Despite many clinic visits and one bed bug infestation, my team had an amazing month in Rwanda. Just outside the city of Kigali, we worked with Pastor Innocent and his wife who head up Successful Christian Ministries. We spent some of our time doing door to door ministry, preaching in churches, teaching in Pastor Innocent’s school, and just making our own ministry in the village where we lived. In this blog I am including a top ten list from the month (not really in any specific order), as well as a video of our month. Enjoy! 🙂
10. Getting to experience (and wait for) a Rwandan wedding. It was supposed to start at 3:00 and got started promptly 2 hours and 45 minutes later at 5:45! Welcome to African time 🙂
9. Attending a rival Rwandan futbol (soccer) match. We stood in the front row, surrounded by enthusiastic but not-Casablanca crazy soccer fans 🙂 For those who don’t know, I lived only a few blocks away from the Casablanca stadium for four years and never went to a game, they were so crazy there! It was a fun game and the rain stopped right when the game started!
8. Going to the village for a weekend and getting to teach all the kids lots of songs and dances!
7. Visiting the genocide memorial and just witnessing how God is at work, restoring the country and the people.
6. Spur of the moment worship night when no one showed up to church on a Tuesday evening. It was an even number of Americans and Rwandans so we took turns teaching one another worship songs in English and Kinyarwandan.
5. Getting some amazing African patterned reversible jackets with pockets and a hood made for us at the market (believe me, it is being put to good use on the cold, windy nights here in Ethiopia this month)! See Facebook for pictures!
4. All the crazy moto rides! Lots of great God moments on these rides as we swerved in between traffic and flew up our dirt road to the Psychiatric hospital where we would stop to walk home 🙂 One memorable day I took 6 different motos, including two to wrong places. The best though was definitely getting stuck in a downpour and arriving back at the house completely drenched, looking like we had just been swimming.
3. Substitute teaching at KICS for a day. It felt amazing to get back into the classroom. Also, what an amazing community of teachers and students! It was fun to see such a passion filled environment around the school.
2. Spending many afternoons of free time wandering around the village to play with kids. The most memorable was one day, after visiting the public school, we left with a following of 30-40 Rwandan children. All of a sudden we hear shouts of “Muzungo!” and there is a boulder being thrown at us! We all made it away without anyone getting hit. The kids found their way back to us and joined us for the rest of the walk. This also included the sight of a dead snake as well as getting lost and wandering around for a good 2+ hours.
1. Taking our host family bowling for the first time ever. They had no idea what we were talking about when we told them we would be taking them bowling! We got to the bowling alley- the only one in the country- and they had workers behind the pins to set them back up 🙂 Also, watching pastor get excited and bowling for other people without giving them a chance to explain how turns worked!
Honorable mentions- Witnessing the continued growth in my teammates and noticing all that God has been doing in all of our lives! Also, on that note, being able to catch up with Megan and Petek, our awesome friends from CVI our first month, a few times throughout the month. Lastly, doing door to door ministry and just seeing how welcoming the Rwandans were to opening their houses and talking with us.
Here is the video which will give you a little glimpse into our month:
