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.

jogging, digressions, and Henri Nouwen

A friend (thanks, J!) emailed to me a book passage by Henri Nouwen right before I left to go home (already over a month ago, wow), and I was thinking about it this morning when I was jogging.

Before I continue, however, a small digression: I do want to share something that I always have meant to share about what it's like to go jogging in Kigali. When I was here two years ago, I wouldn't have felt comfortable going jogging, mainly because I was living out in a rural area where it was completely obvious that nobody jogged and I didn't want to create one MORE difference between me and the people I was living amongst (skin color difference: check; hair color difference: check; language difference: check....that, and more, was enough for one summer). I have since learned that there are many muzungus like me who live in rural areas who go jogging every day, and think nothing of it, but it just wasn't what I felt like doing. Maybe if my trip had been longer than six weeks I would have tried to figure out something.

Anyways, I am digressing from my digression (Victor and I call this "the web." Victor speaks linear-ly, in straight lines, and it is very easy to follow along, straight to the point he is communicating. I, on the other hand, speak tangent-ially, hitting one tangent, then another, then another, and finally will sometimes make it back to my main point. Maybe. Victor is a wonderful listener and I would like to publicly give him a ton of credit for patiently following along my web of thoughts, although I admit there are certain appropriate occasions when he very kindly tells me that he needs me to make my point. I asked him to do this, actually, and every so often he does, and that is just another thing I really appreciate about him. It's better than just tuning me out, which is the alternative, right? In fact, some of you right now, especially you Henri Nouwen fans, are wishing he were helping me write this blog entry, I know it.) Where was I? Oh yes. Digressing from the digression.

So, back to jogging. While I chose not to jog way out in rural Rwanda, here in the city of Kigali there are many joggers, and most of the ones I see are Rwandan. (And when I say "many" joggers, it's all relative: I will pass, perhaps, two joggers on average on any given morning, usually urban Rwandans). What I wanted to share is this: it is very encouraging to jog in Kigali, because whenever you pass a Rwandan jogger, s/he will usually do one of two things (and usually both):

1. clap both hands, applauding your jogging efforts. This is usually accompanied by a smile, a wide Rwandan smile that is just really hard to find anywhere else; and/or
2. shout, "Courage!" in French (which sounds like cour-AH-ge!!). The meaning is "great job!" or "keep going!"

So it's very nice. Especially when I first got here and was gasping for air, trying to adjust to the 6000 ft altitude, a little applause and a 'bon mot' went a long way to keeping me on track with my exercise plan. I wonder where the Rwandan jogging community picked up this nice encouraging habit. Imagine me doing this back in America? [Me to jogging passerby: "Courage!" with applause. Jogger: startled stare and silent look of "Freak!"] Jogging is so much more civilized in Rwanda, you know?

Alright, I just wanted to share that little slice of (urban) Rwandan life. And....I'm back to my original point. When I was jogging this morning, I was thinking about Henri Nouwen.

At first I wasn't thinking about Nouwen, exactly. I was puzzling out something in my head, kind of mulling it over and asking for guidance from God. It had to do with adventure, and God, and how much adventure He wants us to have, and what happens if we choose easy things instead of adventures. And whether or not we sometimes even use adventures to get out of things we should be doing instead. And how would we know the difference, anyways? I know, these are random things to think about, but I was wondering. Does anyone else ever have thoughts about not wanting to waste this one life we've been given? I think it's so easy to choose the safe thing sometimes; I see myself doing it over here at times. Kigali can actually be a very safe place (in the negative sense of "safe") if you make certain choices. But sometimes, "safe" is also boring, so sometimes we run from the safe when maybe we need to stay put and follow through with things sometimes. So, the bottom line of my train of thought, although I didn't realize it at the time, was "What will God think of me, and how will He treat me, if I don't do the right thing: i.e., if I choose the easy way out sometimes instead of the tough way? Or choose the tough way because I think the safe way is boring even though it might be the right choice?")

Anyhow, suddenly, a clarifying and helpful thought about this popped into my head, which is because of the Nouwen passage from my friend, copied below. And I suddenly had a measure of peace that I hadn't known a moment before...kind of like an it's-all-going-to-be-okay sense of peace. So, without further ado. Here's the passage:

“It is not so difficult to see that, in our particular world, we all have a strong desire to accomplish something. Some of us think in terms of great dramatic changes in the structure of our society. Others want at least to build a house, write a book, invent a machine, or win a trophy. And some of us seem to be content when we just do something worthwhile for someone else. But practically all of us think about ourselves in terms of our contribution to life.

But although the desire to be useful can be a sign of mental and spiritual health in our goal-oriented society, it can become the source of a paralyzing lack of self-esteem (the God-given understanding of our value as humans). More often than not, we not only desire to do meaningful things, but we often make the result of our work the criteria of our self worth.

When we start being too impressed by the result of our work, we slowly come to the erroneous conviction that life is one large scoreboard where someone is listing the points to measure our worth. And before we become aware of it, we have sold our souls to the many grade-givers. That means we are not only in the world, but of the world. Then we become what the world makes us.

We are intelligent because someone gives us a high grade. We are helpful because someone says “thanks”. We are likeable because someone likes us. And we are important because someone considers us indispensable. In short, we are worthwhile because we have success. And the more we allow accomplishments -- the results of our actions – to become the criteria of how we view ourselves, the more we are going to walk on our mental and spiritual toes, never sure if we will be able to live up to the expectations which we created by our last successes.

But to live a Christian life means to live in the world without being of it. It is in solitude that this inner freedom can grow. Jesus went to a lonely place to pray, that is, to grow in the awareness that all the power he had was given to him; that all the words he spoke came from his Father; and that all the works he did were not really his but the works of the One who had sent him.

In solitude we can slowly discover in the center of our own self: that we are not what we can conquer, but what is given to us. In solitude we can listen to the voice of Him who spoke to us before we could speak a word, who healed us before we could make any gesture to help, who set us free long before we could give love to anyone. It is in this solitude that we discover that being is more important than having, and that we are worth more than the results of our efforts.

In solitude we discover that our life is not a possession to be defended, but a gift to be shared. It’s there we recognize that the healing words we speak are not just our own, but are given to us; that the love we can express is part of a greater love; and that the new life we bring forth is not a property to cling to, but a gift to be received.”

Henri Nouwen

Okay, me again. Not too much to add to that...although there are many thoughts in there that hit me.

"All the works He did were not really His, but the works of the One Who sent Him."
"We are not what we can conquer, but what is given to us."
"Being is more important than having."
"We are worth more than the results of our efforts."
"Life is not a possession to be defended but a gift to be shared."
"The love we can express is part of a greater love."
"It is in solitude that this inner freedom can grow."

What do you think?