Sent to Rwanda

I had a friend ask if I would help her develop some type of training for girls who are just graduating senior six, or high school seniors, while they are waiting for results. In the Rwandese school system, they take final exams mid-November and then wait until around mid-January to find out their results. It seems like everyone is always waiting on "results". After talking with a few people, I realized the significance. Test results at various ages will determine your future--where you will go to school, possibly what you will study and finally, what you will become when you grow up. When the students who have graduated secondary school, or high school, are waiting for their exams; this determines whether they will be able to qualify for a scholarship to attend university. If they don't qualify for a scholarship, for many of them, that's the end of their education. So I asked, what happens to the girls if they don't get a scholarship? My friend said that som...

Being a little sister, I have always fought to stay out of someone’s shadow. I don’t want to be seen as anyone’s secondhand anything.  Over the last few months, I have found myself saying a phrase over and over in a few different situations, “I’m not Holly.” Holly is one of our ROC teammates who has a PhD in chemistry, certainly not someone I would put myself in the same category with. I was able to graduate high school with the minimal science and math classes and without any chemistry classes. (The teachers probably had something to do with that for fear I might try to blow something up?!). Anyway, so back to Holly. I was going through my sent email box of thousands of old emails and stumbled on a newsletter from Bryan (Holly’s husband), written by Holly just before I was about to visit Rwanda in 2009. She was describing some of the things she was working on and shared, “Some days are very difficult, so it feels good to share when really good days happen. This wa...

Last weekend was Easter and many families have many traditions on celebrating our risen Lord. For the last 15 years or so, my family has attended the Leadership Training for Christ (LTC) conference. We started attending the Dallas, TX conference when I was a freshman in high school and moved into the Tulsa, now Rogers, Ark. conference. I was immediately drawn to it because it gave me an outlet for the talents that God had placed deep within me and I was shown how to develop those talents to bring glory to God. And you get medals. (I was am a fairly competitive person, so it was a motivator.) People in our church would sign up as coaches to help guide us through events like drama, chorus, speech and so many more! They were mentors to us; guiding our unique talents that God had put deep inside of us. I'm sure sometimes they felt like they were herding cats! Some events were group events and some were individual; allowing us to share our talents with each other and also giving us ...

A few months ago, the guys at church gave me a Kinyarwanda name, " Ubuntu ", meaning grace or mercy in Kinyarwanda. They gave it to me because of my tattoo on my wrist that says, " Grace ". Since I have changed my facebook name, I have come across quite a few meanings for the words and want to share them. A friend recently posted this story: Today I read a story about an anthropologist who proposed a game to the kids in an African tribe. He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told the kids that who ever got there first won the sweet fruits. When he told them to run they all took each others hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying their treats. When he asked them why they had run like that as one could have had all the fruits for himself they said: UBUNTU, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad? UBUNTU in the Xhosa culture means: " I am because we are ". After doing a little wikipedia search on the word...

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I reasoned like a child... (I Corinthians 13:11). The first part of this verse has been ringing in my head all week. Here in Rwanda, we have staff who help us around the house and in different capacities. I have a housekeeper, Emelyne. (I know this might be a hard concept to get). First, let me explain this and then I will get to my point. Househelp is normal here. If you don't have help, you are the oddball. Labor is inexpensive and the employment is contributing to the economy, giving someone a job who didn't have one. Emelyne was introduced to me by one of our ministers at our church. He said that she was a young girl, who had graduated secondary school (high school), but did not have the means to go on to university and was looking for a job. When I first met Emelyne, I liked her right away. Her English isn't real strong, but is much better than my Kinyarwanda, so I'm not criticizing. As my roommate, Betsy, and I got to...

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...