Closing remarks :(

12:00 am Kigali Time, Rwanda, January 7 2012

Hello from the future!! It’s January 7th here, and yet back home it’s only January 6th! 

This will just be a quick update because today was go go go all day and I am just exhausted. So again, excuse the lack of attention to spelling and grammar! I am also sad to say this will be my last blog update while I am in the beautiful land of Rwanda... I leave for home tomorrow afternoon. (or... I guess that would be today!)

Today I spent the whole day with Margit.... Girls day!!! It was fantastic. We slept in, had a small breakfast in the morning with the guys (to slowly accustom ourselves to food to break the fasting), then when the boys left for the day to do some things around the church, we went to another African market place to just buy some souvenirs. I bought a painting made out of poop! haha... cow poop. So sweet. I also got something for my mom and brother. (If you are reading this right now - be excited! Sorry Chubby you get SQUAT, hehe). We also walked around downtown Kigali... we got some more fruit and Margit bought some fabric. It was a bustlin’ place dt Kigali. Let me tell you! It was full of people selling all sorts of things. It was like a market only with a lot more buildings and shops. Afterwards I had the opportunity to visit a lady named Joseline (spelling - not sure). She is actually a Canadian! We went to her house for coffee and so that I could chat with her a little bit. She is an amazing lady who is a midwife here in Kigali, but she got her midwife certicifate in the Philippines where she lived before moving to Rwanda. (We talked abit about Manila too... seeing as I will be there in May!) She works in the poorest part of Kigali (the same place the bomb went off). We talked for three hours just about nursing, the health care system in developing countries, how to get started in third world medical care, she told us her story... we talked about everything! It was so informative. She gave me some great resources, books to read, documentaries to watch, people to contact, places to go. She even invited me to come work at the health and wellness clinic they are opening soon (the one attached to the church). This trip has just been great for building my contact book for when I graduate Uni! I am so thankful for this because this is opening so many doors for me once I graduate. God is just paving the way so nicely! I love our God! Right before we left her house she gave me this birds nest that she found in a field near her house... it is seriously the coolest birds nest I have ever seen. I will have to post a picture of it when I get home. After this visit we went to church for the last evening service. My dad preached on healing... and it was AWESOME. So many people were coming up for prayer and crying and just God was so there. I think I cried the whole entire time. They all prayed for my mom and it was just powerful. Margit and I had a chance to pray together and just bond some more. After the service we went for dinner (finally - DINNER!) at this super nice hotel. It was traditional African food... I was being picky tonight so I mostly ate potatoes haha. But I tried goat and it was great! Kinda chewy but otherwise normal! So see... my day was jam packed... I did not even get to take a nap today! No down time, but it was great.

I was joking with Margit and my dad that when I go through customs coming home they are going to ask me what I am brining back with me into Canada, and I will have to say well... I have cow dung, grass, a weapon, poached ivory and fruit. Haha, just kidding about the ivory and fruit. But seriously... I’m not telling them that I am bringing grass back home in to Canada. haha... That is so not allowed. Oh well. I hope they don’t have spies that scan the internet for this type of stuff... We sprayed the nest with bug spray... It shouldn’t have too many organisms in it that will harm the people of Canada... I hope. Haha.

Anyways, tomorrow we are taking a drive to see the mountain region of Rwanda before they drop me off at the airport! Dad and Kelly are staying an extra two days, but I have to start school Monday so I’m coming home earlier. I have a lay over in Addis, and a layover in London. I’m quite looking forward to London as I will sit my self down in a nice comfy airport chair and eat English Chocolate and Sweets for six hours as I wait for the next plane. :) Sounds just dandy.

Thanks again guys for all your prayers and encouraging notes while we have been here! I am excited to come home, but also so sad that I am leaving. I am definitely leaving part of my heart here in Africa. :( But I have a suspicion that I will be back.

See you guys soon!

Love, 

Emilie!

Update... I'm losing track, what number is this?

9:30pm Kigali time, Rwanda, January 5 2012

Hey guys!!

I just want to start off by saying, thank you! I have been so encouraged by all the messages everyone has been sending me, they have just totally lifted me up. I feel so loved and blessed by you. Like... really, I have the best friends in the world (the whole world).

Just an update on the bomb attack... unfortunately it turns out that two people have died in hospital so far. Please continue to send your prayers for the injured and the families of those who have lost their loved ones. 

