One thing that is really different about Rwanda is the
people and their eagerness to learn. I don’t know if all of Rwanda is like
this, but all the staff and all the kids here and all the kids at outreach are
so eager to learn. “They want to study hard to please God” as one kid put it.
It’s so weird, I walked into a room and the kids looked at me and in their cute
little accents went, “teach us Gwen, we don’t understand, teach us”, granted
they were working on this really difficult math problem that I had no idea how
to solve, but still just the idea that they long to be taught is just crazy to
me. After going to public school, and growing up with no real appreciation of
education, the idea of kids wanting to learn is really strange. One thing I
have been thinking about lately is how we take advantage of our education in
the United States. We don’t even appreciate the fact that every kid gets an
education. At school in America, the kids don’t try hard, the kids just goof of
and hope to pass. Here the kids at school work so hard so that they can succeed
and get good jobs later in life. They have this goal in their minds, that if
they do well in school, they will do well in life. I wish I had tried harder in
school. I wish I had learned things, like really learned things, not just so I
could pass the test, but so that I can remember and use the knowledge I learned
in my everyday life. I had this bad habit of memorizing for the test and then
forgetting it. The idea of actually learning the material was not something I
had the motivation to do.
I like it though. I
wish that I had had that kind of eagerness to learn. I also wish that
Christians had that kind of eagerness to learn about God. Another thing that
the kids do here is get up at 6am for Saturday devotions. Granted not all the
kids seem super enthusiastic about it that early in the morning, but some of
the kids are awake before the staff for this and they start banging on their
drums to wake everyone up in eagerness to get started. That’s just crazy to me.
I am not a morning person, I never have been and the idea of waking up at 6 in
the morning on a Saturday is not pleasant to me, but they are doing it for God.
They are waking up early to worship God, which is so right. When I go back to
the States I will not be waking up at 6 in the morning on Saturdays to worship
God, but when I have my daily quiet time I will never forget the enthusiasm and
zeal that the kids approached their devotions with. I want to be that
enthusiastic about spending time alone with God. I want to get to the point
where all I can’t wait to get up and get started worshiping God.
I think there is something so Biblical about being eager to
learn. God gave us incredibly powerful brains, and we would be so much smarter and
innovative if we just tried. What if we
saw learning as an opportunity instead of a necessity? What if we looked forward to all the
opportunities God gave us to learn whether It be about him, or about life, and
recognized how blessed we are to have those opportunities? I don’t know about
you, but I know my life and my attitude would be so much different.
