A Beautiful and Muddy Country

Hi everyone...we typed this last night but the internet went down before we were able to send it. We are just leaving for the first night of the Festival of Hope. If anyone is up at your late hour, please be praying that the rain will hold.

Love you all...here is the update.

Rwanda Update: Thursday, November 19, 7:40pm GMT+2

Hi guys, We've managed to find a wireless signal and someone from our team is letting us use their laptop they brought. Wow, so many stories to share...

We got to Rwanda yesterday in the morning. We came to our hotel, had some lunch and then immediatley set out to do work projects. Some went to orphanages, some went to run eye glass clinics and we went to the local hospital to visit with the sick. There were three of us and we each had a translator. We probably prayed for about a 120 people or something like that. It was intense because everyone wanted prayer for healing. I'll share one story...

We approached a group of people outside one of the wards and we heard screaming. We approached and the noise was coming from a young boy of about 3 years old. Our translator inquired and told us that the parents thought the boy had a demon. He had been like this, frantic, screaming, terrified, for a long time. The translator who was also a local pastor had him brought into a back room to pray for his release from the demon. We felt just a tiny bit inadequate for the task. The pastor started praying for the boy and it didn't seem to be helping. Then he stopped and talked to the parents some more. He told us he didn't think it was a demon but instead a sympton of cerebral malaria. So we started praying for healing. That didn't seem to work either. So we stopped. The boy screamed the entire time. He was hallucinating that wild animals were crawling up his legs and attacking him. He kept pawing at his legs. I suddenly felt like Jesus just wanted me to speak words of love over him. So I started to do that while stroking his chest and face. After about five minutes of this I started weeping and he suddenly stopped screaming and calmed down. It was amazing. God is so cool. But he still wouldn't let me put his pant leg down which he was holding up as a way to avoid the "animals." I grabbed it and pulled it down and whistled a little tune. Then he pulled it back up and I whistled a different little tune when he did. Then I grabbed his pant leg again and did the same thing. And he pulled it up. We kept doing that, pulling it up and down and me whistling this funny little tune and then about about 20 times he started smirking. His eyes, cleared and all the fear was gone. It was beautiful. I could feel the large group around us breathe a sigh of relief. When we left about ten minutes later, he was still calm. It is such an honor to serve our God!

We also handed out packets of rice and soap to the patients we prayed with. Patients are responsible for anything they need. Medicine, supplies etc... they had to pay for entirely. Food and washing and all that sort of thing they had to provide for themselves..either through family or friends. The sick have to take care of themselves! It was a very intense afternoon.

This morning (Robin speaking) Caris and I went to run our first eye clinic with two other team members. It was great! We rode in a van for about 45 minutes on a road that was so rutted I didn't think we would make it all in one piece. Bouncing and shaking, honking to get the people to move aside so as not to run anyone over. (People are walking along all the roads all day and always smile and wave when the white people go by. We are quite an oddity.)

We gave the eyeglasses out to about 200 people today after testing them for what strength they would need. People waited patiently to come up to one of three tables, one at a time to receive their glasses. When I gave them their new pair I would say: "This is a gift for you from your friends in the United States who love Jesus and love you." It was such an amazing experience as all of the experiences are here. We are being blessed as much as we are a blessing, I am sure.

We have a specific prayer request that is very important: Every afternoon about 3 pm we get an unbelieveably heavy downpour of rain that drenches everything and makes everything a muddy mess. Tomorrow afternoon we start our first outdoor meeting at 3 pm. Please pray God will hold back the rain. Else the field we will be in will be an absolute mess!

Well, got to go. Caris and I gave out goats today. We will cover that later. Caris took about 150 pictures of the event. Quite the thing! We had a blast.

See you soon...Thanks for reading our letters. I know it is hard to imagine how it is here. We are having a hard time believing where we are ourselves!

Love to all,

Robin (and Caris)

A Night In London

Rwanda Update: 11/16/09 10:45 GMT

We made it to London! We made it into London this afternoon and bussed to our hotel. We are staying here overnight and will leave for Nairobi and then Kigali tomorrow evening. (Another red eye!) Everyone from the team made it here as well as all of our luggage. We had a team meeting this afternoon where we got introduced to each other, worshipped together and heard more details about the trip. We are getting more and more excited about getting there and getting started with things. We will be trained tomorrow morning on how to run the eye glass clinics.

After the team meeting we had a some time to walk around London and find dinner. A group of nine of us went to the Westminster area which was absolutely gorgeous at night. We come up from the London underground right under Big Ben. We saw the Abbey and the parlimentary buildings and the London Eye. So huge!! It is a ferris wheel that sits beside the Thames river and holds like a thousand people at a time. It costs a fortune to ride and wasn't open tonight but still fascinating.

We finally found a little Italian place to eat dinner together. It had "Godfather" pictures up all over the walls. Funny. I had a Jacket Potatoe with chili which meant a baked potatoe with chili on it. Others at our table where very confused at what a "crisp" versus a "chip" was and which ones meant they were getting fries. Sounds like a great "Italian" place right? :)

Please pray for a good night's sleep tonight. It is nearly 11pm and I'm feeling weary but not tired yet. Only had about 4 hours sleep at this point so I need to crash. Also pray for our layover in Nairobi tomorrow. It is a quick layover and evidently it is a confusing and crowded airport.

Hope to send updates in Rwanda! Love you all.

Caris for the Power Girls

First to London

RWANDA UPDATE: 11/14/08, 10:01pm PST

Hi everyone, we wanted to send our first update tonight before we leave. Our plane departs tomorrow at 1:19pm. We will first be headed down to San Francisco to join the rest of the team. Then we fly out around 8pm from SFO and will arrive in London the next day. We are all packed. (It's amazing how much stuff you can condense down to two suitcases and two carry-ons!) We will spend 24hrs in London to adjust to jet-lag before flying down to Nairobi and then over to Kigali. The last leg will be by bus to Rwamagana. (Yea, say that five times fast if you can say it at all.)

Please be praying! Pray for our flights to go smoothly. And for the adjustment to jetlag! We won't be in country that long so we want to make the most of our time there. Also pray for our patience and mercy towards one another as we get tired and worn out from travel.

At this moment I think we have been blessed with over $7700 worth of support for this project from you...our friends and family. We are extraordinarily blessed as are our Rwandan brothers and sisters. Thanks once again for your generosity of spirit! We can't wait to give away the goats that so many of you purchased.

Grace and Peace to you!