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.