bear update & photovoice

I wanted to thank you all for praying for Bear. Bear said thank you too! He is doing really well; he had a great week facilitating a training-of-trainers workshop, and he's diving headlong into language lessons now. He's planning on doing a little bit of travel in the upcoming days, just a little bit east of where he's living now, with the head of the organization he's working with.

A funny thing happened at a get-together here last night, at a friend's house. I ran into a family that I'd met back in March (haven't seen them since; their daughter is here in Rwanda, and we don't cross paths too much because of our busy schedules; her parents live back in the States and happen to be visiting her again).

When I met the family in March, the mom had told me about her husband, how he had lived for a while in the same central Asian country where Bear works, and how there's a whole support network in the USA for workers in that country. I had forgotten about it until recently, but maybe last week I remembered our conversation and was interested in knowing more. I had even gone to Facebook this week to try to contact their daughter and find out more info from the mom....and then what do you know, I end up at a party with the mom herself last night. :) Do you believe in coincidences? Me neither.

At any rate, it was great to get connected with the mom again (and the rest of the family, too, actually....they are quite an interesting family). Through her I hope to connect up with the support network in the USA, who actually has yearly meetings all over the country.

Today I am looking forward to hanging out with the youth from Baraka's church for a few hours...we're going to do PhotoVoice together! My adult fellowship back home, Interior (shout out to this awesome Ev Free Fullerton gang!) supplied disposable cameras for a group of teenagers here. So today, after we go through the good Samaritan story together (the teens will do a mini-drama for one another), the teens will receive a camera. We'll talk about camera care and photography etiquette (and also just basic picture-taking skills, since many may have never used a camera before). Then they'll go out into the community in small groups and take photos of the various needs they see. They'll also take photos of things that they're proud of in their community, and thankful for.

Once the photos are developped, we'll get together again and the teens will sort through their photos and present their work to one another. Then all together, they'll decide on how they can help to meet some of the needs that they identified in their community, how they can show mercy and compassion in a tangible way, to serve those around them on behalf of the One Who has showed us so amazingly how to serve. Thanks for your prayers!! And thanks again to Interior for supplying the cameras!! I'll keep you posted.

praying for Bear

I am really thankful for all of the people out there who read this blog (and pray) and stay updated on my life over here in Africa. What a huge blessing. :) It is encouraging to get your notes of support and to hear you say that you've read the blog and are praying. Thank you thank you.

So, because you are a faithfully praying crowd, I wanted to request prayer for the 'significant other' in my life, a really incredible guy, who from now on I'll refer to as "Bear" on this blog. I'm calling him Bear instead of his real name because (as many of you know) he's working in a volatile place overseas, and taking precautions about identity-protection is a necessity. In fact, I've removed previous blog pages that refer to him here. Many of you know him, or have met him....and if you haven't, I do hope you will sometime soon.

Notwithstanding, Bear needs prayer! (Oh, that rhymes. Smile.) Last week, Bear was traveling from the US out to the country where he'll be working in central Asia for the next six months (email me and I can tell you which one exactly if you don't know already). He was scheduled to arrive there the same day that our research training began, and toward the end of the training, I got a text from him telling me that he had safely arrived in the capital...and that he'd supposed I'd heard already about the bombing that morning, in that same city, where over 50 people were killed.

Honestly, I almost started crying and then realized I couldn't really cry at the training. It was kind of a weird feeling. No, I hadn't heard about the bombing, although I was glad he was safe in his residence, and so happy he'd contacted me himself before I'd read about it online or something. Now, he's been in-country for about 10 days, and during that time there have been at least four other altercations with associated casualties that I've been reading about, mostly in the southern part of his country, so not close to where he lives, but still. And kidnappings there, even in the capital, especially of foreign workers like Bear, is not uncommon.

So thank you for your prayers! There are so many needs in his country, and unfathomable social and cultural complications and conditions. Together with nationals and expatriate workers alike, he is essentially doing community development work, making himself available to make a difference in the lives of those who are most vulnerable, especially mothers, children, and the poor. But we know that ultimately prayer is what will make the biggest difference. Would you please pray for him? Please pray that he would be a vessel to bring love and hope into the hearts of people who have little reason to believe in love or hope anymore. Please pray for his safety in-country, for him and for all his co-workers. I'll find out if he has any other specific requests for you too. THANK YOU again for your prayer....

