Open My Eyes

So the song Open the Eyes of my Heart more or less became the prayer of our trip to Rwanda. Which seemed very appropriate since Brandon Heath's "Give Me Your Eyes" was the theme song for ISP this year. So a good majority of our trip was just focused on us asking God to give us His eyes.

Our time in Rwanda started in an amazing way. We got out of the airport and got most of our luggage, only missing one bag which we were able to get the next day. Regardless, we made it safe and we were just stoked to be in Rwanda finally and ready to do what God wanted us to. From there we get on to the bus that is going to take us to the first hotel. However, we have to wait a few minutes to find out about the missing bad. As we are sitting in the bus the bus driver asked if he can see Steve's guitar, Steve was fine with it and so the man starts playing. He begins to start playing "Open the Eyes of my Heart" which I found to be an incredible blessing. So the two teams are sitting here in this bus after 30 hours of travel in worship of the sovereign God just praying that he will open our eyes and allow us to see him, and see what he sees.

Throughout the trip several times Steve and I were blessed with the opportunity to lead worship not just for our team, but also for the university students and even a local church. Several times we just ended up playing "Open the Eyes of My Heart", I fully believe this was Spirit led. Steve also had the music for "Give Me Your Eyes," and we found ourselves leading that song on multiple occasions as well.

God answered this prayer of ours. To once again quote Steve, "God ripped open my eyes and showed me what he sees everyday." Rwanda is a very broken nation, fifteen years ago they suffered a genocide in which at least 500,000 people were killed. However, I saw more joy and peace in the Rwandan people than I have in any other group of people.

Slavery in America ended 150 years ago and some Americans are still bitter about that, on both sides of the spectrum. Everyone from that time period has passed away, and some people still have a sense of bitterness about it. Fifteen years ago, this happened in Rwanda; that is in my lifetime as well as probably anyone reading this, but still they do not have this sense of bitterness about it. They told us that they did not wanted to be remembered for the genocide, it happened to them but it is not them. I will always remember them for the peace that they had, as well as how hospitable they were, and many other things. If you went to Rwanda not knowing that there was a genocide, you probably wouldn't know. There was rare mention of it while we were there.

God opened our eyes and allowed us to see a sense of peace in a people group that is still very hurt by this genocide. A peace that could have only come from him.

God allowed us to be changed by the peace that they have.

He opened our eyes to see the poverty in this country. The street children chasing someone down for any sort of handout, they had to work for their handouts. God allowed us to see how blessed of a nation that America is. God allowed us to see so many things through his eyes, and I fully believe that this experience has changed my life as well as the lives of my teammates.