Rwanda

As you've all read, Joel was so sweet to teach the kids for 2 days and let me travel with some friends to Rwanda. At first the kids had no issue at first with the idea (which surprised me at first - I was selfishly hoping to be missed a little). When Thursday morning arrived, they both shed a few tears but recovered quickly and off I went. By the time I arrived home, they were waiting at the gate - you would have thought I'd been gone for weeks. It was nice.

Ruth, Zillah, and I hired a driver to take drive us there and around town once we arrived. Zillah would have been happy on a bus, but I don't travel by bus unless there's no other option. Dennis, our driver, is delightful and trust worthy.

Rwanda is called the country of 1,000 hills for good reason. It was beautiful! The grass is lush and the farming is done up hillsides (like I imagine Italy would be). There were miles of tea fields and houses built on the sides of the hills in the most creative of ways. I can't imagine how they were able to even get the supplies up to some of those places to build the houses.

I wish I had the pictures to show you. I took so many, but they didn't come out well since I took them from a moving car. :)

Even in the city of Kigali (which is pronounced Chi-go-lee(short i & o sounds)) the houses were built on hills.

While there we also went to the Genocide Memorial. It was very well put together and included the histories of other genocides like the holocaust and the genocides of Namibia (1904) and Albania (1999?) (and others I can't recall at this time). It's hard to walk away from an experience like that. It's so sobering. Why does God let it happen? So many, many people killed just because they were different. Friends killing friends, babies and children murdered in brutal ways, families ripped apart, 1 million people killed.

It's too much to comprehend or absorb. I left filling rather numb. I came home to Dade repeatedly saying, "I love you. I missed you." He followed me around the rest of Friday and most of Saturday. And I thought to myself, "How would he be able to cope if I had never returned? How does a child heal from the loss of a parent in a tragic way?" It's too much.

Please pray for the healing of the millions of people, probably the entire population over the age of 16, effected by the genocide. The government is working diligently and stringently to unite the people of Rwanda. May God guide their efforts.