I have already had some people asking me if it is safe where I am and if we are safe. The answer is yes. Rwanda is one of the safest countries in Africa, according to Margit. Because of what happened in ’94, the government does not tolerate any movement that will disturb the peace that they have worked so hard to attain. So... it is really safe here, no need to worry!

Yesterday I spoke at the noon hour session! It went great! I was shaking and so nervous, but it all went over great. :)

Today was amazing. Really, truly amazing. This morning we visited the YWAM base here in Kigali. It was beautiful. I sometimes wish that I did take a year before going into University to do a DTS with YWAM. It was sweet to see what they are doing there with a  preschool and primary grade school for local kids, a vocational school for the locals, along with the DTS programs that they run. They even have a HIV-Aids and widows ministry. It’s a super sweet. Even to hear how they got started. One man really felt like God wanted him to start a YWAM base in Rwanda, he moved here right after the genocide in 94 with only a hundred dollars. Praying and trusting in God to provide, one donor committed then to donating enough money each month for them to build the whole base that they have today. So cool what God puts on peoples hearts and how everything comes together! So neat! We serve such a big God indeed!

This afternoon, after the bible study at the church, we went to a real African market. There were merchants selling all kinds of fruit, beans, nuts, rice, and so much other food. Even a meat section with huge animals hanging upside down bleeding all over.. haha it was gross. Good thing I am fasting or I probably would have lost some of my lunch. There were so many fabrics that they were selling too. So many amazing colours and patterns! They wear the coolest patterns here! I love it!!

Afterwards I went with Margit and a few ladies from the church to help them in their hospital ministry! It was the highlight of my week. I got to visit another hospital and learn a whole lot more about the health care system here in Africa. We brought porridge, tea, bread and cookies to hand out to the ladies on the “maternity ward”. Before we left we also put together some packages with a baby blanket, some onesie baby outfits and some baby hats to bring to the newborns. I was absolutely blown away by the way the hospitals here operate. All the patients have to bring everything from home. The hospital rarely will even supply them with sheets on the beds. There are so many beds in each room... this is what they call a ward. Sometimes there will be more than one lady in each bed even. Lots of people here don’t have health insurance for financial reasons, and if they cannot pay for medicine or even supplies like bandages... they don’t get any. And if they cannot pay their hospital bill... they are not allowed to leave. These moms who have just given birth are discharged from the hospital (so they no longer have a bed) but they cannot leave until they pay their bills. So they are discharged with a brand new baby, sometimes pre-mature, and have to sleep on the ground of the hallways and in the court yard of the hospital on the cold concrete with no blankets, sometimes even the babies have no clothes. It is so sad. We met many ladies who were so scared because the doctors don’t tell them anything about their conditions. We met ladies who were in so much pain but just could not afford medication. We met ladies who were so hungry because they have not eaten for days. How someone can expect to get better and get well in a place like this I do not know. With a translator we talked to this one woman who just lost her baby and was she thought it was because she had the baby out of wedlock... she expected that was why the baby died. It was so sad... I wanted to say, our God is not like that! We got to pray for her and many others. We prayed in each room that we went into. It was so touching. We even visited the children’s burn room. I fell in love with this one little girl who was covered in bandages because she was burned by hot beans and water that fell on her. She had been there for two weeks. I wanted to just hug her, but she just stared at me with such a vague expressions. It broke my heart. There is such a huge need here for health education. Many of these women don’t even know about baby development, what is normal and what isn’t. One lady was so scared her baby was so sick, but all it was is that the baby was too hot in his blanket. It was also so hard to be there because you just want to help everyone... but we only had so much food, and so many blanket bundles. We couldn’t give them money for medicine or to release them from the hospital because its frowned upon. If people keep feeding them money, they will become reliant on it and the system that they do have in place will collapse. It’s hard to explain all this. I learned so much over the few hours that we were there for. It was so different from Canada. The power even went out once. There are no monitors in the rooms, no materials... there is barley anything there! It was just so eye opening. I was so blessed that I could go an experience that today. If I lived here, I would spend so much of my time going there with these women. They go every week. It’s amazing.

I feel like I have been crying a lot while I have been here... haha. Just everything here makes me want to cry! Tears of joy, tears of sadness... a mix of both sometimes!

The prayer times here have been so great! (I really wish there were more words in the english language to say great and amazing!). I have just had times alone with God where I have just cried and prayed and just opened my heart to Him. I am loving this. I will not let this die when I get home.

Things have just been put on my heart while I have been here. Things that I need to do when I get home, things I need to fix in my life, things I need to get right. This has been such an encouraging and learning time for me. 

I am missing home though. I don’t want to come home because I love it here so much, and yet I miss home so much. It’s a weird combo. I don’t really like standing out so much as I do here. Because of the lack of white people here... I do stand out. I miss that about home, its a comfort that I take for granted so often. I will miss the green here... because it is SO green. So many beautiful trees and flowers. I do not want to come home to snow! haha! Gross!

I did not listen to my travel consultants advice... I ate fruit not knowing who washed and peeled it... haha oops. I did it twice! I also have many mosquito bites and I am not taking anti-malarias... haha. I really am hoping I don’t come home with every bad sickness I could get. Oh well...

Please excuse all my spelling and grammar mistakes in this entry. And if some of it didn’t make much sense... haha sorry. It’s late here and I am pretty much falling asleep on the lap top... but I just had so much to say, I had to get it off my plate!

Peace and blessings.

Update 4: Please pray.

9 pm Kigali time, Rwanda, January 3rd 2012

Hey guys. Please be praying, even now. Today was a heavy day. I feel really heavy hearted. About to cry at any moment.

God is doing so much here in Kigali, in the people of CLA, and in my own life. I feel like God is bringing together so much for me. He is connecting the dots right now in my life. It seems like everything I read in my quiet time with God is re-stated in church, by something someone says, by a conversation with others. I feel like there are tons of what I call "God coincidences" going on right now. I still have to ponder and think and meditate on what God is doing in my life... I am not yet ready to write about it here. It is more like God is teaching me about the quiet times with him. The secret place with me and God. I feel like this is being renewed and strengthened in my life. I know God is talking to me... I feel him and hear him. Every scripture I have read in the past few days has been brought alive and relevant. It has really been amazing. It is so crazy to think that God had to bring me half way across the world to get my attention.

This afternoon I had the opportunity to go with pastor Komant to visit a member of the church in the hospital. It was cool because we all got to pray with him, really felt blessed by this today. Also, it was cool because I got to see a hospital. It was so, so different from the hospitals we have back home. It was basically a motel with small rooms with a bed and an Iv hanging. There were no monitors, no emergency gear, nothing else. It was wierd, with a peice of paper on the door saying that it was 'room A'. From what I hear, the health care system here is not good at all. I had many day dreams today about how I could come and nurse here in Rwanda. How I saw a need and how I could help meet that need.

After we went to another Genocide memorial. This time, it wasn't a museum-type, it was a real genocide site. We visited a church where more than 5 thousand people were murdered. They seeked refuge inside the church thinking that the killers would not kill them in a church... but that was not the case. The bodies of most of the people still remained in the church. So many skulls and bones... more than I have ever seen. Baby skulls too. It was so hard. So hard. The clothes of the people still remained, soaked in blood, ripped and torn. I even saw a little girls dress. There was also original weapons left behind by the murders. Blunt clubs and machetes. There were holes in the walls from the grenades thrown into the church. There was a seperate building of the church - oringinally used for sunday schools - that was half destroyed because the murders burned people alive in that building, colapsing the walls around it. Everything was kept in its close to original state from after the genocide. In another sunday school building, clear and dark blood stained the walls... this is where they would smash the babies against the walls. This was the worst part of the whole thing. The blood was still there... still dark, still screaming. It is so hard to see all this. It's almost like I can't belive this happened. Why? Why,  How could people do such a thing. I don't understand at all. So evil. I feel so empty and void... I cannot even begin to relate to this kind of horror.

Tonight during our evening meeting, my dad was interrupted during his sermon by someone coming into the church with very bad news. Not even half a kilometer away from where we were, there was a grenade attack. It was in the neighboorhood just down the hill, the poorest part of Kigali. 28 people were injured we found out later. It was amazing to watch how the church just stepped up to the plate. We immediatly began praying. We had people praying in the mike, we then broke off into small groups and prayed... we prayed all night. Praying for all the injured, for the people who threw the grenades, for salvation, for the doctors and nurses who would help them, for everything. We also prayed that the injured would have enough money to pay for the medical bills. In Rwanda, people have to pay alot of money for healthcare, and if they cannot pay - they will not get treated, even in an emergency. We took an offering. The baset was full of money by the end - it was amazing. It is not a coincidence that we were having a prayer meeting the same time that this event took place. Thank God.

