I"ll start out with, I know this is a little late, but Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. We are in Rwanda and have been here for a little over two weeks. Our ministry contact is named Moses. He is awesome and walks around with his staff parting bodies of water. Maybe the last part isn't true.
Moses has been to the states and has been invited to live there but feels like Rwanda is the place he needs to be. He moved here 8 years ago and home for him is actually Uganda. He grew up in a rough situation not knowing God and having a poor father figure. His father had multiple wives and Moses felt very blessed to have been able to go to school. When he was a young adult he came to know Jesus and the Lord has been blessing him since. He is such a loving and caring man. He has taken it upon himself to take in his half brothers and sisters so that they can have a place to live and the ability to attend school. He has an amazing heart for children and that was shown to us in our first few days being here.
The house we are staying in is located on a side hill located about 20 minutes drive from central Kigali. In the valley below the house, there are cooperative corn fields that are rented by families in the area. Next to the cornfield is an area of run-off water along with a group of palm trees. This is where Moses introduced us to the "Beach Boys".
They call this area "The Beach" and this is where mostly homeless teenagers hang out. Upon our first visit, they were eager to see Mzungus (white people). Moses must have been in contact with these boys previously because they knew him and were willing to talk with him.
Moses introduced us and allowed us to share with them while he translated. It was interesting to see these boys in this setting. As we were talking with them, a large group of children came running out of the cornfields. At first I thought they were just playing, but I realized they were stealing corn and running away from the people who were paid to guard the fields. In one sense it was funny to watch them run out of the cornfields. On the other hand, it was sad knowing this was all they had to eat.
The children began cooking the corn. They found garbage to burn and laid the already husked corn in the fires to cook/burn. Most of your are thinking that this corn is like sweet corn, but this is feed corn. It is hard, gross and bitter, but they are happy to eat it and this is often the only thing they have to eat and live on.
The boys had questions for us about where we came from and things like this. They also had questions about God and Jesus. It is always great to have Moses there to translate for us as he was in a similar situation at one point in his life and he can relate in ways that we can't coming from our backgrounds.
After this visit, we were able to pray for the boys at their request. A couple of the boys wanted to ask Jesus into their lives. We invited them to church, but none of them came.
A few days later, we returned to "The Beach". The boys were hesitant to talk with us or to allow us to take pictures. After Moses talked to them, we learned that the police had raided the area the day after we had last visited. We had to explain to them that we had nothing to do with that and we only wanted to help them. That evening, one of the boys came to church and gave his life to Christ.
It was nice to see the church family support him and welcome him. This went against the perception many of the boys had. They felt like they weren't welcomed in church because they didn't have an offering to give. They also questioned how they could spend time going to church when they had no place to sleep at night and were hungry and weak from lack of food.
These situations teach me so much. My first instinct is always to feed the boys. Lets take them to the church and find them food. But, I was told this sets a precedent for the church which is hard to maintain and instead we need to find things that can be done long after we leave. We want them to understand God's love and desire to provide and not think that "Rich mzungus" will provide.
I'm looking forward to going back to spend more time in the next few weeks and learning more about these boys and pointing them toward real hope, Christ and the church.
