One of the toughest things about living the lives we do is how frequent we must say goodbye. Living in a very transitional place with a lot of transitional people, and running a very seasonal business, we have learned that saying goodbye is inevitable.

In less than a week, we say goodbye to our Owl volunteers: Ina, Jon and Hamilton. We will miss them immensely. They have helped us run the Owl so smoothly that Andrew only had one official shift per week (though he was in and out all the time). They were a constant source of laughter as the vibe between them was more than entertaining. While we are sad they are leaving, we know they must continue on their journeys. We are so thankful for all they have invested in us and in the Owl, and we pray that what they have sewn, they too will reap, and that the skies will open up on them and pour out blessing. It's not been an easy journey for them, and they have sacrificed much to be here. Please pray for them as Ina heads off to Australia, and Jon and Hamilton return to the U.S.

(Thoughts from TJ McCloud, one of Gena's grad school classmates, on his life as a missionary in the Dominican Republic)

Of all the painful, joyful, amazing tests and things that I have learned about the world and myself while working in the developing world, the most heartbreaking was the moment that I realized what incarnation truly meant. 

At some point during our season in the Dominican Republic, I realized that I had fallen in love with that little community of Rio San Juan. Not only that, I truly started to feel loved back — like I had been accepted, finally, by the barrios that we worked in every day. It was a good feeling. I had worked hard to try to be as much like my neighbors as possible. 

But it wasn't enough. I may have been accepted, but I was not one of them. They knew it. I knew it. They had few options— even the richer among them, and I had many. While there were some in town who may have made more each month than I was being paid, I had the ultimate power of the American identity. The passport. The connections. The education. I could live on as little money as possible — move to a palm-wood shack next door to the prostitute mothers of my shoe-shine boys, eat what they ate, spend only what they spent, travel only how they traveled, treat medical problems only how they would treat them; and it wouldn't change a thing. I would still be able to make one phone call and lift myself out of whatever challenge I wanted to. Always holding a get out of jail free card. In fact, I started to realize that trying to live exactly like they did would actually be offensive to them — as they lived the way they did out of necessity and struggle ... I would only be "slumming", condescending, pretending for a time to be just like them — to challenge myself or perform some horrible trick on them— did I think they were that stupid? That they would just shrug and accept me as one of them? Even in poverty, the power of my identity would be like a neon sign pointing me out. 

No, I realized that I had been accepted, but not as one of them. I didn't belong. I was an anomaly — an oddity that they had become used to, but not one of them. 

So what about Jesus? He was God among us, right? He could have called ten thousand angels at any time, right? Well, the experience of struggling with these concepts showed me that those ideas about Jesus were wrong. God walking among us, filled with heavenly power and knowledge, living like us, incarnating himself but still holding on to his heavenly passport — that thought was now inconceivable and offensive to me. Jesus as an interloper? Jesus with an ace up his sleeve? Jesus as divine condescension? Nope. Not worth praying to.

But, thinking about these lines brought me to Philippians 2, arguably the oldest song about Jesus that we have. It states that Jesus denied his divinity — rejected his passport, if you will. That he walked, without a parachute, without a safety wire, through life, depending solely on the Father, just like we should/could have been doing all along. He points to God at every turn — God healed people. God did the miracles. God gave the message. Whatever was special about Jesus had nothing to do with his divine "genetics", or the afterglow from an eternity with the Father. He showed up on the scene, completely divorced from his power and identity, all to be on the same level as his bride, for whose love he had sacrificed everything. He lived like we did. Died like we did. And as the first fruit of the Kingdom of God he had been sent to inaugurate, he was raised like we will be raised. 

I realized that my love for Rio San Juan wasn't like that. I'd never give away my country, my friends, my family, my history and identity and future to be as intimately connected as God through Jesus was with us. So, I failed that test, if it was one — and it still hurts sometimes, truthfully. Do I really love Chico, sitting here working on an expensive degree, eating Combos and drinking a diet coke while I grouse about missing Rio San Juan, instead of being there right now, being present in his life? But, at least I found the desire to even think about it — consider it, be honest about it. And maybe that was a different test I passed. I know it's opened me up to understand much more about God and true, incarnational love than ever before. 

