Faith, Hope, and Love

Note: This post was written after my first trip to Rwanda in July 2015. For some reason, I never posted it. I returned to Rwanda in June 2017 and have been asked to share about my trip for church. The thoughts from this blog post continue to swirl in my head as I reflect on my time in that beautiful country, so I felt it was time to finally send these thoughts into the world!  I can't get the image of Nyamata out of my head. The church doors still have the hole from where grenades were thrown. The walls are filled with holes from bullets and stained from people's blood. Small rivulets of light flow in through the tin roof because of holes left from shrapnel. The cloth covering the altar is almost completely a reddish-brown color--not colored by age or the red dirt Rwanda is known for, but rather by the blood of its people. Around one million Rwandans were killed during the 1994 genocide. No place was safe. Not even the church. As we entered the church, it felt like you w...

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. In honor of the day, I decided to spend the last week reading "The Diary of a Young Girl," by Anne Frank. While a lot of kids tend to read this book in school, I never had to--although I've read lots of books that reference the book, and I obviously know the general story behind it. It's been an interesting read--she's a funny, cheeky 14/15 year old. One of my co-workers thinks I could read a much more in-depth book about the Holocaust--one that sheds light on how things were in the concentration camps, etc. Last year I read Jane Yolen's "The Devil's Arithmetic," which is a children's book as well, but does shed some serious light on the reality of the horrors many Jews faced. Maybe one day I will read much deeper, but right now my thoughts are focused on the aftermath of it all. There's a saying that goes something like, "Always remember" or "We must never forget." Whatever it...