Heading to Burundi

As most of you know, I'm heading to Burundi on Friday as a co-leader of a short term mission trip with 11 other awesome peeps! The map above shows the different places we will visit while there.

About our Mission: We will be working with World Relief, a Christian international development organization that works through the local churches in some of the world’s poorest areas. We will have the privilege of holding two rallies, discipling college age students, teaching seminars on evangelism and discipleship, encouraging local pastors, playing with children (many of whom are orphans), and sharing Christ’s love with those suffering from AIDS and other devastating illnesses.

About BURUNDI: Small, poor, densely populated, and landlocked, Burundi lies just south of the Equator in central Africa. Burundi has experienced many of the same devastating conflicts as Rwanda, yet with a fraction of the attention from the international community. Thirteen years of civil war have uprooted and devastated the lives of hundreds of thousands. Burundi ranks 169th on the Human Development Index of 177 ranked countries. One in five of Burundi’s children die before they reach the age of 5. And adult life expectancy is just 51 years. Yet against this backdrop of despair, Christians and indigenous churches equipped by World Relief are playing a pivotal role in Burundi’s recovery.

We will be in Burundi for 12 days and then on the way home we have a two day layover in Nairobi, Kenya and will have the opportunity to visit and spend some time with some of the orphans in Kibera (the place shown during the American Idol Gives Back show).

I'm not planning on having any access or time to be able to blog while there, but I promise to give a full report when I return. We get back to DC on the 27th.