Today is our last day in our ministry location this month in Rwanda, before we head back to Kigali in order to meet up with the rest of the squad. As I anticipated before we started there was probably going to be a rough month in Africa, and compared to the past two this was it. It was not bad by all means just tough. We mainly did a lot of door to door ministry and preaching.
The door to door ministry got to be very tiring after a while, walking around speaking to people where ever they wanted us to go. But in many ways it was good and I feel very effective. The people here asked a lot of great questions, challenging us to dig deep into the Word for the answers. Many people also came to know Christ or turned back to Christ after talking and praying with us.
In my last blog I had talked about a Muslim man we meet going door to door named Rashed. He did end up coming to Church one more time but after that he disappeared. I ended up buying a Bible for him and going back to his house but he had moved, and none of his old neighbors had any contact information or any whereabouts to where he is now. I just pray that somehow there was a seed planted there for God to move in his heart.
I got a few chances to preach this month at different places. Usually I would give my testimony or parts of it, since the people here love to hear about our lives. However last night, our last night preaching at evening worship service, I felt I should preach on how our riches are in Heaven and not here on earth. Because sometimes, not all the times, they preach the prosperity gospel and I felt the call to let the people know it’s not all about our earthly lives. It seemed to go over well, our pastor and a few of his friends that were visiting all thanked me for what I spoke about.
Personally for me one of the reasons this month was the hardest thus far was the stomach infection I lived with for the first two weeks. After two weeks of not feeling well, I finally went to the Dr. and they gave me some medicine which ended up making things a lot worse. The next morning I woke up and they took me to the hospital, where I had the opportunity to spend the next 26 hours. Before leaving home, one of the things I feared the most, was having to go to a hospital in any of the countries I was headed to, and much less having to stay the night. It did not turn out that bad though, the people at the hospital took great care of me. They gave me a private room, so I did not have to stay in a room with twenty other people, which was a blessing. The room was very simple, not like in the States. It had a single metal framed bed, a bench, a table and a bathroom with no lights. I loved joking around with the nurse that was with me all night who did not speak any English at all. Which sometimes was a problem but thankfully Andrea stayed with me along with Jessica, the girl interpreting with for us this month. So I was in good hands. I tried to sleep most of the time, just to make the time go by faster. It seemed like every time I woke up there were people in my room just to come by and check on me. It was really encouraging, but got old after a while, there was even one girl who was taking pictures of me. Overall my experience in a Rwandan hospital was good and thank God I did not have to stay there any longer than I had to.
Tomorrow my team will be traveling back to Kigali to meet up with the rest of the squad until we head back to Uganda Sunday. There we will fly out to Asia at the beginning of the week.
There seems to be a few changes coming soon. One being a completely different culture and people in Asia which we will have to get used to, but I feel we are getting better as time goes on adapting to different places. Another is team changes. I have been ministering with a great group of people these past few months and will hate to see things change too much. But I am also looking forward to ministering with other and getting to know other people on our squad.
I have put some pictures up under my pictures page from last month for everyone to check out. Also please check out one of my teammates Emily’s blog called “10 days no Blaze”. She did a great job telling about the members of our team.
As always thank you all for your support, prayers, and comments.
