So I'll start from the beginning: The travelling here was ridiculously long. Nine ana half hours to London, then I sit there in the airport for like 8 hours until I finally get to go. From that point on it was pretty much 95% Africans all the way until Kigali. That is something I am still adjusting to, as it will be myself and 95% Africans until I get back to London airport again like a year from now. Most everyone that I have met though has been incredibly friendly and hospitable. I think I am definitely going to love it here for sure.
It is gorgeous outside today, which is the first day it has been this nice since I got here. As much as I love Vancouver area, seriously I wish you could see the view I can see from my bedroom window. It's amazing. No pictures can really do it justice, though I'll still put some up on here at some point anyways.
I got to go to the Church for the first time the day after I got here, and it was absolutely awesome. They sing all these songs that I know from home. There weren't any songs I didn't know, and the music was absolutely great too. Good drums and guitar and everyone was right into it. So awesome worship for sure. Kigali Christian Life Assembly is a cell based Church like Langley CLA, so a fare bit of my work here as well as helping at kids clubs and things is going to be starting up a couple cell groups for pre-teens and kids. So that should be interesting. I don't really know how I am going to do any of this, but I'm sure it will come together in time. The first and most important things are my work visa, moving out of the pastor's place to my own place, and getting a transportation device of some sort. Those are the big three right now. I will be able to put more attention into those other things later I suppose.
On Sunday I got to help out at Children's Choir, which is just the name for kid's club. All these kids have crazy amounts of energy, though at least they're for themost part very well mannered, besides having trouble listening to directions very well. I think it will be a while before they listen to me very well though. After all I am just a brand new muzungu anyways. That is of course (moozoongoo) a new person not from around this area, so essentially a white person. So I definitely have my challenges ahead of me. Anyways though, I was walking up this ramp at the Church and this little girl probably about 7 years old came running down the ramp from the stage with her hands on the back of her pants as she was being chased by someone. She announced to me as she ran by, "My trousers are falling down!" Hahaha I thought that was one of the cutest things I have ever seen. Oh yes, also pants here are underwear. Trousers are pants. I need to be sure I remember that. Could possibly lead to an embarrassing conversation if I were to forget it.
Hey, here is something maybe someone could give me some advice on. I've got all my computer stuff hooked up and working just fine. The only problem is that I guess this is because of the different voltage or something, or my powerbar isn't working properly, but really often whenever I touch certain spots of my computer stuff, I get shocked, some times shocked pretty badly. It's not that bad; it is something I could live with if I had to. But if anyone has any ideas on what I could do about this, I would appreciate that.
I apparently don't have to worry about only being here 3 months after all with my work visa thing. Pastor Komant told me that if I leave the country to another bordering country, then come back in, I canget another three months in the country no problem. Apparently I could even do that a few times if I needed to. I'm still wanting to get my work visa asap, but at least now I have another option incase things don't fully work out that way besides just coming home or something horrible like that. Not that it would be that horrible to come home, but it is just something I really can't do.
The other night Pastor Komant and I went to the house of these people from the Church for dinner. It was a really good dinner, though there are some elements of the food here that I will have to adjust to in terms of stomach and tastebuds. But after dinner I went into this other room with this guy Robert who's just a year younger than me and we watched 'Hitch', so that was pretty cool. Little bits of unexpected good times here and there. Things like that are going to be the things to keep me going while I am here. There definitely is not going to be much of a night life for me here. Actually a muzungu going around at night could actually be a really stupid thing to do. Not exactly safe. Honestly the truth here is that as a while guy I'm a target. That is just something I'm going to have to live with. My days are mostly going to be 7am-9pm. That will be the typical day I imagine. Very different from when I was at home and it looked more like 11am-2am. Yeah that was good times. One day it will be like that again, but for now this is how it is, and I am perfectly fine with that.
Okay, now this is awesome. I was cruising around downtown with Pastor Komant yesterday, and we drove past L'Hotel Des Mille Collines (aka Hotel Rwanda). The hotel from the movie looks fully different as that is actually filmed in South Africa, but yeah, I actually saw the hotel, so that was really sweet. We did just drive past it, so I didn't really see much, but seriously, still so cool.
You know in the movie Alien how if you killed one of the aliens they were filled with acid and it would spray all over you? Well I was introduced to the ant version of the alien last night. Pastor Komant pointed out this large red/black ant thing that if you kill it when your skin is in contact with it, it actually has some kind of acid in it, and you can actually get burned pretty bad... holy crap. Never even heard of that before. Anyways, I am about done for now. I'll get back on here with another post in a while. But don't hold your breath for it though, as you have to keep in mind that it is all dial up here, and so it is slow, and doing work on my site can take a while, and so be a bit expensive to be doing a lot. I'll do what I can, but communication will be somewhat limited to spurts now and then. Sorry! Anyways, I am out. Thankyou for reading my uber long journal entry. Feel free to email me or post in the forum. Seriously feel free ... I wouldn't mind one little bit. Be praying for me too. Bye for now, and God bless.
