On Wednesday, I'm having each of my English students give 5 minute speeches to the rest of the class. I'll have candy for them. I'm excited about it.
On Sunday, our guitar and piano students are going to be performing worship songs for our base church in Remera (Christ Gospel Church). Our team is also performing our drama at the service. We're going to have one or two people speak. I don't think I'll give a sermon, but I'm going to make sure I at least share a few words of encouragement, because they've been very good to us. It's going to be our last Sunday before we leave for Uganda.
We went to the U-17 African championship game on Saturday. The soccer stadium is only a 10-minute bus ride from the bus stop closest to our house. It's hard to believe that every player was under 17-years-old because the level of skill was high enough that it felt like watching a world cup game. Rwanda had made it to the final game, and they were playing Burkina Faso. It was a great game. They kept showing us muzungus (white people) on the big screen, and one of our Rwandan friends said he saw us on TV. It's too bad Rwanda lost, 1-2. President Paul Kagame was there too. He doesn't smile at all ever. I talked to a pastor that said he grew up in the same village as Paul Kagame, and apparently Paul Kagame has always been a very serious person. He is known for being a workaholic.
We helped plant a church in Busanza, and Luke was basically co-pastoring it with the Rwandan pastor, Pastor Sylvan. The Busanza church services happen on the same nights I teach English (we all take a bus to the same town and then we split up with a few of us walking to Vida for English and the rest going to help out at the church), so I wasn't very involved in the church, but he fills in the team when we do debriefing each night. On Sunday, he heard feedback from the members. One woman said something along the lines of, “I had never felt beautiful in my life, but when you showed the photographs of space from the NASA satellite and talked about how much God loves us, I realize that God loves me. At first, I had put you on a higher level because you were a muzungu, but now I realize my value, and we're all on the same level. And even the people that sit on the street begging are loved by God.” I may be combining together testimonies from more than one person, but the point is the same. Luke was tearing up when he was hearing things like that. Also, we bought them Bibles. They were clutching their Bibles as they walked to church. There were three adults in the church when we started. There were 45 this last Sunday. Also, when we first showed up, Luke said that even the adults looked dirty and unkempt, but that now, it seems like they're caring more about life and how they look and are putting effort into the way they look for church. Also, eight people got baptized last Sunday.
This week, our leader broke down in tears at a team meeting for the third time. The first time was when we said we all disagreed with the no-Internet rule and asked her to reconsider, and she felt attacked. The second time was when she was talking about a sense of team disunity and how hurt she was when she feels negative vibes from people. This last and third time was when she was telling us she was repenting from not leading from a position of love and how she wasn't handling everyone well. I think that last meeting did a lot of good in getting us to talk about what we can do to have greater unity. Our team has a blast, but sometimes we can be shallow, and a couple people have felt left out. So we addressed that, and we all feel much better now.
I think our leader is pretty happy with me. At the beginning of the trip, she kind of admit being intimidated by me, which is totally fair, because it just kind of works out that most our team decisions kind of have to run through me cause they need me to decide if we can afford it and then they need me to hand the money to them. But I am extremely selective when it comes to picking my battles, and I'm as careful as I can be to make sure Mikaela feels respected. And I try to give her affirmation at good opportunities. I don't think I'm sexist, but all my male leaders/supervisors have done an outstanding job, but I'm still afraid to believe 1Timothy 2:12-15.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Career Options
Here's a blog post I've written mainly to bounce the ideas off my parents, but I'll share it with you guys too, and so if any of you have advice, I'm all ears.
My favorite secular author is Malcolm Gladwell.* He once wrote about the characteristics that are true of fulfilling careers. In fulfilling careers, you find three commonalities: autonomy, complexity, and performance-reward synchronization. Autonomy is how much you get to be your own boss, so entrepreneurs score highly, but café employees that are even told how to greet their customers don't get to enjoy much autonomy. For complexity, an entrepreneur may need to be skilled in totally separate areas, while an assembly line worker may have to screw a thousand bolts in the same spot every day. Lastly, a salesman may make more money for every single bit of success, but most people on wages or salaries might be paid at the same rate regardless of how good they are at their job.
I want a good career, and I'm considering three options. It's not about the money, but money is a consideration, and it often goes hand in hand with the top-tier careers I'd want because capitalism rewards high-demand services.
Med School
Med School is four years. The first two are non-clinical, and the last two are clinical. The average med school student graduates with a debt of $157,000. After med school, graduates have five years of residency. During residency, they make about $40,000 / year and will work 80 hours per week. After five years, they become an attending physician. A doctor that does general or family practice makes $150,000-$250,000 per year. Doctors who specialize make more, so at the other end of the spectrum, a brain surgeon makes $600,000 per year. If I became a doctor, I would want to be a brain surgeon. I think I would enjoy it the most because it's the most challenging and interesting.
