring countries.   Rwanda’s government is very proactive.   Last Monday a health official visited VVA and told us that handwashing, such as was directed during covid, was being re-implemented.   I was impressed how the students so very joyfully (and I mean joyfully) complied with handwashing dictates.   My older students smiled and said, “I would sure rather do this t...

Road to Rwanda---Church

 It is a strange time here in Rwanda.  The government has published dictates that demands churches are open only if they provide for the safety of their participants.  Sufficient parking spaces, bathrooms, fire precautions, etc.  It has also stated that only verifiable, educated pastors can lead churches.  This has resulted in most services being suspended.  At least for a while. Rwanda is a "churched" nation.  The people are definitely used to attending meeting on Saturday or Sunday, depending on their denominational association.  There is much consternation.  Some feel that ultimately this may result in a positive outcome.  The people who currently feel teaching can only come from a pastor and in church may be forced to realize their own priesthood and study the Bible individually themselves.  Only God knows why and the final outcome from this current situation.  I know many who are feeling that prayer is the answer.  Pl...

Road to Rwanda----Cultural Map

  Our before school  trip to a beautiful island. During session on this trip we revisted a cultural map.  When we look at different cultures how do they fit along the continumm of categories such as communication, leadership, decision making, time, etc.? This is of vital importance if we want to build a strong team.   But the Lord has also been talking to me about how important it is for our students to understand these complexities.  VVA is an American Christian school.  Our vision statement says:  “Developing obedient disciples of Jesus who transform Rwanda and the world through academic excellence, growth in the character of Christ, and service to others.” We feel the mandate to train these students so that they can relate to and understand the international community in a Christian manner.  In essence we are asking these students to be "third culture kids", a term we often use for missionary children. This is not always (or even usually) ...

Road to Rwanda---New School Year

 So,here we are back in Rwanda ready to begin year 3.  Very much looking forward to seeing the kids on August 21,but first we have a week of orientation, which is always good. I have had a few students write me this summer. That is nice. The former grade 9 students asked that I bring back a package of cookies (or biscuits as they are called here) for them to share as a class. I have 5 packages of chocolate chip cookies for grades 6-10.  They will enjoy them so much, and it takes so little to please.  I am also anxious to meet the new teacher,   arriving tonight who will share my high school teaching load. I have been praying for 2 years for a teacher who can handle the AP (Advanced Placement) classes these kids deserve, and here she is. God answers.  We bought meat to bring from Kigali the 2 and a half hours to Musaze last night as we arrived. Usually it is very good, but I am deeply disappointed in the beef. They did not have any hamburger, so I got...

Road to Rwanda---Contacts from Long Ago

 I am so so touched.  We just received a phone call from Alberta, Canada.  (We are currently with Peter in South Carolina.)  It is from Clement Sitima.  Clement was an 8 year old boy when we served in Serenje, Zambia from 1981 to  1984.  His father taught at Malcolm Moffat Teacher's Training College where we were assigned.  His mother was one of the head teachers in the local school system.  They were neighbors to us and dear friends.  Clement remembered that our vehicle had an MCC marked on the side of it.  He called Mennonite Central Committee and MCC contacted us with his email address and phone number.  He has been in Edmonton for 15 years, has 4 children, and owns his own construction company.  He specifically remembered that Rick gave his camera to Clement's older brother who made extra cash through university by taking pictures. We don't necessarily know what the spiritual impact was/is, but at least cross cultural ...

Road to Rwanda----"The works of God might be displayed in" us

  It has been an uphill climb since our really great flight home.   (Remember we had whole rows to lie down on the long flight between Ethiopia to Chicago?)   After getting in at 9 p.m. on July 5, I had tremendous diarrhea by the next morning.   This continued for 4 days. On Saturday night I was up to the bathroom every single hour.   Sunday   morning I started at an urgent care, who tested for covid (negative) but insisted I go to the ER because they could not make the tests I needed.   After many “unproductive” hours at the ER I went home, only to return 2 days later ready to give my sample. Of course the medical personnel were calling the Center for Disease Control, because I was flying in, sick, from Africa. (Who knows I could have been patient zero for the next pandemic?)   They promised the test results would follow me to my next location (from SC to MA) but they never have arrived.   At this point, I seem fine and I assume it was some ...