Tonight was draining, yet amazing, yet sad. Again, please be praying for the country of Rwanda today.

Tomorrow I speak - Pray that I will have strength to do so. Pray for boldness.

Love and miss you guys. Many of you are on my heart today. Know that I care about you all.

Update 3

9:15 am Kigali time, Rwanda, Sunday January 1st 2012!

Happy new year everybody!! It’s about 12:15 Jan. 1st in Calgary right now! I made it to the new year before all you did! I hope it was great! 

Yesterday was one of the best new years days I could ask for! We left the mittelstaedts at 6 am after breakfast and head out on the road. It was a two hour drive across the country to the game park. On our way to the park we drove through remote villages while tons of cute kids would chase our vehicles screaming and waving at us. It was cute. I was telling the girls that I haven’t seen an ugly kid yet! They are all so cute! haha. Once we entered the game park, it was a rickety road, we drove around for 10 hours just looking for animals. It was so sweet. We saw so many animals... hundreds, way more than I could count. Giraffes, zebras, hippos, alligators, wart hogs, tons of cool birds and butterflies, baboons, these deer like antelope things, and other animals I don’t even know the name of... all in their wild natural habitat! It was amazing. We didn’t get to see the elephants that were there because they were hiding because of the rain. Unfortunately there were no lions or gorillas in this particular park, but I am sure I will see them one day! It was such a long day! We had two vehicles, a forerunner and an old fashion Land Rover... very safari looking. I felt so legit.  We didn’t have a guide with us because all the guides were already booked for people currently doing safaris. So we had Marty and my dad looking at a map, trying to not get lost. Of course, we did get lost.  We didn’t exactly know where we were in this huge park, and our forerunner was running out of gas. Needless to say, it was an adventure. We made it out of the park and into the first gas station we saw just in time for the gas light to turn on. Thank goodness! But since the day took longer than we had expected, it was dark by the time we got home. When we got back to their house, we had some dinner... since we hadn’t eaten all day (we only thought we would be gone for a little while... not 10 hours, and we hadn’t brought any food!). It was Katelyn’s 20th birthday so we celebrated a little bit with some cheese cake. I then fell asleep at around 9pm Kigali time... I slept right through the new year. Haha, oh well... it was a great day.

5:30pm Kigali Time, Rwanda, January 2 2012

Greetings. Yesterday, Sunday, I went to church at CLA - Christian Life Assembly. It was remarkably a lot like our church back in Canada, only a lot bigger... and a lot less white people haha. My dad spoke on prayer and it was really, really good. He talked about the book of Acts and how every time something happened it was because of prayer. I really hope that this year, 2012, will be a year drenched in prayer. This week is the week of prayer and fasting at CLA. It is exactly what I need to start off the year. 

After church we spent our last day with Katelyn and Mike (her fiance!) before they headed on their way home. We watched a christmas movie and took a toast to the new year (sparkling white grape juice). The Komants came over for some pizza and we just relaxed and fellowshipped together. This week will be a little more low key, but it is really exactly what I need before I head back to school. Spend the week just praying, fasting, reading the word and worshiping. It’s perfect really. Like a God-Vacation.

During this week at CLA, the church is always open for people to come and pray. At noon hour there is a more structured devotional and prayer time lead by Kelly. I will probably be doing a little devotional one of the days this week.... I am still thinking and praying about what to say. I am not good with public speaking at all... I get so nervous. God help me. During the evenings my dad will be preaching and there will be a time of worship followed by prayer. It feels kind of like camp... it reminds me of that with the structure being similar. 

During the noon session today, I just made a list of all the things I will be praying about during this week. I brought with me a note book, and I like to write down my prayers because I feel as if I can articulate myself better in writing, and I get distracted less easily. I will share with you all these prayers at the end of the week. I like to write them down also because then I can go back and read them again, and see how far we have come, and if they have been answered, it will be clear. After the session, I went to the prayer gardens. They are stunning and beautiful. They are on the CLA grounds. I just walked through the rows of trees, green grass and flowers. I brought the lap top, sat down in the sun and worshiped on my own, did some drawing, prayed, read and wrote some. It was beautiful. This is exactly what I need... rest. It is refreshing. 

I am excited to see what God will do this week in Kigali, in CLA and in my own life. Know that I will be praying for you guys while I am here. Be blessed.