4th of July in Rwanda

I meant to post this over a week ago: here's an evening photo of the brand new (as of February) US Embassy here in Kigali:



There was a reception on the evening of July 3rd at the Embassy for NGO leaders and other in-country Americans, to celebrate the 4th of July. Then on the 4th, there was a big picnic on the Embassy lawn for Rwandans and Americans alike (again, Rwanda celebrates Liberation Day on July 4th, so it is a dual-holiday for Americans living in Rwanda).

The Ambassador is giving a speech in the photo, at the podium, and while I don't know what exactly I was expecting from his speech, I ended up being really encouraged by all he shared regarding how Rwandans and Americans are partnering together to help the country grow....everything from harvesting methane from Lake Kivu (which would ensure Rwanda's energy independence), to building a gas pipeline into Rwanda from Nairobi, to investing in real estate, to just simply building relationships between individuals from both countries.

After reading Darrow Miller's "Discipling the Nations" last year, I had to smile to see how God-given concepts like "freedom," "independence," "hope," and "future" were all evident in the Ambassador's speech as he described the spirit of the work going on here in this country. In spite of all the struggles here, a sense of hope does pervade the country, and there are many wonderful things happening, at many levels of society. The spiritual aspects of development embedded in the social aspects are striking at times. All the same, I continue to pray that while Rwanda develops as a nation in a way that honors God, the poor and destitute here in the country will not be forgotten. There are still so many needs that go unmet, so many children that go to bed hungry, so many people sleeping on a dirt floor at night and barely scraping by. Thank you for your continued prayers!! And may God get the glory.

research update

Thanks so much to all of you for your prayers! Last week was a blur but I was so proud of our team of 24 Rwandan researchers and all that they accomplished! By the end of the week, we had completed a refresher training in qualitative research, tested three different types of questionnaires in three different health topics, and (in twelve teams of 2 researchers) conducted 72 interviews with community members about child health. Whew. :) We have a break now for a week (a break from research, not from work!) and then we pick up next Monday in Nyanza (south), where a team of 12 of us will conduct another 72 interviews. The following week we'll be going north, to Musanze (near the gorillas!).

Here are some of the researchers playing a game during the training on Monday (Fidel, the one leading in the center, is the king of little games to keep everyone alert and focused):


Here are Chantal, Anitha, and Esron reviewing their questionnaires:


Here are Beatrice and Eduard at a local health center interviewing a mother about newborn and maternal health care practices:


Thank you again for your prayers...they made all the difference! "Unless God builds a house...." (or energizes a research project...) And I so appreciate your continued prayers for the upcoming weeks. We have A LOT of work to do, will be doing much traveling, and will need much favor from leaders and help to find the right people to interview. Thank you for your prayers for God's protection, guidance, and leading. And again, overall, please pray that God might use the study results to impact child health here in Rwanda to His glory.

I am in Kigali all this week and I hope to post a few more items. Talk to you soon....

work update from Rwanda...

It has been a while since I have written an update on how the actual research is going for the child survival program (the original reason I came here!). Perhaps now is the time!

You may or may not know this, as I have shared with many of you in person how things are going, but my original research project morphed from a focused study on newborn health into a more broad, "formative"' research project inquiring into cultural and social norms surrounding child health in general. It's a long story how this happened exactly (the morphing of the research project) but the short story is that the World Relief child survival program that I work with is working in partnership with the Rwandan Ministry of Health (MOH), and the MOH needed this formative research project completed. Because I was here this year, already doing research, and because the MOH research encompasses newborn health research, and since the MOH research helps to achieve certain goals of the World Relief child survival program this year, and since it was a great opportunity for me and for the World Relief child survival program, it made a lot of sense to give up the original plan for research and switch to this project. I am so thankful for the way things worked out, actually, and am hopeful that, by working with the MOH, the research results will have a broader impact than originally planned.

