Picture Discription: (1&2) Genocide museum and Kigali genocide memorial, (2&3) Welcoming team from the Kabeza Presbyterian Church, one the of the main churches supported by our church FPC of Nashville, (4) standing infront of the traditional hut, (5) Got time to visit some of my relatives that’s my aunt and grandmother, (6&7) Children in a remote village of rwanda, (8,9,10) These are former street children at the CPAJ center which is a rehabilitation center for street children, (11) With my friend Trey who shared this journey with me.
One day when I was 12years old, I woke up at a very unusual hour and sounds, it was the music of bullets and cries that lasted for a 100 days, nothing else made a sound except those that were dying, even the birds in the air were no where to be found, and the crickets at night were no where to be heard, everything else was silenced by what was going on. In 100 days, more than a million innocent people died just because of what they looked like, hell broke loose on Rwanda. But at the end of every turnel there is a light, no matter how small it might be it is there.
As a result of the genocide, there is a high increase of orphans, street children and of course the problem of Aids is not making life any easier or anybetter. I was not in Rwanda for long, I was there for just a short time with a friend of mine from our church, actually one of our youth directors, who was a great support(the guy with the flowers). We visited different projects that are a part of the presbyterian church there, which our church is establishing a great relationship with. There are three particular places that absolutely broke my heart and made me really wonder a lot about God’s sovereignty and that made me understand much better the way that the old church was commended not to have any poor among them.
Our first stop was a small Presbyterian Church located withing the city of Kigali. We worshiped there, they even made us preach, thank goodness all I had to do was translations!! Our church here in Nashville is trying to help this church build a sanctuary because right now they are just meeting in a place that used to be a local restaurant. While we were there, we were mostly interested in their Youth Ministry, unfortunately this church’s budget is so small that the youth ministry is almost non-existing, but they have a very motivated youth that they just organize themselves and fundraise for their own events. This youth group was absolutely the perfect example of a youth group, they were amazing and absolutely useful and helpful to their own community and their own church. This youth group organizes itself into groups that take care of eachother and those around them, i.e. they have a group in charge of hospital ministry, where they visit those in the local hospitals especially those that are HIV+ because they are so isolated from the community. Since not everyone has a chance to gain education, the youth that is educated forms groups to help those that are not educated and teach them how to read and how to write! These are just a few of the things that blew my brain away and made me realize that they truly understand the meaning of community better than I do. At this church, I understood the meaning of the church being the community of believers.
We made a trip to Byumba, which is the northern part of Rwanda to visit one of the most incredible woman that I have known. She runs a program/ministry “Hannah Ministry” to children that are HIV+ and those that are just 100% orphans and they are “a child led family”. The Child led households go through a lot of problems and I have to say that for those that take care of their siblings not only is it a huge responsibility at a young age, but they also sacrifice alot for the well being of their siblings. Hannah Ministry is the voice for these children in this area of the country. Hannah Ministry also has a feeding program for the children that are HIV+. The purpose of this feeding program is to provide these children the nutrition values that their families would not be able to afford, not forget that these children might not even get fed by their families. The feeding program is just for the children that are taking the ARV medication, so that their bodies would have enough strenght to handle the medication. This was one of the most incredible program I saw while in Africa, mostly because people are just thinking of ARV medication and forgetting the fact that these people are not getting enough nutritional values to strength their bodies as well.
After Byumba, we stoped at a street children rehabilitation center ran by the presbyterian church, at this center I got a chance to sit down with these children and be blessed by their life stories. As any other country in Africa, the problem of street children is inevitable, yet there are only three organizations that are taking care of this problem of street children together with the government. CPAJ ;Centre Presbyterien d’Amour de Jeune(Presbyterian Center for the love of the youth) is a rehabilitation and street children center founded in 1998 by the Presbyterian Church in Rwanda. CPAJ engages in many different activities: paying school fees for these children, counselling the traumatised children, linking these children back to their families if it is a safe environment, supporting the girls with self-reliance activities, and providing HIV/AIDS education to everyone. CPAJ cares for about 270 children. One of the stories that stuck in my head for long, is the story of a little girl, who was 7 years old and she had been at the center for 5 months by the time I met her. Her mother could not care for her anymore and the only option she had was to put her on the street, but as she learned about CPAJ she brought her daughter to their door steps. This is just one of the few stories that are found within the compound of this center, it was an amazing place to be, an amazing place to learn how to be joyful and thankful in all circumstances. Please read this article to hear more about CPAJ http://streetkidnews.blogsome.com/2007/11/26/rwanda-street-children-get-new-basketballvolleyball-court/
After hanging out with the street children who stole my heart from my chest, I visited a missionary hospital in a village just outside of the city of Kigali. This hospital is also another project of the presbyterian church in Rwanda, and this place just made my stomach drop! This hospitals serves a population of 265,000 with only 4 doctors and of course a few qualified nurses. This hospital does not have enough beds for the capacity of people that they treat, so you would be surprised to know that there are people sharing beds in a hospital, or people that have no other way but to bring in their own mattresses and just put them on the floor. You can help this hospital, by starting on donating just a single bed. To learn more on how you can help this hospital contact or visit www.theoutreachfoundation.org and you can learn of many other different ways to help.
