death

Nothing could have prepared me for this.


The Rwandan Genocide. I had flipped through the many pages of its dark literature, and most recently looked across the thousand hills where it unfolded its rage. But now, it invaded my unguarded senses full on.

My stomach plummeted down a dark shaft of unknown horror and emotion as the first classroom of bodies was opened. White, twisted, maimed, disfigured bodies. Preserved in lime, the bodies looked almost alien to me. Yet the toes, fingers, and tufts of hair screamed of their once undeniable humanity. The severed ankles cried of the unmerited torture endured before their slow death. Some arms seems raised in an attempt to defend their life. Children. So many children.

Classroom, after classroom, after classroom.

Many had run from their killers to church buildings for safety. Many looked to the West to save them. Not but 20 feet from fresh mass graves the French played volleyball during their Operation Turquoise.

More than comprehending just the sheer volume of people that died I cannot understand how someone could so methodically plan such a massacre. But what are numbers of dead in Africa? It would seem that at least over one million must die before acknowledging that genocide is taking place.


Rwanda and Burundi are dealing with their respective genocides and ethnic differences in their own separate and very different ways. While I have my opinion these different approaches I want to express my belief in the unconditional love and hope of the Father. He is the great healer, and without Him all is lost. All the Western development money and political advice cannot and will not heal, if barely numb, the pain of human sorrow. Only He is able.

discombobulated.

How does one get back on the train after derailing?





Should I even be on this train to begin with!? Maybe I should be walking beside the tracks at a slower pace, though still headed in the same direction but now focused on the things that were a blear. Am I headed in the right direction? If you stand in the middle of the tracks and look to your right and to your left there are no arrows indicating which direction you should be going!


I balk even to use rigid railroad tracks as an example. How about a desert, frigid and scorching. An expanse of broken earth devoid of visible hope. It has its beauty, yet you know you can't stay long to enjoy it. No indication of the best route to water or shelter is present, yet you know where you've been and you cannot go back. So you plunge forward for fear that STAGNATION will kill you.

Aha, a word! STAGNATION. If I am not moving am I stagnant? Or is there something else I am missing. Maybe if I stay in the desert, it will rain. Seeds long dormant will germinate, and I will see and experience life like never before. Dare I risk a maybe. How does one be still and know, yet not stagnate. Stillness with the absence of knowledge or purpose. To be stagnate?

Translation:

In this rapidly unfolding year there are many choices lying on the tracks/road/path/direction I will follow. I want nothing more than to serve my Lord with my whole heart, but how? and where? with whom? in what capacity?

Be in His will, and thus you do His will. Am I on track with such thinking?

My new favorite animal. Rothschild Giraffe.

I'm very comfortable right now.

I'm conflicted on how I should approach this feeling of comfort. Sometimes life is just so much easier when you don't have too many comforts. The more you have, the more can be taken away. The more you want, the more you seem to never have. You can't miss something if you never had it, right?

Well, all this to say that I have greatly enjoyed the comforts of Nairobi, but I am looking forward to the simplicity of life in Burundi. Though life there is often stressful, it's still simple. I am growing to like, simple.