Wife, friend, sister, cousin....

I would like to share with you a funny but scary experience that happened to me just the other day. But first let me share with you a little about some African Culture's for those who don't know. In many African nations it is normal for men to have more than one wife. Some times numbering more than six or so...
In a lot of the Africa nations women are looked at as what we would call the baby factories or more politely the laborers.
In Rwanda this is not so... As we call having more than one spouse Polygamy, it is actually considered illegal here as well as the States. Of course that does not stop some, right.....

In Rwanda the spouse, childeren, and family in general do not take on the last name of the Father as in the States, they are named with there own given names. How family lines our known and kept in tact are beyond me. Yet every one seems to know who belongs to who... It is awesome and amazing!!
On the other hand I have learned that it is quit normal for a man two have three or four cousin's, sisters, or friends... this is how they are introduced (AKA) wife, lover, mistress, how ever you want to call it.
Just the other day I was in an office and meet a nice attractive young girl. As I waited we started talking. She was asking me about my family and my living in Rwanda. I told her that I was married and had four childeren, that we considered Rwanda our home... She seemed excited to hear this. I told her that one day I wished to have Rwandan residency and not to have to worry about visa's...
She turned and told me that what I needed was a Rwandan wife! Shocked at her response, I told her jokingly that I had a wife and didn't think I need any more, besides I said don't you know that it is illegal in Rwanda.
Yes she replied, it is... But you need to have a Rwandan wife pointing at her self. You see she said"on this side (motioning to her left)you have your wife and on this side (motioning to her right) you have a Rwandan" again insinuating her self.
I noticed that this time she did not use the word wife but just Rwandan.... I tried to play it off by showing her in a joking way what I knew about the way some men do here. So I told her, oh so you will be my sister, cousin, or friend..... Her eyes got big, and she seemed very surprised that I knew such a thing.... yet by her response I realized, holy Crap this women is serious.
She said "you know if you want the Rwandan ID (citizenship) and you ask for your self, they will refuse you... But if you have Rwandan (again insinuating to her self) after two or three years I call and ask for you and they can not refuse me!!!"

It was here that I decided to end the conversation! I acted surprised, which was not hard to do as I was pretty shocked at where the conversation was going. I told her thank you but that I was very happy with where my life was at and said I have to go now.
With that said I went straight home and shared with Astrid what had just taken place. She could not believe it, we had some real laughs as we went together and also shared with our house staff that strange experience. In return they shared with us some other similar interesting stories of things that happen here in their culture.

I tell you I love life here!!! Never a dull moment!!!
I guess I should not say that it was funny or that I laughed because actually it is very sad and a bit scary!! Laughing is a typical response in a lot of African cultures, when something is uncomfortable or they are not quite sure how to respond to something it is easier to laugh.
I guess we are catching on after all...
God help us.... But only in the right things.....

For the loss of Contact!!!!

As many of you know on March thirty first one of our staff robbed us and took just about every thing. He has disappeared and the police have yet to find him. Please be praying with us that he will be caught.
With in all of the missing items one of those things was our lap top that had all of our contacts gathered over the years. Any CD's with the backed up info was also taken.

This is a very great loss to us!!! It means that unless I have gotten an email from you in the last three to four months I have no way of contacting you. So it is not that I don't think about you or that I have written you off. I simply just don't have any of my friends email any more.

If you read this and have not heard from me in a while, I beg you to get back in touch with me. If you know any one that knows me please send me their email so that I can reestablish contact with them as well.
Thank you so much for your prayers, friendship, and support of what God is doing in Rwanda!
God bless you and I hope to hear from you soon!

Money problems.... Or Not....

When I went into this mission, God told me “don’t worry, I am going before you and it will be I who will sustain you”. Of course this sounds great and one doesn’t think much of it until things really start happening. The first three years in Rwanda was just that…. We never really lived in what you would call plenty but every time we would need something it would be there. School fees, rent, ministry materials such as computers, projectors, etc.. , money to fix the car when broken there (which would happen quite frequently)… It would just always be there… Even our book keeper one time asked us “how are you guys living there? Because I see everything that is coming in from the States and to be frank, I don’t see how you do it”…. Thank God she is a woman of great faith and believes God just as much as we do!!! With this we know that our book keeping is covered in prayer…

I have began to ask myself when is this going to let up. Don’t get me wrong I am not complaining… Because God provides and we are never in need!! But it would be nice for once to really have the money. I mean actually have it sitting there in the bank waiting to be used.