I did not know that OHSU is ranked so highly nationally. Every year, they have about 5,000 applicants; they interview 600 of them; and they admit 155.
The main deterrent for me wanting to become a doctor is the residency phase. If I work 80 hrs/wk, I would either become insane or depressed. I would much rather have a family and get to spend a lot of time with them. And still have time for reading, music, and sports. And I'm not sure I'd enjoy doing surgery enough to justify that kind of hell. And I'd be 34 before I finally have it made.
Business School.
Business school is only two years, and the subject matter is much easier, which I have mixed feelings about because I want to be challenged, but I don't want to have to work too hard either.
I would need a few years work experience to get in, so I would have to work as an engineer for a while. It wouldn't be bad, but it wouldn't be super exciting either.
The stereotype about finance guys is that they're slaves to money and want to chase pies in the sky.
“Just do what you would enjoy.”
“What if what you enjoy is money?”
“Then study finance.”
As for the pie-in-sky mentality, business deals are volatile and uncertain. You can become salaried if you become a workaholic slave to an investment firm instead of going it alone, but that doesn't seem much better. I might as well be a medical resident.
I might enjoy finance, but the biggest problem with this career path is that it has the lowest social utility. Playing with stocks, bonds, private equity, and real estate doesn't really improve society all that much. I want to mainly work for my own enjoyment anyway, but why choose business when I can enjoy something more technical with more barriers to entry.
This is also the broadest option for me because business has so many fields. I could choose get an MBA in finance, Masters in Real Estate, or a Masters in Engineering Management (and be a higher-up at a company). I'm not sure which one I'd choose.
Masters in Biomedical Engineering
Think Luke Skywalker's robotic hand in Star Wars. Or Will Smith's robotic hand in I, Robot. Every time I see a person missing a limb, I feel the injustice of it and I think it'd be so awesome to restore their capabilities. Biomedical technology is exploding right now because technology is advancing exponentially and we're growing in medical knowledge at the same time and medicine is so complicated that there's still so much that we don't know. You put all this together, and there's a lot of potential and growth in this field.
Getting an MS in BME would take two or three years. It's probably the best option for high-end finances with the least hell. I'd get home from Rwanda, work for a year and a half, and start grad school in the fall of 2012, and then come back and get a better job.
Looking at job openings for engineers, most of them say a master's degree is strongly preferred, and most positions require a few years of work experience. So I'd have to get an entry-level job when I get back. I know that I need to get a master's degree, because most of the stuff you can do with just a bachelor's degree is also stuff that companies use technicians with a 2-year degree to do. So if I'm going to get a master's in engineering, it might as well be biomedical engineering. Nuclear engineering is a distant second option.
Right now, this option is in the lead. I'd also have the choice of getting a MS in BME, working for a few years and then still getting an MBA. Or some programs have a joint BME and MD degree. Either way, I'm going home and working first. And right away I want to start reading books about the difference career paths, especially testimonials of people that chose these careers and then wrote reflections about it.
University of Washington is really highly ranked in every one of these categories for its graduate programs. It's by far the best school in the Northwest. Maybe I could just live in Vancouver for six months and then I could pay in-state tuition to UW. The rest of the top-tier schools are in California, the Northeast, and a few in the Midwest. I think I would apply for a scattering of famous schools and use University of Washington as a backup.
*Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist for the New Yorker. He simply finds interesting things to write about and then comes up with really cool insights about that topic. One of his books is called “Outliers”. Outliers in this context refers to the people lie outside the average level of success; i.e., exceptionalliy successful people (regardless of what field they've entered.) He writes about the characteristics that most closely correlate with being successful at what you do. Like, intelligence helps, but it's not as important as you might think.
My favorite secular author is Malcolm Gladwell.* He once wrote about the characteristics that are true of fulfilling careers. In fulfilling careers, you find three commonalities: autonomy, complexity, and performance-reward synchronization. Autonomy is how much you get to be your own boss, so entrepreneurs score highly, but café employees that are even told how to greet their customers don't get to enjoy much autonomy. For complexity, an entrepreneur may need to be skilled in totally separate areas, while an assembly line worker may have to screw a thousand bolts in the same spot every day. Lastly, a salesman may make more money for every single bit of success, but most people on wages or salaries might be paid at the same rate regardless of how good they are at their job.
I want a good career, and I'm considering three options. It's not about the money, but money is a consideration, and it often goes hand in hand with the top-tier careers I'd want because capitalism rewards high-demand services.
Med School
Med School is four years. The first two are non-clinical, and the last two are clinical. The average med school student graduates with a debt of $157,000. After med school, graduates have five years of residency. During residency, they make about $40,000 / year and will work 80 hours per week. After five years, they become an attending physician. A doctor that does general or family practice makes $150,000-$250,000 per year. Doctors who specialize make more, so at the other end of the spectrum, a brain surgeon makes $600,000 per year. If I became a doctor, I would want to be a brain surgeon. I think I would enjoy it the most because it's the most challenging and interesting.
