more of Rwanda

Here are some more photos from my time in Rwanda. It was a good time. This are some of my favorite shots that i got.

one of the orphans praying during church

a family at the church that we worked with

my favorite picture. we saw this kid when we
went up to a village to play soccer. It had just finished
raining and this kid was so muddy.

another kid that came to watch our soccer game

i loved having my new camera and getting great portraits

this man was one of the coolest people i have ever met.
his story was amazing. the stories of him surviving through
the genocide and how god protected him are wild.


we met this man that was crippled on our street. we saw him
almost everyday. our last day there i printed him this
picture and took it to him.
he was so happy.

this is a picture of beth among all the people that came
to our soccer game.

Cards from Africa

Well after the excitement of last week, and my new baby. I thought i should post some pics from my time in Rwanda.

So my last day there the DTS team moved from theplace we had been working with over to the YWAM base in Kigali. One of the guys on staff has this ministry called Cards from Africa. It's located just down the road from the YWAM base so I walked down there right before i had to go to the airport.
This little guy followed me all the way down there holding my hand. It was really cool once i got there. They have this nice building where all the youth work.

Their mission is to employ orphaned youth of Rwanda, and teach them about business and to give them fair wages. Our YWAM base in California sent me with 50$ so that we could sell some cards in our storefront, and hopefully continue supporting them. They had worship music playing as there were probably about 30 youth sitting at 6 tables working on cards. They make all of their cards from recycled paper. You can actually see on their web page how they make the paper.

Once i got their i asked them if i could take some pictures of them working. It was fun going around and taking their pictures. Some of them were shy as i started taking their picture. Then i would show them their picture on the back of my camera and their faces would light up. It was a really good time. And a great last day in Rwanda. I'll post some other stuff tomorrow...

Our new baby....

So we got a new baby and her name is Taylor. She is made out of sweet sitka spruce and sapele wood. She's a beauty...and here are some sweet pictures of her...


So it was such a good deal. It all started this morning. I just got back from Rwanda on Wednesday night. Yesterday was kind of a blur and so i thought i'd call my friend Jeremy and see what he was up to, maybe go and catch up at Starbucks. He didn't answer, but called back and told me he had amazing news. That he was at the guitar store and that i needed to come see this guitar.

So apparently the first time i called he was talking to the guitar store guy...his name is butch. Jeremy was in the middle of telling butch that the guitar would be perfect for me and then i was calling him. So i went down and looked at it. It was really nice. It was on sale for a really good price. So I came home and talked to lori about it. You can read about the conversation on her blog here. i'm definitely going to have to take her out somewhere nice or something like that.

I've been wanting a nicer guitar for a couple of years now. I had been playing a samick for a while. Then when me and lori got married i've been playing her samick which was a little bit better than mine. It had a pickup and was a cutaway. But you could tell in the sound that it wasn't the most expensive guitar. But it has served us faithfully over the years. We've used it for a ton of worship times. It's been to mexico, and canada. It's gone lot's of places. I'm so excited for this new guitar. I thank jesus for this sweet new guitar and the blessing it's going to be.

So thank you jesus for the sweet new guitar.

In Rwanda

So we have been super busy. As i stated in our last post. We left our house at 7:00 am on Friday and got to Kigali, Rwanda on Friday at about 11:00 am. We were pretty tired but i figured the best way to beat jet lag, was to not rest at all. So on Friday afternoon i went with all the guys on the team and we played football(or soccer) with a bunch of street boys. We played for about 2 hours.

Saturday we went and changed money and then went to a church that has about 50 orphans at it. It was pretty cool. Saturday afternoon, we went and baptized a bunch of people. Brandon and Cindy, two of our staff got in the water and baptized some local people with one of the local pastors.

Sunday we went to church and it was a great time. In the afternoon we had a time of intercession with the students.

Today we drove about an hour and went and visted a aids clinic. We spoke on hope and tried to encourage the people. We gave them our lunches as they had nothing to eat. We then went up the street and the girls on our team played against the local girls. We got smoked 4-1.

Lori sent me an email and told me that both of our cars broke down. So we need prayer for that. Hopefully it all works out ok. I have taken some pretty good pictures of the people of Rwanda. It is amazing here. It is nothing like what preconcieved ideas of it are. We are going on Wednesday to see some sights. I don't think it's going to be a very exciting day. We are going to try and go to the hotel mecolines, and some other memorials.

Talk soon

Heading to Rwanda

So today is my last day here before I head to Rwanda. I'm leaving tomorrow at 7:00 to drive up to San Jose. Then begins the crazy journey of flights. We leave San jose at 12:00 noon and get to Minneapolis at 5:44 pm. Then we leave Minneapolis at 9:30pm and get to Amsterdam on Thursday morning at 10:00. We then have to spend the whole day in Amsterdam until 9:00pm when we get to Nairobe at 6:30 on Friday morning. Then we have to wait until 10:00 to catch our flight from Nairobe to Kigali.

