Joshua's Blog

Well, for anyone still reading this... I am very sorry! I have no updated for about a week! You guys don't even know that I'm back in Canada! Haha! So I am sorry, and I will attempt to keep this thing moving with at least some sort of recognizable pace! Well, as I've already said, I'm back in Canada (arrived on Thursday night after over 25 hours of flight time!) and I must say... mixed emotions. Life is getting a little shook around. Aside from the inevitable 9 hour time zone adjustment and the ensuing jetlag that followed! life is at a normal Canadian pace!

So today I taught Rwanda history at the Strandfontein Secondary School! I had 5 different classes, 3 grade 9 classes, 2 grade 10. The first one and the last one didn't really work out for me, but the three classes in between was really great! The kids had never even heard of something called genocide, let alone the history of what happened in Rwanda... my main point of the whole class was to encourage them to dream. See, the story of Rwanda (if you haven't already gathered from my Blog) is a story of hope, of success... the underdog coming out from under!

Wow, the real amazing thing is, even though I now have access to 'on all the time highspeed internet' at the house I am staying at (Sharron and Llewellyn's) I have less time to do many of the things I want/should do! Wierd eh?

Well everybody, I’m in the airport in Kenya, thought I should probably give you an update on how things are going. I guess the last update was on Saturday just before the blank at the stadium. Man, I have to tell you how awesome that day was. Well first I went to my last church service at GMC which of course was good but sad cuz I had to say goodbye to so many people who I love very much.

Okay, so the last few days have been almost useless! haha! We've made plans with people and waited, and waited, and waited... and I think 70% of everything we try to do out here is either ridiculously late or totally cancelled... with no communication! Arg!

Good morning good morning! My day has been going for quite some time now… Bryan left the morning for a tour up in the northern volcanoes to take pictures and hang out with some silver-back gorillas! I’m super excited for him, everyone who I speak to say it’s absolutely amazing… I mean you are sitting and walking side by side with gorillas less than 10 feet away from you!

Hello! Just letting you all know that Bryan and I have returned safely from visiting his sponsor child. The trip was much longer then expected, and the roads where much rougher then expected! Mainly due to the ridiculous amount of rain we have had lately! It rained steady for Saturday, Sunday, and a little bit of this morning (Monday)! So the roads where completely saturated! We finally arrived at his child’s village – within walking distance of a lake on the Burundi/Rwanda boarder. It always amazes me just how many people live in rural Rwanda.

Okay, well here we go, had a bit more time to prepare something, so here’s how the past few days went…

Well I didn't get a chance to prepare this in advance, so it's going to be pretty simple and boring, but I wanted everyone to know that we made it back safely! Gashora was so incredible!

Well hello everybody! I just finished an awesome weekend in Kibuye. On the edge of Rwanda, across from the Democratic Republic of Congo nuzzled against Lake Kivu lies Kibuye. A picturesque little town home to 50,000 Rwandans. The weekend started off a little rough, the pastor was not informed anything about our plans while in town, so the pastor was rather stressed trying to scramble to make arrangements. But once the afternoon turned to evening, the pastor became the pastor Valence I remembered… one of the gentlest, solid men I’ve met! Saturday I gave a 4 ½ hour seminar to the church leaders about the role the church plays in a child’s life and vise-versa. The group was smaller than expected because the church has just recently experienced a dramatic church split with one of its elders being caught in adultery. Upon the request of him stepping down from leadership many people left the church. They lost over two thirds of the congregation! But it was very encouraging because they church is eager to rebuild with the solid core leaders that have been sifted out. Sunday I gave a sermon on the importance the family and having a solid house environment plays in a child’s life. Both were well received and I believe encouraged the pastor and his wife. We learned so much about Kibuye including the fact that it was one of the hardest hit communities in the Genocide. Many stories could be shared, but unfortunately I don’t have all that much time so I’ll have to leave it at that… thank you everyone who prayed… there definitely was obvious spiritual opposition to us being there and so all the prayer we received was extremely valuable!