I did not know that OHSU is ranked so highly nationally. Every year, they have about 5,000 applicants; they interview 600 of them; and they admit 155.
The main deterrent for me wanting to become a doctor is the residency phase. If I work 80 hrs/wk, I would either become insane or depressed. I would much rather have a family and get to spend a lot of time with them. And still have time for reading, music, and sports. And I'm not sure I'd enjoy doing surgery enough to justify that kind of hell. And I'd be 34 before I finally have it made.
Business School.
Business school is only two years, and the subject matter is much easier, which I have mixed feelings about because I want to be challenged, but I don't want to have to work too hard either.
I would need a few years work experience to get in, so I would have to work as an engineer for a while. It wouldn't be bad, but it wouldn't be super exciting either.
The stereotype about finance guys is that they're slaves to money and want to chase pies in the sky.
“Just do what you would enjoy.”
“What if what you enjoy is money?”
“Then study finance.”
As for the pie-in-sky mentality, business deals are volatile and uncertain. You can become salaried if you become a workaholic slave to an investment firm instead of going it alone, but that doesn't seem much better. I might as well be a medical resident.
I might enjoy finance, but the biggest problem with this career path is that it has the lowest social utility. Playing with stocks, bonds, private equity, and real estate doesn't really improve society all that much. I want to mainly work for my own enjoyment anyway, but why choose business when I can enjoy something more technical with more barriers to entry.
This is also the broadest option for me because business has so many fields. I could choose get an MBA in finance, Masters in Real Estate, or a Masters in Engineering Management (and be a higher-up at a company). I'm not sure which one I'd choose.
Masters in Biomedical Engineering
Think Luke Skywalker's robotic hand in Star Wars. Or Will Smith's robotic hand in I, Robot. Every time I see a person missing a limb, I feel the injustice of it and I think it'd be so awesome to restore their capabilities. Biomedical technology is exploding right now because technology is advancing exponentially and we're growing in medical knowledge at the same time and medicine is so complicated that there's still so much that we don't know. You put all this together, and there's a lot of potential and growth in this field.
Getting an MS in BME would take two or three years. It's probably the best option for high-end finances with the least hell. I'd get home from Rwanda, work for a year and a half, and start grad school in the fall of 2012, and then come back and get a better job.
Looking at job openings for engineers, most of them say a master's degree is strongly preferred, and most positions require a few years of work experience. So I'd have to get an entry-level job when I get back. I know that I need to get a master's degree, because most of the stuff you can do with just a bachelor's degree is also stuff that companies use technicians with a 2-year degree to do. So if I'm going to get a master's in engineering, it might as well be biomedical engineering. Nuclear engineering is a distant second option.
Right now, this option is in the lead. I'd also have the choice of getting a MS in BME, working for a few years and then still getting an MBA. Or some programs have a joint BME and MD degree. Either way, I'm going home and working first. And right away I want to start reading books about the difference career paths, especially testimonials of people that chose these careers and then wrote reflections about it.
University of Washington is really highly ranked in every one of these categories for its graduate programs. It's by far the best school in the Northwest. Maybe I could just live in Vancouver for six months and then I could pay in-state tuition to UW. The rest of the top-tier schools are in California, the Northeast, and a few in the Midwest. I think I would apply for a scattering of famous schools and use University of Washington as a backup.
*Malcolm Gladwell is a journalist for the New Yorker. He simply finds interesting things to write about and then comes up with really cool insights about that topic. One of his books is called “Outliers”. Outliers in this context refers to the people lie outside the average level of success; i.e., exceptionalliy successful people (regardless of what field they've entered.) He writes about the characteristics that most closely correlate with being successful at what you do. Like, intelligence helps, but it's not as important as you might think.
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Monday on the Horizon
It's 1 AM here. While I'm sleeping, it'll be afternoon/evening for all of you, so I wanted to make sure I got a couple blog posts up for you guys before I went to bed. When I wake up tomorrow, I'll be going to the bank and an Internet cafe. I hope I succeed in getting in touch with a bunch of you after I wake up tomorrow. Fingers crossed. :-)
Mutara
Our team joined a Rwandan pastor named Pastor Claude to plant a church in the small town of Mutara. Pastor Claude has planted 4 churches in his career. This was going to be his fifth, and we all crammed into a bus to take us there on Wednesday morning.
We stopped at a small town on the way. I gave a sermon in Kinyarwanda on John 11. We had Elijah translating into English for my team (and to make sure I was saying what I thought I was saying). Then we performed the You're Everything skit. As always, the church attendance was almost entirely little kids and breast-feeding mothers.
