GOOD MORNING! It is currently 8:45a.m.on June 1st in Kigali, Rwanda which means it is about 1:45 a.m on June 1st in Texas.
Maegan and I worked our schedule around where we have this entire day off. We're going to take some time and go have coffee w/ a missionary friend, watch a movie or two, and do some packing. We leave on June 3rd, so day after tomorrow.
Tomorrow we will be very busy and thursday we leave so this may potentially be our last blog. We're both going to just take a minute and say a little bit.
I went to Kinyinya yesterday which is the village of genocide survivors that Maegan has already visited. While there, several of the orphaned survivors really opened up about their stories and felt no restricitions in asking about ours. :) The stories of genocide survivors are heartbreaking and I'll never forget them. I'll never forget the atrocity that has been done in this country or forget the people that still need prayer for healing. It is a blessing to hear their story and see their hope. It is a blessing to share Christ with them and know all of us no matter our circumstances are in need of a savior, the savior, Jesus Christ.
Our time here has been a blessing. I've taught in many services, but still believe I've learned more than I've taught. This culture is beautiful and the people are beautiful adn now I'll let Mae share!
Well...what to say...Overall, there have been many, many emotions during the time I've spent here. Some days are wonderful, some days are rough, some days I dread what we're doing, some days I still have the excitement of a child, but somehow, even through those bad, conflicting emotions, when I see the face of a small child, whether it's a child I'm holding and loving, or just seeing through the car window, it all fades and I remember my purpose and all those negative emotions are worth it. It's a mission field, to think there would be no hard days would be naive, but to know there are hard times, and to process and work through them and get over them, and still bring glory to the Lord, that's what's worth it. Even on our days off, we love to still find ways to bring God the glory He deserves. As we just say and discussed our plans for the day, we decided since we didn't have much to do, we would go on a walk and hand out my last bag of smarties. I would hate to do nothing. I know that sometimes rest is glorifying to our Father, but with only 2 days left, i know that there are days at home to rest, and while we're here, I want to be HERE. Doing things. Serving our Father. Serving the Rwandan's. Even if it's something as small as giving out candy to kids in neighborhoods that might not have that opportunity at "sweets" for a long time.
The lessons I have learned during these three weeks have been great. In my journal I've been keeping track and calling them all "Africa lessons;" I will share them at some point, probably upon our return.
I have learned a lot about myself, a lot about our God, and a lot about a cool culture. Being here has only solidified what I thought I was called to do with my life. I remember a time I wanted to be an attorney, and not have children and potentially not get married, and then the Lord stepped in and totally changed my heart, and now I realize children are who I want to be around the rest of my life. Crazy huh? I'll expound on that later and wrap up for now.
Keep praying for us. We still need it even with only a few days left. There is still time to be attacked by the enemy, and there's still time to honour our Daddy God.
Thanks so much for your continual support and prayer! We have felt it here more than we imagined.
-Jess and Mae
Monday, May 31, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
A few short stories- jess
I am incredibly tired, but decided to write a blog update of a few highlights from the past few days. There is one that incredibly sticks out to me.
STORY 1: OVERNIGHT
On monday our coodrdinator asked if we would like to add an "overnight" to our scheduel. After thinkign about it and praying about it Maegan and I both thought it would be good to do. We figured I'd preach around 7p hang out w/ the people for a while and then go to bed because we'd been told we'd have beds. The day of the "overnight" Maegan and I go hiking and just have a very fun and active day.Around noonish or so our coordinator calls and informs us that he'd pick us up at 8:30 p. This was surprising to us because most services start between 5p-8p. As we are preparing to leave for our overnight our housemate informs us that in Africa and overnight is not just spending the night somewhere, it's an all night long service!!!! EEEEKS. We def. were not prepared for that after our long hike we were both exhausted and looking forward to an early bed time. As we get in the car and tell our translator he just laughs and thinks it is absolutely hilarious while I am praying to God I'd be able to stay awake to preach. He tells me he'll ask them if i can preach before 1am... aaaahhhhhhhh.
We ended up loving the overnight. They all laughed at our mixup and allowed me to start my message at 11p. It was a great time in the Lord and I really believe God touched their hearts. We were able to go to bed around 1am and had a peaceful nights sleep until 445 when the muslim call to prayer awakened us from the mosque down the road!! The people from the overnight cooked maegan and i breakfast and really touched our hearts w/ their generosity.
I want to share an awesome answer to prayer I received that morning from one of the men in the service. For quite some time now I have been praying for the grace of God in my life to come and take over every time i speak (which I believe He does), but I have been praying specifically that people will not hear words from my mouth but seriously from the mouth of God. This man came up to me and said that the grace of God is so strong in my life that He could tell it was not speaking, that when he looked upon me he didn't see a person, but only the glory of God.... AMEN AND AMEN.
