A Whole New World: Just Down the Block

It has officially been one week.
One week of Los Angeles.
One week of prayer.
One week of being challenged.
One week of living in the Spirit.

It has been one week of working in Los Angeles. So many times I feel as though I have left the country, even though that is not the case. It  feels as though I have traveled to India and then to China. Oh and then I stopped in Mexico. It has been an adventure. There are few people that I have met that actually speak English fluently. I am in a different world. Yet somehow, I don't need my passport.

Doors continually have been opening. It's amazing to see what God has been doing. And I know that He still has so much more planned. The focus is to actually dare to live a missional lifestyle. The challenged is to continually be burdened for the lost and do something about it.

We are stepping over the great divide of fear, convenience, and ignorance to be cross-cultural and reach out to the different ethnic groups around us. Los Angeles is a land of culture, religion, diversity, idolarty, and darkness. It is a land that needs Light.

(L to R) Alli, Tiffany, & Katy. We are indeed a small team.

A small taste of my world.

Unwashable Dirt: Rwanda

I went to Rwanda.

I came home and found that something was missing.

A piece of my heart was left in Africa.

Rwanda is a beautiful country.

It is the land of a thousand hills.

A land of poverty

A land of discrimination

A land of brokenness

It is a land of hope.

The beautiful lush country of Rwanda impacted me more than just providing nice snapshots and picturesque views. It changed my perspective of Africa, and even my perspective of God’s people and His heart for the nations. The dirt in Africa is red. It is red and quite simply unwashable. No matter how hard I tried, the dirt would not come off; causing the bottom of my feet to look very similar to the dirt.

In time this dirt washes off. The dirt comes off the sole. But I pray that the red dirt of Africa would never wash away from the soul of my heart.

I was blessed to see and experience so much. I am not quite sure how to put everything into words. But we can take comfort in that “a picture says a thousand words.”

I hope that these photos give you a glimpse of the beautiful Land of a Thousand Hills—Rwanda.

This is the airport in Nairobi, Kenya. Our last flight to the final destination...

This is the hotel that we stayed at, it was very nice.

This is my humble abode. 

Every night I used the mosquito net to protect

 me from the little critters.

This is my friend Cara and me outside the Catholic Church, just across the street from our hotel.

Below are the woods that surround the University, where we would spend our afternoons.

 

This is the University of Rwanda.

This is what my classroom looked like, simple and functional

This is our class of students. They all did excellent. All of our

students passed the English proficiency exam!

This is me with two of my students,

 Odette (on the left) and Chantel (on the right). 

We would teach in the classroom from 8-12 in the morning. In the afternoons, from 2-5, we would walk to the main campus and play games or just talk with the students. 

One day we had unexpected visitors, at least for the Americans. There were monkeys walking around the campus! Monkeys in this part of Rwanda would be equivalent to the squirrel in Southern California. 

 

These are various photographs of what one would see on a walk throughout Butare, Rwanda.

At the end of a long day we would walk back from the University to our hotel. 

The walk back was all up hill. This is the view that we would see when we just about made

 it to the top. I loved it. This captures just a glimpse of the beauty of Rwanda.