So once i get to Rwanda and hopefully not super tired. I'm going to be working with the DTS while I'm there and partnering with them. We are going to be working with a local church that has ministry that works with the local street kids.
I'm looking forward to our time there. It should be really good. We are also going to be working with the church there. The DTS and possibly me are going to be speaking at a conference there and praying for people. We can't wait to see what God is going to do during this time. This is a picture of some of the local street kids. Please be praying for my time there, and for Lori and Eli as they are going to be staying home. I hate traveling and being away from them. Please also be praying for my time with the DTS, and that i can speak into their lives and encourage them while we are there.

family

So it was good to be in Canada like i said in the last post. We had a great time with my family and Elijah got to meet everyone. He loved getting to see all his family and definitely loved all of the attention. He had a great time playing with his uncles especially.

He's definitely feeling better. He's sitting in his swing with his big smile. He's going with Lori to her family girls get together. Here are some photo's of our time in Canada and Eli with his family.

Flying through the air

Well we are sitting in LAX. We left Toronto about 7 hours ago. We are just waiting for our plane to board which should be any minute. We had a great time in Canada. it was fun seeing everyone and getting to enjoy canada but we sure are ready to get home.

I leave on Wednesday for Rwanda for two weeks. I'll blog more about that this week though. I'm going to work with the DTS for the two weeks. But i have to start putting my laptop away now.

Ben Folds?

Kind of an interesting video by Ben Folds. I saw this on a friends Blog and thought i'd put it on here.

My blog name must change

Lori told me today that she wants her own blog. We'll see how that goes. I bet she'll blog more than me now just to prove me wrong. So this isn't going to be "words with will and sometimes lori" anymore. It's just going to be "words with will."

Last night I fed Eli. We just started giving him Rice cereal and he loves it. He started out just taking the spoon nicely and enjoying his cereal.


Then he decided that he didn't want to just sit there and enjoy me feeding him. He was ready to use the spoon by himself.


Once he stole the spoon from me, he threw it down on the floor and decided that utensils weren't necessary and just wanted to chug his food out of the bowl.


I had to wrestle him to get him to finish his food. Lucky for me he has no defense against the leg lock. : )

new pics

So i just got some pictures off of one of the DTS students camera's. He got some sweet pictures of me and Eli. So we were praying at one of our Staff houses and I was standing there while everyone was praying. I'm leaning against the counter when i feel a strange warm sensation against my body. Eli decided to pee all through his diaper and then onto my shirt. As you can see from the picture Eli was extremely happy and i was not.


So a couple of weeks ago we went to Boomers for a fun day. Once a month our staff stop working and just have fun together. This month our DTS joined us and we all had great fun driving go-carts, mini golfing, playing arcade games and bumper boats. So me and four of our students went on a adventure on the bumper boats. From left to right are Zach, Matt, Me soaking wet, Katie and Crystal. Notice that I'm the only one soaking wet, well even wet for that matter.



And then i got this sweet pic. A couple of weeks ago while we were getting ready to go to San Francisco i needed to shave. i came out and had this sweet look. Needless to say i went right back in and shaved it off when lori saw it.

No name for me....

I was trying to think of something creative to title this blog. But instead of taking tons of time to title the blog. I'll just talk about our last couple of weeks.


We can now take a little bit of a breath for now. The DTS that I have been leading leaves for Kenya and Rwanda on Tuesday. I have really enjoyed leading this DTS but I'm ready for a little break.

Four weeks ago we spent the week in San Francisco for one of our lecture weeks.
Then we went straight to Modesto(also in California), for a weekend ministry time. We got to do some really cool stuff in Modesto and learn about the injustice's happening in this city. We helped them plant a community garden, that once it produces produce,
they are going to hand out to homeless people in the city and people in need. We also did a community garden.

We took the DTS camping up the coast to one of our fav camping spots called Plaskit Creek. We surfed and hiked at this other campground called Lime Kiln.
It was a fun weekend. Although we forgot several things like can openers, flashlights, and utensils to eat with. But we managed. I cut our cans of chili open with a hatchet. Luckily no one at shards of metal, that we know of.

We leave for Canada on April 11th for 2 weeks or so. It's nice we had a bunch of Airmiles so we were able to fly from San Luis Obispo to Toronto for like 200 total. It's going to be a nice to time to rest, see all our family and friends.

Then I get back and i go to rwanda for 2 weeks to do a pastoral visit to the dts and make sure that they aren't killing each other. It will be really good. I'm looking forward to going.

taking a day to breathe

so once a month our ywam base takes the day and we stop working and spend the day in prayer. It's actually really a great refreshing and restfull day. We call it Silence and Solitude. We generally don't have an agenda, except to just quiet our minds and listen to God. One of the things that we try to do is contemplative prayer. I don't really have the time to type it out here. So look it up on google or something. Basically it's just quieting your mind and listening for God's voice.

