We've been busy!

A week ago right now, I was in our new MCC Seed Land Cruiser, heading six hours south of Bukavu to visit a new partner in Baraka with two of our Seed participants and Serge. It’s a beautiful drive, a lot of it right along the shore of Lake Tanganyika. I got a really good feeling about the partner’s work there in Baraka, and I was especially encouraged because the Seeder we’re planning to place there also felt good about the place and the people she’ll be working with.

(pictures to come when we have better internet access. At the moment, we've run out of credit, and the store is closed Saturday through Monday for International Worker's Day!)

To me, this is an answer to prayer, as we have now placed all 8 of our Seeders with their host organizations for the initial organizational orientation, and everyone seems to be happy with their placements! I know there will be bumps along the way, but it’s really encouraging that after a lot of re-arranging and trying different options like a puzzle before coming to our decision, God has guided us to a good place.

We still have a whole lot of work ahead of us and still have many challenges, especially finding a balance between uber-formality with partners (invitations, stamped documents, approval by the big boss, etc.) and relationships of trust. Also finding a balance with our Seeders of being a family who trust and support each other and being employer/employee. Personally, I’m really struggling to find a balance between loving people who are difficult and requiring changes in professional behavior.

But for the past two days (Friday and Saturday), I have not even thought about the Seed program! We have moved from the big house and parcel of land (in our equivalent of the suburbs) where MCC has been since the first MCCer came back to Eastern Congo around 2010. We’ve been wanting to live in a Congolese neighborhood where friends from church could easily come visit, and we wanted to live closer to Serge, my co-facilitator, as well. It turned out he was looking to move too, so he found us two lovely apartments in the same small building, less than five minutes’ walk from the office! The place is clean, simple and we feel a good sense of ownership. AND we’ve got two spare bedrooms, so come on over!