I've spent the last few days really trying to inhale and process what my life will be like for the next three months. In doing this, I've experienced a wide spectrum of emotions and thoughts: happiness and sadness, purposefulness and purposelessness, connectedness and loneliness.

I'm still trying to figure out the balance between immersing myself in this place and remaining connected back home. I want to heed the advice of Jim Elliot, "Wherever you are, be all there," but at the same time keep up a healthy flow of interaction with you guys in the States. That's one of the things I'm working through this week.

Also, I've realised (I'm starting to really like the British spellings of words. Its how they do it here. Call me anti-American if you wish; I'm still working through the morality of endorsing it. I guess its just the testing of new, uncharted waters that is an essential part of every coming-of-age journey.) that it takes me a while to process things, and I've been processing a lot this week, which has put my mind and emotions in overdrive. So there's my excuse.

Note: when I refer to going to "town," I mean basically "downtown." I am staying in Kigali, which is the biggest city in Rwanda, but I'm a few miles from the main commercial hub, which we would call "downtown" and which Rwandans call Mumugi (pronounced "moo-MOO-gee").

We (Becky and I) went into town on Wednesday morning and walked around a bit, familiarizing ourselves more with the area and acclimating ourselves to interacting with Rwandan people. Then, in the afternoon, we had a meeting with Dwight to discuss what we will be doing for our internship. Drumroll please...

My Job
I think I'm basically going to be a Research Assistant for assessing the Business Development and economic context in which Food for the Hungry is working here in Rwanda. My goal is to gain a good understanding of the macro-economic policy of the Government, their goals and strategies for poverty alleviation and economic development, as well as any models and/or forecasts they have constructed. This research will then be used to evaluate the effectiveness and contribution of Food for the Hungry's work in Rwanda, as it pertains to the government's priorities in their strategy for poverty alleviation. This is a very important aspect of FH's work in Rwanda, because we don't want to implement projects with goals that are contrary or contrasting to what the community views as its needs, but to walk alongside churches, leaders, and families to create sustainable development. Again, we don't want to impose unnecessary projects on a community, but to simply provide resources in assisting them with confronting issues that they've pinpointed as a priority. FH has been doing this in Rwanda on a micro-level very well for a few years, but Rwanda is small enough of a country and, from what I've read so far, there is enough of a overarching strategy already formulated by the government to consider how FH's work is fitting in to the bigger picture of helping Rwanda rise out of its crippling poverty. This is the "walking with leaders" part of Food for the Hungy's mission. Its pretty cutting edge stuff, at least to me. I'm really excited about it. On Wednesday, Dwight let me speak to Alexi, one of the higher-ups in the FHI office here. He used to work for the Ministry of Commerce in the '70s I think, so he has some connections with people in the government that can hook me up with some relevant documents. So part of my work will consist of me going to the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning and the Ministry of Commerce to hunt down documents. Pretty awesome.

And there it is. I finally have some idea as to what I'll be doing for these next three months. I've learned this week that the quality and effectiveness of this internship experience will be very dependent on my being proactive and taking lots of initiative. If you pray, please ask the Lord to help me in this area, because I do not do this naturally. Having some sort of concrete purpose does help a lot though.