Friends from work over for lunch

Halloween in Rwanda (nerd and Alice in Wonderland)

Life

Tom visits the local landfill.

Lori leads worship at the kid's school.

Lori and the kids make lunch for the street boys.

Pastor Charles (our translator 2 years ago) and his family visit our home.

We attend a wedding.

Playing with the street boys

Zack is playing around with the street boys at the side line of the soccer game.

Tom's Work

Tom continues to assist the city officials here in Kigali. He has been working on 8 projects redeveloping about 1000 acres in the city. He has found the city staff to be hard working and very ethical (he has also found many cultural differences which will need to be a subject of future commentary!) They are committed to see their country and their city thrive and improve especially after all they have been through in regards to the genocide 14 years ago. Just last night he had a meeting with the mayor in which he was able to share with her about the book of Nehimiah and how Rwandans are similar to the exiles from Jerusalem. They prayed together in her office and discussed the progress of the city. Tom has a wonderful opportunity here to influence leaders and to help set up procedures in this fast growing city. Also, Last Sunday Tom was asked to preach at one of the Rwandan churches. He was able to share his testimony and again about the refugees coming back to rebuild the city of Jerusalem in the book of Nehemiah. He even received a letter from a gentleman in the audience that had been a refugee for 40 years and had recently come back to Rwanda. There are so many stories of broken lives that God is renewing. Rwanda is a place where God is changing lives and changing a country that is trying to follow Him. It is exciting to see!

School

Now that summer is past we are in full swing into our school schedule.The kids are attending KICS which stands for Kigali International Community School along with 200 other students. It is about 20 minutes from our home, they teach from an American curriculum and the students are from all over the world. A few days before school started. I (Lori) was asked to teach 3rd grade until the regular teacher arrives later in October. I have students from England, Swedan, Italy, Holland, Russia, Rwandan, Uganda and the Philippines. I am enjoying my students and this experience has renewed my love for teaching. Since it is a Christian school we can openly talk about God and pray daily. The 3rd day of school two of the children asked about the existance of God and about evolution. They said their parents did not believe in God. What a great opportunity I have to share from the Bible and to show the love of Jesus to these wonderful children. Hannah and Zack are enjoying their school experience as well. They have made friends with many students and they like their teachers. We are very proud at how well they have adjusted to their new school and to life in Rwanda!

A Dog Accident

We also enjoyed visiting some missionary friends who live a few hours north of Kigali. We enjoyed spending time with their family and and seeing the hospital they are overseeing. The highlight of the trip though was when we helped the missionary family take their dog from Kigali to their house. Keep in mind that we have a very small Toyota sedan and their dog was a very large German Shepherd. Basically, the dog sat on the kids for two hours. We were told earlier that the dog was very well fed. As you can imagine, the dog had as accident all over the back seat. We drew quite a crowd as we stopped to clean it up.When we arrived to the nearest town to their home we were greeted by an amublance to take us on the one hour dirt road. We were quite a spectacle with four white people, with a large dog (there are not many dogs in Rwanda) in an ambulance. It was a day our family will always remember.

Vacation Bible School

Hannah, Zachary and I (Lori) were able to be part of a Vacation Bible School with the church we visited with the Saddleback team in June. We enjoyed seeing some of the same street boys we had previously met. We helped a Canadian team do this vaccation bible school. The kids did great helping with the activities and even got to help serve lunch. The street boys watched movies, made t shirts and played games. we also gave them a meal of rice, vegitables, fuits, and beans. It was very humbling sitting amongst these boys who we knew had no home, no parents or no food for their next meal. It is sometimes hard to know how to process these kinds of situations.

