I woke up miserable. I had been awake most of the night, sleeping an absolute maximum of two hours. We walked to the last day of teaching at Rhema Preschool and I was determined to get through the couple hours of class and finish strong. As we neared the school, tiny Rwandans shouted “Mzungu!,” wrapped their arms around us, grabbed our hands and drug us toward school. After class, there were tearful goodbyes and many sweet hugs from the children we taught four days a week in July.
Jay and I headed to the ATM for team food money for travel day since he’s been serving as our team’s financial steward. The trip was a little longer than expected because we included our daily samosa stop (YUM!) and made friends with the security guards at the bank.
Little did we know, we were right on time.
We rounded the corner to find 4-year-old David. He was in our teammate Madison’s class and I had met him just the day before. He ran up to us sobbing in the middle of the street. We tried to comfort him to no avail. He grabbed my arm and started dragging me the opposite direction. I knew something wasn’t right and we decided to try to help this child. A woman stopped and spoke to David. From the limited Kinyarwandan we knew, we inferred that he was lost. School had been out for over an hour, so he’d be roaming helplessly and hopelessly for quite some time.
We started walking towards the church and preschool with hopes of finding one of the teachers. We saw a man who was dressed quite “smart” (as Africans say!) and was carrying a backpack. I went out on a limb and asked him if he spoke English. Finding that he did, he talked to David and confirmed that he was, in fact, lost. David was supposed to walk home with an older student who had left him. He only knew the general direction he should go and was crying for his family. This stranger of a Good Samaritan offered to help us, so we continued on.
When we neared the empty preschool, David ran to the doors and started banging and wailing. At one point, he cried so hard that he was vomiting. We held him until he calmed down. The Good Samaritan was at a loss and didn’t know what else he could do to help us. That’s when our translator, Vital, just happened to walk up to the school. He was supposed to meet up with our team leader, Teresa, an hour ago…but in true Rwandan fashion, he was late.
Little did he know, he was right on time.
Vital knew David’s family, but they had recently moved because his parents had divorced. We started in the general direction that David told us. On the street, we ran into yet another woman who knew David. She told us that he now lived with his grandmother and told Vital where her compound was located.
We followed her directions to a street vendor who showed us the way to the house where David’s father was staying. We walked between houses and through alleyways and then we arrived. David smiled for the first time in an hour as he ran up to his little friend, Gina. Gina was the cutest site I’d seen in all of Rwanda with a teddy bear tied to her back with a blanket, just like the women here carry their babies, if only it had been a more appropriate occasion to snap a photo. Vital felt comfortable leaving David with Gina’s mother who would take him on to his grandmother’s house.
Many people were impressed by this “good work” that Jay and I had done, but really we were just being interruptable and loving the one that God placed in front of us that day. We decided to not let ministry end when we “clocked out” and turn our back on someone else’s child. They say it takes a village and we learned the truth behind that statement. However, we also learned the incredible timing of our awesome God. What if I hadn’t met David the day before and he hadn’t of recognized me? What if I had stayed home because I didn’t feel well? What if we hadn’t needed to go to the bank that day? What if we hadn’t taken extra time at the bank to befriend security officers? What if Teresa and Vital wouldn’t have set their meeting and Vital hadn’t been late? What if all the random women we spoke with wouldn’t have been there? What if Gina hadn’t been home? We’ll never know the answers to those questions, because as always, God orchestrated every last detail in His perfect timing.
“There is a time for everything…He has made everything beautiful in its time…no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” – Ecclesiastes 3:1, 11
Jenn Dannelley
