Pura Vida

Okay. Today is the leaders’ turn to post to the blog.

Today was our third and last day at the Abraham Project. We took turns/shifts between working with the kids at the daycare and doing various manual labor tasks – pulling nails and staples from boards, moving scaffolding and concrete blocks from the parking area, and moving broken fence sections out of the way. The students seemed to have a great time, and kept a good attitude during all of the above.

Before leaving the Project, we were led through a short debrief time by Jonathan (our in-country host) and Steve (the Children’s Home director). The students (and us leaders) were given the chance to share about our experiences, and it was reinforced that what we’ve been working on – though it may have seemed small – makes an incredible difference when combined with the work of all the other teams, past and future.

You have raised some pretty cool kids. Though this week has flown by, we have gotten to see the maturity, thoughtfulness, and faithfulness of this team in many ways; they don’t complain during manual labor, they give their all when playing with kids, and they are pretty darn hilarious when playing our nightly games of Mafia & Quiddler. As leaders, we feel like we’ve been spoiled because we’ve basically just been hanging out with fun people this week, and getting to watch them grow in their faith and character. Our small group times have given us space to really process what they have been seeing and feeling, and they really seem to be “getting it.” We have confidence that the streets and schools of Bellevue are going to feel the impact of students who have really had a heart-changing experience.

Joe, John, Jess and Kat

PS We will be arriving into Seatac at 9:41pm Friday Aug 13, 2010 from Houston on Continental.

Today Was a Fairytale

Hello! This is Morgan and Chelsea here (: Today, our day off, started at about 5:45 this morning. We rode the bus to Volcan Póas where we saw a volcano crater and then we hiked up to a lake covered in clouds and fog. However, the clouds blew away when we arrived and then we were able to take tons of pictures! We stopped for a quick snack and shopping, then we took the bus down to Póas Canopy Tour where we geared up for our zip lining adventure. There were 21 platforms with 12 cables total. The very last cable was a quarter of a mile long. The view while going was beautiful, flying over a tropical rainforest. We finished the adventure off with a delicious lunch, then had a long, bumpy ride back to Franco’s. We all took much needed naps, ate a great dinner, and ended with Mafia and Quiddler. Lets just add that Morgan won Quiddler for the second night in a row. Off to bed, lights out. Buenas noches!

Love Morgan and Chelsea

PS. Hi Mom, Dad, John, Alison! Miss and love you all. -Morgan
Hi Mom, Dad and Zoey! Love and miss you! –Chelsea

Spiderman & Chickys

Hola! This is Emily, Melody, and Elena.

Today we worked at the Abraham Project again pulling nails and working with the children. We played games with a giant parachute with all the little kids that went to school there, we also helped them make paper masks. Emily made an Ironman and Spiderman mask for a little boy, and Melody made a flower mask for a demonstration. The most fun part of working with the kids was playing with the parachute. For a snack we all got Chickys, they are the best cookies in the world so don’t be surprised if all your kids come back fat! Something surprising about the people here is even though they are poor and don’t have many things, they are way happier than anybody we have ever met. Seeing the kids here, they seem so happy all the time, even though their parents have done horrible things to them in the past. It is hard to imagine anyone hurting the kids, because they are so cute and joyful. Another thing is that the Abraham Project has no sure source of money and they are short on supplies, but they don’t worry because so far, God has helped them through it all with providing them the money and supplies they need. It has been really amazing to see how brave they are in trusting God.


SHOUT OUTS:
Mom, Dad, Sam, Elizabeth, Tess, and Cooper! I love and miss you guys!! –Emily H.

Heyy Mom and Lizzy, I miss u guys soo much and can’t wait to see you!!! I love u guys- Melody B.

Hey Mom, Dad, and Maria! I miss you and love you!!-Elena W.

Costa Rica - Day Three

Today for breakfast we had bacon and eggs. Also on the table were the normal staples of Café (coffee) and gallo pinto (rice & beans). After breakfast, we headed out to Project Abraham.

