The month of June, though it was difficult and challenging was also a very fun and awesome month full of great experiences. As I mentioned before in previous blogs, we spent the month of June in Kigali, Rwanda with our hosts Pastor James and his wife Olivia. We worked with them and the students at the school they started for kids who couldn’t afford school, playing with them at recess, teaching them bible stories, and creating profiles for them in order to get them sponsorships for school as well as creating a promotional video for their website. In this blog, I just wanted to talk about my top 5 favorite things from my time in Rwanda.
- The food
Rwanda, with the exception of one or two other countries was one of my favorite months with regard to the food we had to eat the entire month. Our hosts went through the trouble of getting us a cook to cook for us for the month. His name was Tom and he knew how to cook. At the end of every meal, someone in our group would say that this was their favorite meal on the whole race. Generally, the meals were very simple, with a good amount of variety, however, the meals were just so well seasoned and cooked that they just tasted amazing. A very common thing we had were these seared potatoes with some sort of beef, beans, plantains, and vegetables which was usually topped off with some sort of fruit like watermelon or pineapple. Amazing!!!
- The People
The people in Rwanda really stood out to me as special. Our host Pastor James, though we only spent a week with him was so awesome!!! He took us to see the city one of the first days we were there and after spending an afternoon with him in the city, it was very evident that he knew a lot of people all over the city, from government officials, to hotel lobby employees, to 1992 Rwanda genocide survivors. We got a tour of Kigali and saw remnants of the city’s dark past. His wife Olivia spent the whole month with us and it is evident the Holy Spirit works through her. One of the first days we were there, we had a prayer meeting and at the end of it she had a prophetic word for each person in the room. One by one, she would tell us something she believed that she heard from the Lord, something she wouldn’t know about our pasts or upbringing and then she would go on to share something she saw about our futures. She told me about a few things I was struggling with at the time and that I would eventually become a Pastor!! This was crazy because up until this point, I hadn’t even really considered this as an option, though I had been told by a few people who knew me that they saw me as a Pastor. It was just weird because she didn’t even know me and she just declared that with confidence. (More on this in a later blog) We also got to hang out a lot with a couple people that were our age. Victor and Noella who were our translators and spent a lot of their free time hanging out with us. In fact, on our off days, they would take us to some of the coolest places they knew in Rwanda. They taught us how to dance and were just some really fun people. To be honest, all the Rwandan people that we got to know were really cool and fun people and many were just dumb prophetic, like Olivia.
- The Kids
Another one of my favorite things about Rwanda was the kids. We spent most of our time playing with kids and I love playing with kids. However, playing with kids is usually exhausting for me, especially when the kids don’t know me because I have to work hard to build a trusting relationship with them and that is very draining for me. However, in Rwanda the kids had so much energy and sought to be played with so much that I didn’t feel like I needed to do anything extra to love them. Particularly, my favorite part of everyday would be the moment we arrived to the school and the kids in class saw us. Literally, all 200 kids in the entire school would stop whatever they were doing, whatever class they were in, they would run out into the schoolyard and rush us and each individually give us a hug. Then, they would just wrap their arms around your arms and legs and just stay attached to you until they were told to get off. It was truly amazing. Teaching new chants and songs was also incredibly easy and they were always ready to learn a new song and dance because of their incredible energy.
- The Ministry
This month, our ministry was incredible. As I mentioned before, our hosts started their own Christian school for under resourced kids who couldn’t afford schooling on their own. Ministry involved spending time with those kids and getting to know them as well as play with them during recess. It was really fun and at the same time exhausting work. However, perhaps the best part of the ministry for me was getting to be a part of our hosts vision to provide affordable education for the community. The children in the school program become integrated into the school by sponsorship in order to cover the cost of the schooling and part of our job, namely my teammates Colby and Jake was to take pictures and create a promotional video, in order to get the children sponsors. I have embedded a video that Jake made sharing a bit more of the heart of this ministry and how through the school, children are able to go to school and pursue dreams that would otherwise not be possible.
- The Beauty
Rwanda is beautiful!!! Known as the land of 10,000 hills, all you see looking out on the landscape of Kigali are these beautiful rolling hills. In addition to the rolling hills, like I mentioned, our friends from the church took us to lake Keevu which was a very pretty lake surrounded by mountains and had a view of an active volcano in the Congo. We spent several hours on a boat ride on the lake and got to see the sun set over the lake. In addition to the natural beauty, the city of Kigali is one of the cleanest, well kept cities I have ever been to. Driving through the city, not only could you see modern buildings and architecture, but you also get beautiful views of the countryside, especially as the sunsets into the hills.