STORY 2: JEAN MARIE
Maegan and I have the most amazing driver, Jean Marie. He has a very relaxed tempermant and hardly speaks. One day I was preaching in one service then driving to another directly after to preach, so I had gotten my messages together and decided to preach the same message in both services. After the first service jean marie told our translator he had a story he wanted me to hear, it was a very funny story pertaining to what I had preached on, so I decided in the next service to tell the story.
Before I told the story (it was an english speaking service) I said "I want to tell a great story taht our drive just recently told me, Jean Marie if you're in the congregation will you stand up". There was over 500 people in the congregation and so i scanned for a few seconds and never saw him so proceeded w/ the story and rest of my sermon.
After the lesson we stuck around and fellowshipped then went and got in our car. I said "jean marie i told your story in my sermon!" jean marie replied "I know I was in the church" I said "but jean marie i told you to stand up!" Jean marie simply laughed and said "I know I just didn't want to"
I hope this is as funny to you as it has been to all of us here!!!
I'll go ahead and end because this has gotten long. Next week I'll be joining maegan with orphanage ministry and we'll be wrapping up our time here, it's hard to believe it's already been two weeks.
We love you all.
Be blessed,
J. Tate
STORY 1: OVERNIGHT
On monday our coodrdinator asked if we would like to add an "overnight" to our scheduel. After thinkign about it and praying about it Maegan and I both thought it would be good to do. We figured I'd preach around 7p hang out w/ the people for a while and then go to bed because we'd been told we'd have beds. The day of the "overnight" Maegan and I go hiking and just have a very fun and active day.Around noonish or so our coordinator calls and informs us that he'd pick us up at 8:30 p. This was surprising to us because most services start between 5p-8p. As we are preparing to leave for our overnight our housemate informs us that in Africa and overnight is not just spending the night somewhere, it's an all night long service!!!! EEEEKS. We def. were not prepared for that after our long hike we were both exhausted and looking forward to an early bed time. As we get in the car and tell our translator he just laughs and thinks it is absolutely hilarious while I am praying to God I'd be able to stay awake to preach. He tells me he'll ask them if i can preach before 1am... aaaahhhhhhhh.
We ended up loving the overnight. They all laughed at our mixup and allowed me to start my message at 11p. It was a great time in the Lord and I really believe God touched their hearts. We were able to go to bed around 1am and had a peaceful nights sleep until 445 when the muslim call to prayer awakened us from the mosque down the road!! The people from the overnight cooked maegan and i breakfast and really touched our hearts w/ their generosity.
I want to share an awesome answer to prayer I received that morning from one of the men in the service. For quite some time now I have been praying for the grace of God in my life to come and take over every time i speak (which I believe He does), but I have been praying specifically that people will not hear words from my mouth but seriously from the mouth of God. This man came up to me and said that the grace of God is so strong in my life that He could tell it was not speaking, that when he looked upon me he didn't see a person, but only the glory of God.... AMEN AND AMEN.
STORY 2: JEAN MARIE
Maegan and I have the most amazing driver, Jean Marie. He has a very relaxed tempermant and hardly speaks. One day I was preaching in one service then driving to another directly after to preach, so I had gotten my messages together and decided to preach the same message in both services. After the first service jean marie told our translator he had a story he wanted me to hear, it was a very funny story pertaining to what I had preached on, so I decided in the next service to tell the story.
Before I told the story (it was an english speaking service) I said "I want to tell a great story taht our drive just recently told me, Jean Marie if you're in the congregation will you stand up". There was over 500 people in the congregation and so i scanned for a few seconds and never saw him so proceeded w/ the story and rest of my sermon.
After the lesson we stuck around and fellowshipped then went and got in our car. I said "jean marie i told your story in my sermon!" jean marie replied "I know I was in the church" I said "but jean marie i told you to stand up!" Jean marie simply laughed and said "I know I just didn't want to"
I hope this is as funny to you as it has been to all of us here!!!
I'll go ahead and end because this has gotten long. Next week I'll be joining maegan with orphanage ministry and we'll be wrapping up our time here, it's hard to believe it's already been two weeks.
We love you all.
Be blessed,
J. Tate
Friday, May 21, 2010
The end of the first week! -Maegan
Monday, the very first day of the work week, started off making the week look like it was full of promise. Don't get me wrong, it has been a great week, but it has not been exactly what was planned. I've been warned to stay FLEXIBLE as a missionary, and this week has taught me just that.
Let's stay on Monday for a moment. I met Debra, the lady I will be working with the whole trip, and she decided we should get to know each other better before we began working together. So she told me her whole story of how she got involved with starting orphanages. She was a businesswoman and left it behind because she had such a heart for children that couldn't eat for days at a time and had no where to lay their heads at night. After we got acquainted we headed off to meet with the first lady. Her name was Agnes. She has 5 daughters. I asked her how she met Jesus, and as her story unfolded, we found ourselves all weeping together. She met Jesus after she had all 5 children and found out not long after that she was HIV+. She panicked of course, for her children, but after having them all tested 3 times over the years, they have ALL been negative every time. She breast fed them all, and did everything with them that would have made them positive, and yet, the Lord protected them. Wow. Her whole story was incredible, but that was the highlights.