For more info on TJ McCloud, visit www.tjmccloud.com

This is an extremely well done video that very well portrays the crowd that we minister to both inside the Owl and outside on the rock. Take a 15 minute break and follow this link:

http://vimeo.com/48468088

The words, "Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours," haunt me when I really think about them. The story of the wastefully reckless son in Luke 15 reveals the Father's heart in a way that took a while for me to accept. It's not fair, I thought. But fairness is the last thing I want if that word is really broken down.

Recently, Pastor David here in Mexico preached about the prodigal's brother, and how we often sit by frustrated when others are blessed thinking we deserve a blessing too. The reality — none of us deserves such, but in God's economy, we are freely given much. This parable reveals a lot about those of us who grew up as Christians and have been following since the day we learned to walk. Though we live in our Father's house and know our way around every nook, it is our pride that wont allow us to truly understand who we are to the King. In Matthew 7, Christ tells us to ask, seek, knock. In that same chapter, Jesus appeals to the heart of parents: Which of you will give a stone to your child that asks for bread? This statement assumes the child will ask.

On the long journey back to Mexico from North Carolina, we had made plans to stay with friends each night along the way. When it was looking impossible for us to arrive at our friend's house in Laredo, Texas, we had a decision to make. We called another friend who knew some people willing to put us up about two hours out of our route. We considered it but thought it wouldn't help us to get back to Mexico in time for Bety's (one of our youth) big 15th birthday party. So I decided to call my mom and dad, who have already paid for so much and supported us financially even when it means sacrificing themselves. I don't really know why I was worried or my heart was racing a bit before I called. I feel like I struggled getting the words out, "We need some financial help right now. We could really use a hotel room, could you book it for us?" Maybe I could blame the desire to be independent on where I grew up. But feeling like I'm a financial burden to my parents (and many other family members) is a tough pill to swallow. However, now that I too am a parent, I think about if my son were to call me up in a similar situation. Would I think of him as a financial burden? Would I be frustrated that he called? Of course, if he were doing this on a daily basis ... for shizzle. But otherwise, my answers would be big fat no's. On the contrary, I want to bless him and when I can help him out (I'm imagining future theoretical situations) as long as he was thankful, I'd be glad he called.

I don't like asking for things. I don't like feeling like I need someone. But I do like to feel needed myself, and I do like it when others ask me for something they know I can give them. I know that pride is a big issue here, especially for someone as independent as I'd like to be. But I am learning there is humility, and there are times when bold humility is needed to combat pride and be blessed. This is one of those times. Financially, we've been slammed with costs from the coffee shop, from our son, from our ministries and from our journey back. The numbers aren't crunching — or humming — or even whispering. Pastor Jonathan tonight in Mission was asking if people had economic needs. He began praying for them and he said, "We know that when the need is great, the victory will be even greater." Raising more support is frustrating, to be honest. Sometimes we feel like we have to sell ourselves ... sell our ministry ... and try to compete with what others have going on. Figuring out creative ways to raise monthly support while miles away isn't exactly what I had in mind for a fun afternoon activity. But I feel like God is telling us the harvest is coming, and in order for it to come, we must prepare. There's a lot of work that goes into farming — investing, planting and harvesting. And when the drought comes, do we sit by and wonder when the rain will come, or do we ask God — in bold humility — to open the floodgates of heaven?