After another hour of driving, we arrived at what would be our house for the rest of the week. It had no running water or bathroom. The out-house smelled awful. The only furniture in the house was our foam mattresses. They were like normal mattresses, except they were 5 times skinnier than normal mattresses. Mine was so lumpy that I chose to sleep on the concrete floor the first night. That turned out to be a poor decision. I slept on the mattress on the other nights, and it wasn't so bad.
After the first night, we showed up the next morning to work on the site of the future church. We used machetes to take out the thorn bushes that were growing all over the future field next to the house of Pastor Claude's mom. After the field was made, we went into the woods and cut down about 40 small trees with machetes and dragged them back to the field. We dug 2-foot holes in the ground with machetes and hoes. We made a grid of these holes and dropped the trees into them to serve as the poles for a tent for the church. We nailed on other trees to serve as the cross members and tent supports. We tied tarps over the cross members and had a covering. I gave a short testimony and Elijah preached a message. The Pastor then gave an altar call for salvation and about 100% of the audience came forward and repeated the sinner's prayer. The audience was mostly little kids. There were a few adults too. One of them was an old lady whose really old husband-like live-in boyfriend came out to get her out of the church and she said to leave her alone; if he resists her, she'll beat him up and kick him out of her house. The pastor separated them and talked to them. He was drunk and just needed to calm down. The pastor also encouraged her as a new convert to not be violent.
Also, we rented a film-reel projector and screen and played the JESUS film for a crowd of maybe 80, mostly kids. The sound wasn't working so one of the church guys narrated the film on the microphone. We played the first half of the film on Saturday night. One of the guys helping us stayed behind to play the second half on Sunday night. We left on Sunday afternoon after the church service. Luke preached the sermon that morning, and that Pastor again had an altar call. Again, all the 20 or so kids came forward. They may have been doing this for the second time, but they were happy for Jesus nonetheless.
There were a lot of health issues that we saw. Some of the kids had an umbilical hernia, where the umbilical cord isn't cut correctly so instead of a belly button, it just looks like they have just a giant tumor. A lot of kids have skin issues, like scabs on their chins. One kid was missing an eye. Another had an eye problem where the whites of her eyes were solid pink, but it was different from pink eye. One kid had elaphantitus on his fingers. I'm mainly able to give so much description to these issues because our nurse teammate pointed these out. She also asked why so many of the kids have tear-shaped scars under both their eyes. Elijah explained that there is a witchcraft operation where they take a red-hot poker and stick it underneath their eyes. With a growing church in the area, hopefully witchcraft will decrease.
We stopped at a small town on the way. I gave a sermon in Kinyarwanda on John 11. We had Elijah translating into English for my team (and to make sure I was saying what I thought I was saying). Then we performed the You're Everything skit. As always, the church attendance was almost entirely little kids and breast-feeding mothers.
After another hour of driving, we arrived at what would be our house for the rest of the week. It had no running water or bathroom. The out-house smelled awful. The only furniture in the house was our foam mattresses. They were like normal mattresses, except they were 5 times skinnier than normal mattresses. Mine was so lumpy that I chose to sleep on the concrete floor the first night. That turned out to be a poor decision. I slept on the mattress on the other nights, and it wasn't so bad.
After the first night, we showed up the next morning to work on the site of the future church. We used machetes to take out the thorn bushes that were growing all over the future field next to the house of Pastor Claude's mom. After the field was made, we went into the woods and cut down about 40 small trees with machetes and dragged them back to the field. We dug 2-foot holes in the ground with machetes and hoes. We made a grid of these holes and dropped the trees into them to serve as the poles for a tent for the church. We nailed on other trees to serve as the cross members and tent supports. We tied tarps over the cross members and had a covering. I gave a short testimony and Elijah preached a message. The Pastor then gave an altar call for salvation and about 100% of the audience came forward and repeated the sinner's prayer. The audience was mostly little kids. There were a few adults too. One of them was an old lady whose really old husband-like live-in boyfriend came out to get her out of the church and she said to leave her alone; if he resists her, she'll beat him up and kick him out of her house. The pastor separated them and talked to them. He was drunk and just needed to calm down. The pastor also encouraged her as a new convert to not be violent.
Also, we rented a film-reel projector and screen and played the JESUS film for a crowd of maybe 80, mostly kids. The sound wasn't working so one of the church guys narrated the film on the microphone. We played the first half of the film on Saturday night. One of the guys helping us stayed behind to play the second half on Sunday night. We left on Sunday afternoon after the church service. Luke preached the sermon that morning, and that Pastor again had an altar call. Again, all the 20 or so kids came forward. They may have been doing this for the second time, but they were happy for Jesus nonetheless.