Next we headed off to Kinyinya, a village that began as genocide survivors and is now 98-99% survivors. We went into one of the home and started off with about 5 people, and by the time 3 hours has passed our group had grown to about 20, all crowded in a small entry room in the house. We started off with them just asking me questions about America. Questions I thought would be easy, but turned into questions like, "What do American's think about African's?" Etc. Man, I had to rely on the Lord to help my answer those. At one point, they asked me what advice I could give to them being survivors of a genocide and a hurting people. WHAT? Me?? Give THEM advice? They were touching my life in such a powerful way that to asnwer that was beyond my own control. I began to just tell them about Jesus and the power he could have in their life, their hearts, their hurts and pains and bitterness. 2 people ended up getting saved by the time we left, and it was so great to see God move in even a small gropu of 20. And 2 more hurting people are now relying on the Lord to heal their hearts. The village of Kinyinya needs prayer. There is no church out there, and the people are pretty far from anything. Many of the young people out there are enrolled in University and must walk 12 miles to school everyday and back. And I thought having to leave an hour early to get in my car and drive to school was bad. Man did I get a gut check. Most of these students try to find people in the city to stay with during the week, but many still have to resort to the walk. They told me as we were leaving that the one thing they all thought about me was that I was a "unique blessing" in which they had never encountered. My eyes filled with tears thinking that in some way I had been a blessing to them, when all I could see was how much they had touched me.
That night we got a phonecall that Debra's cousin had passed away unexpectedly, and as she was the closest relative, she must plan the funeral and go to Uganda. So I wasn't able to spend the rest of the week with her. Jess and I occupied ourselves in other ways in the mornings and in the afternoons and at night (everynight) we went so Jess could preach. Good thing I don't get tired of hearing her sermons. Ha. It's been great, and slowly my fear of speaking in front of groups is going away. Slowly.
My favorite part of all has just been the children's faces that light up when they see a "Muzungu" (White person) and stop for a hug. The kids are so well mannered and you never ever meet a stranger. As Jess and I went for a walk yesterday, we ran into tons of school children, and everyone stopped for a handshake, hug, and smile. It's so great.
Tomorrow is the safari and I'm SUPER excited!!! 4AM will come early, but I'm convinced it will be worth it!
Can't wait to see what the Lord will do next week. Be praying for us as the new week comes on. I have yet to have Traveller's Diarrhea, or get altitude sick, but my allergies have been terribly bad. Several times a day my eyes swell up, get blood shot, and I sneeze uncontrollaby. I think I'd rather have diarrhea a few times. Pray for our health and for our ability to withstand attacks from Satan. She may not admit it, but I know preaching 2x a day has taken a toll on Jess, so also pray for her health and spiritual and physical exhaustion. Overall, the week has gone by oncommonly fast, and it has been a huge blessing to be a part of what God is doing in Rwanda.
Until next week,
Maegan
Let's stay on Monday for a moment. I met Debra, the lady I will be working with the whole trip, and she decided we should get to know each other better before we began working together. So she told me her whole story of how she got involved with starting orphanages. She was a businesswoman and left it behind because she had such a heart for children that couldn't eat for days at a time and had no where to lay their heads at night. After we got acquainted we headed off to meet with the first lady. Her name was Agnes. She has 5 daughters. I asked her how she met Jesus, and as her story unfolded, we found ourselves all weeping together. She met Jesus after she had all 5 children and found out not long after that she was HIV+. She panicked of course, for her children, but after having them all tested 3 times over the years, they have ALL been negative every time. She breast fed them all, and did everything with them that would have made them positive, and yet, the Lord protected them. Wow. Her whole story was incredible, but that was the highlights.
Next we headed off to Kinyinya, a village that began as genocide survivors and is now 98-99% survivors. We went into one of the home and started off with about 5 people, and by the time 3 hours has passed our group had grown to about 20, all crowded in a small entry room in the house. We started off with them just asking me questions about America. Questions I thought would be easy, but turned into questions like, "What do American's think about African's?" Etc. Man, I had to rely on the Lord to help my answer those. At one point, they asked me what advice I could give to them being survivors of a genocide and a hurting people. WHAT? Me?? Give THEM advice? They were touching my life in such a powerful way that to asnwer that was beyond my own control. I began to just tell them about Jesus and the power he could have in their life, their hearts, their hurts and pains and bitterness. 2 people ended up getting saved by the time we left, and it was so great to see God move in even a small gropu of 20. And 2 more hurting people are now relying on the Lord to heal their hearts. The village of Kinyinya needs prayer. There is no church out there, and the people are pretty far from anything. Many of the young people out there are enrolled in University and must walk 12 miles to school everyday and back. And I thought having to leave an hour early to get in my car and drive to school was bad. Man did I get a gut check. Most of these students try to find people in the city to stay with during the week, but many still have to resort to the walk. They told me as we were leaving that the one thing they all thought about me was that I was a "unique blessing" in which they had never encountered. My eyes filled with tears thinking that in some way I had been a blessing to them, when all I could see was how much they had touched me.