Bold humility knows its place, knows what it deserves but also knows the heart of the giver. I'm not sure my parents gave it a second thought to buy us a hotel room that night. That's because they have sacrificial, parental love. And they have a miniscule version of what God the Father has for his children. Jesus tells us to ask, to seek, to knock. But in order to ask, we must lay down our pride, our reputation that tells us we have everything under control. It is out of desperation that we realize the value of the verb. In anguish we find ourselves with no other choice but to ask. What would it be like if we didn't wait until we were desperate? What would the parable of the prodigal son have been like had the brother had a better understanding of his father's wealth of love for him? How many parties would the brother have thrown in his lifetime? And how much more intimate would he have been with his father? How much more joy would he have had when his brother returned? The brother had a worldview looking through a lens of achievement — if you do this, you receive this. If you are good, you get a sticker. And the prodigal also had that same viewpoint — surely I can at least work as a hired hand on my Father's land. Achieve this and receive this. If you don't achieve, you don't receive. Not so in God's economy. The Father's worldview is so much better. His love is so much bigger: bigger than we deserve, more creative than we can imagine, and stronger than the wind that knocks us down. It's a love that says, "You're mine, therefore, all that is mine is yours. Period."

Wow, what love the Father has for us!

Five days ago feels like an eternity away -- that dirt-floored and fabric-doored house is cultures and ions away from where I sit now. A carpeted airport with Iphones, laptops and refrigerated show-cased food are all within my arms reach. But in my mind, I'm walking through the slum-- a word my friend, Moussa, snubs at. There are seven of us on a Sunday morning following each other through the tightly packed "houses" made of tin, mud and fabrics. We pass a large group of men playing a board game that reminds me of Parchesi. They make bets. "Hello," one calls at me. And then another chimes in. "Hello. Mzungu. Hey. Hello." I keep walking, pretending their stares and words do nothing to me. Moussa turns around and smiles at me. He puts his arm around my shoulder and points at several freshly chopped fish heads on a makeshift counter to my left. "Are you hungry?" he laughs. I'm thankful he's smiling. I'm thankful his skin is the same color as the men playing Parchesi. I'm thankful he's looking out for me.

We walk ahead, passing a hair dresser shop on the left. Three chairs, mirrors, combs and scissors inside. A man is getting his hair cut. The woman cutting it is laughing louder than Adele's Rumor Has It in the background. The ground is so uneven, and there are so many people walking to and fro that I must pay attention to keep up. Women on the right are washing clothes in a tub. One woman washes her screaming 8-month-old. "Mzungu," little children call out to us. They come and grab our hands, easing our hearts as we internalize all the public staring. Underneath soaking wet clothes dripping on a line pitched between two houses, we walk like ducks in a row. Chickens walk next to us reminding us how follow-the-leader works.

We walk to a dead end where fifteen children line the outside of one child's house. Our leader, Ivan, has brought us to see where and how the children live. I cannot make it inside the first house because there are too many kids. Two girls are fighting over me in Luganda. "She's my friend," says one. "No she's mine," says the other. Moussa informs me of the conversation as one girl stands up and takes my hand. She starts pushing her fingers against each of my fingernails-- I wonder if she realizes how deep her touch travels and unravels my soul.

Later, Ivan tells us that some of these children are born out of prostitution. He tells us that one 9-year-old girl was recently raped on her way to school. He tells us how he feels bad because he had made funds available for her to go to school. We visit five houses. We meet five mothers and several aunts. There are no fathers around. I walk into house number two, directly adjacent to the first one. The mother is holding two baby twins, maybe five months old. She happily welcomes us in her home -- a one room, dark and dingy place with sheets hanging up to divide the "bedroom" from the front room. There is no furniture. There is no bed. Five of us can barely fit inside. The child smiles with delight that we are in his house. Ivan tells us he's not sure the twins will live past five. "Malnutrition," he says. My heart sinks, and I think about my own son, only months older than these twins. How would I feel if such a fate was pronounced on him? "It's a crime against humanity," says my South African friend Lloyd.

Indeed I agree. But who are the advocates? The change-makers? The lawyers that will defend humanity? And where do we start? We walk back toward the main path ducking laundry and passing ducks. We take lots of pictures with all the children. One grabs my camera and asks to take a picture with it. I keep my hands on it as she takes a shot. We say goodbye to some of them. Others remain in our shadows. As we walk away, a stranger about 13 years old bumps hard into me. Immediately I wonder what to do. Should I chase him? Expose him? Chance getting lost in this place?

