We went back to work on 05 Jan (Happy Birthday, Mom!) and one of the first orders of business was to sketch out our work calendar for the month to send to the rest of the MCC DR Congo team. I filled in January, and February too, since I already know. Then I realized March will be taken up with one main task, and, VOILA! It's April already. Wow.
Yesterday, on the VERY, VERY BUMPY road back from Ruchuru and Bunagana (on the border with Uganda), my mind was very busy. Some thoughts were:
- This situation is the climax of usefulness for the sip guard on my Nalgene bottle!
- Serge could do this job without me (as he speaks so many different languages and I hardly speak French), but he might quit because of all the administrative stuff that I enjoy doing.
- These houses look like images of coal mining towns in the 1800s because they're "clapboard" and there's black dust (here it's dried lava) covering everything.
- I feel so close to our dear friends, Micah and Betsy DeKorne, who are missionaries in Uganda with World Venture! Because I was very close, just across the border from Kisoro where they initially went in 2013.
- And, of course, a million job-related thoughts popping up about placements, policies, etc.
So I'm here in Goma for another week, visiting communities where we will be placing Seed participants with an organization for their two years as community development workers. Mark's in Kinshasa, getting his work of monitoring various governmental agencies regarding election stuff. (He's writing a post explaining himself what he does.)
And a brief story about our run-in with the police last Sunday.
We're on our way to church, both of us riding on a "moto" motorbike taxi, so with the driver. We just arrived at the paved road where we were going to get onto two motos. Police see us and stop our driver because he's not wearing a helmet. Then they decide that we are actually in trouble for riding two on the moto. We see three on a moto so often that we did not believe them when they said it's illegal to have three on a moto.
But they insisted and put us in a nearby taxi and got in to drive to the station. Mark and I tried to talk our best French way out of the situation. It's not going anywhere...yada, yada, yada, a lot of time (like 20 minutes) passes. We call my colleague Serge who comes to the rescue. He knows one of the policemen, hears our story, tells us it is actually illegal to have three people but, of course, they're just enforcing it because we're white and they can get a lot out of it, so we should just pay and go on our way. So we followed his advice and got to church, thankful to still have a pretty good attitude for the day but a little less eager to pass through that intersection again.
Then we exercised and visited friends and sent an email (Thank you for your prayers!) and felt better.
Yesterday, on the VERY, VERY BUMPY road back from Ruchuru and Bunagana (on the border with Uganda), my mind was very busy. Some thoughts were:
- This situation is the climax of usefulness for the sip guard on my Nalgene bottle!
- Serge could do this job without me (as he speaks so many different languages and I hardly speak French), but he might quit because of all the administrative stuff that I enjoy doing.
- These houses look like images of coal mining towns in the 1800s because they're "clapboard" and there's black dust (here it's dried lava) covering everything.
- I feel so close to our dear friends, Micah and Betsy DeKorne, who are missionaries in Uganda with World Venture! Because I was very close, just across the border from Kisoro where they initially went in 2013.
- And, of course, a million job-related thoughts popping up about placements, policies, etc.
So I'm here in Goma for another week, visiting communities where we will be placing Seed participants with an organization for their two years as community development workers. Mark's in Kinshasa, getting his work of monitoring various governmental agencies regarding election stuff. (He's writing a post explaining himself what he does.)
And a brief story about our run-in with the police last Sunday.
We're on our way to church, both of us riding on a "moto" motorbike taxi, so with the driver. We just arrived at the paved road where we were going to get onto two motos. Police see us and stop our driver because he's not wearing a helmet. Then they decide that we are actually in trouble for riding two on the moto. We see three on a moto so often that we did not believe them when they said it's illegal to have three on a moto.
But they insisted and put us in a nearby taxi and got in to drive to the station. Mark and I tried to talk our best French way out of the situation. It's not going anywhere...yada, yada, yada, a lot of time (like 20 minutes) passes. We call my colleague Serge who comes to the rescue. He knows one of the policemen, hears our story, tells us it is actually illegal to have three people but, of course, they're just enforcing it because we're white and they can get a lot out of it, so we should just pay and go on our way. So we followed his advice and got to church, thankful to still have a pretty good attitude for the day but a little less eager to pass through that intersection again.
Then we exercised and visited friends and sent an email (Thank you for your prayers!) and felt better.
So glad to read about your adventures! You are so blessed to be able to be used by the Lord this way! Carol Boykin
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