People...

This year I met some truly amazing people through my trip to Rwanda. I was able to visit a new continent with 15 people that I had never met prior to November, and two others that I knew as acquaintances, and was able to make good friends with many of them. Through this I met some amazing people, people that I could truly see living the life that God has called them to live. They all very much inspire me.

The guys that I went with were a solid group of guys that have just majorly inspired me. They were the exact example of what God has called men to be. I remember the first full day that we were there we all woke up and one of them asked if we were all interested in doing a men's Bible study while we were in Africa. This Bible study truly blessed me. It was truly incredible to go to a different country with a group of 6 other guys, where 4 out of 7 are studying the Bible as part of their classes, one changing to Christian studies, and then even the ones who aren't having a very strong foundation in the word of God. It was an incredible blessing to have people around me at all times who had amazing insight on the word of God.

A couple of the guys had said things that just truly inspired me, even now that I'm back home they are still hitting me. I want to share a few of them with you...

Santiago at one point had told Chris, "I didn't come to Rwanda to chill." The context of this was the day after we landed, we were all tired, crabby and just wanted to sleep but instead Santiago was being a champ and instead of resting goes out and starts just finding children and just starts loving on them.

Danie (girl) asked us a question about what we would tell people when we got home from Rwanda. People are going to ask what we did how would we respond. Steve answered this question amazingly. His response was this, "God ripped open my eyes and gave me a glimpse of what he sees every day." God sees the poverty, the brokenness, the hurting, and He allowed us to see these things. Steve further went onto challenge my team to be intentional about how we are going to spread the gospel at home everyday.

I want to say that more often than not I, as well as others, were surprised by the insight that was brought about by the non-Christian studies students. I honestly could not have picked a group of people that I would rather spend 3 weeks in a foreign country with.

The girls I couldn't forget at all. The guys were outnumbered on this trip. Regardless of this I will say that I was also very blessed by the girls that went to Rwanda. One way that I was very specifically blessed was on the way home in the Kenya airport we were just looking through the different stores and we came by a store that had magazines on display and one of the girls spoke up to say, "Brian, don't look over here." It took me a second to realize what she meant, then I noticed that there was a whole row of magazines - and thus figured out what she was telling me to watch out for. A similar situation happened on the airplane from London to LAX, one of the other girls had warned me to be careful about looking forward because the movie that the guy in front of me was watching had nudity. It truly is a blessing to have a group of females that realize that the men that they are on a team with all struggle with lust, being that we're human, and also just assisting us to avoid the temptation. I don't know if either of the two girls realize how much of a blessing I found this, but it was truly incredible for me. Steve wrote a song for the girls of our team, I helped a little with writing a lead and and just playing the song along with him. This song just talked about how we were so appreciative of what the girls have done for us, whether they realize how much of a blessing they had been to us or not it was incredible.

There were a lot of good things said so I can't remember all of them to quote more but I was truly blessed by all the members of both my team as well as the B team. The girls definitely displayed an amazing examples of what Biblical Womanhood really is.

I know that I'm forgetting amazing things that happened and I apologize for that, but I really just wanted to write this specific blog as a thank you. Thank you everyone for making this the amazing experience that it was. I miss seeing everyone on a daily basis. God has truly blessed me with the opportunity to make amazing friends.