I decide my camera isn't worth it. I decide I would steal too if I were in his shoes -- or at least be heavily tempted to bump hard into others to find pocket treasures. We keep walking. My anger turns to understanding and then to self-reflection. Why did I put the camera in my back pocket? How stupid was I? Why do I feel violated? Ignorant? Powerless?

Now I wonder: my thoughts were rare and, in that moment, foreign to me, but are those daily and normal thoughts for these children, for these women? I got to leave. I said goodbye to that place. Long after I write this story, long after everyone reads it and forgets it -- they are still there. They are still being violated, feeling ignorant and personifying powerlessness. Who will stand for those women and children? Who will teach that 13-year-old boy there is a better, more abundant life than one of pick-pocketing? Who will teach those men how to be leaders and examples? Who will put their arm around these and lead them laughter?

The year was 1994. Mass killings and genocide taint the personal memories of then 25-year-old Maurice Kwizera. Seven months after he saw his friend die by the machete-filled hands of angry so-called Christians, Maurice gave his life to Christ.
     The transformation that happened 18 years ago has shaped his current worldview in
development work: “The only institution that can bring holistic transformation to the world is the
church.”
     Ethnic killings targeting the Tutsi tribe happened in 1959, 1963 and in 1973. But Maurice was four in 1973 and remembers little. What Maurice does remember is that many of his parents' best friends growing up were Tutsi. “The first cow we had was from a Tutsi. In Rwandan culture, if someone gives you a cow, they are a real friend.” Maurice also remembers his teachers in school randomly asking the students who were Tutsi to stand up in class. Then they would ask the Hutus to stand. Then they would count how many of each. If a Hutu stood when the Tutsis were called, the teacher would correct the child. “For young people, that was meaningless,” Maurice said, “Young people didn't understand there was manipulation behind the targeted killings.”
     Maurice and Juvenal were roommates. They were both teachers in different schools in a town seven kilometers from Maurice's rural home village. But Juvenal was Tutsi. Maurice was not. “But this was not a matter for me and him at all … we were friends. He and I were ignoring many details of the genocide. We could hear on the radio that the killings started in Kigali, but we always thought such a situation wouldn't happen in our region,” he said.
     Maurice spent two nights outside sleeping with Juvenal in the bush when the killings started coming closer to where they lived. They decided to leave the town they taught in. Maurice convinced Juvenal to go back to his village. “I thought even if the killings are spreading, they won't make it to the rural villages. ... Ignorant we went,” he said. The two teachers stopped when they were thirsty, traveled by day, and often greeted people they were passing.
     Juvenal hid in the attic of Maurice's parents' home. Meanwhile there were five other
neighborhood children who came to hide in his house. “We were trying to hide them in different places, one in the bush, others in different rooms,” he said.

