Day 7-Written by Carissa Cluff

"You are my strength when I am weak, you are the treasure that I seek, you are my all in all"

We woke up this morning like any other morning, with roosters crowing and birds singing, God's creation surrounding us. We ate breakfast together and discussed what our day was going to consist of. We were going to be picking up four of Simon and Kedress' kids and Noel, one the kids sponsored by CBC, and going to lake Kivu. After breakfast we packed sack lunches for everyone and took off for Simon's house.

After picking everyone up we were all pumped to be on our way, so pumped that we broke out into song (this is becoming a regular thing for us). We sang "Our God is an awesome God","Lord I lift your name on high", and some kinyarwandan songs that I did not understand, but tried to sing anyway. This lasted for about 30 minutes before we all started to get tired, not a whole lot was said again until we stopped at this beautiful waterfall off the side of the road. We got out to take pictures and to explore this unfamiliar world around us. After that we were back on the road for about another hour and a half.

Once we arrived at the lake we sat down at a little area of beach to eat our lunches together before getting on the boat. When we were all finished we headed over to Bat Island on a very small, very unstable boat, that slowly filled up with water on our way over. I thought that that was the scary part, when we got off the boat it looked like just a mountain in the middle of a huge lake, little did I know that we would soon be surround by thousands of bats! We started hiking up the mountain unaware of what we were getting into, the girls were dressed in jeans and flop flips and Denise was wearing a skirt, it was clear that we thought it would be nothing more than a relaxing walk on a trail. We were very wrong, we went up the side of the mountain that was steep with no path, pushing through the bushes and sliding on loose rocks the bats began to swarm all around us. Me and a few others were lucky enough to get authentic bat droppings on us! Despite all the negative things I was feeling on the way up the mountain, once we reached the top I was able to take a deep breath and look around at all that our great God has created, and appreciate it!

After making it down from the mountain we went to Peace Island, which sounded much more like my scene, they had soda at this island, and a monkey! We all went over to look at the monkey which had a leash so we thought it was safe, soon after feeding it bananas it lunged at Nate and grabbed his arm. After the initial shock of a monkey attacking him we were all able to laugh about it. We later went swimming and spent more time with Simon's kids playing Uno, it was a great time of fellowship with them! We got to know them so much better and began to build relationships with them as our brothers and sisters in Christ. I am so glad that they were able to come with us and spend the day hanging out with us. I am so encouraged by each and everyone of them!

Once we were done on the island we started back toward the car, where we had another 3 hour drive ahead of us. The way back was spent relaxing, fellowshiping, and enjoying God's creation around us. We drove through little villages and everyone we saw was working in some way or another, either looking for food, bringing home food, or carrying water, everyone has to work so hard for everything they have here.

We arrived at Simon's house around 7:15 and dropped them off, by this time we were all very hungry, so we stopped on our way home for pizza. This was our first meal that tasted like something from America and I loved it! We all ate way too much as usual and then came home and played some card games together.

I am realizing just how blessed we all are to have to ability to eat whenever we are hungry and to know that we have a place to sleep every night. My prayer for us is to remember when we leave here just how good we have it, and to keep these families that we have meet, in our hearts and constantly on our minds, so we can be encouraged by their unwavering faith and joy in Jesus Christ!