First Sunday

One of the great privileges of coming is getting to worship with local churches.  An unavoidable reality we are always confronted with is how different cultures experience worship.  In Rwanda, the more indigenous expressions like it loud, long, and filled with top of your lungs shouts of hallelujah.  And the gracious welcome and treatment is humbling.  The inserted video gives you just a brief sense of what it is like, as the "Friends of Jesus" choir sings.  The music portion of the services are always led by such choirs. Josie, the micro-seed leader and trophy of God's grace is the choir leader.  She survived the genocide as well as Aids, which she contracted by being raped as well feeding her family via prostitution.  She is a marvelous church leader now.

People often ask where we stay.  We have rented a house in the Kimirunko district of Kigali, Rwanda's capital.  We are about a mile from the teaching site, which is the Harvest Christian Church.  Below is a picture of the house. It has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and miracles of miracles, hot water in the tubs.  It is still hard to call it a shower as there is not curtain, and you have to hold a wand to shower.  But it is still a blessing. The house is used for pre-wedding parties and weddings, and therefore is known as the Umuhuro House.  We are just a short walk from the main market, which is a trip in and of itself....a super Walmart made up of seemingly 1000 small shops about 5 feet wide.  The house costs us $500 for 17 days and comes with help to clean the house, assist with meals and do laundry.  Never had it this good at home!

We brush our teeth with bottled water, eat only fully cooked foods, and generally are just careful.  But it really isn't all that hard to get along here.  I even have a Rwandan cell phone number.  All I had to do was pop in a Rwandan SIM card and away it went.  In fact, we can call home for 50 minutes a day for about $1.25.  Amazing.

Several Pastors have already stopped by the house as they have made their way into Kigali for the training.  We will start up tomorrow, Monday, about 10 AM, so we can let the guys traveling in from shorter distances make it.  After that, we will start each day at 8:30 and go to 5.  Lunch is usually 1 to 2:15. It takes that long to feed 60 guys one at a time.  But given that many of them have not hard enough food to feed their families for months, we are more than pleased to take the time to make sure they eat well while they are with us. Pray for clarity as we teach 1 Samuel.