New Blog site

Merry Christmas to all of you. I wanted to tell you that we have a new blog page. You can find it at awillingspirit.com

It is a work in progress and I am just learning to edit it and add pics and other content so please be patient and check up with us from time to time.

Bustling

Well, I've arrived safely back in Rwanda after my trip back for my dad's funeral. Thanks to everyone who prayed for my family. It was great to see many of you and I am very sorry for those I could not find or did not get to spend time with. We will be back in the US for our furlough around May 1, 2011.

Today is Thanksgiving day and last night Kristin and I sat on the couch and talked about how we missed being in the States for the holidays. We discussed some of the things we missed and memories of past holidays. We are so blessed to have a great family here and a great Thanksgiving day dinner and fellowship with our team.

As I reflected on what it was about Thanksgiving that really increased our "cultural fatigue" I settled on a few subtle "holiday" emotional triggers that just seem to be missing here.

1. The weather. In the Midwest, there is almost always cold weather. We certainly don't have that here. We miss the "chance of snow" on the days after Thanksgiving.

2. Changing of the leaves. It's odd to set out all of our "fall" decor with the browns, golds and deep reds but not be able to see any outside. The trees never change color here. The get dirty in the dry season but never change color.

3. The biggest thing for me this year was the "bustling". I was in the States this past week and I happened to go to Wal-Mart on the Saturday before I left, which I didn't realize at the time was the Saturday before Thanksgiving. It was crazy busy. It felt like the holidays. Now that I'm back, there is no bustling. Rwandans obviously don't celebrate American Thanksgiving, nor do the Canadians, British or other nationalities. School is in, they did make it a half day so the Americans can celebrate Thanksgiving but it's back to a full day of school tomorrow. I guess all the bustling I'm going to get this holiday is seeing all the American people I know at the local grocery yesterday afternoon buying up the last of the chickens or baking soda (which I never found).

Well, despite the lack of bustling, we are blessed and find many things to be thankful for this holiday season. Thank you again for praying for us and we would love to hear from you and have the chance to pray for you and your family this holiday season as well. Most all of you have my email address so please feel free to send us a family picture or a quick note with prayer requests or family updates. If you don't have my email address, I'm on Facebook so just look me up. I'm easy to find.

Blessings and Happy Thanksgiving.

Brian

Loss

I want to let you all know that my dad passed away today. I have so little that I can say about it right now. Certainly we will miss him very much. The kids are broken, each in their own way. Samuel lost his fishing buddy and Madda lost a guy who thought she was the best.

As I wrote in my journal last night, and those of you who knew my dad, would agree that he led a life of torment. The end of his life was plagued not just by physical pain but by an emotional pain whose source was invisible to me and much of his friends. I know that Satan tormented him badly and my father allowed it as some sort of punishment for things in his past. He rarely shared those things with others but I know they weighed on him greatly. I am thankful for his rest now and the fact that he is set free.

I pray that God will bring justice upon the wicked and send his wrath upon the enemy. I pray that the sin of this world will pass away and all be made new again. I pray that Satan will be bound forever, never to torment another soul the way he did my father.

Please pray for my family and the time we will have together. Pray that we will find peace together and that I can bring the healing of Jesus Christ to my family over the next two weeks.

Blessings.

CHE (Community Health Evangelism)

Joselyn Jelsma (CHE trainer),
Charles Kabeza (ATN administrator)
David Kimbrow
David and Felix
Heath Amos

During our time in Rwanda we have been praying for God to show us ways to interact with people in our area. Specifically those in the valley below us. Even Samuel has been saving his coins so he can go down in the valley with me to buy vegetables from some of the people we know who live there. The problem with such a place is that there is not only a language barrier but also a huge cultural barrier that is greater than just nationality. It is economic. Not even to the degree that I was used to in America but what most Americans would feel like if they went outside to get their newspaper and found Bill Gates and Donald Trump strolling down the street. Finding ways to help these wonderful people without feeling like you have caused some type of dependence that is based on money or in my case, skills is difficult.

During this past couple months as I have been praying for God to show me a way to better interact and better help those that live in the valley near me he has shown me CHE or community health evangelism.

CHE is a program that allows us to interact with community leaders and engage them in conversations about what they think their community needs rather than what we feel they need. When we put our thoughts towards fixing their problems, they also expect our money. During our CHE training we have began to develop insights into helping communities fight disease and poverty as a community team and to find dependence on each other and hopefully God in the process.

I know it sounds simple but in a cultural setting like Rwanda it is easy to get lost in the belief that in order to be effective you have to have big projects help lots of people. This training has reminded us that helping communities and saving the lost starts with one person at a time.

Please pray for our team this week as we finish our training and begin to coordinate our thoughts and ideas and especially pray for use as we ask God to show us the communities he has chosen as our CHE community. Also pray for patience. CHE is a long term project that is built on relationships. Pray that we can continue to build those basic and foundational relationships with those who live near us that are struggling to live day to day.

