What Happened to us in Rwanda?

Dear Friends and Family,

Thanks to your encouragement, prayers, and financial gifts, we made it to Rwanda and back safely. Thank you all for being patient with us as we took some time to talk through things with our church before sending this report letter to you. Now that we have a plan, we would like to share with you about how our trip went, and where we see God leading us from here.

First, the trip was everything we were hoping for. While we were in Rwanda we visited two churches, spoke with several Rwandan Church leaders, ate in a Rwandan home and several Rwandan restaurants, visited a church’s children’s program, visited the Rwandan history museum, drove a significant length of the country (which is only about the size of Maryland), visited the market, observed the day-to-day life of our hosts (and their three energetic children), visited and observed the pastoral training school that we are hoping to join, slept under mosquito nets, drank about 10 Fantas (the drink that every good host offers his/her guests), took walks through neighborhoods in Kigali (the capital city), and even visited a Starbucks-ripoff coffee shop complete with Caramel Macchiato. All in just 2 weeks! In short, we were able to get a taste of what Rwanda is like, see what needs the church there has, observe what living conditions would be like if we were to move there, and picture how our gifts could be used in ministry with the Rwandan church.

One thing that really impacted us was the realization that the church in Rwanda has a lot of very deep needs. For one, the vast majority of their pastors are untrained and are hungry for Biblical and practical instruction. For example, one pastor who we visited told us that his greatest need was not financial, but was training in how to be a pastor. He had not gone to seminary or been ordained before becoming a pastor. Rather, he told us that he was a layperson who had been slowly given more and more responsibility in the church until eventually he was running it completely. To make matters more difficult, church leaders usually do not mentor those below them, because there is a fear that if you train someone below you, they will rise up and steal your position. This means that if you cannot pay for formal instruction, as most pastors cannot, then you have no options for learning the Bible or training in ministry.

The ministry that we hope to work with was formed to address this exact need in the Rwandan Church. Their core ministry is a 4-year school that uses a modular setting to train pastors in Biblical Studies, Theology, and Ministry skills. It is a very exciting ministry that is addressing one of the most important needs of the Rwandan Church, and because the education is heavily subsidized, it is available to even the poorest of students. Were we to join this school, Luke would use his education from as a teacher in the school, likely specializing in theology and Church history. Jaymi would use her skills and experience to work in their Children’s Ministry Training program, which helps churches create effective gospel-centered children’s ministries within the pastor’s churches.

So what’s the conclusion? We feel that God has used this trip to confirm our calling to go work in Rwanda. The work that they are doing in Rwanda is very important and fits perfectly with our gifting. In addition, we feel both a peace and a tremendous excitement to get back there, which has only increased the longer we’ve been back.

Because of this, we have begun the process of applying to return to Rwanda long-term. So far we have applied with our home church’s mission board, and they are excited by our vision. While Luke finishes school, they plan to help prepare us by offering us a number of opportunities both to be mentored and to serve in ministry, with the ultimate goal of us being appointed with the missionary organization in June 2011. At that time, we will begin seeking individuals and churches to partner with us and help send us to Rwanda, while also preparing to leave as soon as we can.

In the meantime, we’ll continue growing through the work of our church, finishing graduate school, and adjusting to life with two boys under 2 (second baby due any day now!). We’ll begin sending out updates again next spring as we approach the appointment time with the mission board.

Thank you all for your prayers and gifts. We most certainly would not have made it to Rwanda this summer without you, and we are grateful to God that we did.

Sincerely,

Luke, Jaymi, Ayden, and Baby



In the coming months, please continue to pray with us:

• That our hearts will continue to be drawn to Rwanda and our future life and ministry there.
• That we will be focused, effective, and learn a lot while finishing school and serving in our church and neighborhood in Chicago.
• For the current work being done at NCM in Rwanda and the team that we will be joining.
• For smooth adjustments for our boys, as the next few years will include a lot of travelling and transition.

Absent

Late winter and into spring of 2010, I started blogging about our potential path to the mission field. Then in May I dumped our support letter onto the blog with little explanation. I've been absent from the blogger world ever since. Sorry.

We went to Rwanda for the last 2 weeks of May and it was an INCREDIBLE trip (my next post will be a copy of our letter with the details of the trip). In short, we plan to go back long-term. By the time we left there we were thinking that that is what God wanted us to do. But before announcing that to the whole world, we wanted to have confirmation from our church that they believed that we should be heading there. After all, they are the ones who know us best and ultimately would be sending us as an extension of the local church. We figured it would be a few weeks of conversations, then we would send a follow-up letter (hopefully) exclaiming that we were going to go back!

