We have settled into our time in Rwanda. I would rate it as the 2nd most beautiful place we have visited behind Nepal. It is amazing and thus far I am loving my time with Pastor Moses and his wife Mary.
We are staying in the house with the family and I figured I would give you a brief glimpse of what life on The Race means this month.
7am – Get up and workout. It is very, very hilly here which means I am not running much. It does mean I am doing a lot of p90x and using a deck of cards to determine my workouts. Deck of cards workouts means I flip a card and do the value on the card of that exercise. They are feeding us really well so I definitely need the workouts.
8am – Team breakfast. We usually have bread , pineapple, bananas and a garden style quiche type egg dish. They have peanut butter here so we have all been happy campers.
9am – The church has a sewing group. Basically, men and women pay 2000 francs per month ($3.50) and they attend a sewing class where they learn how to sew. The class lasts 17 months and at the end, the church gives the women a sewing machine that they can then use. It is basically designed to teach the local people a trade which they can use to make a living. The people who graduate then pay the church back for the machine over the course of time so that the next sewing class can have machines when they finish. Our role is to encourage and do a morning devotional with this group. We sing songs, pray and usually one of us shares a testimony or something we are learning.
10am – We have gone down to the place the pastor calls “The Beach” and the locals call “Darfur”. Darfur is actually in Sudan and a place where genocide is taking place. For these people, they are usually homeless and jobless and spend much of their time smoking marijuana and trying to come up with food. We have been down on a few occasions to talk with different people and share the love of Jesus.
1pm – It is lunch time. We usually have rice, potatoes, cucumbers or cabbage and a meat/gravy sauce. I would rank it as quite delicious.
5pm – Evening church. Church here is a bit different than church in America. The first hour is spent in praise and worship. It looks something like I picture a Zumba class looking as it is almost like the worship leaders have choreographed dancing. I consider it my second workout of the day as it is a lot like an aerobics class and is all in Rwandan so we dance around, but don’t understand much. Once the hour or so of worship is complete, one of us usually preaches for around 40 minutes. We spend some more time in prayer and worship and usually finish up around 7pm.
8pm – Dinner looks a lot like lunch
8:30pm – Family devotionals with Pastor Moses and the people living in the house. It is usually about 15 of us and different people share each night.
9:15 – Team time. Since we have 7 of us, a different person is in charge of each day. My day is Tuesday and we can do whatever we like. We can have prayer, worship, play games, watch a video, etc. It is solely at the leaders discretion. We usually try to finish up by 10 or 10:30pm and then it is off to bed to start over the next day.
We are definitely enjoying our time and I am looking forward to tonight and tomorrow as I was able to make some contacts in basketball so I am off to one teams practice tonight and another in the morning. I haven’t been in the gym since Serbia (August) and that is an itch I am very excited to get to scratch today.
Next week we will begin doing more door-to-door evangelism in the morning. I have a feeling life will only get busier from here, but we are enjoying partnering with Pastor Moses and his ministry.
