Friday, September 27, 2013

I’M A PEACE CORPS VOLUNTEER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I MADE IT!!! Sorry this post is a little late… and I’ll be honest… my English is terrible these days and I can hardly think strait… Plus my internet is super slow so I only do a little at a time on my computer if it requires internet :/ hahaha but better late than never eh!!

My site is great and I will do a whole other post with pictures all about Ruli and the team of people I work with and things like that… but right now I want to take a minute and try to express myself and some of the things that have been going on!! For some of you that will mean stop reading and wait till the next post… for others you just got excited!! Either is good by me :) And it won’t be a very long post!!

Well, I am in Africa… anytime I think about it I just want to cry!! There is a part that wants to cry because it’s exciting, new and wonderful!! Where the other part wants to cry because, I am seeing, the poverty, sickness and devastation of a third world country. I want to help them and solve their problems because they are good people just trying to make it through another day!! But I am only one person…

Before leaving America the Peace Corps asked us to individually write down a few ways we would know if we are helping and accomplishing anything. This was so we would have something to look at if we ever thought about leaving early or got depressed because maybe we don’t feel needed or aren’t actually helping in anyway. I did this and the first thing I wrote was “Make someone smile everyday”.

It’s not easy being away from friends and family and especially Mormons… there have been a few times when I wanted to just crawl in a hole so no one would tell me that “If you don’t drink how can we have any fun” or “You will break some PC rules eventually because they are so hard to keep” or “There is so much that needs to be done here but you’ll never actually make a difference”.

All day long Rwandans are staring at me and talking about me and laughing at me and I don’t know exactly what they are saying… but I know enough to know when it’s nice or when it’s not :/ Plus body language says a lot.

I hadn’t been to church in over two months and my spiritual bucket, which normally is spilling over, was getting very low. With so much going on, and never having a break from it, I have been stretched and pushed to new limits!! There is basically a consistent prayer always in my heart/head and I know the Lord is blessing me every day to speak and understand the language and keep smiling no matter what!!

With all this going on I just keep telling myself that “As ONE person I cannot change the world… but I can change the world of ONE person” and I remember that every day I have made someone smile and I have smiled too :) The Lord set a great example when he was willing to leave his 99 and look for the one. That’s what life is about! It’s not about the numbers but about the one person we can help! I can help one person and am doing my best to focus on that!!


Thanks for all the support and prayers and emails and phone calls!!! It means a lot to me and keeps me going more than I can say!! 

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