September Blog Postings

September 5, 2009 - Observations from Church at Urukundo Home for Children

For a lot of my life church has been, well, let’s just say, “difficult.” Without opening the proverbial can of worms on my blog, I’ll just say that it was because of sin within the church collective, and my sinful response. But then things changed when God brought healing to my life through a wonderful church home. It took years, and it wasn’t right away, but God softened my heart to his body. Though never once through all of the heartache and years of difficult church experiences did I completely give up on God’s people, the simple act of going to church and taking part in worship was more of a duty and a challenge than a joy. That was until three years ago when God changed my heart and I was finally able to give myself wholeheartedly to a local body.

Since arriving in Rwanda two months ago, I’ve been worshipping mainly at the Urukundo Home for Children. Though I love the simplicity of the service and seeing the children’s enthusiasm in worship, I’ve been missing my church home more than I expected. Today was evidence of that. A visiting lay person served communion using much of the liturgy that I’m used to. The familiarity, beauty and symbolism in taking the sacrament brought tears to my eyes, as did saying the Lord’s Prayer. I was shocked at how much I longed to worship God in a language and a format that I’m familiar with, rather than straining to hear a translator or sitting through numerous songs that I only know every 10th or 20th word. I found myself yearning to be a wholehearted part of a local church body. That was a yearning that four years ago, I never thought I’d experience.

Please pray for me. Pray that I am able to strike a balance between visiting churches to learn more about the Rwandan church and its ministry to children for my job, and becoming a regular part of a church body. Pray that I am able to find an English service that I can attend from time to time so I am able to be fed spiritually in my mother tongue. Please pray also that I am able to become a part of a local Rwandan church and build relationships. I do long to again be able to give myself wholeheartedly to the local church.

With that said however, worshipping at Urukundo has been an incredible blessing that has taught me so much. Each week one of the children and then an adult speaker “preaches” a sermon. We sing hymns and choruses together, mainly in Kinyarwanda, and the childrens’ choirs perform. They conclude the service with a time of testimony and praise to God. Without fail, each week, one of the children gives public praise to God that He brought them all through the week and none of them died. In all of my years of working with and ministering to children in the US, I have never, ever heard one of them give praise to God that they were still alive. It gives me pause to consider the brevity of life here, especially for children, many of whom don’t even make it to their fifth birthday. I know that I have never given public praise to God that I am still alive and didn’t die through the week. I just don’t expect to, at least not yet. Yet because life is harder here, these children can appreciate that it is God who gives and sustains life. They’ve learned a lesson that I have yet to learn.

I’ve also learned much from the wisdom and toughness of Mama, Arlene Brown, who founded and runs Urukundo. She’s an 80 year woman who has sacrificed an easy retirement and a rocking chair in the US to provide a home for 40 orphaned and abandoned Rwandan children. She will stop at nothing to make sure that the children in her care receive all that they need.
Years ago, I read the book by John Piper, “Don’t Waste Your Life”. Arlene, or Mama as we affectionately call her, certainly has not wasted her life, even the last years of her life. I am amazed by her fierce tenacity to care for these children and advocate for them. She is one tough cookie, and is truly the type of woman I would like to become. As I reflect upon what I would like people to say about me when I am 80 years old, I would hope that like Arlene, many children would be able to say, “She showed me love and cared for me when I had no one else.” She is an inspiration to me whenever I think that living in Rwanda is too tough. If a woman in her 70’s can move to Rwanda and start an orphanage, than surely I can muster up the strength to meet the daily challenges of life here.


September 6th, 2009 - Who Am I Anymore?

I’m becoming a woman I don’t recognize anymore. I grew up in suburban New Jersey, ten miles from New York City. None of the women I knew growing up made thing from scratch, sewed, canned or hand washed anything. I grew up around wonderful women but none were of country stock. New Jersey is an all too convenient place where you can get anything you want or need within a five minute drive of your house. It doesn’t make you resourceful at all.

Then I moved to Rwanda. This weekend I spent most of my time at home doing all manner of things I never thought I’d do. I cut and hung two sets of curtains, hand washed and hung my clothes out on a clothesline, cooked a meal using no convenience foods while using the barest minimum of water, made biscuits from scratch, boiled three kettles of water to purify it for drinking and successfully bartered for my mattress and paid a boy needing work to carry it on his head to my house.

My life is a far cry from what it was in New Jersey, yet I suspect it is making me a stronger and more resourceful woman because of it. Next week’s project: Learning to make bagels from scratch. Who says you have to live in New Jersey to get what you want? Now if I could only replicate New York style pizza…..


September 7, 2009 - T-Shirts

Rwanda is home to many fabulous t-shirts, each one having a more hilarious saying on it than the next. One of my favorite pastimes while I’m out and about is to read the t-shirts that I encounter. I suspect most of their owners don’t know what their rather colorful statements mean. Here were two gems from Friday:

“I’m too sexy for my hair, wonder why it isn’t there”. Worn by a man with a full head of hair.
“Yes, I’ll drop everything and solve your problems.”

I love these t-shirts so much that I’m planning my birthday party around them. In two weeks it’s my birthday. I’m throwing a party and asking all of my guests to come wearing the craziest shirt they can find in the market. My hope is to photograph them all and turn them into the pictures for a calendar next year.