crazy times..

The past 36 hours have been loaded with the unexpected. It started off by waking up to screams from a woman who is regularly abused next door. I guess the man hits his wife and even his two small children. Beatrice’s mom Kristine goes over there to pray with them frequently, and sometimes the children come over here. Although one can go to jail for domestic violence, they said it’s a pretty regular occurrence here… It didn’t seem to be very upsetting to the people we were talking with, probably because it’s so common. It really broke my heart though.

Next, we went to English class where I was to have a bit more heartache. One of my young students who is an orphan was raped and beaten by a family she was staying with. She recently told her testimony in church for the first time, and ever since she’s been unable to stop thinking about her past. I think she may have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as she has all of the symptoms. She has been unable to concentrate in class or retain anything we cover. Wednesday she started crying when I called on her in class. I talked with her afterwards for a while during which silent tears rolled down her cheeks the whole time. In asking if she has anyone to talk to about her past, she thought for a mere second and then replied, “No. I can’t trust anyone.” Because she has been abused and taken advantage of for so many years by everyone she knew, she is unable to trust others, build intimacy, give or receive love. I offered to “counsel” her but she said no because I will be leaving in 2 months and she didn’t see the point in building a relationship if I’m just going to leave. Continue praying for this girl and for me as I’m unsure how to help. I think the best way may be to teach a counseling class to train the church members here how to counsel. That way those who will be here long term can best help.

Yesterday morning was the most unexpected event of all and the one that possibly broke my heart the most. Hilliary, Angie (our fun house girl) and I were walking to the market to buy food to make our weekly dinner that night. Upon rounding a corner, we saw something in the middle of the road. Most of what happened is a blur to me now as I went into “fight” mode. What I first thought to be a pile of clothes was a man who was laying face first in the dirt. People were around, but nobody stopped or even gave him a second glance. We immediately made our way over to him, wondering if he was alive as he wasn’t moving. We tried to check his pulse, while talking to him and touching his hand and back. Soon, he began to move and more people crowded around. As two men slowly helped him up, we gave him our water and he drank a whole bottle in about thirty seconds. He had dirt all over his clothes and his face and had a very hard time moving. The people who were around seemed satisfied once he was up and they had carried him to the shade. However, it was obvious that he was in a lot of pain and I didn’t feel okay just leaving. We found a man who spoke some English and he translated for us saying that the man wanted to go to the hospital but had no money. A boy offered to push the man (named Andres) on his bicycle and we followed.

The hospital was jammed packed with people, including many young children and mothers. It was quite a challenge trying to talk with the staff as none of them spoke English but we eventually understood that we simply had to wait. Hilliary and Angie went to the market across the road while I waited with the man. After seeing the nurse though, she motioned that he needed to be transferred to a different hospital. After having some difficulty finding Hilliary in the market, and getting a taxi that wouldn’t over charge us, we made our way to the hospital, which turned out to be a hospital specializing in neurology and psychiatry.  While waiting there, we met a very kind guy named Emmanuel. He was 25 years old and was there with his family to have his brain tumor looked at. We soon got into the doctor who thankfully spoke English. He explained to us that Andres is a patient there at the hospital but he doesn’t have enough treatment to buy the medicine he needs or to pay for counseling as he suffers from epilepsy. His parents are both dead and he lives with his two brothers but none of them have jobs. The doctor explained that this is a great problem in the country as many, many people need help but nearly none of them can pay for medicine, yet alone pay for food. It was so painful sitting there, seeing that Andres was completely helpless. We ended up getting him a 2 month supply of his medicine and paying for his hospital bill but I couldn’t help wondering what would happen to him in 2 months when his medicine runs out again. We gave him our email and drew him a map of where the church is located and we think he may come on Sunday. I dearly hope he will. It’d be great if we could help him find a job somehow so that he can begin to take care of himself.

While at the psychiatry hospital, I couldn’t help but thank God for this whole ordeal. I wonder what would have happened to Andres if we hadn’t stopped, if God hadn’t had us walk that way at that time. I also got the Doctor’s email and telephone number as I explained that I’d love to come back and talk with him. He agreed and I’ll try and go back next week. I think it’d be so great if I could find a way to go there maybe once a week to help out, observe, maybe job shadow? Yesterday and today have been confirming that I want to go into psychology. Today made me really want to go to med school and be a psychiatrist instead of a counselor.  I wonder though, how would I pay for med school if I want to work with poor people who probably couldn’t pay me? God knows and will provide if that’s what I’m supposed to do though..