An Eleven Year Miracle...

Most parents know that children force us to talk about things we might not ever talk about otherwise. In 1998 we had a baby that was stillborn. We probably would rarely mention him, but our children love to bring up the subject (even to strangers! J). Even though they never knew him, our children talk about him, discuss his age, look at his pictures and talk about meeting him in heaven. And they make sure our oldest daughter understands she’s not REALLY the oldest child in our family!

Our baby in heaven is not really the subject of my blog today, but I needed to lay the foundation for you. We had 2 miscarriages, our baby that was stillborn, and then another miscarriage. The doctors ran many tests and told us to start the adoption process. You know what that means. They pretty much thought we would never have children.

During that time we were living in Hershey, PA while Brian did his Medical Residency. The small church we attended there became our family and when we grieved, they grieved with us. They cried with us, brought us meals (I told them not to, but thankfully they didn’t listen), and just carried us through that difficult time. (We love you, gracepointechurchofchrist!)

And then…

We got pregnant again.

We half-heartedly waited to give the first big chunk of money towards adoption. We fearfully attended many, many doctors appointments. We went through the anxiety of “to tell or not to tell.” (We told. We needed the prayers.) Some of our dearest friends drove an hour and a half to be there with us for the first big ultrasound. (I’ll never forget you being there in that moment, Tim and Tracy.)

And there she was on the screen.

A perfect baby girl. A strong heartbeat. All the right organs. 10 fingers. 10 toes. A sigh of relief. A few tears. And many, many prayers of thanksgiving. (I think Tracy and I jumped up and down screaming afterwards… or maybe that was about getting to go out to eat?)

We had to name her “Grace,” of course. No other name would do for such a miraculous gift from God. Undeserved on so many levels.

When Grace was born our church family rejoiced with us. You truly cannot imagine. When someone grieves with you the rejoicing is that much sweeter. She was not just our baby, she was the church’s baby. When we would arrive on Sunday morning she would disappear in the arms of a loving church family member, get passed around, reappear when it was time to eat, and then disappear again. When it was time to leave I would have to ask “Who has my baby now?” When she “talked cute noises” during the service they wanted her to stay in the auditorium so they could listen. (Sermon? What sermon?) I’m pretty sure our minister held her while he made the announcements on several occasions.

Today is the 11^th anniversary of that momentous occasion. Yes, Grace is 11 years old today. I cry as I remember the circumstances surrounding her birth, and, yet, I praise God for His gift. Grace is a joyful treasure in our family. She is a smart, beautiful girl, and her excitement and zest for life are contagious. If you know her, you know the definition of enthusiasm. Of leadership. Of generosity. She sings, she dances, and she has the longest eyelashes I’ve ever seen. She can spend 30 minutes telling you the entire plot to a movie she’s seen. She can recall the minutest biblical trivia. She’s her Mommy’s soul and her Daddy’s heart.

Happy Birthday, Grace. You are dearly loved by many people, most of all by your Mommy and Daddy. You are so amazing—we can’t wait to see how God is going to use you!

Modern Marvels by Kristin

Our neighborhood just got street signs.

It's quite exciting.

Our house is at the top of a T shaped intersection (that's our roof you can see in the picture) so one of the new signs is right in front of our house. The children had to go out and touch it and marvel at it.

Now when someone asks how to get to our house we can give them more precise directions.

Kind of.

Just so you can see what an impact having a street sign will have on us, here is a picture of our street:

You'd be surprised at the amount of vehicular traffic... :-)

Nearing the Corner

When we arrived in Rwanda our new team began to dream and pray about what God wants from us as a team. I'm not sure we initially planned to "go big" but by the time we had finished our mission and vision statements and set our long term and short term goals, we were looking at BIG. In short our goal has become the discipling of all of Rwanda. We knew from the beginning that this was an impossible task for us but we believed God was expecting us to recruit Rwandans who have a heart to see their nation changed and redeemed. For over 6 months we have been praying and recruiting prayer partners to pray Luke 10:2b. (Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.)

One clear blessing from God was his leading of a Rwandan to our team who by the nature of his previous job at a local seminary has hundreds of relationships with preachers all over Rwanda. It is through these contacts that we have been invited to so many Rwandan churches to teach our obedience bible studies.

As I mentioned in my last post we go as often as we are invited to these rural churches to teach a gospel of obedience.

In the past these training weekends were done by foreign missionaries and one or two Rwandans. However, this past week we went to our first obedience training and had 6 Rwandans and only 3 missionaries.

We are so thankful for God's faithfulness in answering our prayers to raise up workers from the Harvest.

We know that this one success does not mean our work is complete but we continue to pray for Rwandans to join our work.

We are praying in pairs for God to raise up workers from the harvest and we ask all of you to find a prayer partner who you can pray with daily for Rwandans to be raised up to carry the gospel of obedience and healing into their own land.