That night we got a phonecall that Debra's cousin had passed away unexpectedly, and as she was the closest relative, she must plan the funeral and go to Uganda. So I wasn't able to spend the rest of the week with her. Jess and I occupied ourselves in other ways in the mornings and in the afternoons and at night (everynight) we went so Jess could preach. Good thing I don't get tired of hearing her sermons. Ha. It's been great, and slowly my fear of speaking in front of groups is going away. Slowly.
My favorite part of all has just been the children's faces that light up when they see a "Muzungu" (White person) and stop for a hug. The kids are so well mannered and you never ever meet a stranger. As Jess and I went for a walk yesterday, we ran into tons of school children, and everyone stopped for a handshake, hug, and smile. It's so great.
Tomorrow is the safari and I'm SUPER excited!!! 4AM will come early, but I'm convinced it will be worth it!
Can't wait to see what the Lord will do next week. Be praying for us as the new week comes on. I have yet to have Traveller's Diarrhea, or get altitude sick, but my allergies have been terribly bad. Several times a day my eyes swell up, get blood shot, and I sneeze uncontrollaby. I think I'd rather have diarrhea a few times. Pray for our health and for our ability to withstand attacks from Satan. She may not admit it, but I know preaching 2x a day has taken a toll on Jess, so also pray for her health and spiritual and physical exhaustion. Overall, the week has gone by oncommonly fast, and it has been a huge blessing to be a part of what God is doing in Rwanda.
Until next week,
Maegan
The end of the first week!- Jess
Well Maegan and I are both going to write a little bit about our first week as we are coming to a close of our 7th day here! So I'll try to write mine in a hurry and let her write a blog also.
I think first and foremost I want to say Praise God for all He has done and will continue to do while we are here. Our God is a big God and He has worked and moved while we are here. We are blessed to be apart of His Kingdom we are blessed to be His hands and feet.
Well to start off we have been here 7 days and I have preached 11x and we have been in 14 meetings. These have been in churches, small groups, ministries, schools, and a youth revival meeting. I have loved all of it, diving into the Word for hours a day to find what God has to say to these people has been more than a blessing to me. I love seeing God work and move and knowing that it is Him talking and not me. Sometimes I'll say something and I'll just think to myself, wow God, that really makes sense, I need to write that down. I'm finding strength and truth in the verse 2 Cor. 12:9 which says "My grace is sufficient for you for My power is perfected in weakness". I have never had to speak this many times in one week and I felt like it would be impossible, but God's grace has been sufficient. He has been faithful and true to His people. I love being able to speak truth into their lives and I love being able to lay hands on them and pray for them. I love seeing God speak to His people, capture and recapture hearts, heal emotions and bodies, I love watching God be the Shepherd to His sheep.
This week I received a big blessing. We were able to go to the Star School where I went a year ago. We came to the site to find they had expanded and Darlia the head mistress was pregnant. It was a blessing to speak to them again, it was a blessing to see that so much had been accomplished and yet Darlia still had much vision for the future.
I have a couple of prayer requests before I pass the computer over to Maegan to share on her experiences. This week we were sitting waiting for our transport to arrive to take us to where I was supposed to preach. My vision got very blurry and my head began to ache. Our transport arrived and on the way to the meeting I got very nauseated and the head ache became unbearable. In tears I had to tell our coordinator that I would be unable to preach, as we came into the house I began vomiting and had a migraine for hours. Along with this the lady that Maegan was coordinating with to work in the orphanages had a death in the family and suddenly had to leave to Uganda. A few other things have gone on that just have been direct attacks from the enemy. We have been standing in faith against these attacks and believing that God's will and plan for this trip will prevail over any dirty attempt of the enemy to thwart what we are doing here.
Also, Maegan and I have been talking a lot about a vision God has placed on our hearts about a ministry that would coordinate missions teams. We see God shaping the vision and giving us new ideas about how to start it, run it, and maintain it. Please pray that we would continue to hear Him on this subject.
I simply ask that you would join us in prayer, intercession, and faith. We love you all. thank You....
As Always Be Blessed,
Jess
I think first and foremost I want to say Praise God for all He has done and will continue to do while we are here. Our God is a big God and He has worked and moved while we are here. We are blessed to be apart of His Kingdom we are blessed to be His hands and feet.