There were a lot of health issues that we saw. Some of the kids had an umbilical hernia, where the umbilical cord isn't cut correctly so instead of a belly button, it just looks like they have just a giant tumor. A lot of kids have skin issues, like scabs on their chins. One kid was missing an eye. Another had an eye problem where the whites of her eyes were solid pink, but it was different from pink eye. One kid had elaphantitus on his fingers. I'm mainly able to give so much description to these issues because our nurse teammate pointed these out. She also asked why so many of the kids have tear-shaped scars under both their eyes. Elijah explained that there is a witchcraft operation where they take a red-hot poker and stick it underneath their eyes. With a growing church in the area, hopefully witchcraft will decrease.
Counseling
I've heard that one complaint about becoming a doctor is that doctors are trained to treat patients and lose touch with the humanity of their patients. Patients become nothing more than just cases in which they aim to find the correct diagnosis and prognosis. I was thinking about that because I thought it might sound a bit cold to talk about my family here as if they were counseling patients. I'm really close to everyone here, and they're so much more than the issues they've dealt with. So this post is more like a side note about my experience here. I have a counseling text book with me. I'm still early in the book. I only like counseling because it helps people. I'm enough of an uneducated beginner that my main influence just comes from being somebody that cares, and I only give marginal bits of actual counseling. Some of these people may to visit Portland someday, so I definitely wouldn't want to be using real names.
Girl A. She has struggled with an eating disorder for 4 years. She's getting encouragement from the other girls, and she's getting a hold on the underlying issues. Also, her parents are divorced. Her mom is in a wheel chair with MS. Her dad is an alcoholic who has lost his sight. Both are on welfare. She also needs work on her life outlook and plans, because at this point she doesn't dare to hope for college and a fulfilling career.
Girl B. She is very musically talented and comes from a moderately healthy family. She was sexually abused by her choir teacher in high school. Her last relationship was a 3-month relationship that was overly physical, and she's still dealing with the effects.
Girl C. Her parents are together, but they were having difficulties when she left. They appear to be doing better now. Her parents have little overt spirituality but have been improving since she left for outreach. She had an addiction to pornography for 2-3 years. She's in a relationship but feels she ought to be brake up with him. She's 19 and he's 24, and he wants to get married. She is not physically attracted to him at all, but she feels shallow for giving this any weight.
Girl D. She is 26 years old. She's in a relationship with a 36-year-old for two years. He's been wanting to marry to her for a year, but she's dragging her feet. She feels something might be wrong with her for not wanting to get married to him. She's leaning towards breaking up with him but doesn't have the heart to do it. During lecture phase, she came into a prayer circle during lecture phase for women who had been raped before, but she hasn't mentioned this since.
The other two girls aren't dealing with any major specific issues.
Guy A. He experimented with homosexuality in high school but rejected it and has had two girlfriends since. He was addicted to pornography for 4 years.
Guy B. He was addicted to pornography for 5 years. His dad left the family when he was 14. His mom remarried to a good man. His dad is still a raging alcoholic that the rest of the family hates. He has forgiven his father and is working to reconcile his family to God and to each other. He is planning on getting engaged a few weeks after DTS ends to a girl her met during lecture.
I love how we are involved in outreach ministry, but at the same time, we're ministering to each other. I feel like a lot of the good I'm doing here in Rwanda is helping my teammates with their own life journeys and encouraging my teammates so that they can be continue being a blessing to Rwanda.
I also like how there is no set of experiences that is completely beyond healing. And it's awesome that God uses our backgrounds and experiences in our ministries.
Girl A. She has struggled with an eating disorder for 4 years. She's getting encouragement from the other girls, and she's getting a hold on the underlying issues. Also, her parents are divorced. Her mom is in a wheel chair with MS. Her dad is an alcoholic who has lost his sight. Both are on welfare. She also needs work on her life outlook and plans, because at this point she doesn't dare to hope for college and a fulfilling career.
Girl B. She is very musically talented and comes from a moderately healthy family. She was sexually abused by her choir teacher in high school. Her last relationship was a 3-month relationship that was overly physical, and she's still dealing with the effects.
Girl C. Her parents are together, but they were having difficulties when she left. They appear to be doing better now. Her parents have little overt spirituality but have been improving since she left for outreach. She had an addiction to pornography for 2-3 years. She's in a relationship but feels she ought to be brake up with him. She's 19 and he's 24, and he wants to get married. She is not physically attracted to him at all, but she feels shallow for giving this any weight.
Girl D. She is 26 years old. She's in a relationship with a 36-year-old for two years. He's been wanting to marry to her for a year, but she's dragging her feet. She feels something might be wrong with her for not wanting to get married to him. She's leaning towards breaking up with him but doesn't have the heart to do it. During lecture phase, she came into a prayer circle during lecture phase for women who had been raped before, but she hasn't mentioned this since.
The other two girls aren't dealing with any major specific issues.
Guy A. He experimented with homosexuality in high school but rejected it and has had two girlfriends since. He was addicted to pornography for 4 years.