When we had to so abruptly leave Rwanda with only 48hours notice the money showed up….

We spent some weeks in Europe then by faith made plans to go to the United States, of course every time we tried to plan ahead it would never work but always ended up getting the money on the last day or last hour. Then we would have to take these last minute flights that in my eyes were outrageously expensive! This would happen many times throughout our three month furlough. I had a very big problem with this as I saw it as a huge waste of money! After all it could be going to the building of Heaven Touching Earth (HTE) our children’s village. All in all with the traveling between Europe and the States we spent over $26,000. The funny thing is that the money was not there when we wanted to use it but when we would step out based on what the Lord was speaking the money always showed up.

This all has a purpose, of course! God is trying very hard to get something through our heads.

You see when one is living and working among some of the Nation’s poorest orphans an vulnerable children yet also seeing firsthand the millions of dollars coming in with the awesome, rapid development of this place. I guess it is easy to get eyes off of God and put them on Man for help!
I see now that God really doesn’t care how much he has to spend to reach the lost or to reach me for that matter. After all he did say in the beginning that he will go before us and it will he who will sustain us…

Thank you God!!!

Break time stories... Then & Now

When living in a place where you have little or no choice on things as food or items that bring comfort or convenience to your life. You learn to just live simple! After a while you almost forget what your missing...
While visiting the west again boy were we bombarded with choice ! We would walk in to stores and start crying, or we would have a list of items in our head to get in and get out again but then walking into the store we would find our mind just go blank and would just walk around in a daze and finally leave with nothing.
When eating in restaurants we found it easier if the menu had pictures and we would just tell them to bring what we saw in the picture. I know it sounds ridiculous but you try living three years with no choice in what you eat. When you ask for chicken you get chicken if they even have it, unlike, would you like baked, fried, deep fried, boneless, skinless, honey glazed, barbecued, etc. etc..
Your body is no longer used to all the added things in the food, artificial colors etc.. We found that hear in Rwanda we eat very organic. The first few days in the States our girls loaded up on one of their favorite cold cereals called fruit loops. One of the mornings when we were cleaning up some toys that were on ground some from our girls and some from our host families little dog. There was this little bright green, I mean florescent green thing on the ground. thinking it was one of the dogs toys we went to pick it up and realized that in fact it was one of our little girls that had an accident. Only a few moments later our daughter Nani comes running down stairs saying "Mom, Dad, this is so wicked cool!!! My Poop was bright blue with other colors to..."

It has been a little tough on the girls being back when they were so getting use to choosing from 100 different cereals, muffins of all sorts, bagels, etc.
Breakfast was and is a big meal for them. Now they get to choose between Cheri o's, cornflakes, fruit and fiber, or cocoa crispies, and thats it.... But with a box costing any where between $6 to 10 dollars they dont get much of this either.
It wont be long before we settle back into the simplicity of life and once again adopt the phrase TIA (this is Africa)... A few days ago I was sitting in a office to pay for my internet bill and found myself laughing so hard as I was on my way some two hours later.

On the way home I run into much traffic due to a car broken down in the middle of the road. This greatly holds up traffic but no one seems to care but me for a moment. I first thought was that of any of you.... If you would just move the stupid car to the side every one can pass with out holding up traffic!! But When in Africa one must think like an African, It is broken and there for it does not work so it is stupid to try to move something that doesn't work. In a short moment I find myself laughing again and thinking to myself it is so good to be home!!!

Deepest Apologies...

I realized while We were on our break in both Europe and the States that it was not going to be possible for us to see and spend time with all our friends. We simply did not have enough time between fund raising and visiting.
In total we were out for about three months and all over the place. It was a whirl wind of emotion I must say!! Of course we loved being out after not having a break for almost three years but oddly enough even after three short weeks we found our selfs longing and wanting to be get back to Rwanda again. I guess this is proof that it is home!! We would frequently contact our staff here on the ground to be updated on the progress and wellbeing of the children we were caring for. This of course kept also our minds and hearts here.

I would like to send our deepest apologies to those we did not get to see or spend much time with!!

Quick Review

We have come to the end of our break and now are back in Rwanda just as God promised…

I don’t even know where to start. It has been so long since I have written anything and I realize that there is probably a lot of people who don’t know what has been happening.