At the project we got a rundown on the facility and its history, then began work. One of the cool things that Project Abraham has going for it is a large donation of wood that was previously used to ship glass to a local company. The majority of the buildings there are made with this wood. The only problem is that the wood, as it comes to them, is full of nails and staples, with the occasional screw. Our first project was to remove all of these from the wood so it can be planed and processed for construction. It is amazing to see what they do with the wood. They have built 95% of the buildings, furniture, floors, cabinets, etc , and all this stuff is beautiful…It’s a cool metaphor for the Christian life.

During a break, we walked up to the corner store to pick up some Chicky's. (Chicky's are a cookie, consisting of a buttery wafer, covered in a thick chocolate, strawberry, or vanilla shell. We then returned to pulling nails and screws from the boards. After lunch, we switched to a landscaping project, leveling dirt in the yard. Then we toured one of the children's homes and Steven (the leader of the Abraham Project) told us many stories about the kids living there. Afterwards we returned to Franco’s for a relaxing evening. Joe introduced us to a word game called Quiddler, but he never won because Jess Brown is a walking dictionary.

Love you Mom, Dad, and Natty –Bro.

Hey Mom and Dad and Laura and Papa! I love you guys! <3 xoxo Costa Rica is tight! – Dylan

Costa Rica Day #2

Brigitte and Alex here! Coming to you live from Costa Rica. No weather problems, except torrential downpours and thunder and lightning…
In other news, this morning, we woke up and had our first typical breakfast consisting of rice and beans with a ham and cheese omelet, OJ, bread and weird jelly and butter. After, we all went to a traditional Costa Rican church service, ALL IN SPANISH, mind you (We didn’t understand anything). We could feel God’s presence even though we didn’t understand the language. Alex says: “worship was pretty awesome cause it was pretty awesome!” (video below)
After church, we changed and went to a “local eatery” and it was bomb.com. After our epic lunch we went on a coffee tour and learned about how they make coffee through an amazing performance of costumes on wheels and marriages. We learned about the structure of coffee beans and the process of making coffee properly. Alex and Jess even got to participate in said process! The tour would have been outside if it wasn’t for the weather… But we got sweet souvenirs!
Following the coffee tour we went a local restaurant and had the best food ever! I, Brigitte, had chicken and rice and beans and horchata and Alex had FISH and rice and beans and a mango smoothie. It was tastier than it sounds.
Now we are sitting in Casa de Franco (our hotel)meet and then waiting to play quiddler and possibly the good, the bad and the ugly.
Costa Rica is sweet. It’s really humid and there is lots of greenery but it’s definitely different from my expectations, I like how there’s not as many stray dogs as Tijuana (saves me a lot of tears), but it’s still pretty underdeveloped… I really like it here and I already have my first bug bite, let’s hope I don’t get some crazy Costa Rican disease that makes me crazy.
Alex really enjoys the Costa Rican cuisine (omnoms) and is really excited to go zip lining and to hang with the kids at the Abraham Project.
Day two of the Costa Rica Mission Trip was a success and we are really looking forward to the rest of our time here. More blogs coming soon!
Love,
Brigitte & Alex & the team
PS.
HI MOM HI DAD! HI CARSON! I’m taking good care of Clancy McFeathersworth…even though he fell off of the top bunk last night… =[ yo mom can u give the blog address to carson he doesn’t have it. KTHXBYE <3
~Alex
Hey momma and daddyo! I miss you lots! Hope you’re taking care of Annie, pet her for me :] And tell Bonnie to not steal my clothes while I’m gone…
-Brigitte


Video of the church service today!!!

We Made It!

After a long day of travel we made it! Tonight we went to the church that helped found Abraham Project and attended youth group. We had a great time worshiping and hanging out with the students from the church. We will post pictures tomorrow.

Joe

"Out of Order"

Hi Everyone! Costa Rica Mission Team here.

We all made it safely to the airport and found a place to sit and wait before our plane boards. We happened to place ourselves by some "art" titled "Talking Fountain". Yes, a drinking fountain that makes audible gurgling sounds when used. We qucikly became disenchanted with its novelty, and came up with a creative solution. We built an "Out of Order" sign to prevent our fellow airport visitors from using the fountain, which ended up being somewhat entertaining as people had to walk another 20 feet to another nearby (silent) fountain.