Well, sorry for the long post. Please continue praying for my student and for Andres, as well as for us. The first week or so, I was having a difficult time connecting with people or loving the culture, but God is making my heart break very much for this place now. Pray that this continues and that God continues using us the way He wants to. Also, I feel that I’m starting to get sick so please pray that I’d remain healthy so that I can continue to do what I came here to do.

Thanks friends.

Megan

ps

ps. hilliary's blog is www.hillsblog.com so read hers also! apparently the last link was wrong..

and also, i uploaded a few pictures onto facebook so check there as well because it takes about half an hour to upload one picture on here because the connection is so slow!

week 2

\]It’s so difficult to decide what to write about when each day here is so eventful.. Hilliary and I will be trying to come to the internet café on Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings. We are nine hours ahead here but if you’re around at any of those times, get on Skype! Also, pastor’s address here is BS 2815 Kigali, Rwanda.  If you have something to send, do it through Fed Ex or DHL and they can most likely ship it to the house.

Hilliary and I got pretty discouraged this week after another church service. It’s been difficult to connect to God when everybody here does so through different means. All the services we went to were so full of emotion, dancing, crying, prophesying.. things that are very foreign to our way of connecting with God. Then, the messages of miracles we kept hearing from the Kenyan pastors were hitting us both the wrong way and we had a day of seriously doubting the ministry, God, and us being in Africa. Despite not feeling like praying, we spent some time doing so together and every day since then, everything has been SO SO much better!! We were also discouraged because we felt that no one was really investing in us relationally but this has changed immensely as well and we thank God for it. The transformation is huge J

We’ve gotten to hear a few more stories from some of the people in our church who are also our students and I appreciated this even though it was hard to hear. One of my students has no parents and from a young age lived with a family who took her in to look after their children. However, she was raped and beaten so badly that she was unable to walk or get out of bed for 2 years. She was rescued and is still working through trusting others and having faith in God but she is improving significantly.

One of my other students used to be a soldier and was having a hard time for many years getting a job. He got so discouraged that he decided he wanted to shoot himself, but when the time came, he couldn’t do it. He decided to try one more time getting a job as a cab driver after praying and he got it and has committed his life to pursuing God ever since.

People here find so much to thank God for…

Hill and I also had the opportunity to cook here last Thursday night, and we will continue to do so every week despite the DISASTER we created! We tried to make tortillas and fajitas and everything would have been fine.. but there were quite a few important things that went wrong. First of all, we got the wrong kind of flour at the market (what a crazy experience).. we then went to another market and bought flour, but this too was the wrong kind. Thus, our tortillas didn’t work at all. Then, we made the fajitas but it wasn’t very tasty so Auntie gave us a few peppers to put in. Hilliary cut it, smelled it and concluded that it smelled like a mandarin.. so we put in a lot and the dish was so hot it was hard to eat!

Yesterday at church and Saturday at an outreach event, the Kenyan pastors were there again and we continued to feel anxious as they talked. I talked to Pastor Beatrice again yesterday after they left, explaining to her my discomfort at their message of miracles happening if you have enough faith and how it is hindering me from growing during church. We talked for an hour about it, which is pretty ironic for me as I greatly hate confrontation. Basically, she agrees with me but is in a sort of bind that I won’t explain. I feel very convicted about this and asked if I could talk with the three pastors sometime (which again is very unusual for me! God is giving me such boldness here). So, please pray for this! Part of me feels so nervous at dialoging about theology with three grown pastors who have been preaching for years, yet I feel like God is really with me. It’s interesting to see where He’s taking me while I’m here.. I never thought I’d be challenging “prosperity doctrine” in Africa! Hilliary and I are also speaking to the youth on Tuesday and will need to prepare messages so pray that God would give us words then also.

Missing you all,

Megan

prosperity, children and class updates..

So far, Hilliary and I have been asked to marry someone 3 times and two young boys have tripped because they were staring so hard at us! We’ve had more and more good laughs lately. The other funny line from hilliary after she almost got run over as she tried to cross the traffic congested street—“A dead muzungu (white person) is even more rare than an alive one!”