Let me start from the beginning:

March31,2008

We were up North of the country to see the Kids, are car broke down again and while trying to fix it we received a phone call from one of our staff telling us that many of our things in our house had just been stolen. We abandoned the trip to see the kids and after fixing the car headed straight home to see what we would find. It was late when we arrived home and what we found was very shocking!One of our house staff had gone and taken everything he could from our house; Computers, cameras, power point projector, ipod, etc. etc. anything electronic plus much more. If that is not enough, I had stopped by our office to check on it in rout to file the police report. Everything was gone!!!! Electronics, tables, desks, chairs, curtains, toilet paper, you name it, it was gone…. All in all we figured it to be about $13,000 to 15,000 to be taken.

The next morning while taking more of an exact count of everything that was gone, I received a phone call and was told to come for a meeting where I was told we had to go out of the Country in 48hours.
I went and broke the news to Astrid and immediately we started to make phone calls to everyone we knew to ask them to pray. After this point I don’t remember many details because everything moved so fast. What I remember is never seeing my family for the next three days due to having meetings with any one I could who I thought might be able to help us. Astrid was at home packing up everything we had left. Our friends both local and from the international community, really gathered around us to support us and pray. The night before we had to be out we decided through the advice of a very good local friend to have a night of just worshiping God and lifting him up high. Once again putting the focus off of what Satan was trying to do and putting it on the very one who had brought us to Rwanda in the first place.

April 3,2008 ( the morning of departure)

The Girls went off to school. I went for more meetings and to deal with our daughter Yaida’s visa for the Netherlands. Our flight is leaving at 8 in the evening meaning we need to be at the airport around 5. At 4:30 I am told that there had been a big misunderstanding and that we did not have to go but could stay.

Praise God!!!!! Unfortunately we had tickets that could not be refunded. I asked if it was ok that we still go out for a holiday and come back to start fresh again. I was told “Of course, no problem!”

WOW!!!!! GOD IS SO GOOD!!!! He has done the impossible!! Thank you for all your prayers for us, our God has heard and has answered!!! We are back and more excited than ever to see God move in a mighty way through this nation.
There is going to be a revival coming to Rwanda and an out pouring of God’s presents on his people here like no one can imagine. Please continue to pray for us and pray for this great Nation, it’s leaders and all that God has planned.

All things New...

About three days ago we were able to get Jean Paul out of the Hospital. The Doctors said that he is strong enough to go out but they had great concern to where he was going to go. They informed us that he was not quit strong enough to go back to the village yet but needed to gain some more weight and still be monitored for a couple of weeks.

There was not much choice for us but to keep paying the hospital and bringing all his meals or to take him home with us so we could watch over him. So we chose to bring him home. He was very excited to know that he was going to be out of that place and even more excited to find out that he would be staying with Mama & Papa Nani.
I was made very aware that this poor boy knew nothing of city life but only that of the village. When we got him from the hospital it was about nine o’clock in the evening and very dark, as we took the twenty min ride back to our house the only expression to explain what I saw was that of a deer staring in to the head lights of a car. Jean Paul’s eyes were so big as he looked around at the lights of the city and those off in the distance. He asked in amazement “are those all lights??” It dawned on me that the only light he was used to at night was that of a candle, lantern or flash light.
Before arriving at the house I made sure that it was explained to Jean Paul that the house was very big and very Muzungu (white person). But it was not Mama & Papa Nani’s house. We were renting and living in someone else’s home. I told him that we were just like him and the other kid’s, we did not have our own home. That is why we want to get the land so we can build homes for all of us to live together.
When we got to the house I guess you could say he was shocked and speechless…. We sat him down and went through some rules of the house. The cute little guy could only node his head and stare at every thing.We got him some thing to eat and I sat with him observing as he looked at all the decorations and photo’s on the walls. He looked at the tile floors and the detailed wood work on the ceiling with the fancy lighting.
I know he is really observing us to as he now sees us in our own surroundings eating strange foods, the children running around dragging all these toys every where. He sat yesterday watching Jasmin & Yaida play in a big inflatable swimming pool we have. I thank God for our Rwandan staff who can explain these strange things that he is seeing. Last night he sat down and watched Nani & Zoey as they played with lego after dinner, slowly we watched as he began to also interact and try to build some things.
All in all he is recovering very well and getting a little stronger each day but I wish I could hear and understand what must be going on in that little head of his as all things in his life are so new now.

Thank God for saving him from Satan’s grasp!!!