Rwanda

Wow! It is month 5 already on the world race. Actually, we have only been on the race for 4 months but we are in our 5^th country so I like to call it month 5. We are in Rwanda, Africa and have made it half way through this month and almost half way through the trip. Our ministry this month consists of going to church to preach, evangelizing door to door, evangelizing on the basketball court, and teaching 4 year old kids songs.

Preaching at church has been a pretty challenging task for me. I am not great at organizing sermons nor am I good at putting words on paper to preach to a congregation. My thoughts get jumbled together and I have a lot of trouble getting my point out clearly. I do love to talk about Jesus but I am better when I am talking to someone one on one and telling them about how real Jesus has been in my life. Since there will be a lot of preaching going on in Africa, please pray that I will get better at organizing sermons and preaching the good news in the church building.

I have loved going door to door to evangelize. At first I didn’t think it would be fun at all but it has definitely grown on me and has inspired me significantly. We have seen a few people “get saved� and we have been able to encourage a lot of other believers. It is really cool to see where some of these people live. We walk up to their homes and their homes are made out of mud. One house we visited the people had their toothbrushes sticking out of a mud block. Not every house we visit is like this but half of them are. One thing though, the people we are visiting seem to have quite a bit of faith and trust in God. They seem to be on fire for God. Hmmm…. I wonder why? Maybe because they have nothing and they have to rely on God.

I have been to the basketball court twice since we have been here. The first time I went out there and it started pouring down rain about 10 minutes later. So I went under some shelter with everyone that was on the court. As we were waiting for the rain to stop I told a few of the people what I was doing in Rwanda and brought Jesus into the conversation. The conversation did not last very long. Then after about 15 minutes it turned really weird because I was the only white person on the porch and they were all looking at me laughing and talking in their language. So I decided to go back to the house. The second time I went to the court I was able to play basketball for about an hour. We played a couple games then between games we gathered everyone together and told them about why we were here. We are trying to build relationships and tell them about the gospel at the same time since we do not have much time here. I have found out that the best way to share Jesus with someone is when you build trust with a person. I am able to go way deeper than any surface level conversation when I have someone’s trust. Please pray that we will be able to effectively minister on the basketball court this week as we go back to play some ball with the guys.

We have also been teachers this month. I have a little teaching experience from Cambodia and we have two teachers on our team. But this is different than anything we have ever done. We are teaching toddlers and that is challenging. Basically, we have taught them songs and played games with them to pass the time. It has been fun but it has been challenging at the same time. It is amazing though that every time we walk in the gate to teach the toddlers they come running up to us with their arms wide open and give us a big hug. This is repeated about 50 times because there are around 50 toddlers in the school we are teaching.