     On April 13, five days after the two arrived in Maurice's village, a mob of about 100 people came to the village looking for Juvenal. “In that crowd of people, there were young people and even women,” Maurice said. “Some of them I knew. Others I didn't know because they came from other villages.” One of them he recognized as a church leader.
     Maurice was about 600 meters from the front door of his house. “The [mob] said, 'We were informed that there is a teacher who was brought to hide in your home. Is it true or false? Tell us yes or no.'” Maurice tried to lie. “I said he was [here] but he continued to another district.”
     Part of the mob then went to Maurice's house without him and “almost destroyed all of the house.” They found Juvenal and the children. They asked Juvenal how much he paid Maurice to hide him. “In my imagination I didn't think that they would kill him,” Maurice said. Maurice started negotiating with the killers. They asked Maurice for the money they assumed Juvenal paid him. “I didn't get any money,” Maurice pleaded with the mob. “How much can I pay you not to kill my friend?”
     While Maurice was negotiating, the group that went to his house returned. “They said, 'Ah, we found him, and we killed him.'” Maurice then ran to his house and saw his friend and the children dead. “I was told by those killers that they asked Juvenal how much he paid me. He told them, 'If you come to kill me, at least spare [Maurice's] life. I didn't give him any money. He was a friend; he took me here. If you are killing people, don't kill him. Kill me alone,'” Maurice recounted. “That was shocking for me.”
     The mob then left Maurice's village. “That was a terrible moment for me,” he said. “First of all I started blaming myself. 'Why did we travel by day? Because we came during the day, I caused his death.” Maurice asked himself, “How do people come about killing people like this — machete-ing them, cutting them in pieces? How am I going to live in this world? How am I going to live in this country where the killers are in power? I couldn't imagine a country where the killers are leaders.”
     Maurice said he is not sure if he was traumatized. “But even today the image is in my head. That was my first time seeing a person die, but not just one person — six people dead. Not from an accident, not from an illness, but macheted into pieces.”
     Thirteen years after the incident, Maurice found out that the director at his school told the killers that he and Juvenal left for Maurice's hometown. He heard the director left Rwanda and has not returned. “I would forgive him, definitely,” Maurice said. “Especially when I got saved, I realized that behind all of that, it was the devil lurking. So it was with all the other people who committed unbelievable actions. … And I think if they all ask for forgiveness and repent of their sins, the blood of Jesus is so strong — it covers all of those.”
     Maurice later found Juvenal's cousin James, who was a soldier in the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a majority-Tutsi rebel group that took power in July 1994. He recounted how Juvenal died, and was glad he could give James some information, as many of James' family members had died without any knowledge of how or where.
     Maurice, who grew up in a Christian home and attended church, had never given his life to Christ. This event, he said, shook his faith. “I was questioning Christianity for sometime. I had the same question the people on the outside asked us, 'How in a country 90 percent Christian could a genocide happen?' I didn't have an answer to that.”
     In November of 1994, Maurice gave his life to Christ at a prayer meeting. “When you are saved you have other dimensions — spiritual dimensions — that can explain things in a different way. At that time, I was just a Christian by name. But after I accepted Jesus, I saw another dimension of Christianity,” he said. “Maybe those who killed were members of denominations, but they weren't Christians. I can't call them Christians really.”
     The answers were not numerical. “I found that the number of Christians doesn't matter,” he said. “Up to the point of seeing bodies, I didn't think people would kill,” he said. “Because of this, I am very passionate about talking with people and with church leaders about restarting the concept of Christianity in Rwanda.”
     Maurice is the director of programs for World Relief Rwanda, a Christian development agency that focuses on holistic development through teaching church leaders, savings and loans associations, HIV/AIDS programs for youth and adults, child development programs, maternal health programs and safe water programs. “I joined them especially because it was a Christian organization and I like the mission of empowering the local church to serve the most vulnerable,” said Maurice, who has been with the organization for 11 years.
     “Working with the church becomes important,” he said. “I don't do it only as a job, but I do it as something I see as fundamental. Even though the church has had faults in the past, it is the only institution that can bring transformation in the community,” he said. “In the aftermath, we saw the church contributing to the reconciliation.”
     Maurice said, “It is only from God's power that people can come together again. For that I see the church as very important in bringing transformation, in reuniting communities, and preventing such a horrible thing from happening again.”
     The personal memories Maurice has of the genocide, he said, has made him braver. “This gives me courage to talk to people — to talk about peace, to talk about reconciliation and to talk about loving your neighbor,” he said. “It is something strong in me.”
     Also strong in Maurice is his gauge on Christianity. “If you say you are a Christian, unless I stay with you for some time and observe you and hear your testimony and see how the Holy Spirit is leading you … I'll never know. You may be a Christian or not,” he said. “It has become a relative concept,” he said. “Probably I'm wrong because a Christian should be someone you should not question, but for me it is very relative.”
     Maurice said that many people have a hard time visiting the genocide museums. “I go to the museums because I know what it means to visit such places. I cannot be afraid to go visit the bones in these memorials, because today when I go there, I don't merely just see bones, mass tombs and videos, but I see those six bodies,” he said. “We have a bad history, but a promising future. All of us learned a lesson from what happened.”
     Though the events of April 13 are still vivid in Maurice's mind, his faith is more intense. “I know what Christ did is more powerful than all that I saw,” he said.
When asked what ethnic group he is, Maurice leans back and smiles. “I am Rwandan. I am Christian.”