Our Life

Hi wonderful family and friends!
Sorry we haven’t been able to write many emails. We still have no internet at home so we send them when we can at other locations. We are all doing well. Tom is busy at work with various projects with the city. We got a so Tom has been driving us around. I’ll start driving soon , but I need to practice stick shift. The driving is a bit crazy around here so pray for our safety! We are still setting up the house and fixing the plumbing and various other things as it is a very old house.
It was Hannah’s 12th Birthday, so we had a party at our house with three families we have met here. Two of the families are Rwandan and one family is American and the parents work at the embassy. They live down the street and Hannah has made friends with their daughter who is the same age and will be going to the same school next year, her name is Allison.
It has been a bit slow for Zack, Hannah and I. Each day I try to think of some activities to do, but not knowing a lot of friends yet and not having a car regularly has made it challenging at times. We have taken the kids swimming at the sport club near by, we play a lot of games and we read! Next week the kids will go to Vacation Bible School at one of the churches we have visited. Later, we hope to help with one of the churches we were with on our two week trip as we enjoyed working with the street kids playing soccer and helping with their ministry. Sometimes I get impatient to find the church we will get involved in but I have to realize that we have only been here about a month and in our house for about 3 weeks. Just getting settled and daily living, figuring out what to cook here and how to get around the city has taken much of our time. Last Saturday we spent most of the morning driving around the down town area just trying to find the grocery store! We drove up a couple of one way only streets and got stopped by the police.
The Rwandan people have all been so friendly and helpful. We are enjoying the culture and having fun with the language. They get such a kick out of us trying to speak Rwandan even when we must sound so funny to them with our pronunciation.
Overall everyone is doing great and the kids have been very flexible. We have enjoyed great time together as a family and in God’s word together. Today I read Ps. 37:3,4 “Trust in the Lord and do good. Dwell in the land and cultivate faithfulness. Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” I’m learning to make myself at home here and be there for my family. – finding my delight in the little things and in the Lord even in the simple tasks of my days.
We miss you all and we think of you often. You are in our prayers. Please sent emails when you have time and I will try to answer them when we walk to the nearby hotel that has internet access! We have the large picture up in our living room of most of you all from our going away picnic. It is good to be reminded of friends and family back home who are praying for us!
We love you all! Lori (Tom, Hannah and Zack)


Greetings from Rwanda,
We are doing great, although we miss you all. Last weekend we were able to go to Lake Kuivi. We stayed at Kumbya, which is a camp for missionaries. We rented a four wheel drive truck and drove south west. It took about seven hours. There were missionaries there from Rwanda and bordering countries. We can now say we tent camped in Africa! We all made lots of new friends. We heard different stories and what the missionaries have been doing. It was like a combination of Forest Home family camp and tent camping at Lake Mohave. Every day we would go swimming in the lake. The kids got to go intertubing and jumped off a cliff. One night Hannah and a few other girls slept on the beach throughout the night.
Every day a speaker would speak to the adults and the children had their own programs in the mornings. We especially enjoyed hearing about the history of Rwanda and got a better understanding of the events that led up to the genocide which occurred 14 years ago.

Our New Email

We had some trouble with our email. So we had to get a new one. It is rwandawheelers@yahoo.com

We made it!!

Our team from Saddleback Church left us today after two weeks traveling around Rwanda. We were able to work with orphans and street children in several places around Rwanda. The local churches have a great ministry caring for the kids that have been left behind. We move into our house tomorrow. pray that that goes well. We have not been able to log into our email account, but managed to get into our blog, eventhough the computer system is all in french.

God has been very good, and we look forward to getting settled and connecting thru the internet with all of you.

We saw baboons, giraffs, crocidiles, and zebras too.

March 15th

We are currently working on our support letter. Although Tom will be receiving a small salary from the Rwandan Government and we will be using our savings, we still need to raise about $4,000 each month for our living expenses. This will cover our basic food and utility costs, along with health care insurance (including emergency medical evacuation insurance) and school costs. Labor costs are fairly low in Kigali but products and food are actually relatively expensive because most of there products are imported by air. There are no ports, rail or even good roads into the country.

Tom will also be leaving his job in Rancho Santa Margarita in order to go to Rwanda. This 14 month trip is certainly stretching our faith!

We are excited to be on our way!

First Blog

The Wheeler's are planning on moving to Rwanda!

We will be moving in June to the capital city, Kigali. Tom will be working with the City government to help train engineers and planners in the City. Tom will also be helping with development masterplanning of the City and our whole family will be involved with helping Saddleback Church with the PEACE plan in Rwanda.

Email us at tlwheeler@cox.net for more information.