After more than a year of praying and dreaming, I learned earlier this week that God has finally opened the door for me to go to Rwanda! If you were any where near Tyson’s Corner on Monday morning and heard an inappropriately loud shout of joy, that would have been me!! I can’t tell you how excited I am for this opportunity to serve Christ in a place so desperate for the light of the Gospel.

I’ll be heading over in late September and staying for just over a week. Yes, it’s absolutely killing me to miss a week of The Gathering and I’ll miss you guys more than you can imagine but I honestly feel the Lord saying this is the right time to go. I’ll be going as part of a small team that will be leading two different three day training conferences for Rwandan pastors. To say I feel privileged to serve these pastors, most of whom have no formal training, would be a massive understatement. I’m already asking God to lead powerfully through us and use our simple lives to advance His cause in Rwanda.

I’ll be posting regularly during the trip and in these next couple of weeks leading up to it. I want to be able to share with you how everything is going but I’m really hoping that reading my story will compel you to live your own. Remember, our dream for The Gathering is that every student would do an intenCITY trip – a short 48 hour missions trip in DC – annually and take at least one international trip during your four years (give or take!) with The Gathering. Our heart isn’t just to be a big event on campus; we want to carry the light of Jesus to every corner of the globe…Haiti, South Africa, New Orleans and, now…Rwanda.

To learn more about this war ravaged nation in the center of Africa, check this out.