Gisenyi - Sunday, September 9th

Here's the recap of our trip to Gisenyi yesterday:

 

On Saturday night, right after I updated my blog, the power went out.  No big deal.  When we got up at 5:45 on Sunday morning, it was still off.  Slightly bigger deal.  However, there still was some water because our water tank is gravity fed.

 

Pastor Andre's wife accompanied us, so that we would actually make it to Gisenyi!  It was really good to be able to get to know her and find out some things about what we were driving by.  If Rwanda is known as the Land of a Thousand Hills, we must have covered a couple hundred of them!  A lot of the hills are terraced, although some are still mostly trees.  It really is up and down, up and down, and quite turny as well.

 

 

 

About two-thirds of the way there, we stopped at a city to go to the bathroom.  It is where you turn off to go to the volcano national park, to go to the Uganda border, and it is near there that gorillas are found.

 



They start young!

Entering volcano territory.  The following stone walls are all
made of lava rock.

Tea!!!

More tea!

This "cliff face" is where they used to bring soldiers
to train climbing it.

A common mud house.

This is a refugee camp where refugees stayed after the genocide,
but is also currently in use with refugees from Congo. Dad asked
Mrs. Mfitumukiza how many refugees are currently staying there.
Her answer: "Too many."

 

And now, on to the service!!

 



My first glimpse of the service as we turned off the main road.

When talking with Sibomana, he said that on average, the people would
have walked around 4 hours to get there. Mrs. Mfitumukiza added that
some of them walked 7 hours to attend this service!

The event took place outside, as everyone attending it would never fit inside the building!  It was laid out in a U shape--one of the long sides was where most of the congregation sat as well as on the short side; the other long side where the "important" people sat: we mzungu's, Pastor Andre and Pastor Gato and their wives, as well as other regional pastors and their wives; and the "open" end of the U was where the choirs sang and danced.

 

 Looking across from where we were sitting at the other side of the "U."

 

The service had begun by 9:00, but the "guest arrival time" was 10:00, so at least an hour of choirs had already taken place by the time we got there.  Nevertheless, a major chunk of the service (at least 2 hours that we saw) was choirs singing and dancing.

This little guy was SO cute and sure had the moves down!

One of the cool parts was when a couple of groups combined Christian music with some traditional dancing:

As the day progressed, the sun came out, which also meant out came the umbrellas!

These are the local regional pastors and their wives (and some children).

Someone found the service a bit long!

When we left, a whole crew of kids actually tried to climb in
the car with Caleb!  When we finally got the doors closed, they hung
on to all the doors of the car until Mrs. Mfitumukiza asked them
to get off!

And now, on to the drive back to Kigali!

At several points along the way we saw spots that were selling
carrots bundled up like this.

A tea place.

Soccer is good any time of the day!

We didn't blame these guys for trying to get a bit of help on some of the uphills!

We finally got home around 6:30; Dad did a great job driving us all the way.  Thankfully the power was back on!  Later on, when I was ready to go to bed, I stepped into my bathroom and was putting something down on the edge of the tub, when I realize that right beside my hand is a tree frog!  So we got a picture (of course!) and then Dad took him outside!

Today, both Caleb & I did school, and Caleb stayed afterwards to attend the first soccer meeting.  We are also working on getting our measurements ready to order furniture!  I'm really looking forward to getting that ordered--and arrived!

PS - I tried to download a couple of the videos we took, but they seem to be too large.  Maybe some night I'll try to let it load overnight and maybe you'll get to see some of them.