Well to start off we have been here 7 days and I have preached 11x and we have been in 14 meetings. These have been in churches, small groups, ministries, schools, and a youth revival meeting. I have loved all of it, diving into the Word for hours a day to find what God has to say to these people has been more than a blessing to me. I love seeing God work and move and knowing that it is Him talking and not me. Sometimes I'll say something and I'll just think to myself, wow God, that really makes sense, I need to write that down. I'm finding strength and truth in the verse 2 Cor. 12:9 which says "My grace is sufficient for you for My power is perfected in weakness". I have never had to speak this many times in one week and I felt like it would be impossible, but God's grace has been sufficient. He has been faithful and true to His people. I love being able to speak truth into their lives and I love being able to lay hands on them and pray for them. I love seeing God speak to His people, capture and recapture hearts, heal emotions and bodies, I love watching God be the Shepherd to His sheep.
This week I received a big blessing. We were able to go to the Star School where I went a year ago. We came to the site to find they had expanded and Darlia the head mistress was pregnant. It was a blessing to speak to them again, it was a blessing to see that so much had been accomplished and yet Darlia still had much vision for the future.
I have a couple of prayer requests before I pass the computer over to Maegan to share on her experiences. This week we were sitting waiting for our transport to arrive to take us to where I was supposed to preach. My vision got very blurry and my head began to ache. Our transport arrived and on the way to the meeting I got very nauseated and the head ache became unbearable. In tears I had to tell our coordinator that I would be unable to preach, as we came into the house I began vomiting and had a migraine for hours. Along with this the lady that Maegan was coordinating with to work in the orphanages had a death in the family and suddenly had to leave to Uganda. A few other things have gone on that just have been direct attacks from the enemy. We have been standing in faith against these attacks and believing that God's will and plan for this trip will prevail over any dirty attempt of the enemy to thwart what we are doing here.
Also, Maegan and I have been talking a lot about a vision God has placed on our hearts about a ministry that would coordinate missions teams. We see God shaping the vision and giving us new ideas about how to start it, run it, and maintain it. Please pray that we would continue to hear Him on this subject.
I simply ask that you would join us in prayer, intercession, and faith. We love you all. thank You....
As Always Be Blessed,
Jess
Saturday, May 15, 2010
The crazy first 48 hrs
Well, we finally made it to Rwanda. Finally. We’ve got a great story if you’re willing to read until the end, a story of mishaps, our journey through five countries and what was supposed to be 3 flights that turned into 6 flights, all in the 48 hours since we left the Dallas airport.
First let’s start with the first steps we took getting out of the car at Terminal E (which is the Terminal for Delta) at the DFW airport. We were told that we actually needed to be at Terminal D, which made no sense to us since we had Delta tickets. So the first of many battles began as we tried to figure out why we had been moved to Terminal D. Simply trusting the Delta representative behind the counter we hopped on a tram that would take us across the airport to Terminal D. Upon arriving at Terminal D, we stood in line for about 30 minutes only to reach the point of checking our bags to find out that there were problems with our reservations. When I (Maegan) booked our tickets, the man misspelled Jessika’s name the first time, and apparently never cancelled the first reservations. So instead of having 3 reservations for 3 flights, we had 6 reservations for 6 flights. So the ticket he printed for us was not a valid ticket, and that is why it said Delta on it instead of KLM. After an hour of working on the ticket situation, we find out that because of the mistake, our tickets that included seat reservation had been cancelled and we no longer had seats together. We decided that we would not be upset and we would get through security and go on with our mission. So we grabbed dinner at McDonald’s and went to sit down to wait for our flight. Upon arrival at the gate however, we find out that our flight had been delayed an hour and a half. So we finally board the plane and a kind gentleman allowed us to switch seats so that we could sit next to each other. Praise God, the tide was turning, we had hope.