Since the last blog, after praying God gave me great amounts of boldness to ask Pastor Beatrice about the theology questions that I had from the church service on Sunday, as it really made me upset. I realized after talking with her that it was really weighing me down and almost keeping me from fully entering into service and working alongside of this ministry.. so I’m so grateful for the courage to ask her my questions even though I was so unsure of the cultural appropriateness of doing so. I think through our conversation about the “prosperity gospel” here in Africa, faith, miracles and not losing sight of loving God, that I’m more convinced than ever that this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. It really surprised me though that a kind of “prosperity doctrine” theology runs so rampantly here in Eastern Africa, just as it does in Seattle and in the United States. The pastors who spoke at the church on Sunday were guests from Kenya who spoke for nearly 3.5 hours about how if we only have enough faith in God, we will never get sick, we will have jobs and money and our every prayer will be answered by God. While, yes, I do believe that miracles happen, these pastors completely missed the point that intimacy with God, loving Him, and obeying Him are primary. God seemed more like a big Santa Clause up in heaven who we turn to when we need something, rather than having a relationship with another Being.

It’s also been so encouraging to see that God is the same, even across such vast cultural boundaries and differences. He speaks the same message to people here—and this is only more proof to me of His existence.

Class has also been going well.. their smiles keep me going. We played bingo today and they loved it! They practice English everywhere they go.. when we leave the classroom, you can hear them walking down the road pointing to things and saying their colors etc. It’s so great.

We also had the opportunity to visit former prostitutes and their mothers yesterday in their homes. I’m not quite sure I can adequately describe the slum.. it was filled with the sound of crying babies, everything was made of mud and tin, there were huge holes in the walls of the houses, trash and human feces were in the cramped walkways between the houses.. and this is where hundreds of thousands if not millions of Rwandans live. The first house we visited was the home of a young mother who was a former prostitute who has two beautiful twin baby girls. When we walked in, the babies were simply lying on a chair, one of them crying. It took over an hour before the milk was ready for the hungry babies and one of them drank it so fast that she puked it up all over the woman who was holding her. (She also then proceeded to poop and pee on Hilliary J.) It broke my heart to see this little family. The HIV positive mother was so young, had no way of making money other than selling small crafts, had two malnourished babies to look after… all the while, trying to maintain her faith and live a life free from the easy way of making money through prostitution.

After this visit to Odette and her babies, we went to another home of a young HIV positive mother who used to work in prostitution. It was really great because I brought some extra money through a very nice friend who donated some, and with that we are going to be buying these women groceries and the materials they need to the most to take care of their vulnerable children.

It has been so neat to learn from the women of Patmos Healing Ministries and to see the mutli-faceted work God has called them to. All day yesterday, I couldn’t stop thinking about what it might look like if the churches of America, if my church, associated themselves with the poor the way that the women of this church do. The majority of these women don’t have jobs, so they use what little resources they have to bless women who are even more vulnerable and needy than themselves. They visit prostitutes, take care of the neediest of children, visit the sick, use their resources fully for taking care of those around them, encourage youth… it’s amazing and I wonder what transformations would take place in our own communities if we lived this way as well.

I’d also like to say a big thank you to those of you who donated items (clothes, crayons, coloring books, money). The children, youth and adults who have been receiving these items have been so grateful and excited. Some of the soccer jerseys and youth clothing was given away today and all the boys put on their new clothes right away, sporting them proudly the rest of the time we were there. It has been a great encouragement to the people here and I wish you could see their smiling faces.

It’s time to go, but you can also read Hilliary’s blog at www.hillsblog.com

Until next time,

Megan

first week in rwanda..

Hello friends! I can't believe I've already been here for nearly a week.. there's SO much to tell and not enough time but it's been crazy. Despite being in Kigali for several days now, being here still feels like a dream. up until today, we were just hanging out at the pastor's house we're staying at, traveling around town and running errands so it felt a bit like a vacation. today, though, we started teaching english. I got a bit nervous last night when we found out that instead of just teaching the church staff, we'd be having our own classrooms, but it was GREAT TODAY! I had ten students (all but one were adults and 2 pastors). I'll post a picutre of them next time.. but I teach for 5 hours three times a week which I thought would be such a long time, but it went by very quick today. the students are so great and immensely eager to learn english. I kept wanting to go back and review but they said, "no, no.. we can review at home.. teach us more!!" and after I taught them how to say their first basic conversation in english, their faces lit up and huge smiles spread across their happy faces! Because of that, I could do this everyday.. after we were done for the day you could hear them all outside asking each other, "what is your name? How are you?" it was so encouraging for me to see the fruit of the work even already...

