TIME

So I will be leaving Kigali in 19 days and I will be home in 20 days! It is so incredible how time is flying! I am currently taking 6 credits and I have found them to be really time consuming. With 12 class sessions over a 4-week period I have to read 7 novels and 2 textbooks. I also have 7 exams, 12 papers (1 page single spaced) and then a 10-page (double spaced) paper. So to say in the least I have a ton of work!

For my Traditional African Culture and Religion class we are now studying the concept of time. We are comparing African's view on time and the American's view. Africans really don't believe in time. If they have a meeting at 2 and run into an old friend on the street...Well they will sit and talk with the friend till 3. Americans though would be making that meeting regardless of whom they ran into. I know I am personally VERY guilty of this. I am extremely time orientated...

This isn't what God calls us to be though. We are called to live the greatest commandment, which is love! We have such an awesome God who loves us and he calls us to love one another. We shouldn't have "office hours" for those whom God calls us to share the Gospel with. We are God’s children 24/7. Imagine if God was only God from 9-5 on weekdays… Life would be pretty out of control…

In the Gospel Mark, Jesus was tired and needing a break. When 5,000 men gathered around him it would of been reasonable for him to want a break and excuse them. But he had compassion! He ministered, performed miracles, and fed all of them! Jesus who was King and Savior was willing to put the people’s need before his. He was not worried about the fact that it was getting late or that he had been working all day... No, he was worried for the people! If Christ has this love for his people--then I should follow in his footsteps. I am not saying that I am going to disregard all time schedules. But I do know that I need to give more of a "person priority" rather than a time priority. I am so blessed to have the most amazing friends and family. And God has used Africa to show me how I need to give more priority to them rather than time, money, school, or work. And I think we are all called to do this because we have a God who doesn’t work 40 hours or even 60 hours a week… No, we have a God who works 168 hours a week and he takes no vacations.

800,000 dead, Many Tears, and Seventeen Years of Pain Serve as a Reminder

17 years ago marks the start of the genocide that took 800,000 lives here in Rwanda. Sitting on our balcony I am looking over Kigali (the capital), I hear President Kagame speaking at the stadium but the streets are empty. I look at the hill across from us knowing that Hutu men stormed that hill killing the Tutsi. It is weird knowing that I have a friend who lived on that hill during the genocide and for only reasons God knows, he some how escaped the mass killing…  It is so beautiful here and I consider it one of the most beautiful places I have ever witnessed. Knowing that 17 years ago bodies piled the streets and women and children were being raped, it is hard to think that such a beautiful place could host such hostility. The genocide still causes the whole nation to mourn during the month of April and today I can especially feel the tension within the city. Soldiers line the streets in order to prepare for the worst and businesses shut down early.  Walking the street I know that anyone my age was in someway affected by the genocide. 800,000 people… So many lives lost because of a hatred that ran and still runs so deep. What is scary is that any country is capable of doing this. Rwanda when the genocide began had a population who was 98% Christian… A much higher percentage than that of America. I think that the world needs to look to Rwanda and learn from the pain that they experienced. No one can predict genocide. The people two weeks before the genocide had Hutu and Tutsi children playing together, men and women talked freely on the streets, and yet, the killing began on April 7^th… Hate can be so incredibly strong. Strong enough to kill, rape, beat those who were Tutsi, regardless of them being a friend, family member, child, elder, or stranger. I can’t imagine watching my family be killed, being raped, or considered one of the “lucky survivors” and having to walk the streets, searching the dead bodies for my loved ones. April serves as an awakening reminder each year to the people of Rwanda but I think it also should serve as a reminder to the world. A reminder of the cost of hating something or someone, whether small or large, is dangerous and in Rwanda it cost 800,000 people their lives. Let us be reminded.