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| Arrival at Kikago Airport |
Dear CCR Family,
It is still hard to
belief. We wake up in the morning and
it feels like a dream to be in Kikago (Chicago). Yet this is real. God called us to leave Rwanda to begin a
missionary journey in Kikago. Thank
you for the blessing of our Send Off.
We have gone as your missionaries to serve Africa’s Great Lakes Diaspora
in North America. We are back to the
early missionary days of learning to live, establishing a home, making friends,
and praying for God’s guidance. Out of this process came all that was good
about journey in Rwanda. We trust God
will bless the same process in Kikago.
We have been fortunate to
live in a 4-bedroom furnished apartment at a very low cost in the lovely Kikago
suburb of Wheaton. We are only 2 blocks
away from Wheaton College. Our oldest
daughter, Sophia is home with us through her vacation. In August she’ll begin Wheaton’s “In Chicago”
program and actually be over an hour away from us on 2 different train
rides. We are savoring this season of
us all being together again.
Our air shipment has
arrived with memories from our Great Lakes.
Our house is feeling more like
home. We hope some of you can visit us
in the future. We’re a bit tight, but
can always find a little space for all of you.
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| Celebrating Sophia's 20th Birthday in Kikago with no power, but a fire |
We’ve twice been without
power since moving to Kikago. Both
times electrical lines were broken due to storms. We enjoyed posting our power loss on Facebook
and giggled at expatriates in Kigali who share every detail that makes Rwanda
look a bit less than ideal. Our
neighbors and we did umuganda. Our
family joined another neighbor with a fire at night to have some light and
conversations. In a way we felt at home
in the community, resiliency, and laughter of a 17 hour power outage. (Some of our Kikago neighbors were without
power for 4 days with no generator or inverter.)
Our kids are
adjusting. Ethan has been playing
football (American soccer). Also, today
we registered him to begin the 10th grade at Wheaton North High
School. We were proud of him that he
chose more difficult academic subjects.
Caleb is registering to
attend the College of DuPage in August.
He plans to take dual credit courses that can be transferred back to
KICS for graduation while also earning university credit. We are proud of his resilient adaptation.
Ruth is taking a ballet
class once per week and also frequently at Wheaton’s public library. She has a way of bringing graceful beauty to
our adaptation.
Timothy has done 2
football (American soccer) and 1 track (Athletics) camps. He seems to be one of the fastest boys his
age.
With all of us there are
some struggles to adjust to America.
Home is not here. Home is
heaven. Everything else is
temporary. Thank you for your care in
our temporary situations and your prayers and concern for our family.
We are in the process of finding
a local church to place roots.
Thankfully, we have many good churches from which to choose. In some ways, we seem to have too many choices. We do not know exactly what God intends for
us to do in Kikago, but we believe we first must find a church home so that we
have others near us who can guide our discovery.
As we go on this journey
God has been surprising us with African friends. We’ve met African missionaries a bit older
than us who have settled in Kikago. We
need our bzee and they are nearby.
Also, on our first Sunday
as we walked through a church parking lot we made eye contact with a familiar
looking Rwandese family. They asked, “Are
you the pastor in Gaculiro?” We visited
and found they had moved from Kigali to Kikago a little before our journey and
that they had in the past visited at CCR.
We’ve since been visiting each other and enjoying our shared
journey. Without a Sovereign God how
could this happen?
Another time, Dave was
driving through our neighborhood and thought he saw an angel. A woman from our Great Lakes was walking
with a hoe on her shoulder, baby on her back, and a bucket of dodo in her
hand. After convincing himself she was
human, Dave greeted her. Later we
visited her family and found they were Barundi refugees by way of Congo and
Tanzania.
This past weekend we had
our first house guests, Yves Ntare Musiine and Nicole Kamana. Dave will be performing their wedding in a
few weeks in Indianapolis. We enjoyed
some extra time with them to plan for their future marriage.
We have yet to visit all
of your family and friends in Kikago, but trust we will at the appropriate
time. We continue to discover that God
has prepared the field in Kikago before we arrived. There are Great Lakes Diaspora here from
students to refugees to professionals. One of the umudugudus near our own has their
English signs translated to Kiswahili. We
sense we are just where God needs us to be for His glory.
You are frequently in our
thoughts and prayers. Thank you for the
privilege of pastoring you. Now thank
you for the privilege of representing you as a missionary. We miss worship at CCR and hunger for a day
in eternity in which all nations and generations will worship together.
Imana ikurinde,
Dave and Jana
P.S. We plan to see Gabriel Mugisha Jacobs in a
few weeks and will pass on your greetings and post photos to Facebook.
