Getting Ready for my Trip!

I have been a sponsor through Compassion International for 24 years, and a volunteer advocate for children in poverty through Compassion since 1995. While I have been on trips to meet my sponsored children before, I have never been to Africa. Rwanda fascinates me, with its beautiful green hills and pastoral views of cattle grazing, yet its bloody history of the 1994 genocide. This young man I sponsor - Uwezo Jean Paul - is 19 years old, and may bear scars of remembrance of that horrible time. Surely his parents and older sister remember.
My husband and I have sponsored Jean Paul since he was 7 years old. Jay, my husband, had the opportunity to meet him in May 2000. He has grown a lot since then. He writes to us often, and in every letter he hopes and prays that one day we would be able to come back and visit him. I don't know what he will think when he gets me instead of Jay. Hope he doesn't mind too much!
I am planning lots of fun things to take him, things I hope will help a 19 year old as he nears the end of his high school and sponsorship career. My suitcase currently holds a wind-up flashlight, a battery operated cd player with rechargeable batteries, a polo shirt and fleece jacket, and some family gifts including a rug and some jelly beans. I am also so excited that I am able to take him a refurbished used laptop. Maybe he can use it in college if he makes it that far, or for a business or for his church.
I leave Friday morning Feb 6, and fly to JFK, then connect with the Compassion group (of about 20 people) and go on through Brussels, Belgium to Kigali, Rwanda. We don't arrive until Saturday evening. They are something like 7 hours ahead of us. The weather is supposed to be rainy, and 70's during the day and 50's during the night. Since it is 19 degrees here right now, that sounds pretty good. I am praying for good traveling weather.
I hope to be able to post messages while I am in Rwanda from my hotel computer to let everyone know how the trip is going. I probably won't add pictures until home. Please pray for me on this trip, that God will do great things for all the Compassion workers and children we encounter, but especially for Uwezo Jean Paul and his family!