Christmas in Belgium

Our team had a great Christmas Eve Celebration last night! We had a wonderful dinner of pineapple baked ham, mashed potatoes, Russian casserole, rolls and lots of delicious deserts. We even had a homemade birthday cake for Jesus!




At midnight we started our newest outreach activity - a team prayed and prepared event of 80 hours of worship and intercession. We are using the cafe space on the floor level of the base here for ongoing worship and prayer. Each person on the team has committed to spend at least 10 hours of every 24 hour period in the room loving on the Lord and praying for the people of Belgium. I stayed last night for the first four hours - it was amazing. When I went to bed my voice was going hoarse from so much singing and praying! And that was just the beginning!!!

Here is one more pic from our time here in Brussels:
yummmmmy... I finally had a real Belgian Waffles. The problem (or maybe it wasn't) was that once I had one, I couldn't stop. So, I remembered that my dad asked me to eat one for him... and I did. Two delicious sugary warm Belgian waffles sitting in a metro station with a couple of friends. What more could I ask for on a day off?

Snuggling in Cold Brussels, Belgium

My team made it safely here on Monday and we are enjoying a day of rest from our busy schedule. We have done creative worship (painting, singing, dancing) on the streets, in the metro, and in the train station. It has been very fun and rewarding.

There were some technical difficulties with the visas for our leaders, Margret and Gabby, so the 15 of us students went on ahead without them.We are having a great time here serving the people and worshiping on the streets.

I gotta run to do some laundry now and enjoy a cup of tea with the woman hosting a couple of us in her home from the team.

I will post more stories and pictures another time.

Take care!

Departure Day! Belgium, France and Rwanda... Here I Come

Hi everyone!

It is departure day! My bags are packed, my room check is completed and I am finishing the last few details before my team leaves the island of Hawaii tonight.

A few technical difficulties with passports and visa have caused the team to not be able to travel all together today. The first group of us - me and 12 other students will go today. Two other students will follow on Monday. And our team leaders will hopefully be set to go in a week.

So, with that said, Wes and I, the two student-leaders for the team, will be leading our team to Belgium for a week, then to the south of France, and finally to Rwanda. Hopefully Gabby, Margret and Hero will be approved to come to Europe to meet us for some of our time there and then the flight down to Rwanda. As student leaders, there are a lot of things that we will be learning and praying about as we go. Your prayers for widsom, confidence in Christ, and unity for the team are greatly appreciated.

I hope to be able to post something on the blog every couple of weeks while I am out of the country for the next seven months.

Here is a little taste of what the language sounds like. The Rwandans speak kinyarwanda (or sometimes called Rwandan). I would love to learn this song as a team to sing while we are there. We have another song that Margret taught us also. The team also learned some dance moves to

http://blog.speakrwanda.com/category/music/

Thanks! I love you all!

Less than a Week...

Time flies by! I have been in Hawaii for 11 weeks already and will only be in this paradise for 5 more day. I already started packing for my 7 month journey that will take me to Belgium, France and then Rwanda.

Our team is doing a lot of preparations right now. Yesterday we started to learn the dance moves to a worship song called "Above All" by Michael W. Smith. We are also learning the lyrics to a Rwandan song. Tomorrow we are going to practice 3 skits that we can perform for people we meet along the way.

Here is a bit about a wonderful day about 3 weeks ago. Sorry I am so slow to post about it :(

A couple of weeks ago, three of my roommates and I borrowed a car and drove to a couple places around the island. My favorite part was at the end of the day. We drove to Mauna Kea which is a 13,000 ft inactive volcano with an incredible star observatory near the top. As we set out, God blessed us over and over again with beautiful sights:


an incredible sunset,




a rainbow so close we could almost touch it,

and then a night sky without a cloud in sight. They had telescopes set up for the visitors to check out the best star gazing on earth. I took this picture through one of the telescopes with my own camera. WOW God is amazing.

So, the part I didn't share yet, was a little blip in our plan. Exactly as we reached the driveway of the visitor center at 9,200 feet on Mauna Kea, steam/smoke started coming from the hood of our borrowed car. Ericka pulled over and a couple men from the visitor center came over to check things out. Turned out we had totally blew the radiator - cracked right up the side. Well, with a van that couldn't be driven we had to trust God for a different way to get back to campus - a 2 hour drive away. One of the men looking at the car offered to take us back to town. He didn't have any room inside his car, but there was space for the 4 of us in the back of his pickup truck. We were in the mood for adventure and had brought lots of warm clothes and blankets with us for the trip, so we gladly accepted. God gave us 2 more hours to enjoy his beautiful stars singing praises to him from the back of the truck. WOW!