Guy B. He was addicted to pornography for 5 years. His dad left the family when he was 14. His mom remarried to a good man. His dad is still a raging alcoholic that the rest of the family hates. He has forgiven his father and is working to reconcile his family to God and to each other. He is planning on getting engaged a few weeks after DTS ends to a girl her met during lecture.
I love how we are involved in outreach ministry, but at the same time, we're ministering to each other. I feel like a lot of the good I'm doing here in Rwanda is helping my teammates with their own life journeys and encouraging my teammates so that they can be continue being a blessing to Rwanda.
I also like how there is no set of experiences that is completely beyond healing. And it's awesome that God uses our backgrounds and experiences in our ministries.
Monday, January 10, 2011
I am here...
(Hey mom, click on the pictures to make them bigger.)
Rwanda is in East Africa. To the right of DR Congo. Below Uganda. To the left of United Republic of Tanzania.
Rwanda is shaped like a lima bean. Kigali is in the middle.
Our house is on the eastern edge of Kigali.
Here is a close-up of our house.
We travel to Busanza for church planting.
There are three blue-roofed school buildings in Busanza. Our church meets in the middle school building. Each building is just one dark class room.
Notice Busanza is in the middle of nowhere. When you click on "What's this?" on Google Maps, it finds the nearest major roads and gives you its geographic coordinates.
I am currently sitting in the mall in Nyarutarama.
Here's a close up of the mall.
Pretty cool, eh?
Rwanda is in East Africa. To the right of DR Congo. Below Uganda. To the left of United Republic of Tanzania.
Rwanda is shaped like a lima bean. Kigali is in the middle.
Our house is on the eastern edge of Kigali.
Here is a close-up of our house.
We travel to Busanza for church planting.
There are three blue-roofed school buildings in Busanza. Our church meets in the middle school building. Each building is just one dark class room.
Notice Busanza is in the middle of nowhere. When you click on "What's this?" on Google Maps, it finds the nearest major roads and gives you its geographic coordinates.
I am currently sitting in the mall in Nyarutarama.
Here's a close up of the mall.
Pretty cool, eh?
Monday Monday
I love Mondays.
We have Mondays off. Completely off.
In Nyarutarama, there is a really nice mall called the MTN Center. The MTN Group is a giant telecommunications company based in South Africa. It's an internet service provider in Rwanda. On the third floor of this mall, there is a excessively nice cafe, the Bourbon Cafe. You can order something and then get free Internet.
The mocha I just had was amazing. I also ordered a chocolate croissant. It was warm with melted chocolate on top.
We have Mondays off. Completely off.
In Nyarutarama, there is a really nice mall called the MTN Center. The MTN Group is a giant telecommunications company based in South Africa. It's an internet service provider in Rwanda. On the third floor of this mall, there is a excessively nice cafe, the Bourbon Cafe. You can order something and then get free Internet.
The mocha I just had was amazing. I also ordered a chocolate croissant. It was warm with melted chocolate on top.
Fun Team Dynamics
A lot of our team members have pet peeves about things that gross them out while they're eating. Luke goes crazy when you mention finding a random crunch in our rice (we have to pick through our rice before cooking it because there's little rocks in the rice and sometimes we miss one). Michelle gets really grossed out by the idea of finding a hair in your food. Kara gets nauseous when you make the the slurping sound of someone sucking the the saliva off their retainer.
Luke has a silent laugh and it's awesome cause when I tell a good joke, he just looks like he's frozen for like 15 seconds and he looks like he's imitating a peacock. Kara has a really really loud laugh.
Michelle is a nurse, and we're lucky she's on the team, cause Katie got a staff infection, and Michelle got her some medication to treat it. She's also in charge of making sure we have the right anti-malaria stuff, which is a difficult thing to do because the medicine packages, even though they're multilingual, have different names for all the medicines.
Luke, Sam, Kara and I really enjoy talking about gastrointestinal topics. Especially Kara. There's a lot to talk about because the food and our stomachs haven't always gotten along, and also there's hard-to-aim-at squatty potties (a hole in the ground that smells worse than any smell in the US).
Luke has a silent laugh and it's awesome cause when I tell a good joke, he just looks like he's frozen for like 15 seconds and he looks like he's imitating a peacock. Kara has a really really loud laugh.
Michelle is a nurse, and we're lucky she's on the team, cause Katie got a staff infection, and Michelle got her some medication to treat it. She's also in charge of making sure we have the right anti-malaria stuff, which is a difficult thing to do because the medicine packages, even though they're multilingual, have different names for all the medicines.
Luke, Sam, Kara and I really enjoy talking about gastrointestinal topics. Especially Kara. There's a lot to talk about because the food and our stomachs haven't always gotten along, and also there's hard-to-aim-at squatty potties (a hole in the ground that smells worse than any smell in the US).