other than teaching english three times a week, hilliary and i will be taking care of children two times a week and teaching an art/craft class once a week for women to learn practical skills. nearly all of the people here don't have jobs--including the vast majority of them who have completed schooling in universities. it's very sad and i can't help but think in the big picture and wonder what needs to happen for the rwandan economy to be rejuvinated.. knowing english helps people get jobs though so i'm honored to play my small role in this. I've also been asked to teach a class to train people how to counsel.. however, i'm not sure if I can do this and will need to decide by tonight. i have some materials with me and some basic ideas of how to conduct counseling but am not sure if i could train church members how to do this.

the women we're staying with are fantastic and have been nothing but supportive and kind to us. our interpreter chantal is with us nearly all the time as well as several other women who are staying at the pastors house to keep us company. hilliary and i thought we might lose weight coming to africa, but the exact opposite is happening! we eat SO much here and when we say no to more food, they hand us more! already hilliary and i are thinking that we are gaining weight haha! we joke that we'll come home 30 lbs heavier at least :)

up until yesterday, i was having trouble staying awake as i was so tired.. all the women kept teasing me calling me a "baby" and "bad." It's fun and I haven't been tired the past two days as bad so that's good! before, everytime I sat down I was falling asleep in my chair!

Hilliary is learning the language "kinyarwandan" VERY quickly. she's amazing and god has really blessed her with language skills. it's astonishing and everyone here thinks so.. they tease me also because I am more slow. they say, "hilliary will know kinyarwandan in one month, but megan will not know by the time she leaves!" I'm trying though!

some other things we have done include going to the southern part of the country to visit one of the pastors sons who is at boarding school. when we walked into the courtyard of the school, ALL of the heads in the surrounding classrooms turned and we heard several gasps at the sight of us.. when class got out, all the students rushed out to stare at us haha. some even ventured over to talk to us and let us take their picture.

everywhere we go here, people stare, point and say "muzungu," the word for white person. at first it was very weird, but i'm getting used to it and it can actually be a little bit funny :) yesterday we accompanied "auntie" who is a sort of maid for our house and while we sat in a shop waiting for her, several people in walking past, came back doing double and triple takes. we've been making lots of jokes about it. OH, and we've gotten asked to marry people twice now!! It's hilarious! while we were at the same market, one man stopped us and said we were beautiful and asked if he could marry us.. but that he only needed one of us :)

our first church service was yesterday and it was 4.5 hours long!! it was the longest service i've ever been to in my life and was possibly the most foreign to me as well. despite my attending a pentecostal church in seattle for about a year and a half, i wasn't prepared for all that went on yesterday in the service. i was very confused and a bit upset about the theology that was presented and asked the pastor if i could ask her some questions tonight. i need to be very respectful though and am praying it goes well. it's so important to see different things not as bad. i have a lot to learn from them and the way they see god and worship him, but i hope they can learn a little bit from me as well.

overall, the people are incredibly hospitable, kind and beautiful. despite being a bit discouraged yesterday, i am doing well and am very much looking forward to getting into the routine of things with the programs we're doing. we're even cooking for everyone on thursday night.. it'll be an adventure for sure.. especially knowing my wonderful cooking skills haha. we'll be cooking american food though which involves going to the market, doing dishes from the spicket etc. we've also been using a tub of water that's heated every morning to wash ourselves and that was interesting on the first morning figuring out how to do that! we got water all over the floor :)

well, I'm runing out of time on the internet.. sorry this was so jumbled and that I rambled for a bit. I miss my family and friends back home and have been deeply encouraged by the cards and everything that you sent with me. i'm opening them very slowly because i want to save them for if i have discouraging days. it's been so encouraging though when i'm discouraged to know that there are so many people at home and all over the world praying for us. so THANK YOU for your prayers. Please continue praying.. here are some requests:

-praise god for the english class today! it is going to be fantastic and fruitful. pray that the students learn quickly and that their english skills will enable them to get jobs.

-I need to decide by tonight if I feel equipped enough to teach a counseling training class. I am doubting myself a bit but think having 3 years of education at an american university has taught me a lot.. please pray for discernment and wisdom about this.

-understanding and wisdom about the theology here and for our discussion with the pastor tonight.

ALSO, I WILL BE BACK ON THE INTERNET WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON.. I'M NOT SURE WHAT TIME THAT IS IN AMERICA AS THERE'S AN ELEVEN HOUR TIME DIFFERENCE BUT IF YOU CAN, GET ON SKYPE DURING THAT CHUNK OF TIME!!!! It would be SO great to talk to some of you!!

again, thanks for your support and prayers. love and miss you all at home..

until next time,
megan