This morning I woke up to a great surprise at our house here in Kigali, Rwanda. Nope – it wasn’t the African kiddos that come to our house every morning yelling Mzungu (“foreigner” in Kinyarwanda), which I love to hear. Their voices in the morning are like little birds waking me up.
I woke up this morning to find a Christmas tree in our living space. Yes! A Christmas tree in July in Africa. And every year at Christmas in December I celebrate my birthday too, because I was born the day after Christmas. So my team also surprised me with a day to celebrate my birthday. Our holiday festivities included making ornaments, eating marble bread (my birthday cake) with Nutella, playing photo pictionary, and writing notes of encouragement to stick in the stockings. We hung the stockings under the fireplace with care (aka, a crackling fire playing on YouTube on the computer).
These kids sang happy birthday to me as part of our Christmas in July celebration. These stockings were hung under our YouTube video of a crackling fire.
We had an ornament making competition. Right before our Christmas celebration, we blessed pastor and his wife with an appreciation dinner at our house.
Not only did we get to share Christmas with each other and celebrate my birthday, but we also extended the spirit of giving into the community we are living in. We blessed the community near the church we are working with with more than 200 pounds of rice and beans.
Initially we had planned on buying enough food for about 50 families. But as we brought the food down to the church from our house (a 10 minute walk), dozens and dozens of children started following us. It was awesome. We had planned on holding a children’s church service that morning and distributing the goodies to the children after the service. For a couple of hours, we held the children’s attention. They were so attentive. We sang songs and told Bible stories. As it came time to disperse the food, we had a head count of more than 130 kids. Yikes! We began praying that, like the multiplication of the two fish and five loaves of bread, God would multiply the food we had purchased. We handed out drinks and biscuits to the kids while they were sitting in their chairs. Then on the way out, they got bags of rice, beans and some soap. We had enough for everyone! Overall, we had a really blessed morning giving to these children and their families.
Photo on Right: We love this little girl. She has a twin brother. The community makes fun of her though. They call her big nose and always laugh at her. She is so precious. I've sewed up her torn clothing while here. Here, she's looking over the bags of beans we are handing out. When we first arrived, there were a handful of kids that didn't smile. We have washed them, fed them, loved them… and now we are smiling and laughing with them. Good times…
God also really put it on my heart to buy a new chalkboard for the nursery school that the church holds.
This is the chalkboard we bought for the church nursery school. Here, I'm stalling for time as we wait for more kids to come to our children's service. I'm having the kids flex their arms and then point and say "the beach is that way." It's all in good fun.
The area we’ve been living in is fairly poor and you don’t need to look any further than the children’s tattered clothing to see that. Every chance I’ve gotten this month, including the morning we handed out the food, I took my needle and thread and sewed the holes in these children’s clothes. As I did that, at least a dozen or so children would always surround me and point out their holes too in hopes that I might sew them up as well. I did what I could.
I ran out of thread this month. I felt compelled to sew every child's torn clothing.
This month is wrapping up. While in Rwanda, we’ve primarily spent our time with the community’s children in the mornings, loving on these kids; spending time with them; teaching them songs, numbers and english. In the evenings and on the weekends, we’ve been primarily preaching at the church. We also spent Saturday and Sunday mornings preaching the Truth on the Radio Flash Rwanda.
This is our pastor this month. He and his wife welcomed us in like family. Here, Sarah and I are teaching numbers to the children during nursery school. The church provides a morning nursery school to nearby families who can't afford to send their children to the government or private schools.
We had a variety of ministry opportunities this month. Here, I'm preaching about God's love and the importance of loving other people. I preached twice on a radio station as well. Here, I'm sharing about the importance of sharing our testimonies and how our story can encourage other people.
Sometimes when we went down to church in the evenings to preach, there were only children at the church waiting for us. We'd sit on the grass with dozens of children surrounding us and we'd sing and talk about Jesus' love for them. It was such a simple form of fellowship.
Other Photos and Thoughts
"Welcome in blessed fish." A call out to my fellow Alaskans who are fishing at the moment. My prayer for you is that the blessed fish come in for you. Here, I'm with one of my favorite kiddos, who we nicknamed Eddie. He's a bit of a stinker but that's why I like him. He was always outside our gate waiting for us.
My team fell in love with these twins. This is a photo of her jean jumper before I sewed it up.
We loved these kids and they loved us!
These two photos were taken as we drove out of town one day to the genocide memorial site. This is how the African women carry their babies and jugs of water: piggyback-style and on the head, respectively.
One million people were massacred during a three month span in 1994 in a horrible genocide that plagued Rwanda. I heard that the rate of people killed during this genocide was three times as that compared to the rate the Jews were killed during WWII.
We depart tomorrow morning back to Uganda. Please keep us in your prayers as we travel and live in Uganda next month. I will be based about 18km from the capital, Kampala.
I’m really grateful and blessed to have loved these children here this month. They loved us as much as we loved them.
On to month 8 out of 11. God’s love and blessings to you.