Monday, January 3, 2011
Unfortunate Team Dynamics
This is the third blog post in a row. They're written over the last week, because our Internet access day is Monday. I'm going to call people back home when it gets later in the day, since we're ten hours ahead.
Our team leader, Mikaela, may be ahead of the curve to lead a team at the mere age of 19, but I still keep being surprised when she does something really immature. Here's just one story that gives a perfect picture of a pattern that's been making half the team a bit disillusioned with team dynamics...
We have team meetings. At one meeting, Mikaela was gone, so Luke was facilitating. And Kara, Sam, and Madi mentioned their teaching positions are extremely frustrating to them, partly because they say they aren't really the teaching type. They were hoping we could add a street ministry, or maybe Kara could perform with her guitar at a bar. Part of the problem is we keep going to Busanza for the small country church we're planting, and Luke keeps preaching there, but they don't have any real roles, aside from let the kids touch their hair and hold their hands. So we brought it up at this team meeting. Now, we wanted to be very careful that Mikaela doesn't take all this personally again, so we talked a lot about the best way to bring this up to Mikaela. We decided that Luke would give her a heads up, and then the dissenters would talk to her individually.
On Sunday, as always, we went to a restaurant for dinner like we always do. We did the affirmation circle, which took a while with ten people. Every person was in the hot seat and other people just started saying nice things about them. And after being there at least an hour and a half, it came to be 8:30. We asked what time the busses stop running, and Elijah said 9:00. I also thought we were being rude for not clearing out so long after we had finished eating. Mikaela decided that we still had to bring up something quickly and shouldn't wait til we got home. She first mentioned that she felt a bit sad that we hadn't been completely open and honest with her. Then she brought up the problem of people not having their hearts in the right place with the ministries they'd been given. Then Luke preached a sermon to us about “How bad do you want it? Isn't God worth it?” Then they wanted our feedback, and I chipped in that first, we hope Mikaela doesn't feel sad because we were very intent about being open and honest with her in the most Christ-like way. She said she really appreciates that a whole lot. But she didn't really connect it to her introduction about how she felt sad that we weren't being open. We didn't have much time for feedback, because we had to leave. We were too late for any bus to come by us, so we had to walk for a while to a main bus stop and try to find a bus home. There were only a few busses and there were a lot of people trying to cram into them. A couple Rwandans saw us and started arguing with others on our behalf because they felt that we should be pushed ahead onto the bus because we were guests in their countrry. So we got onto a bus and made it home.
It would have been much more mature to wait until we got home so that we could have had an actual discussion. I understand she was anxious to bring it up, but she gave in to impatience. And her response to our original point was just defensiveness. I like the ministries we've gotten to do, and I am happy to be here. But working with a childish leader is now another thing that we're doing for God.
They had planned it out to do affirmations right before rebuking us. Using affirmation time as a ploy took away from it a bit, but I was still pretty happy with what people said about me....
“You have an insane amount of knowledge, but you're extremely gentle about it.”
“You have unlimited patience, especially in your teaching.”
“You're a really, really good listener.”
“You're really funny.”
“You're an encourager.”
Our team leader, Mikaela, may be ahead of the curve to lead a team at the mere age of 19, but I still keep being surprised when she does something really immature. Here's just one story that gives a perfect picture of a pattern that's been making half the team a bit disillusioned with team dynamics...
We have team meetings. At one meeting, Mikaela was gone, so Luke was facilitating. And Kara, Sam, and Madi mentioned their teaching positions are extremely frustrating to them, partly because they say they aren't really the teaching type. They were hoping we could add a street ministry, or maybe Kara could perform with her guitar at a bar. Part of the problem is we keep going to Busanza for the small country church we're planting, and Luke keeps preaching there, but they don't have any real roles, aside from let the kids touch their hair and hold their hands. So we brought it up at this team meeting. Now, we wanted to be very careful that Mikaela doesn't take all this personally again, so we talked a lot about the best way to bring this up to Mikaela. We decided that Luke would give her a heads up, and then the dissenters would talk to her individually.
On Sunday, as always, we went to a restaurant for dinner like we always do. We did the affirmation circle, which took a while with ten people. Every person was in the hot seat and other people just started saying nice things about them. And after being there at least an hour and a half, it came to be 8:30. We asked what time the busses stop running, and Elijah said 9:00. I also thought we were being rude for not clearing out so long after we had finished eating. Mikaela decided that we still had to bring up something quickly and shouldn't wait til we got home. She first mentioned that she felt a bit sad that we hadn't been completely open and honest with her. Then she brought up the problem of people not having their hearts in the right place with the ministries they'd been given. Then Luke preached a sermon to us about “How bad do you want it? Isn't God worth it?” Then they wanted our feedback, and I chipped in that first, we hope Mikaela doesn't feel sad because we were very intent about being open and honest with her in the most Christ-like way. She said she really appreciates that a whole lot. But she didn't really connect it to her introduction about how she felt sad that we weren't being open. We didn't have much time for feedback, because we had to leave. We were too late for any bus to come by us, so we had to walk for a while to a main bus stop and try to find a bus home. There were only a few busses and there were a lot of people trying to cram into them. A couple Rwandans saw us and started arguing with others on our behalf because they felt that we should be pushed ahead onto the bus because we were guests in their countrry. So we got onto a bus and made it home.
