Burundi is impossibly green and beautiful. It is literally on the shores of Lake Tangyanika (sp?) which is a massive lake that actually has a huge crocodile population in it. I'm pretty sure the fish we had for dinner was caught there pretty recently. Dinner was great. Fresh avocados, rice, fresh fish with a gourmet, lemony, creamy sauce. Fresh, tiny, lemony bananas made the perfect dessert. It rained really hard this afternoon - maybe a 20 minute rain - the raindrops were each like little buckets, soaking the foliage and cooling us down. Our room overlooks a beautiful grassy area with a small glimpse of the lake. We sat on our little balcony and soaked in the fresh breeze and felt almost like we were on vacation!
We spent quite a bit of time this afternoon with the pastors and church leaders involved in the church-planting process this week. We've re-connected with our Burundi friends whom we worked with in Rwanda in September '07 - Bishop Bosco, Bishop Independence, Herve. Then, as an added, fabulous surprise, my translator, Emmanuel (from Rwanda - the one who gave me a cow), showed up to join the translator team! He rode on a bus for 8 hours to get here from Rwanda.
Tomorrow we will break into our assigned teams and join worship services at the mother churches. Then we will travel to our brand new church sites and meet with the nationals we will work with this week during our door-to-door evangelism campaign. Should be a great day!
Oh yeah, one last thing, we discovered a frog in our room earlier today. It hopped around quite happily then disappeared behind the dresser. So, if you think you're imagining faint screaming sounds in your sleep, yes, it's probably me!
Internet service is slow - software instructions are all in French, i.e., Word, etc. I went to edit a paragraph and had to guess which words meant cut & paste!
