Home Owners

Yesterday Ariel and I purchased a house. It took about twenty minutes to sign about fifty pieces of paper. Now we're homeowners! It's a three bed/two bath with a large front porch toward the mountain. The view is going to be breathtaking when the leaves get out of the way. The house burned last year, and it's been stripped down and rebuilt from the studs up, so everything is new from the appliances to the wood floors. The house is nestled into Upper Cove, not five minutes drive from Dayton. I would just like to inform ya'll that our first project is to set up the guest bedroom. That way when you come to visit, you'll have a place to sleep. And we will let you sleep in (until you smell the delectable aromas of coffee and breakfast wafting from the kitchen).

In other news, we've arrived home from our two weeks in Rwanda with a Bryan team of student interns. The trip was a success in several ways. Students were stretched and grew spiritually, which is really the most important outcome. I think several of the students will go back to Rwanda to continue the kingdom work there, and I think that all of the students will live new lives with modified lifestyles from now on (lives seem to change when the Lord brings them into close contact with Christian brothers and sisters who have suffered through the brutality of genocide). The other success of this trip is the relationships established with organizations that will now begin regularly accepting Bryan interns. We are aiming at five/six interns in Rwanda for two months during summer, 2008. The trip was richly multifaceted containing the following elements:

• Internships - students placed into work/ministry contexts according to their skill set/major/career interests.
  
• Home stays - students lived in twos with families, directly experiencing typical daily life in Rwanda.
  
• Church fellowship - students worshiped in indigenous churches. Several students preached the main sermons at their respective services.
  
• Cultural learning - students visited museums, genocide memorials, university lectures on Rwandan history, etc. in an effort to better understand Rwandan culture.

Ariel and I enjoyed our time in Rwanda. We shared most of my duties: visiting the organizations hosting our interns, arranging the complicated logistics, and discipling our nineteen students.