We arrived at Amsterdam only an hour late which was no problem for us because we had a 13 hour layover. We rented lockers to put luggage in, so that going into Amsterdam we could just take one purse. We got everything in our lockers, got through customs, got stamps on our passports (Whoop) and just as we walk through customs, Jessika remembers that she forgot the map in the locker that she bought specifically for this one day in Amsterdam. As we left the airport we found it to be much colder than the weatherman had predicted, and raining. Both of us still trying not to get frustrated, we headed to the train station where we purchased our roundtrip tickets out to Harlem so Jessika could finally visit Corrie Ten Boom’s house, one of her biggest hero’s. The significance of this, is that when I went to purchase our plane tickets months in advance, I made sure to have the long layover in Amsterdam, just for the purpose of this house visit for Jess. We arrive in Harlem and immediately love the small streets and historic buildings, Jess is like a small child on Christmas morning as we get closer and closer to the house. We did however notice that the streets were strangely silent. As we approach the museum/house, we find that no lights are on, doors are locked and everything is deserted. We hang out trying to figure out what’s going on, when an older couple happens upon us. We ask them if it’s a holiday and the man exclaims, “Yes, it’s the day they celebrate Jesus ascending to Heaven!” Oh man, Jess’ dream of seeing Corrie Ten Boom’s house that day were crushed in an instant. She was extremely disappointed but settled for walking down the streets photographing surroundings that Corrie had talked about in her books. Freezing cold, we decided to admit defeat and get back on the train toward Amsterdam. Across the street from the train station, we found a small café (not coffee shop) that was warm and served Dutch pancakes and coffee. Finally, there seemed to be hope that things were turning around. We waited for our pancakes for almost an hour before I finally realized how long it’d been and went to inquire. As it turns out, they forgot to put our order in. Awesome. But once we finally got our coffee and pancakes, the tiredness and coldness seemed to fade away. Until we walked back outside to find out that the rain had picked up while we were inside. We figured out that Anne Frank and Van Gogh’s museum’s were on the opposite side of town, and we were much too tired to walk that far. So we began walking around town, taking pictures of buildings and just generally observing everyday life in Amsterdam. We came across Madame Tussaud’s and decided we were there, we had the money, why not go inside and check it out. (It’s a wax museum of celebrities and well known world leaders). Expecting a leisure walk through the museum, we were faced instead with the history of Amsterdam, which doesn’t seem bad, but included “the dark years,” aka, a haunted house. Let’s just say I was less than amused and by the end, had a heart rate that seemed as if I had just run a race, not walked through a museum. The rest of the museum was enjoyable but by the end we decided we were so exhausted that we just wanted to get back to the airport. We had 5 hours until our plane was scheduled to depart, but we knew our bodies couldn’t handle much more. We sat down on the train headed to Schipol airport, only to hear that the train had been cancelled and would not be going. So we waited and got on the next scheduled train out. After sitting down, this train was cancelled as well. We find out that an accident had happened on the line, and no trains were departing from Amsterdam Central and going to Schipol. We found out that there was another way to get to the airport by train, but instead of taking the fifteen minutes it was supposed to take, it would take an hour. We really had no choice, we could either stay in the cold at the train station, or we could get inside the warm train and ride for an hour. On the train ride we got to see the tulips that we’d heard so much about and they were definitely beautiful. We made it to the airport 2 hours later, but still early since we had decided to leave so early in the first place. It was almost a blessing in disguise that we decided to go early. We had an uneventful hour in the airport, and loaded up to head to Nairobi, Kenya.
We get to Kenya and find out that there is a stop during out flight in Burundi which was never on our ticket and something we knew nothing about. We had a window and middle seat in a row of three. Jess sat next to the window, and I was lucky enough to sit in the middle, right next to a woman that cared very little how much of my personal space she took up, or how much her elbows, arms, and blanket connected with my body. It was rather interesting trying to be nice to her and having a cold shoulder and a couple jabs in the ribs (quite literally) in return. We landed in Burundi and the people staying began exiting the plane so the people that would be departing with us could join. Well, the flight was overbooked, but no one realized it until everyone was boarded on the plane, with their stuff already stowed beneath. And so began the process of getting some people off, as well as finding their cargo and retrieving it as well. We finally leave Burundi heading toward our final destination, Kigali, and only an hour late. The flight is much more bumpy and filled with turbulence than the previous flights, but I was so excited that it didn’t even affect me. Plus, the overbearing woman was replaced by an older man that had a deep love for literature and an uncanny ability to recite many, many things from a clearly fantastic memory. It was a much better flight indeed. Until we began to notice that as we descended, the light outside our windows also began to fade, and it turned darker and darker outside. Next thing we know, the pilot tells us that the weather in Kigali is too bad, so we will be returning to Burundi for an hour or so and then we should try again to go to Kigali. It was during this trip back to Burundi for our waiting period that I began to feel sick for the first time on this trip overseas. I decided I should probably cut the conversation with the nice gentleman and sleep instead. So for the remainder of the flight, I slept, as Jessika had been the ENTIRE flight—missing everything.
Coming off the plane it was time to get rid of the last 48 hrs of craziness and begin to prepare what God has called us here to do.
It’s now Saturday afternoon (this is Jessika now) I hope you enjoyed maegan’s story of our first 48 hours leaving the country. We love the lady we are staying with Audrey, she was an MK in Uganda growing up and now has this wonderful home in Kigali that she has opened up to us. We have already met up with the head of the orphanage that Maegan will be working at. She actually runs 4 different orphanages including one that is made up of 99% Genocide survivors. We had some time to share with her our hearts and our stories as well as here hers. We cannot wait to really get into the swing of things. This whole next week I speak 2x a day and it will definitely only be through the grace and strength of God! I spoke this morning at a ministry called “Together as One” and thoroughly enjoyed it. Maegan was taken by surprise as they called her up to give a word too! I was proud of her though she handled it well. We are about to leave to go on a tour of the city and also visit the Genocide Memorial. I’ll cut this off because I know it is soooo long!
