My take-aways from our mission trip to Rwanda in June 2009 with Food for the Hungry and Pathways Church.
High Points: Holding hands non-stop with little children, making babies cry because they've never seen a white person before, hearing "What Is Your Name?" about 50 times a day, carrying water on our heads, hugging and kissing little dirty wonderful children all day long, communicating without words, hearing the rat trap go off and knowing one more rat has been killed, watching roosters and chickens brought in for the offering at church, seeing giraffe and zebras, hanging with 11 other awesome people from Colorado, learning how to lead people effectively by experiencing our team leader’s leadership, pouring guava nectar concentrate in my bottle of water and drinking it for lunch, brushing our teeth under the starry sky, seeing the humility and thankfulness in parent’s eyes on home visits, walking on dirt paths single file (with a few kids holding our hands in front and back) in a skirt, carrying mud bricks to help build someone a house, experiencing church without media, chasing a cow with a stick, sipping soda from glass bottles, staring at children while they stared at me, being kissed by a little dirty girl with a torn shirt, brown face, big eyes, and warm smile, learning that people with much less are really quite rich...
Low Points: Watching rats run across our bedroom floor, having a mouse on my arm in the middle of the night, hearing rats at night up in the rafters.
Entertaining Points: Getting the giggles at dinner over nothing, hearing kids ask "What is my name?" instead of "What is your name?", playing clapping games, jumprope and volleyball and tug-o-war with happy little children, singing songs as we walked along the dirt paths, watching children crawl under a web of yarn with big smiles, sitting in a Rwandan 6th grade classroom, being mobbed by children every day, seeing double-handed waves with huge grins, riding a cruiser bicycle with bad brakes down a singletrack trail, playing euchre late at night, laughing with friends at dinner, packing 18 people into a 12 passenger van.
Sobering Points: Life is not always fair. Why is it that we have clean water, clean clothes, nice houses, and they have none of the above? Why can we get loans to finish our education and they have to wait until they get enough money, with no jobs available? Why do our children have medical treatment readily available and theirs do not?
Spiritual Points: The God we know is all the way over in Africa!! People with nothing still have an amazing faith in God. When you have very little, you are totally reliant on God to provide your needs. In a way, they are better off than most of us because they don't have to go thru the whole "letting go of my stuff" phases like we do to find God again. They have nothing to let go of so many have God very near in their hearts. And boy, do these people know how to do church! Words can't describe the emotion they pour out into their songs, dancing, and offerings.
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