The Lord's Plan Will Prosper...

What a journey it has been...! Last April I graduated from Elim Bible Institute after spending two years there studying Missions and International Community Health. To complete this program of study we are required to do an internship overseas in the health field. So the original plan was for me and Theresa (a fellow student in the program) to go to Ethiopia for three months to complete our internship and then to travel to Rwanda for three months.

We were planning to leave in January. Around November we felt like the door in Ethiopia was closed to us and so we decided to just go to Rwanda for the whole six months. This was the hardest decision to make because it meant giving up our internship and therefor not completing our program and receiving our diplomas. This was tough but we really felt that it was what God had for us and so we followed Him even though we did not understand.

So our next plan was to spend three months with the Parrs (an American missionary couple) in Kigali, Rwanda. The other three months would be spent in a village about an hour from there. By this time we had pushed our departure date back March 31st.

Just when we thought things were lining up perfectly, our plans changed again! We got a call from Elim Fellowship (our sending agency) saying that they did not want us to spend three months with the Parrs for reasons that I will leave unsaid. So once again we were on our faces before the Lord crying out to Him. It just seemed that everything we planned was crumbling once again. Lord, what are You doing?

That was just a few days ago and I can already see the hand of God. He is opening and closing doors so that His will can be done in us! Now we have an open door to spend our whole six months in the village that we were going to spend our last three months. I am disappointed that we can not work with Les and Yvonne but I am excited about what God is going to do with us in this village. We are trusting Him completely! So Lord willing, we will be there by mid to end of April. I think I am finally beginning to learn that it is God's plan that will prosper and not my own!

In the beginning...

So when and where did this call to Rwanda start? Well...God had this planned for me before I was born and in hindsight I can see His hand all over the details of my life calling me and preparing me to live radically for Him. In 2002, I went to Kenya for a month and Africa began to capture my heart. The next year I went to Zimbabwe for three weeks. It was then that I realized that my love for Africa was more than just feelings, it was a call.

November 30th, 2005 was a day that changed me forever. I had been asking the Lord for clarity in my call to Africa. Africa is huge and I wanted God's direction to a specific place. During a chapel service at Elim Bible Institute God spoke to me with more clarity then ever before. He lead me to the passage in Ezekiel 37 about the Valley of Dry Bones. Then He gave me visions of the bones in Rwanda from the genecide in 1994. Then He brought to mind a song with the words... "you see dry bones but I see an army." With all these pieces in my mind the call came clearly. "Valerie, you see dry bones in Rwanda but I see an army. I want you to go there and I want to use you to breathe my life into those bones and raise up my army in Rwanda."

I could never have imagined how that day would forever change my life. Within nine days of receiveing my call to Rwanda I found out that one of my college teachers was taking students on a trip to Uganda and Rwanda! So in the summer of 2006 I traveled to Uganda and Rwanda for two weeks. This served to confirm my call to Rwanda. I remember arriving in Rwanda and being overcome by the emotion that I was home!