Quick background: there is a national strategy here in Rwanda to mobilize health workers at the community level, using volunteers where possible, to help prevent child deaths (particularly deaths caused by preventable disease: malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea, and malnutrition). However, the Rwanda MOH wants to have a standardized set of key behavior change messages for community health workers to be able to disseminate to their communities. The Rwandan govt wanted research to be conducted to specifically address the barriers (as well as facilitators) of appropriate health behavior in the rural poor communities (i.e., find out why parents DO take care of their children properly, and why they do NOT....is it ignorance? just pure poverty? traditional beliefs about caring for children? social constraints that prevent prompt care?).

The research I will be conducting will seek to find out what these barriers and facilitators are, here in Rwanda in a rural impoverished setting. Then, using a standard public health behavior change framework, my team and I will be devising key messages to deliver to these rural poor communities that will be targeted to fit the social and cultural norms, based on the research results. God willing, these messages will be used by the MOH's partner organizations (like World Relief, for example) in future child survival programs.

Thank you for your prayers for this research! I have been planning this for a while now, and there have been some considerable logistical delays, but tomorrow I begin with conducting a training (in French, yikes!) for 24 Rwandan researchers, and then Melene and I will be busy through the middle of August, traveling all over Rwanda, to collect data and then to design the messages.

I would love your prayers that the research team and I would be able to conduct the project ultimately to God's glory (i.e., with excellence, professionalism, kindness, compassion)....and that in the end, children would be positively impacted by the work. Would you also pray that the design of the messages would be very useful, in a practical way, for organizations like World Relief to use in the future here in Rwanda? Thank you so much. :)

I will try to keep you posted on how things go with the research, although I'm not sure what my time constraints will be, nor my email access! But I so appreciate your prayers!!

Also, there is a lot going on with so many of you this summer! Many of you are traveling, some are changing jobs or taking on new responsibilities....others are encountering new challenges (or the same challenges!) of day-to-day life! I am praying for you too and am so thankful for you all. I love getting your emails and would love to hear from you if you have a chance. xo

two Rwandan holidays this week

Awareness that America is not the center of the universe came slowly for me.

I think the first time this really sunk in was when I was a teenager...and it happened during an experience related to holidays.

I had moved to Canada right after I turned 17, and for a while I didn't notice any big differences between Winnipeg, where I was living, and, say, North Dakota (which I had driven through). Really, Canada was almost exactly like America, the way I saw it at first...

But then, my ignorance intersected my first experience with national holidays that weren't my own. Thanksgiving comes early in Canada, in October if I remember correctly, and it is celebrated on a Monday, not a Thursday. And there's no football. A month or so later that year, American Thanksgiving sailed right on by the Canadians....nobody stopped working, nobody ate turkey, nobody passed out from tryptaphane.

That's when I began to feel like an outsider.

July 4th was similar: nobody in Canada stopped working, had watermelon in the park with the extended family, or rushed to fireworks shows. But they didn't need to: they celebrated their own way, on their own day (July 1). They didn't need to celebrate July 4th too.

Growing up with a love for holidays (and holiday traditions), these shifting holidays and celebrations made me think about things I had never thought about before: different countries have different histories, different stories, than my own country's. What an epiphany. And as I came to this realization, I also became a little embarrassed... Why hadn't I realized this before? It was kind of a signpost for me, an understanding that the world was bigger than I had imagined up to that point.

Rwanda has her own story, and this week two national holidays are being celebrated: Independence Day (July 1) and Liberation Day (July 4).

Independence Day dates back to 1962, and was established to celebrate Rwanda's liberation from Belgian colonization. Belgium colonized Rwanda at the turn of the century, and was responsible for many of the ethnic tensions that resulted in some of Rwanda's national scars and tragedies of post-colonization years.

Liberation Day (tomorrow) marks the end of the 1994 genocide, and the end of the 3-month mourning period. I asked one of my Rwandan friends which holiday was more significant, and they said July 4th, "because it is more recent. The other is old."

Like every country, Rwanda's holidays open a window into her history. Thank you for your continued prayers for the hope and the future of this nation.