Jess and Maegan
First let’s start with the first steps we took getting out of the car at Terminal E (which is the Terminal for Delta) at the DFW airport. We were told that we actually needed to be at Terminal D, which made no sense to us since we had Delta tickets. So the first of many battles began as we tried to figure out why we had been moved to Terminal D. Simply trusting the Delta representative behind the counter we hopped on a tram that would take us across the airport to Terminal D. Upon arriving at Terminal D, we stood in line for about 30 minutes only to reach the point of checking our bags to find out that there were problems with our reservations. When I (Maegan) booked our tickets, the man misspelled Jessika’s name the first time, and apparently never cancelled the first reservations. So instead of having 3 reservations for 3 flights, we had 6 reservations for 6 flights. So the ticket he printed for us was not a valid ticket, and that is why it said Delta on it instead of KLM. After an hour of working on the ticket situation, we find out that because of the mistake, our tickets that included seat reservation had been cancelled and we no longer had seats together. We decided that we would not be upset and we would get through security and go on with our mission. So we grabbed dinner at McDonald’s and went to sit down to wait for our flight. Upon arrival at the gate however, we find out that our flight had been delayed an hour and a half. So we finally board the plane and a kind gentleman allowed us to switch seats so that we could sit next to each other. Praise God, the tide was turning, we had hope.
We arrived at Amsterdam only an hour late which was no problem for us because we had a 13 hour layover. We rented lockers to put luggage in, so that going into Amsterdam we could just take one purse. We got everything in our lockers, got through customs, got stamps on our passports (Whoop) and just as we walk through customs, Jessika remembers that she forgot the map in the locker that she bought specifically for this one day in Amsterdam. As we left the airport we found it to be much colder than the weatherman had predicted, and raining. Both of us still trying not to get frustrated, we headed to the train station where we purchased our roundtrip tickets out to Harlem so Jessika could finally visit Corrie Ten Boom’s house, one of her biggest hero’s. The significance of this, is that when I went to purchase our plane tickets months in advance, I made sure to have the long layover in Amsterdam, just for the purpose of this house visit for Jess. We arrive in Harlem and immediately love the small streets and historic buildings, Jess is like a small child on Christmas morning as we get closer and closer to the house. We did however notice that the streets were strangely silent. As we approach the museum/house, we find that no lights are on, doors are locked and everything is deserted. We hang out trying to figure out what’s going on, when an older couple happens upon us. We ask them if it’s a holiday and the man exclaims, “Yes, it’s the day they celebrate Jesus ascending to Heaven!” Oh man, Jess’ dream of seeing Corrie Ten Boom’s house that day were crushed in an instant. She was extremely disappointed but settled for walking down the streets photographing surroundings that Corrie had talked about in her books. Freezing cold, we decided to admit defeat and get back on the train toward Amsterdam. Across the street from the train station, we found a small café (not coffee shop) that was warm and served Dutch pancakes and coffee. Finally, there seemed to be hope that things were turning around. We waited for our pancakes for almost an hour before I finally realized how long it’d been and went to inquire. As it turns out, they forgot to put our order in. Awesome. But once we finally got our coffee and pancakes, the tiredness and coldness seemed to fade away. Until we walked back outside to find out that the rain had picked up while we were inside. We figured out that Anne Frank and Van Gogh’s museum’s were on the opposite side of town, and we were much too tired to walk that far. So we began walking around town, taking pictures of buildings and just generally observing everyday life in Amsterdam. We came across Madame Tussaud’s and decided we were there, we had the money, why not go inside and check it out. (It’s a wax museum of celebrities and well known world leaders). Expecting a leisure walk through the museum, we were faced instead with the history of Amsterdam, which doesn’t seem bad, but included “the dark years,” aka, a haunted house. Let’s just say I was less than amused and by the end, had a heart rate that seemed as if I had just run a race, not walked through a museum. The rest of the museum was enjoyable but by the end we decided we were so exhausted that we just wanted to get back to the airport. We had 5 hours until our plane was scheduled to depart, but we knew our bodies couldn’t handle much more. We sat down on the train headed to Schipol airport, only to hear that the train had been cancelled and would not be going. So we waited and got on the next scheduled train out. After sitting down, this train was cancelled as well. We find out that an accident had happened on the line, and no trains were departing from Amsterdam Central and going to Schipol. We found out that there was another way to get to the airport by train, but instead of taking the fifteen minutes it was supposed to take, it would take an hour. We really had no choice, we could either stay in the cold at the train station, or we could get inside the warm train and ride for an hour. On the train ride we got to see the tulips that we’d heard so much about and they were definitely beautiful. We made it to the airport 2 hours later, but still early since we had decided to leave so early in the first place. It was almost a blessing in disguise that we decided to go early. We had an uneventful hour in the airport, and loaded up to head to Nairobi, Kenya.
