With all the excitement of PVT and changing continents, I never really got the chance to talk about our ministry the first two weeks in Rwanda.
I LOVED our ministry host family! Pastor Fred and his wife Mary have several children who they love so well. These two have massive hearts and love the Lord with such a passion and joy. Pastor Fred loves the Lord with his whole heart and desires for everyone in the city to come to know and accept Him. My teammate Grace is writing a blog about Pastor Fred’s testimony so be sure to subscribe to her blogs as well!
As soon as we arrived at their house, we started the ground running. We went to church that evening with a testimony and sermon prepared! It has been so cool seeing the growth in my confidence and comfortability with sharing my testimony and sermons at churches all over the world! God is so good!
We went to Awakening Healing Revival church every evening and twice on Sundays. I thoroughly enjoyed going to this church- the atmosphere was infectious! They would spend around 30 min worshipping the Lord and then would praise, dance and celebrate God for 30 more minutes! It was a full on workout every night. We were jumping, stomping, stepping, running and dancing in any and every way. It was a blast! The way these people dance before the Lord is so beautiful. They are truly dancing for Him and no-one else. It reminded me of the way that David danced before the Lord in Samuel.
During the day, half of us would teach English while the other half evangelized out in the streets. The first couple days I taught English to the kids. They didn’t know much English at all, so we went through the alphabet and sang letter sound songs over and over again.
When I had to do house to house evangelism in South Africa last summer, I was not a fan at all. I didn’t like the lack of relationship and it felt like we were never getting to know the families. It seemed to me like we weren’t seeing them as people and just as a checklist of things to do. So when I heard that we would be doing house to house evangelism- I wasn’t super excited.
The first day, Daniel, Grace and I went out with our translators to evangelize. We stopped to talk to a bunch of men on bikes hanging out under a tree. Daniel shared the gospel with them and we were able to pray with them. Five of them decided to make the commitment to accept Jesus!! My prayer for them is that they would get connected to a church and experience community where Christ is the foundation. We talked for a little while longer and I left feeling filled up and encouraged, not discouraged like I had previously been. The next few houses the same thing happened, the families we visited were so friendly and so eager to talk with us.
I realized one of the reasons for my apprehension was that I was limiting God and His ability to change hearts in any situation. Just because I didn’t get to know them on a more personal level first doesn’t mean the Lord isn’t tugging at their hearts. I just needed to be obedient and plant the seeds.
Now I see things a little differently and I kind of enjoy it! The people in these countries are hungry for Jesus. They are so willing to sit and listen to us share stories about his goodness and faithfulness throughout our lives.
If God wants to use me to be the catalyst to bring the people of Rwanda to know Him, why wouldn’t I want to go house to house sharing Jesus with everyone?!
