Sent to Rwanda

I believe that being an aunt is one of the most important titles I hold. Some of you know my 3 precious biological niece and nephews, Carsten, Cohen and Teegin. My life was turned inside out when we were blessed with those cuties. Some of their friends began to call me Aunt Jamie. I kind of got used to the title. My definition of the word aunt: one who gets to love 'em, sugar 'em up and send them back to their moms (then take a nap) . Two weeks ago, one of our teammates told me, "Jamie, you're going to be an aunt again!" I was a little stumped at first, with 2 biological kids and 2 adopted kids, I knew they had a houseful. A baby had been left in a field and was being circled by some dogs when the neighborhood security guys found her. My friends agreed to take this little angel baby until a permanent situation can be found. Her mom abandoned her and is facing consequences because of it, but now Little G has joined our ROC team. After spending five seconds ...

Some of the leaders of our team are in the process of making some decisions about Christ's Church Rwanda, the church that some of our teammates planted. At our weekly prayer meeting, we were challenged to pray and fast for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday; leading up to the planning session on Wednesday. I have been trying to decide about the fast and what to fast from. Before I came on my first trip here, I did a 48 hour food fast. God just poured into me during that time. I know that a fast isn't always a food fast, and for me, I don't believe that food fasting is the best idea right now. As we were brainstorming fast options, facebook came up. I laughed because I do spend umm..quite a bit of time there. When I think of giving things up, I remember a lady who used to visit a department store I worked in during college. Her children were grown and her husband had passed. She would buy things and return them the following week. It wasn't a money issue, the woman was livin...

I have never liked making resolutions because I have always said, "Why should I make them? I'm just going to break them in a few weeks anyway. Why waste the time?" Well, obviously my life has changed dramatically and I was particularly moved by our sermon today by my teammate, Rusty. My interpretation of his message was that you can't have a resolution without a revolution and you can't have a revolution without a revolutionary and Jesus is our revolutionary, so do something big to please Him and impact someone with your resolution. So, throughout the year, I am going to make resolutions and will write about them, thus reminding me to stick with them. The first resolution I want to start with is this: Love like you won't get hurt, Sing like nobody's is listening, Cry when my heartbreaks, Learn to listen/not just waiting to talk, Take time to get to know people, Always do the next right thing no matter what anyone says and most importantly Listen to...