Monday

With 3 ladies dressed like Arab sheiks, faces covered against the incredibly dusty road, (two of whom were joined by their noses to the same sarong!) the Land Cruiser ground up yet one more steep, rocky orange road into the hills outside Kigali, to visit the parish of Bumbogo.  The customary warm greeting awaited us and plates of boiled eggs, teeny bananas and bread rolls.  We continued to increase our girths, embarking on our second breakfast within a couple of hours.  The little humble home, as with many other pastor’s homes had some unusual items – probably gifts from muzungus, that they had no idea how to use!  This family had found an unusual use for those silly shower puff things that pad out gifts sets of ‘smellies’ at Christmas time.  Various coloured  ‘shower puffs’ were tucked into the corner of each arm chair in the living room, where we might place a cushion.  In other homes we’ve seen beach balls hanging from the ceiling as unique expressions of décor!

In the yard at the back of the house we were all intrigued by the truck a little child was playing with – deftly constructed out of a small jerry can with various plastic lids fashioned in to wheels – it looked surprisingly realistic.

The sound of singing became louder and louder from the nearby church, beckoning us - a most effective way of calling people to worship, in a society where the clock on the wall is often merely ornamental.  In the church we were greeted by most exuberant dancing, drum beating and those characteristic harmonious African voices.  After the usual introductions, each of the team shared with the congregation the blessings we have received during our visits to many Rwandan parishes.  We spoke of their warmth of hospitality, their ready smiles, faithfulness in tough times, and the freedom in their worship to sing and dance without boundaries.  One of the men in the church  responded by saying how saddened they were to hear that their brothers and sisters in England often felt inhibited to dance in worship, and they longed to come straight over to UK to help us dance and worship with our whole bodies.  On the other hand immediately after saying this, he continued by saying he was so overwhelmed by the fact we’d come all this way to visit them, he felt this was a great demonstration of our faith and he did not have the words to express his emotions.

After this time of sharing, Pastor Samuel asked the church whether they had any questions for us to answer.  We were then faced with some most unexpected thorny issues to which we had to respond immediately – questions with which the western church is continuing to grapple.  They commented that as the team introduced themselves, not one of us had a family of more than 3 children.  Even though they always smiled and clapped at the mention of any of our children or grandchildren they were questioning why the team had such small families, when in Genesis, God had commanded man to populate the whole earth.  Rwandans are certainly following this instruction with their large numbers of children. They questioned whether ‘family spacing’ was a principle that should or should not be used in the Christian community.  They then proceeded to tell us that they had heard about the acceptance of same sex marriage in the church in Europe and America and wished to hear our views on this!  

After this discussion, the congregation left the church, where Pastor Samuel and Isobel remained to have a chat with the headmaster of the local school.  He talked of the 1000 children in his primary school, which works in 2 shifts in order to educate this large number of children in one building – rather a heavy work load for the teaching staff, who work a double shift daily!  We handed them some gifts of school supplies, but a rather paltry amount, considering his number on roll!

The pastor’s wife provided a wonderful spread of lunch, finishing with their home grown passion fruit.  Having eaten so much passion fruit over the past couple of weeks, but seen none growing, the pastor took us out onto one of his terraced fields to see them.  Pastor Samuel commented that they weren’t flourishing because, ‘This area is suffering from a long period of sunshine,’ not a phrase commonly heard in England!

We arrived back at our hostel in Kigali just in time for an appointment with Gilbert, a businessman,  who expertly talked us through the issues involved in setting up a UK shop to assist the poor widow basket weavers of Rwanda.  After his in depth lecturing, we had all learned a lot about what constituted an expertly woven and dyed basket, and which were made by amateurs!

Once more we were invited to a meal at the American Pastor’s home.  Having mistakenly smothered ourselves in Deet, expecting we were attending a BBQ last time, and feeling rather foolish arriving high on repellent, we neglected to spray ourselves this time.  We were then greeted with the words we really didn’t want to hear, ‘Oh this time I’ve had time to light the fire and we’ll sit round the fire pit after the meal!  We survived and had a very enjoyable end to the day, drinking, chatting and eating chocolate cake around a fire pit.

Give thanks for an encouraging visit to Bumbogo parish; for the faithful ministry of catechists among the different congregations; for hospitality.

Please pray for discernment and wisdom for pastors when dealing with some of the social issues; for our planned visit to the Peacebuilding Healing And Reconciliation Programme (PHARP) tomorrow (Tuesday).