the Servant Heart

The first thing I wanna do on this my final blog of Rwanda, is honour our dear friend Vincent. Vincent is hired by the landlord of the house we stay in to look after the place while he's not around. A simple form of property management if you like, and Vincent seems very happy to have this job. But he goes above and beyond what he is expected to do. He has helped us cook nearly every night; if we leave our bedroom door open even for 5 seconds, he's straight in there and has our clothes washed before we know it.

I often feel bad about this fact, but also have learned so much from him about what it is to be a silent servant. He never makes a noise about his good deeds, in fact he goes as far as to hide them from the people he does them for. There is no limits for his servant attitude either as he often insists when we actually do our own cleaning, that he does it for us. It has been a pleasure knowing this guy and I pray that his faith in God grows abundantly.

This week, we spent a couple of days writing our report on what we have seen, including long term and short term actions for each of the cooperatives. Hopefully they are God led and will prove useful. Dave also got to give his Sexual Education class which went down with a bundle of laughs with the young people. You wouldn't believe some of the questions asked. I also got to share some of my IT knowledge and have begun to design a short teaching course for CJ.

Mark arrived yesterday, and by means of celebration for his arrival and mine & dave's departure we had everyone around for dinner. It was an amazing night of fun food & fellowship. There really is something about sitting down and having a meal together that crosses all kinds of cultural and linguistic divides.

Today I visited the last cooperative that I will get to see, but it was one of the most moving. This was a group mostly made up of genocide survivor widows. They have applied for a CJ grant but as yet CJ can not find a partner to support this so big prayer is needed to get this group off their feet and earning some capital. It's important for their general welfare, it's important for the children's education, it's important just to change the general mentality of trauma, something that still seriously and deeply affects these people.

We heard of terrifying testimoneys of how some escaped the genocide. One lady in particular beautifully shared with us often fighting back the tears for over 30 minutes. Her story began with the genocide soldiers coming into her house and beating her, but yet choosing not to kill her. She was then seperated from her family, husband and children, being dragged to different cities again being beaten and raped several times, but yet for some reason still alive. Finally when the genocide was over she found 2 of her children, and the entire rest of her family dead. It was only by the grace of God and the kindness of a few people that she is alive today to tell her story. I can not process this kind of pain. She still has amazing faith, and she longs for the day that God will restore her in paradise. I want her to know that Jesus wants to bring this restoration into her life today, and wants to use her testimoney to change lives everywhere.

As we left a lady prayed for us. Little did she know that when she prayed about our finances that it was quite prophetic as all of Dave, Luke and myself are trusting in God to provide for our near future! As I leave Rwanda I pray that someday, this place (and indeed Ireland) will bear a great witness for Christ all around the world, a beacon of hope and peace to areas of deep hatred and pain. I leave tomorrow on a gruesome 11 hour bus journey, followed by another all day plane journey so please bear me, and more importantly Rwanda (and the people we have met) in your prayers.