Sunday's Blog: We were encouraged by the number of young people attending the English service at 8am in Byumba cathedral.  Alan preached about the Lord’s prayer and its relevance to each of us in our daily lives.

The Youth for Christ Choir took us back to the days of the 1980s Billy Graham crusades with their renditions of Amazing Grace, I Surrender All and Blessed Assurance…  In song they moved from their seats to the front of the church swaying in a rhythmic conga formation to lead the worship.

As the English service drew to a close, the cathedral began to fill with church members in readiness for the following service in the Kinyarwandan language.   The cathedral’s wooden benches were almost full to their capacity, seating 1000, and though we found a few spare spaces on a bench near the back, our white faces were soon spotted by a church warden, dressed in a green and white cassock, who eagerly re-seated us on the front row beside the font.  Almost immediately 3 church members slotted themselves strategically between us on the front bench to interpret for us individually.

Andy, who was due to preach in the service, had previously been collected by another church warden, keen to get the service started and was seated amongst the clergy on the platform in the chancel.

Although the service was three and a half hours long, it was full of variety, music and colour.  A group of between 15 - 20 new members were welcomed into the church, introduced and then enfolded in a loving embrace by their brothers and sisters.  Several newly-weds were invited to the front for well wishing, 3 young people were baptised and Andy preached whilst Pastor Elson interpreted.  The service was interspersed by wonderful African singing and dancing led by 3 choirs. 

After Andy’s message, there was a good response from the congregation to Elson’s call, inviting people to give themselves to Christ.  About 30 young people came forward for prayer and were then taken into a side room where church members talked with them, putting into place a follow up programme.

Having eaten breakfast in a great hurry to attend the early service, we then returned in the early afternoon to ‘enjoy’ barely lukewarm porridge and hard boiled eggs.

We spent a gruelling afternoon coding and sorting hundreds, if not thousands of banana fibre cards hand made by a group of local widows, ready for us to take back to sell in the UK.  Fortunately Heather produced a packet of sweets to keep up our sugar levels and cheer us on through this tedious task.  By the time Andy returned from a meeting elsewhere, the large pile of empty sweet wrappers said it all!

Once again we were invited out to dinner in 2 pastors’ homes.  The 2 grannies, Eleanor and Heather, were in their element in Pastor Elson’s home as they spent the evening passing the young baby, ‘Heavenly Joy’ from one to another, cooing over her cuteness, living up to her name.  (until she covered Heather in baby rice!)    
      

Elson’s other children Shalom and Grace were also home from boarding school for a family wedding.  Alan enjoyed finding out about Pastor Elson’s involvement in the training and follow up to the post genocide programme of reconciliation.  This social therapy programme is based on post World War II material and has been funded by the Netherlands.

Meanwhile Andy and Isobel were being entertained at Pastor Etienne’s house.  We munched through warm roasted peanuts, trying to maintain a conversation with the family as the lights flickered on and off with annoying frequency.  A storm was brewing outside as the rainy season approaches.  Clearly Rwandan electricity struggles in such weather conditions.  After a sumptuous feast of local produce, Etienne invited Isobel to eat one of the lemons off his tree.  Hoping there had been confusion in translation, she accepted the offer, only to find that it was indeed a very bitter lemon and much wincing and grimacing ensued!  Etienne’s teenage boys tried to appear macho and proceeded to down their segments with virtually expressionless faces.

The jolly evening was rounded off by Andy organising a family game of bowls using Etienne’s home grown fruit.   To add to the excitement of the impromptu game, the ‘passion fruit jack’ was extremely well camouflaged on the concrete floor and to add another dimension to the challenge, we were periodically plunged into sudden darkness as the electricity cut out again!  A fun night was had by all!

Please pray for the young people who responded and also those who were baptised in the cathedral and pray for them to be discipled.

Give thanks for the opportunity to meet with local families and share meals;  the Cathedral was full and needs to be extended/rebuilt;  a youth group activity raised £2000 towards the building of a new cathedral.