The land of a thousand hills...

I know I have been pretty quiet here for the last few months. It has been a very busy time for My Love and I. From traveling for work, working on seminary classes, every day ministry and family happenings, we have been running non-stop. In the midst of all of that running around, we even found ourselves running (or rather flying) to Kigali, Rwanda this past week!!

My Love's sister, Alison, traveled here to Rwanda two years ago with Frank and Rwanda Challenge  to teach a group of national pastors. We have now followed in her footsteps and found ourselves with Frank and Theophile (the lead pastor) in Kigali preparing to spend two weeks building relationships, teaching and learning from church pastors and the next generation leaders and learning about the beautiful culture, people and country of Rwanda.

Our travel was surprisingly smooth, though incredibly long. We left our home at 5:00am on Wednesday to catch the 8am train to Chicago. We then spent the night in a hotel and got up at 1:30am to get ready to head to the airport by 3am to catch a flight to Toronto, Canada. We then sat on the plane in Toronto for two hours before finally taking off at 11:20am (EST) for our 13 hour flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Surprisingly the flight was fairly empty, so My Love and I had a little bit of room to stretch out in our feeble attempts to get some sleep. All-in-all it wasn't terrible... well other than the nasty turbulence we hit over the Atlantic... pretty sure my knuckles were white and I broke My Love's hand at that point. But really, it wasn't a bad night. We then got through security and onto our final flight from Addis Ababa to Kigali and arrived in country and met up with Theophile around 3pm on Friday, April 17th. 

Despite being tired, we hit the ground running in order to get ourselves some-what acclimated to the new time zone. We dropped our things off at the guest house where we are staying these next two weeks. And then we headed out to pick up a few things and dinner. We then spent the evening relaxing and going to bed early. 

Saturday was a hard day. Not only was I still tired from travel, but I also didn't sleep much at all (which is normal even when we are home). And the planned activities for the day consisted of visiting 2 of the Rwandan Genocide memorials. My Love had no idea what to expect, while I had some idea of what to expect when it came to the pictures and the stories because I had visited Majdanek Concentration Camp in Lublin, Poland. But none-the-less, it is never easy to look at human suffering.

We went through the two memorials. One was the main national one here in Kigali and the other was Nyamata Church, the church where the Tutsi's hoped they would find refuge on April 7, but on April 13th they were attacked and killed. It's estimated that more than 10,000 people were killed at the church and it's surrounding area. And over 50,000 are buried in the mass graves at the church. 

With being in Rwanda in April, the country has turned to a time of remembering. There are signs everywhere that say "Kwibuka" which means "remember." And the memorial here in the city was quite busy with groups of people walking through to "remember". 

"Remember" 

Everyone in this country is a survivor in some way of the Rwandan genocide. Every person in this country has a personal connection to someone who was killed. Every person in this country has a dark shadow of fear and mourning hanging near them. Every person in this country have a story or a memory of that time.

Zerapheth Church in Kigali, Rwanda 

But this country and every person in it is looking to the future. Great strides have been made by the government, by the Church, by the people to make a better Rwanda. To make a Rwanda that is not divided between Hutu or Tutsi or Twa. To make a Rwanda made up of Rwandans. Not only is this country moving forward, but they are moving forward together.

I wish I had more time (and more energy) to tell you all of the things we saw just in our first day here. But that would make for a very long post. So, I will leave you with this and then write again in a day or two...

This country is absolutely beautiful. The land. The people. The language. My neck is starting to hurt from constantly turning it around in order to try and see everything. And my camera is already being transferred and emptied in order to make room for more. 

But honestly... I can't express how beautiful this place is or how grateful and amazed My Love and I are to have the opportunity to be here, to meet these people, to teach and learn from the national pastors, to worship with our Rwandan brothers and sisters on Sunday mornings (that was a beautiful experience in and of itself). 

My Love and I are so looking forward to the coming days and weeks here in the land of a thousand hills.