June came and went and the conversations with the church were sluggish, at best. July came and went with little improvement. We began wondering if they were hesitant about our call to ministry, despite the fact that the conversations that we HAD had were all positive. But we just couldn't seem to get a firm go ahead from them. Very discouraging. It left us both with little to say to anyone who asked follow-up questions about Rwanda. Everything seemed conflicted and in limbo and although we were both still excited about the ministry there, we just weren't sure what was going on. Hence the silence. No follow-up letter to the many, many people who prayed for us and even gave to help cover the cost of the trip. No blogging or posting on Facebook about it. Unless we were directly asked, we rarely even brought it up. We just didn't know what to say.

Finally, in early August, things started moving. We met with 2 of our pastors who enthusiastically said that the church was behind us in this. They had a plan laid out for us to minister in our community and in our church, and for them to mentor us in this preparation process. The waiting and confusion were more related to transitions that the church was going through and confusion that arose from that, and really didn't have much to do with us. It was SO encouraging to have that conversation. We really felt that if God wanted us to go to Rwanda, our church would be a part of that process. Having them finally join us in our enthusiasm for it just pulled everything together and confirmed what we already felt.

So what's next? We plan to apply with the mission board with the goal of being officially appointed with them in June. Being appointed just means that they have approved us to join their mission board, specifically with the Rwanda team. From that point, we will begin connecting with churches and individuals who want to come alongside us and partner with us as our "senders." We'll have a lot of money that needs to be raised and we'll want a lot of people to plan to pray for us. Once that process is complete, we get to go! That process tends to be about a year or so, though. So if you are following the timeline, it's looking like summer 2012 is when we might be actually heading to Rwanda, although I'm sure that timeframe will be adjusted as we go through the process and find that some things move faster or slower than planned.

Meanwhile, Luke is finishing up classes this fall and will have one major test in the spring to complete his master's degree. I am already a day past my due date with baby boy #2, so I plan to have my life turned up-side-down at any moment now. Little Ayden is completely oblivious to the million transitions swirling around him and is just enjoying life as a toddler in the summertime.

I should also note, another reason that I have been so absent from this blog is that I have felt like I needed to lay out where we are in the process (as I just did) before I could really just sit and talk about what I think about it all. So even though I've had thoughts that I might have wanted to post, it seemed too cumbersome to prepare all of the details first. So now I've gotten through that and I plan to post our follow-up letter that we mailed out a few days ago as well. So the story of it all should be up to date and now I can just post what I think about it.

So there you have it. I hope to make this a more active blog again, despite my lack of writing recently. It helps me process. It connects me to others. It seems fitting for me.

And we're going to RWANDA!!! WOO HOO!!

Details of the Upcoming Trip

I'm snapping myself out of "journal mode" to give some of the details of our upcoming trip. I've just copied our letter, but taken out identifying details. We'd love for you to pray for us!! And if you didn't receive this already by mail or e-mail, let me know and I can add you to our mailing list.

Dear Friends and Family,

We hope you are doing well and enjoying this incredible spring weather! The past year or so has brought about a lot of changes in our life, and it looks as though the next year will bring even more. A (now 15 months) will become a big brother in September and by next December L will have finished his Masters degree.

Meanwhile, we have been looking ahead to our long-term future and we feel that God is calling us to serve Him in full-time ministry overseas. More particularly, we feel that He may be leading us to serve at a pastoral training school in Rwanda. This ministry has a unique program that serves people who are already working as pastors (often at multiple churches) but have little to no training in the Bible. For example, after one of their recent sessions that taught the basics of the Gospel, over a third of the attendees responded by claiming that they were professing faith in Jesus Christ for the first time! Although they had been serving as pastors, they hadn’t even understood the Gospel for themselves. Apparently, this is a typical scenario in much of the African church, and for many of these pastors, training centers supported by missionaries are the only Biblical and Theological education available to them.

We are extremely excited about this opportunity, and we feel as though God is leading us to join this ministry team. We are passionate about the work they are doing, we feel that we are both gifted to accomplish this kind of work, and many of our friends and advisors have been encouraging us to pursue it. Therefore, our next step is to take a short trip to Rwanda to see and experience the ministry first-hand. While we are visiting, we will have the opportunity to tour the country to get a feel for life and ministry in Rwanda. L will be able to observe the pastoral training school while they are in session, while J will be able to observe one of their other programs that helps church workers develop effective children’s ministries. Overall, we’re hoping to accomplish three things on this trip. First, we want to confirm that God is indeed calling us to Rwanda so that we can move forward with confidence, second, we want to begin to develop a vision for our future ministry there, and third, we want to make connections with the missionaries and local pastors in order to have a personal tie with the real needs of those who are laboring for the gospel in Rwanda.