Above is our first team photo (past security). We'll probably post again with a real update during our layover in Houston and/or when we arrive in Costa Rica. Until then...

KNM & JGM

Costa Rica - August 6th - 13th 2010

A team from our High School Youth will leave for Costa Rica Friday night. You can follow them through this blog site, which they will try to update daily.

Contact Information:

Steve Thomas-956-287-3131-(US Number)-At Project Abraham
Joe Westfall- email: jwesty3263@yahoo.com

We're Home!!

WEll, we finally made it home, after a 40 hour trek that took us from Rwanda, stopping in at Uganda, changing planes in Ethiopia, re-fuelling in Rome, changing plane and an 11 hour layover in D.C. and then finally back to Seattle...

What an amazing trip, so much to process and think about now that we are home. Thank you for all your prayers, God did a lot more then just keep us safe out there.

Too tired to write any more...

God Bless,

Robbie

P.S... Sorry for the lack of photos, we have had a couple problems trying to upload pictures...we have a lot!!

Hello everyone!! so today we woke up at 7o'clock (super early!) and went 30min out of town to make mud bricks for a 17yr old girl and her siblings. we first had to carry huge water jugs on top of our heads to her plot which was really tiring! then we mixed water and dirt to make 31 bricks, the house uses 2000 bricks but because of the lack of water we wernt able to make any more. after lunch we went back to the center to clean up the library and hang out with the remaining kids. being with them was alot of fun but saying goodbye to them was really hard and emotional. around 1 o'clock we separated into two groups and went into the less travelled roads to converse with people. which was difficult because of the language barrier. luckily sophie and robbie spoke some fench and were were able to have a semi decent conversation. sophie definately dominated the conversation but robbie liked to add things like "i play with soccer" (it had obviously been a long time since he spoke french). on our way back to the guest house allie sophie robbie eliot and madeline saw a large group of people singing and dancing under some trees which gave us a taste of the Rwandan culture. during our prayer walk we got the opportunity to pray for a few people in the streets and were invited into the Zion Church for an impromptu worship session. after walking the side streets of rwamagana we came back to the guest house and barely stayed awake for dinner. it had been a long and fun day!

today's message was brought to you in part by sophie and allie
thank you and good night :)

PS robbie's wearing a banana suit (AKA the Rwandan soccer uniform) while singing and dancing around the room. were all alittle tired from the past week.

Hey everyone!!! This is Brynne, Tara, Alexa, Yasha, Eliot, and Madeline! Today was a wonderful funfilled day. The day started off with a lovely french toast breakfast at our guesthouse across the street from the Center for Champions. After an amazing devotional time, we soaked ourselves in Deet (insect repellant) and got ready for a busy day. Our day in a nutshell included moving all the furniture out of the old library into the new space, painting the "accent wall" of the new library, and making bracelets with the children at the center. Some unforgettable moments included Tara and Brynne's adventure to the "squatty potty" (the not so great bathroom/ hole in the ground at the center). After mass producing bracelets, we set up the old library for "Movie Night". We all crowded on benches in our sudo cinema to watch the movie, "Finding Nemo". The children's smiling faces and laughter made the hard work so worth it. After the movie we had to say our goodbyes because the children are leaving early tomorrow morning. It was very hard to leave them all tonight because our bonds with them have only become stronger over the past couple days. There were some tears, but we left with confidence in god's plan and grace. At dinner, we had a visit from Renee (Second in command of AEE) who brought us to tears with his kind praise and inspirational words. We all miss you and can't wait to come home! Mark is giving me a hard time so he wants me to stop writing :( LOVE YOU ALL!

xoxox Brynne

PS: Mark is the best youth leader on the face of the planet...besides Robbie and Tara....

PSS: Rwandan phrase of the day: "Ntagutandukana N'urukundo" also known as No Seperation from Love :)

Waking this morning to an Islamic call to prayer was one of the most unexpected things in this country. I'd like to take some time and talk about other unexpected things that have occured as well.

First of all, watching the Discovery Channel and reading National Geographic, I came here with an expectation of mud huts and goat roasts. While goat is eaten, and some people do live in mud huts, Rwanda is a far more developed country than I expected. Even the rooms we are staying in have hot water (sometimes) and we can walk up to the gas station to buy a can of Pringles and a Coke.