We get to Kenya and find out that there is a stop during out flight in Burundi which was never on our ticket and something we knew nothing about. We had a window and middle seat in a row of three. Jess sat next to the window, and I was lucky enough to sit in the middle, right next to a woman that cared very little how much of my personal space she took up, or how much her elbows, arms, and blanket connected with my body. It was rather interesting trying to be nice to her and having a cold shoulder and a couple jabs in the ribs (quite literally) in return. We landed in Burundi and the people staying began exiting the plane so the people that would be departing with us could join. Well, the flight was overbooked, but no one realized it until everyone was boarded on the plane, with their stuff already stowed beneath. And so began the process of getting some people off, as well as finding their cargo and retrieving it as well. We finally leave Burundi heading toward our final destination, Kigali, and only an hour late. The flight is much more bumpy and filled with turbulence than the previous flights, but I was so excited that it didn’t even affect me. Plus, the overbearing woman was replaced by an older man that had a deep love for literature and an uncanny ability to recite many, many things from a clearly fantastic memory. It was a much better flight indeed. Until we began to notice that as we descended, the light outside our windows also began to fade, and it turned darker and darker outside. Next thing we know, the pilot tells us that the weather in Kigali is too bad, so we will be returning to Burundi for an hour or so and then we should try again to go to Kigali. It was during this trip back to Burundi for our waiting period that I began to feel sick for the first time on this trip overseas. I decided I should probably cut the conversation with the nice gentleman and sleep instead. So for the remainder of the flight, I slept, as Jessika had been the ENTIRE flight—missing everything.
Coming off the plane it was time to get rid of the last 48 hrs of craziness and begin to prepare what God has called us here to do.
It’s now Saturday afternoon (this is Jessika now) I hope you enjoyed maegan’s story of our first 48 hours leaving the country. We love the lady we are staying with Audrey, she was an MK in Uganda growing up and now has this wonderful home in Kigali that she has opened up to us. We have already met up with the head of the orphanage that Maegan will be working at. She actually runs 4 different orphanages including one that is made up of 99% Genocide survivors. We had some time to share with her our hearts and our stories as well as here hers. We cannot wait to really get into the swing of things. This whole next week I speak 2x a day and it will definitely only be through the grace and strength of God! I spoke this morning at a ministry called “Together as One” and thoroughly enjoyed it. Maegan was taken by surprise as they called her up to give a word too! I was proud of her though she handled it well. We are about to leave to go on a tour of the city and also visit the Genocide Memorial. I’ll cut this off because I know it is soooo long!
Jess and Maegan
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
1 Day until take off...
Hey friends, family, and random readers!
Tomorrow at 3:35p maegan and I will be flying out of DFW towards Amsterdam. I can't express how excited I am. visiting amsterdam is some thing I have wanted to do for years since I first read the Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. So I feel like a child on christmas eve as we wait to board tomorrow and head to her house.
This is my third time in a year to head out to Africa so all of the anxiousness has pretty much left and I just feel so blessed to bring my best friend along for something that has already taken me out of the country for 4 months this year. Maegan has felt called to Africa since she was younger and seeing God fulfill that calling is so amazing.
While in Africa I will be teaching in churches, schools, youth rallies, etc 1-2x a day, so I know that God is going to be STRETCHING ME. Maegan will be working in an orphanage and definitely pushed to her emotional limits as well.
We're excited to see God grow us and use us. We're excited to interact with the people of Rwanda and learn from them. I'm not sure how many times I can use the word excited in this blog, but I'm sure I'm reaching the limit.
So, with it being 1:45 am I will close with just asking for your prayers and thanking you for your support on this journey.
Next update either amsterdam or Kigali!
J. Tate
Tomorrow at 3:35p maegan and I will be flying out of DFW towards Amsterdam. I can't express how excited I am. visiting amsterdam is some thing I have wanted to do for years since I first read the Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. So I feel like a child on christmas eve as we wait to board tomorrow and head to her house.
This is my third time in a year to head out to Africa so all of the anxiousness has pretty much left and I just feel so blessed to bring my best friend along for something that has already taken me out of the country for 4 months this year. Maegan has felt called to Africa since she was younger and seeing God fulfill that calling is so amazing.
While in Africa I will be teaching in churches, schools, youth rallies, etc 1-2x a day, so I know that God is going to be STRETCHING ME. Maegan will be working in an orphanage and definitely pushed to her emotional limits as well.
We're excited to see God grow us and use us. We're excited to interact with the people of Rwanda and learn from them. I'm not sure how many times I can use the word excited in this blog, but I'm sure I'm reaching the limit.
So, with it being 1:45 am I will close with just asking for your prayers and thanking you for your support on this journey.
Next update either amsterdam or Kigali!
J. Tate
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