Road to Rwanda---So What's the Point?

  This is a post by Joel Corbin. We taught him during our time in Senegal (2002-2010).  He is a missionary kid, born and bred on the African mission field. He and his wife and two little bitty sons serve in Gambia in a remote village to the Mandinka tribe. Recently he posted this on FB:      Since I started working overseas in 2017, I’ve noticed that actually being a missionary on the                ground is a ton different than what people in the US realize. Part of the fault of this is on the                missionary’s end. We are so driven to present the best parts of our work overseas as the “fruit” of        the investment of churches and inviduals that we often leave out the hard parts, the mundane           parts, the “real life” parts that make up most of our day- in and day-out grind as a cross-cultural  ...

Road to Rwanda----Letter Confusion

Repost from Facebook, May 12, 2017   Chinese have trouble with "v" and "w". I don't remember struggling with this issue in Taiwan, but maybe I was speaking mostly in Chinese, and here I am using mostly English. When the students were introducing themselves at the beginning of the semester, many said they liked "mooies". I thought and thought about that one, and finally realized it was "movies". Another difficulty was the student who asked me about Easter "wiggles". Dances for Easter, like the "Bunny Hop"? Telling kids to sit still in church? I had her repeat it a few times, and even had trouble when she spelled it, because it was an unexpected word. It was "vigil". You can see how things can get so confusing. However, there are always these kinds of difficulties for overseas workers. Do I have stories? In Zambia "r" and "l" are completely interchangeable. The house worker told me Paul had cut...

Road to Rwanda---Confucius Birth Place

  If one of my previous Face Book  posts shows up in my timeline inbox that might be interesting, I am trying to post it here.  The date on this post is May 1, 2017.  Confucius has been the main force in Chinese philosophical thought since about 400 B.C. I am talking a long long time and a very pervasive force. Yesterday we went to his birth place. By regular train it would have been 2 hours. By fast train it took us 20 minutes (price about $4.50). By fast, I do mean fast. It said it was going about 300 kph. (Rick says that is about 185 mph.) When you were on the inside of the train, the terrain was going by quickly but not at a dizzying pace. However, standing on the platform with a through train buzzing past was quite exhilarating. The town of QuFu itself had a more "Chinese" feel to it than what the big towns have. It was a long day of seeing old buildings and a beautiful forest with hundreds of huge headstones spaced through out. (As we were viewing the forest/ce...

Road to Rwanda---My Friend Sarah

  My friend Sarah, who was so very, very sick and you prayed for a month or so ago, came to visit tonight with her daughter and fiance.  She came to visit for a special reason.  As soon as they got here, they connected to our wifi and posted this announcement on the School's WhatsApp!  What a privilege! You can see how healthy and full of joy she is.  She thanks all of you for praying for her.  She prayed with us before she and her family left just now, back out into the rain to go home.

Road to Rwanda----Serving Meals

 You know I did not start to cook until I was almost 60 years old.  I have no idea how I raised 4 children to maturity.  I remember at one point in Taiwan when they were young that I had to put my foot down and tell them they could only eat out once a day.  Paul (our eldest), being the social creature that he is, learned to cook so he could feed his friends in Taiwan (1988-1995) when they came over....I always made sure I had expensive boxes of Hamburger Helper on the shelf for him to use, but I personally usually did not even fix that much of a meal.  Purity from about age 4 on, would get up in the middle of the night and fix herself a tuna fish sandwich and eat it all herself because she could not stand the thought of any of us touching her food.  Peter existed on fruit, whole boxes of kiwis, etc.  Because of her CP, Peace had to have soft textured foods or she could not chew them, so I remember making her scrambled eggs. In Senegal (2003-2010) I tri...

Memories--from 2017

  Finished our laundry for the first time in China (2017-2019). In Panama (2010-2016)I had to go to the back of building OUTSIDE to do my laundry. Here I have a machine right in my itty bitty kitchen....with only HOT running water??? After one is done washing, then you go out onto the balcony and hang your clothes on hangers to let them dry. This is different from Taipei (1988-1995). There we had bamboo poles levitating 4 stories up at our apartment. You strung your clothes on these poles. Until I learned how to "string" rather than just flop the clothes over the poles, I kept losing my underwear to the balcony below. I then had to go down to the apartment below with a corresponding piece of underwear and mime asking for it back. Maybe I can at least say the words now.