Rwanda is also strangely clean. Non-biodegradable bags are illegal and members of the community take part in county wide clean up projects. Unlike Mexico and parts of the U.S., there isn't trash strewn everywhere.

Rwandans also have an interesting way of showing physical affection. Homosexuality is illegal in Rwanda, so the sight of strait men walking hand in hand is a common sight. Even today, we walked past a police station, and civilians would hold hands with the police officers...something that would never happen in Bellevue.

Walking by a group of prisoners working on a plantation today, we smiled and waved. The prisoners were wearing orange, which meant that they had not admited to the crimes they had commited during the geonoside. The strange thing was, these prisoners were not fenced in. There was only one guard, and many of the prisoners using machetes for cutting grass and pineapples. Like out of some movie, after we waved, many of the men smiled and excitedly waved back, including the guard who was cradling his machine gun.

However, some things I've seen have been totally along with what we see and hear on the TV. I remember watching shows on Africa and seeing people singing and dancing all the time. I thought to myself that the reason they were doing that was because they had cameras pointed at them. However, the first night we spent in Kigali, we could hear a group of women singing down the street. This was a familier sound by the end of our stay in Kigali. Even today, a bus drove by, and everyone on the bus was clapping their hands in unison.

While Rwanda is wonderful, many of us are excited to get back home.

Lots of love to my family and friends,
Eliot

Centre For Champions

Hello!

So we just got back from the centre now after watching a movie with the kids. This is Robbie. Everyone else has gone to bed so i'm afraid you're stuck with me today! I will try to post some pictures, last night we couldnt upload any because of the slow connection.

Today was a great day. We spend the whole day at the Centre with the kids. The morning was spent re-painting the lines on the basketball court. We had lots of help from the kids of the school! These kids are amazing and all have incredible stories to tell. Some of the team were able to speak with the kids and hear from them more of what life is like for them. It has been so great to watch our students from Bellevue interact with these kids from Rwanda.

In the afternoon we finished up painting the lines and then spent the rest of the afternoon teaching them some dance moves, drawing, learning more of the language, and playing various games with them. These kids love having us here. For many of them, they have no family and to have people from across the world come here and hang out with them is huge.

This evening we had dinner back here at the guesthouse before heading back to the school to watch Wall-E with the kids! We had around 50 kids come, so we were all pretty packed in there!

Tomorrow we will be spending the day at the Centre, working on the library and art room.

The team are all doing well, and i have been so impressed with them and their openess to step out of their comfort zone. I can see already that God has been doing so work on all of us here.

Thank you for all your prayers, and i'll try to get someone more interesting to write the blog tomorrow night!!

Peace,

Robbie

Center for Champions Day 1

Bite!(What's up?) This is Makaela and Alexa!
Woke up this morning to hearing my roomates slam doors for no reason. We went to breakfast where we ate amazing food prepared for us by our lovely chefs. We then had our morning devotional where we prepared for the day ahead of us in prayer and fellowship. After that, we put on our skirts and slacks and headed to the church called Rwanda for Jesus. First we got lost, but when we arrived there, we immediately felt welcomed and were excited to be there. It was incredible seeing the way that a different culture worships. Robbie introduced us all to the church when the pastor asked. There was an amazing pastor!! She was great. She spoke about Nehemiah and how God rebuilt Jerusalem. She connected it to how God is rebuilding the hearts of the Rwandans and it really put things in perspective for us, seeing as how we depend on many material things in America. She said that God rebuilds the thing that matters most:our hearts. Rwanda for Jesus will stick with us cause of the fact that they worship and speak with freedom and peace. After our two hour and ten minute service we went back to AEE to eat lunch and head out to Rwamagana. It was a beautiful drive of about an hour of scenery and it was clear that there was a transition between the lifestyle in Kigali and in more rural areas like Rwamagana. Finally we arrived at our new guesthouse where we all have single bedrooms(ugh..we don't like sleeping alone...) but they are very nice and our mosquito nets come in handy. After we unloaded our suitcases we headed across the street to the great old Center for Champions! When we got there, the Center was bigger than what we had expected. Mark gave us a tour of the campus. We then met many many girls and boys and got to draw, talk, play football(aka soccer), and play basketball with them which was incredibly fun. We were touched by how excited they were to be around us and have pictures taken with them. After a about four hours at the center we headed back to our guesthouse for dinner and debrief, Mark also read us a story! :)
We are excited for tommarow, have a good day!
Love,
The tired ones.