So this last week we went out to this beautiful state park called Montana de Oro. We went out there with our staff, and DTS students. I spent the day with my ipod and
walking along the coast taking pictures and listening to Damien Rice and some Ryan Adams. It was an amazing day, it was beautiful and warm (sorry people that are living in cold places). It has been amazingly beautiful here this last week. I was just looking for God in Creation and being able to spend the day worshiping him looking at creation. Like in:

Psalm 19:1-6
vs1God's glory is on tour in the skies, God-craft on exhibit across the horizon.
vs2Madame Day holds classes every morning, Professor Night lectures each evening.
vs3Their words aren't heard, their voices aren't recorded,
vs4But their silence fills the earth: unspoken truth is spoken everywhere. God makes a huge dome for the sun - a superdome!
vs5The morning sun's a new husband leaping from his honeymoon bed, The day breaking sun an athlete racing to the tape.
vs6That's how God's Word vaults across the skies from sunrise to sunset, Melting ice, scorching deserts, warming hearts to faith.

This was out of the message. Gotta love Eugene Peterson. And a nice pic of our little guy. He's getting so big. He's great.

Time goes fast

Like I said in our last post. I'm horrible at blogging. I guess it comes down to the fact that i never know what to say. But we have been doing pretty good. We have been super busy now that the DTS has started. I'm excited about the students we have here. They are a great group.

Elijah is such an amazing little boy. He really is becoming a little boy. I see him and can't believe that he is only 3 months old. He makes us laugh all the time, and i feel like i'm always saying "lori, look at how cute he is." Which is usually followed by me going and getting the camera and taking 1500 pictures of him in like 10 minutes. Here are some pictures of him from the last month or so. I love taking pictures of him and it's been great. Well that's all i got. We're doing good.

talk to you guys soon

I'm horrible at blogging

So i'm sorry for all the die hard bloggers who type one out every day as they are getting ready for bed, or sitting with their morning coffee. I'm just horrible at taking the time to type these out. This blog is my once a month serious blog and quite random. You can skip to the end if you want to just see pics of eli...anyway...here goes:

We have been so busy, the DTS started today. We have been running around all week, frantically getting all the last minute stuff together and it has finally arrived. I'm going to be leading this dts(will), so there is a little more responsibility on me. I'm so excited for it though. I'm ready to see all these students (15 in total) have their worlds completely changed(hopefully).

So i've been reading this book that is totally rocking my world. It's called the Irresistible Revolution, by shane claiborne. Freaking amazing book, super challenging stuff in it, and lots of taboo stuff. Especially living in a super conservative, republican part of the states. So in these last chapters i've been reading they've been talking about war, and how it's not really christ like, besides the whole just war theology, and old testament thoughts on war. He goes on to talk about christ and how Jesus was about loving his enemies. It's been amazing. One of my friends phil, his blog is listed over on the side. He had a link to this blog by a guy that was commenting on something shane claiborne had said. He talked about showing love through a noose and the recent saddam hussein execution. He went onto talk about terrorism and war and the sauls of tarsus, osama bin ladens and saddam hussiens. I'm kind of glad God didn't have Saul wiped out, or something like that. It starts to make you wonder. Saul was doing horrible things killing christians and was one of the most feared people(like some of the radical terrorists of today i would imagine). It just makes you wonder what God thinks about all this.

It's just making me do a whole lot of thinking. So here are some pics of eli. He's getting so big. We are doing good, starting to get a little more sleep. And speaking of sleep...i must go...

Driving to the snow!

I love that i can say that. Sorry to my friends in Canada that have it permanently, but after growing up for 21 years. I love the fact that i have to drive to snow. We went to Lori's family christmas this weekend up to Shaver Lake which is in the Sierra Nevada mountains (i think).
Anyway it started out snowing just a tiny bit on saturday night. So we took Elijah out for his first snow picture ever. We went to sleep and woke up to atleast 6 to 8 inches of the fluffy white goodness. I think i'm only calling it that because i get to drive away and leave it there.


I felt so un-canadian as i was digging our car out of the snow. i was using a dust pan to dig my car out of the snow. That's also the real picture of our new car. It was so nice up in the snow this weekend. i had fun using the 4 wheel drive as well.

We are having a blast with Elijah, and loving being parents. He is starting to sleep well. It's so much fun. i love him so much....he's now passed out on my chest as i type this out. I love just having him lay here. I love our dad n me times.

some more pics of me

Well we are doing good. Eli is staying healthy and strong, Here are some good pics of Eli and his mom last night. He is just so amazingly cute. I can't get over it. He's so nice and alert right now, and getting rid of his jaundis. He's making so many funny facial expressions. He's constantly making us laugh.