rwanda + days 1-3

we’re here!  we left birmingham at 11:30 am saturday morning and after 4 flights & 4 countries we finally arrived at our hotel at 2:00 am monday morning.   it was by far the longest day{s} of travel we’ve ever had!  i am happy to say that all legs of our travels were on time & pleasant {we even had a cabin crew on the british airways flight that wasn’t on strike!}   we have had one big hiccup since we’ve been here – our luggage didn’t exactly make all 4 fights & 4 countries.  it’s tuesday now and we’re still not sure where our luggage is.   we’ve been told that it is going to be on the flight coming into Kigali tonight and that we’ll have it in the morning, so if you get a minute, say a little prayer.  reed and I have nothing except the clothes on our backs {and the charity items we’ve gotten from the awesome people we are traveling with}.  and if you do the math, that means we’ve been wearing the same clothes for 3 days now.  although this is pretty traumatic, the worst part is really that all of the gifts we brought along {and wakm employees sent} for the children we sponsor through compassion international were in the checked luggage.  we are going to meet the children tomorrow so our prayers tonight {it’s 9:15pm here, 2:15pm at home!} are that the luggage does in fact come in so that we can give out the gifts to the children.

we started our day today by visiting the compassion international country office here in rwanda.   it was really neat to get an inside look at things.  we met a lot of people who do various jobs with the country office::  counselors, program directors, financial staffs, we even saw the auditors’ office!  those are the things you get excited about when you’re on a trip with accountants & auditors!

after the visit to the country office, we went back to our hotel for lunch.  we sat on the patio and had lunch enjoying the beautiful weather.  the breeze was awesome and the company was even better.  there are 2 members of the compassion team that are serving as our guides this week and today they joined us for lunch. 

we then headed to the genocide memorial.  it was sad.  i mean really sad.  the genocide happened in 1994 and was devastating to the country of Rwanda.  I’ve linked to it above if you want to read more.  the hardest thing to see & read was the pictures of small children {9 months – 7 years} and the horrible ways they were murdered during the genocide.  what is truly amazing and inspiring about the whole thing is the way that God has worked in this country.  the people here have shown enormous amounts of forgiveness, which is an example to all of us. 

tomorrow we will be going to nyamata to visit our children.  we are praying God will be honored and glorified through our visits with the children.  we know we will be blessed by the children and are praying that we will be a blessing to them as well.  we were given lots of hugs before we left to pass off to the many children in nyamata, and we can’t wait to share them! 

we’re off to get some rest -- still recovering from our travels!

we thank each of you for the prayers you have offered up and want you all to know how much we appreciate them.  please continue to pray that we will be effective instruments of God’s love.

{we're sorry there aren't any pictures with the post, but the internet is very slow & expensive.  we'll have a picture post when we return to the states!}