Day 1: Operation Kigali Market

HI ALL!!! This is Yasha and Brynne speaking all the way from RWANDA!!!!
This morning the team got up to Tara's deafening alarm. After reluctantly getting out of our mosquitoe nets, we hobbled 10 yards to hot breakfast. We were greeted with hot french crepes, toast,various fruits,and jams. We then proceeded to the gazebo located on the lawn inside the guesthouse compound, where we had a great devotional time and prayer ( 2 Corinthians 1: 3-5). Subsequently, we listened to the wise advise provided by Mark Grayson, and Melissa Roussin ( AEE), which helped us to understand the Rwandan culture and rules and regulations. After we arrived at the centre of Kigali, we were greeted with smiling faces and laughter. we proceeded to the UTC( union trade centre) where we had a glass of delicious iced coffee. Then we walked to the Bank of Kigali where we entered a local craft shop, and spent some Francs. Walking hand in hand with the close traffic we made it to the taxi station, where we got into a bus to go back to the guesthouse. We had a delicious fish and potato dinner. Dark quickly came to meet us, as we hurried back to our rooms to get for worship and debreif time with the whole team. With a small worship set with Eliot Stone on guitar, and Yasha Sojwal on the piano, and Brynne Whitakker on Vocals, we slowly brought this day to an end.

Throughout the day, we saw the generosity and love of the Rwandan people. Seeing the smiles and excitement on the children's faces, brought hope to each of us for a better world. Whether it was dodging cars in the street or praying for eachother with the nature sounds surrouding us like a blanket, our bonded together like peanut butter and jelly. We do miss our families a lot and love them all! We are thinking of all of you and can't wait to share our stories and experiences!

With love,
Brynne Whittaker and Yasha

PS: I love you Daddy, Mommy, and Kelsey! - Brynne
PPS: I love you Mother, Father, and Raoul!! - Yasha

We Made It!

After around 27 hours of travelling, we finally touched down in Kigali this afternoon at around 2pm. The flights all worked out well, we were a little delayed leaving Addis Ababa. We made a stop at Rome to re-fuel, but unfortunetaly weren't allowed to leave the plane!

The weather is good, really warm today when we got off the plane. Tomorrow we will meet with the head of African Evangelical Enterprise in the morning to hear more about what they do in the country, then in the afternoon we'll take a look around the city. Sunday we head out to the center for champions, after going to church here in Kigali.


The team are all well, but wiped out from the travel, and they all headed for bed straight after dinner! This will be the only blog I post, and then they will each get the chance to post one blog over the course of the trip.

I've attached a couple pictures of our trip so far...more to come!

Peace,

Robbie

Travel Information

Below is our travel information. Please pray for safe flights, on-time arrivals, and that our bags meet us at the airport in Kigali!

Wednesday 14th
Meet at Airport at 8:00pm
Meet inside the terminal, by the United check-in desk
SeaTac – D.C. Flight Number 262
Departs 10:53pm
Arrive 6:50am

Thursday 15th
Ethiopian Air Flight number 503
D.C. – Addis Ababa
Departs 10:05am
Arrives 8:20am

Friday 16th
Addis Ababa – Kigali
Ethiopian Air Flight Number 807
Departs 10:30am
Arrives 12:00pm

Return Flights
Sunday 25th
Ethiopian Air Flight Number 806
Kigali – Addis Ababa
Departs 4:15pm
Arrives 7:45pm

Ethiopian Air Flight Number 500
Addis Ababa – D.C
Departs 10:15pm
Arrives 7:55am

Monday 26th
United Flight 917
D.C – SeaTac
Departs 5:27pm
Arrives 8:15pm

Rwanda July 14th-26th 2010

We will try our best to update this blog as much as we can during our trip. Please be aware that it will not always be possible to have access to the Internet.

Thanks!