It would have been much more mature to wait until we got home so that we could have had an actual discussion. I understand she was anxious to bring it up, but she gave in to impatience. And her response to our original point was just defensiveness. I like the ministries we've gotten to do, and I am happy to be here. But working with a childish leader is now another thing that we're doing for God.
They had planned it out to do affirmations right before rebuking us. Using affirmation time as a ploy took away from it a bit, but I was still pretty happy with what people said about me....
“You have an insane amount of knowledge, but you're extremely gentle about it.”
“You have unlimited patience, especially in your teaching.”
“You're a really, really good listener.”
“You're really funny.”
“You're an encourager.”
A Little Success Story
Every Wednesday and Friday, we go to a village called Busanza. The first time (mentioned on Tuesday of A Week of Days in the Life), our church service had 2 mothers and 20 kids. The second time, we had maybe 9 adults and more kids. The third time, we had 25 people. The fourth time, we had 35 adults, including Rosette, the widow who could barely walk but still walked all the way to church, and 50-60 kids. Ten people came forward to receive Christ. We are outgrowing the classroom that we've been meeting in. We show up two hours before the service and just walk around, inviting people to church. It's really easy to visit people because they stay outside so much. We split up in groups with at least one Rwandan in each group to do most the talking and interpreting when we want to say something. I'm going to push for us to start handing out Bibles as well.
Random Cultural Reflections
Here in Rwanda...
Some men grow out the fingernail on their pinky. I saw one that was 3 inches long. I asked Elijah about it. He said it's not for any purpose; it's just random. Bras are not commonly worn. Almost every car is a Toyota. Guys hold hands with their guy friends. Public breastfeeding is much more common. Luke was speaking at a church once and he said 6 of them were nursing and he found it a bit harder to get through his message. Everyone smells like B.O. Elijah says it's because people without running water only ever throw water on their head, and they definitely don't use deodorant. When you're standing in line, you have to stand close enough to someone to be almost touching in order to be considered in line. Girls look just like boys except that they always wear skirts. Most women have their hair a bit longer than the guys' buzzed heads, but it's still a pretty compact afro. Men and women often carry heavy things on their heads. They normally have some cloth wrapped around their head to make it softer and distribute pressure. Little kids love shouting “Muzungu!” (“whitey!”) and running up to us and shaking our hands. Everyone else just stares, mainly at the women. People are extremely helpful about directions; we might have gotten on the wrong bus once and 5 different passengers started arguing among themselves about which route we should take. Most of the time, the bus we take is just an overgrown van that is crowded enough that people have to get up if someone in a row behind them wants to go. A couple times, Elijah has argued with a person that was trying to charge us extra for something, but for the most part, we're charged the same price for goods and services as the locals. A lot of people speak English. Most of the time, people seem really pleased when I try to speak Kinyarwanda and show that I'm trying to learn it.
I'm glad to have learned so much about a foreign culture, but it also makes me really like American culture.
Some men grow out the fingernail on their pinky. I saw one that was 3 inches long. I asked Elijah about it. He said it's not for any purpose; it's just random. Bras are not commonly worn. Almost every car is a Toyota. Guys hold hands with their guy friends. Public breastfeeding is much more common. Luke was speaking at a church once and he said 6 of them were nursing and he found it a bit harder to get through his message. Everyone smells like B.O. Elijah says it's because people without running water only ever throw water on their head, and they definitely don't use deodorant. When you're standing in line, you have to stand close enough to someone to be almost touching in order to be considered in line. Girls look just like boys except that they always wear skirts. Most women have their hair a bit longer than the guys' buzzed heads, but it's still a pretty compact afro. Men and women often carry heavy things on their heads. They normally have some cloth wrapped around their head to make it softer and distribute pressure. Little kids love shouting “Muzungu!” (“whitey!”) and running up to us and shaking our hands. Everyone else just stares, mainly at the women. People are extremely helpful about directions; we might have gotten on the wrong bus once and 5 different passengers started arguing among themselves about which route we should take. Most of the time, the bus we take is just an overgrown van that is crowded enough that people have to get up if someone in a row behind them wants to go. A couple times, Elijah has argued with a person that was trying to charge us extra for something, but for the most part, we're charged the same price for goods and services as the locals. A lot of people speak English. Most of the time, people seem really pleased when I try to speak Kinyarwanda and show that I'm trying to learn it.
I'm glad to have learned so much about a foreign culture, but it also makes me really like American culture.
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