Getting Ahead of Myself

Today I was thinking about all of the amazing stories we have to share from our most recent trip to Rwanda. But if I tell these stories one at a time, in chronological order, it will be a while before I get to this moment. One of the unique things about this trip was that we were there to share music. Both and Troy and I, in wanting to be helpful and make the most of these trips wondered about the 'usefulness' of just doing music. You would think that as a musician and someone who has seen so clearly the way music can bridge and communicate things that words can't hold, that I would understand the usefulness of this, but it wasn't until we pulled up to a huge, stretching acacia tree on one of the 1,000 hills of Rwanda and began to set up our instruments that I knew that this is what we were supposed to do. There was no electricity for miles, and so we ran our equipment from a generator that pooped out on us a couple of times. Dan Brown, our sound engineer and friend worked overtime to keep the whole operation up and running. The couple from Kigali that rented the equipment to us kept a close eye of everything. The woman had a long stick, and would smack the toes of anyone who stepped on a cord! Elderly women, children, it didn't matter, those were her cords! There is a lot to share from that day, but here is my favorite part. Melody and I learned the chorus for Joy is in Our Hearts in Kinyarwandan so that we could invite everyone to sing. Kinyarwandan words are a lot longer than English words, so we had to just say "Halleluja, halleluja, Christ our joy!"