Although we’ve been expecting to take such a trip, J’s pregnancy demands that we either do it immediately while it is still early in her pregnancy or wait for nearly another year from now when the new baby is old enough to travel. We feel that God is clearly leading us to take this trip sooner rather than later. Therefore, we will be traveling to Rwanda May 17 – June 1. We’ve estimated that the trip will cost about $5,000.

We would love for you to partner with us as we pursue God’s call on our lives. Please pray for us as we step out in faith and seek God’s wisdom. In addition, with L having been in school for the past year, we are not able to pay for this trip on our own. If you are able to help us with this need, you can let me know and I will give you the information about how to donate.

Although the details of planning a trip so quickly can be overwhelming, we are excited and thankful for this opportunity that God has given us! When we return, we’ll contact you again to let you know what God has done while we were in Rwanda. We are so thankful for your love and support.

Sincerely,

Us

Beautiful Twists and Tugs of the Heart

At this time next week, we will be boarding a plane to Rwanda. Ok, not directly to Rwanda, but we'll start the first leg of our 24-hour journey---we gotta make it through Europe and that crazy ash cloud first. Then we'll be in Rwanda.

Africa. Although both of us have taken a number of overseas trips, neither of us has been to Africa. From the pictures, it looks similar to the trip I have taken to the south Pacific. So I suppose I am just expecting that, but really, I just don't know what to expect.

It feels a bit weird. (and overwhelming--we've got so much to do in the next 7 days!! but that is a different story....) Back to weird. We're going to an unknown place, meeting up with people we don't know, and hoping that by the end of it, we'll want to go back. Like really go back. Like move our kids across the ocean, learn a new language, and settle there. The number of simultaneous emotions that go through me as I think about that are too many to list. Excited. Scared. Uncertain. Hopeful. Joyful. I want to go. I want the adventure, the experience, the opportunity to do something that is really making a difference. I am terrified to go. There are so many "what if's," especially when I think about raising our kids there. Yeah, so many of those.

This past few weeks, I've become very aware of all of the subtle expectations that I have had about raising a family. I always assumed that about the same time that we got to kid #3, our car would probably be on it's last leg and we would get a minivan. Maybe keep our current car around as an unreliable second car. But if we move to Rwanda in the next year or two, it's pretty likely that kid #3 will be born there, we aren't bringing our car along, and I doubt a minivan will be our car of choice. (Do they even have minivans in Africa?!?!) This is obviously not a huge deal and it's a "dream" that I can easily let go of. It probably wouldn't have happened that way anyway if we stayed here, but that's just what I subconsciously expected. Not a big deal on it's own, but when you start to think about ALL of those little expectations that you didn't even realize you had.......well, it makes you realize that you really are giving up life as you know it.

But there is more than all of that--more than the fears or the lost expectations or even the selfish desire for adventure. We started this process with a "simple" question for God: "what's next?" We expected something like L continuing his education, or looking for a teaching job, or pursuing a position in a church. Working with the church overseas was possible, but it wasn't really at the top of our list. But God has been drawing our hearts, step by step, to this exact place. If I hadn't had a one-year-old crawling all over me, I would have captured the progression here and all would see how beautiful it is. Not to bash the little guy, but there have been so many posts in my mind that never made it on here because the little dude wants to type every time I do. But back to the beauty. How do you explain the little twists and tugs at our hearts that have slowly brought us here? How do I capture that now? There is such a peace and confidence that comes from knowing that what you are doing is simply not your idea, but God's. And if God has planned it, He will provide for every part of it! He will keep our new little boy safe in my belly as we travel. He will protect our little man (and us!!) from heartache as we leave him behind for 2 weeks. Or maybe He won't take away the heartache, but He will sustain and comfort us and him. Maybe He won't keep us all healthy as we travel, but He will provide whatever we need to endure whatever comes our way. When you are walking on your own path, you can't be sure of that. But when you are following God's path, although there is uncertainty, there is also peace.

Matthew 6:25-33 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."

One week from now isn't really that different than right now. In both cases we are just walking through life, trusting God to provide, and pressing on to serve Him in whatever way He wants. The only difference I can see is that while we are here, we have a false sense of self-sufficiency, but when we board that plane, we know we have to trust Him.