We saw them building this on the main road, and Mark asked what I hoped it would be. My response: a Chick-Fil-A...

Perfect things about Congo:
the weather
the forecast
the climate
the temperature...

Birthdays! Last year, we flew to Congo on my birthday; this year, we will fly to stress leave on my birthday. Interesting? Ironic? Needed!

I got Mark this cool hat as an early birthday present. We'll be on a field visit on the 25th (no cake), but at least we'll be together!

Mark got me these lovely plants as an early birthday present! I guess I'm officially "mature" since I'm so happy to get plants for my birthday. ;)

We'll eat a special dinner out in honor of our birthdays, but I doubt it will compare with last year's fireworks!

Phew! Big sigh

Big sigh of exhaustion for this introvert! In a good way.

Our new Eastern Congo Program Coordinators, Clair and Beth Good
Photo credit: Ben Weisbrod

Last Monday, the first day the seven MCCers sat together in our office (Mark, me, Serge, our new boss couple and our *former* boss couple), they recognized the stress we've been under and warned us that there is also such thing as positive stress, and we're likely to experience it now. And I think my state of mind when we got home from visiting Goma on Saturday shows how true that positive stress idea is. I slept all night and again for four hours this morning. I almost skipped frisbee!

On the boat ride home from Goma. Serge and Clair are passed out. I think we all slept a good portion of the 6 hour trip.

And Mark, ever the extrovert, has really enjoyed all of the time to talk and hang out! He's been an incredible support to me as we've been hosting in our home and in our town. He made a run to buy more internet credit when we ran out suddenly, he made amazing tacos one night when I was too tired to cook, got all the office keys copied and a whole lot more.

I got to put into practice some of the process design stuff I learned at EMU to lead a final circle conversation before our interim-bosses finished and went back to Kigali. It was really nice and encouraging to me to allow my gifts to be used for the good of the team, and I was thankful they let me insist that we do some relationship discussion, since the relationships often get neglected because we have so much good and pressing work stuff going on.

We've had lots of intense conversations and have a lot more ahead of us, but it's a huge blessing to have people here in the midst of the challenges with us. Mark and I will be going on stress leave sometime in the next month for a week of counseling and rest (still in Africa), and we're really looking forward to it. We're running pretty close to empty right now.

play by play of the last couple of weeks

The long-awaited for day is here, and we made it! Our new MCC Eastern Congo Program Coordinators are on the ground, so we aren’t alone anymore. We have a busy week ahead of introducing them to eastern Congo, MCC partners, and Seeders.

Mark is just back from a week in Burundi, where he attended a class at Great Lakes Peacebuilding Institute. It was actually a really hard week for him, as he felt very lonely and isolated, and the class wasn’t what he was hoping it would be. We’re both so glad to be together again.

I had a cold last week, so I worked, did homework, and slept. And hosted a visitor a little bit, but I was a pretty lame host. We set up a new apartment for Seeders based in Bukavu; it was like moving – SO MUCH WORK! But I think everyone is pretty happy now. We also had a crazy hail storm here! I’m trying to upload a video to share.

Our wonderful pastor Nicolas is visiting the US and got to spend time with Mark’s family in Austin. It’s so special to us that our family got to taste our life a little bit of our life by hanging out with Nicolas. It kinda makes me more homesick but mostly just makes us really happy. Nicolas and our church are two of the best parts of life here.

Let’s see…we played Frisbee yesterday, and that was fun, except that we play right by a soccer field that doesn’t have nets in the goal. I had just thrown a really nice score and saw the receiver catch the Frisbee then got hit SO HARD by a soccer ball in the side of the face. I almost fell down, but Mark caught me. It was so romantic! ;)

We’ve both been overthinking lots of things, but I’m just going to close this post with simple reports of what we’ve been doing, with some pictures. Enjoy.

Mark playing the drum at church

Another picture of our beautiful Lake Kivu