Road to Rwanda----Jesus is greater

  A rather strange cultural/spiritual incident yesterday in school.   The students were getting comfortable on the couch and bean bag chairs for a documentary about the silk trade in China.   However, I could not see the face of one of the boys sitting on the bean bag chair on the floor.   (I have to keep an eye on them, or they might fall asleep during a video. Haha) I told him to move.   There was a whispered confrontation between him and the girl sitting on the couch which was beside the bean bag chair.   No one moved. I asked what the problem was.   The boy passionately stated that the girl had stepped over his legs splayed on the floor in getting to her seat and he would not move until she had stepped back over his legs (????)   He went on to explain that if she did not do this, he would never grow any taller (every teen age boy’s nightmare).   The girl refused to acquiesce to his request, stating that it was utter foolishness.   Th...

Road to Rwanda.....Names

  This week I tackled getting my students to coordinate the use of Works Cited with intext citations.   They both require listing the last name of the author.   To my confusion, the results were quite a failure.   The students often listed the authors’ first   or even middle names in formatting their essays??? I am used to the confusion from English as a Second Language students who do not recognize what we would say were American “first names”.   My essays from students in China, did not know that “Bruce” as opposed to “Smith” were given names, not family names.   They simply did not have enough English.   But my students here in Rwanda speak excellent English and recognize, use, and are named English names. I have also been confused ever since I got my student list of names from the school office a year and a half ago.   The class lists alphabetized by the student’s FIRST   name.   This just is not done, but I never got a clear an...

Road to Rwanda----Valentine's Day Party...Rwanda style

 My grade 6 students engineered a Valentine's Day Party.  These are 11 and 12 year old kids, but for the second year in a row, they decided that they were going to have a party....Warning: No adults were involved in the set up! The parents of one of the members of the class owns a restaurant, so it was easy to make reservations for the night of Valentine's Day from 4:30 to 7:30.  They then invited 4 adults to come: Rick and I , and their math and science teachers who are a couple.  We happily accepted, but were also not quite sure how this was going to turn out.   We were a little late in getting strated...after all this is Africa, but were all present by 5:30, having traveled by foot, car, taxi, and mototaxi.  The three male students were the ones who conceived of and executed the party and they had a definite plan.  They collected $5 for the food from the 7 students who came (only one of the 6th graders could not attend).  We then ordered o...

Road to Rwanda---A friend is sick

   Over a year ago last October a young lady stopped me as I left school.  She wanted to apply for a position at the school, but the gate guard would not let her in.  She walked with me as I started to go home. Her English was good and she said she was a preschool teacher and she wanted to work at VVA.  After we talked a bit, the principal drove by and stopped and picked me up.  I told the principal that the lady wanted a job.  Almost a week went by and the principal came and asked me about the lady I had mentioned because the school really did need more aids.  I remembered her name and said she talked like she was capable. Her application was still sitting in the guard shack.  She was contacted and hired.  During the past year we have been friendly.  We felt like we had bonded through her application process.  Now, a year later, she invited us to come to her home.  So, this afternoon (Sunday) (this was written in August) ...

Road to Rwanda----Saturday Outing

  Last Saturday we were invited to a picnic to celebrate some friends’ engagement.   It involved about 45 minutes by car, then 20-30 minutes by boat and finally a hike up a VERY steep incline to their remote undeveloped property.   The car ride was on some of the worst roads I have been on in my lifetime of travel with bad roads all over the world. The boat ride involved the engine cutting out halfway enroute (both coming and going….the boat owners realized they needed to do something and traded for a   bigger boat on our return trip….but I assumed used the same rather faulty motor??)   The hike up the cliff was only accomplished because one of the young 20 something volunteers at the school took my hand and arm and hefted me up….and back down.   Rick made it on his own, but he was not able to do the hefting needed for me…..we are getting old.   The view during the picnic was gorgeous.   I took a nap on a blanket while some of the others went back...