Integral Mission in Rwanda

Bruno & Kathleen Soucy with the Development Team in Rwanda

(Lawrence, Esperance, Sam, Andre, Gato, Isaie)

One of our joys in being a part of Canadian Baptist Ministries, is the great family of coworkers with whom we have the pleasure of serving with. I just returned from a week in Kigali, Rwanda, where we are helping with the Children of Hope and Guardians of Hope projects with the Rwandan Baptist Association.

It is exciting to see the holistic impact the church is having upon communities throughout Rwanda. Please uphold the Rwandan team in prayer as they prepare for 2012 ministries and anticipate the arrival of the Bustin family who are being redeployed by CBM to Rwanda where they will be involved in rural pastor training and Integral Mission projects.

In Prayer:

* Pray for the work of the Guardians of Hope as it seeks to strengthen home based care for people living with HIV and AIDS. This is an important component in each of the 29 GOH groups in Rwanda.

* Also in prayer this week, please remember the Christian churches in Garissa still reeling from the grenade attack on a Pentecostal Church this past Sunday that killed two people and injured three others. Insecurity in Northeastern Kenya has escalated over the past few weeks and has resulted in the withdraw of several international and national organizations. CBM will not have personnel in NEP until the situation improves.

The Children of Hope

Walking up a narrow alleyway in Kigali

Nothing is flat in Rwanda -- you are either on your way up or down in this "land of a thousand hills". There are no easy paths to follow. I think the same can be said of life here, as the country struggles with incredibly high levels of poverty and need. It is a constant challenge for those who seek to care for the marginalized. There are no easy answers, no simple solutions.

Children of Hope Manager, Esperance, with AEBR development director, Gato Munyamasoko

In January, Erica and I began giving oversight to the Children of Hope program in Rwanda that was started by the AEBR with Laura Ward and Patty Card in 2007. The Children of Hope is a joint ministry of Canadian Baptist Ministries, the Danish Baptist Churches and the Association of Rwandan Baptist Churches that serves over 1500 orphans and vulnerable children within Kigali, and the Southern and Eastern provinces of Rwanda.

For anyone coming from a place like Canada, it is incredibly difficult to wrap our minds around the idea of a "child-headed household". Yet, tens of thousands of child-led-households are a reality in Rwanda and the countries of sub-Saharan Africa where over 12 million children have become AIDS orphans (and that number doesn't include the untold number orphaned from conflict, war and genocide). In our travels throughout Rwanda, it has been heart breaking to meet young children, not much older than our own three kids, caring for one another in a shack without running water, electricity, nor even a bed. These are children without anyone to protect them, provide for them, guide them, or love them. Kids who have been left to fend for themselves after the trauma of watching their parents die.

Children of Hope has been the churches response to hundreds of child-led households. Unlike the Guardians of Hope who are able to bring AIDS orphans into their homes as part of their family, the Children of Hope must continue to live on their own for the lack of a guardian -- the need is just simply too great and there are not enough guardians to care for these children.

What COH does, instead, is match a cluster of child-headed households with an adult mentor from a church (often the mentors are already Guardians of Hope themselves). The mentor looks out for the children and is there to give support, advise and protection. Through the charity of the church, the children receive assistance with school fees, uniforms, access to health care, and the tending of a kitchen garden. Life is not easy. The path is not simple. But by God's grace none need walk it alone.

Esperance with Rev. Nkuyemurugero Japhet, Regional Minister for the AEBR in the Eastern Province of Rwanda

Over the past year, Canadian Baptist Ministries has been coming alongside the AEBR in alleviating a crisis in shelter for over a hundred vulnerable households. With new laws in Rwanda requiring all homes with traditional thatched roofing to be demolished and replaced with ones constructed with at least iron sheeting, there became an urgent need to house the poorest of the poor. "They destroyed so many homes without preparing the people!" explained Rev. Japhet. In his community hundreds of families had no place to go as they were drive from their homes as they were demolished.

As the church banded together in response, the highest priority was obvious -- within their community were several child headed households -- homes where a orphaned children were left on their own to care for themselves. "With the support of Canadian Churches who gave $20,000 dollars, we have built one hundred homes for families who were homeless," shared Esperance."We cried, but Canadians heard our cry!"

According to Rev. Japhet, "In our region 20 child-headed households have received new houses with iron sheet roofs.... we are so thankful!"

"Thank you all for helping us!"

In Prayer

* Please remember Esperance and her family as they travel this weekend to Burundi to be with her father who is in the late stages of his battle with cancer. We also think of her mother who is too ill to make the journey to be with her husband in hospital there.

* We continue to pray for the Children of Hope in Rwanda and for the funds to continue supporting this important ministry.

* We give thanks for the way that God's love and compassion is being seen through His church in Rwanda through their response to the dire needs of widows and orphans.

Banana Republic

Banana Republic

As you enter Rwanda's Eastern Province, banana plants stretch out over the rolling countryside as far as the eye can see. Green banana's are the staple of diet in this region of Rwanda: "Green banana for breakfast. Green banana for lunch. Green Banana for supper," shared Rev Gato as we drove by truck along the main route through Eastern Province toward Tanzania. "And of course, banana juice to drink!"

Erica with Children of Hope manager Esperance

enroute to Rwanda's Eastern Province

Mubago, Rwanda

During our monitoring visits, we were delighted to meet with the Children's of Hope mentors in Mubago in Rwanda's Eastern Province. The mentors, many of whom are Guardians of Hope, come alongside 134 orphans and vulnerable children who are living in households headed by an teenaged sibling. These child head of households benefit from the support, encouragement and wisdom of local adult mentors who watch over the children of hope!

Through the help of Canadian Baptist Churches, the mentors are able to ensure that the children have basic needs met and are attending school and vocational trades. The children are also provided with health insurance, training and seeds for kitchen gardens, livestock, and life skills training.

Aaron with Pastor Rutozi Vedaste

in front of the Mubago AEBR Church

As the work of the Guardians of Hope and Children of Hope reaches into the community, the evangelistic impact of the church has grown. Over the past three years, the Mubago Church has been transformed from a congregation of 20 people to now 150 believers. They are now making bricks and building a solid church structure.

Children of Hope Mentors

Erica speaking with Seraphine

Seraphine Ngarise is a mother of three and a mentor with the Mubago Children of Hope. Through her mentor's association she is saving 200 Rwandan Francs each month. Through the saving and loans program, she has able to buy and sell sorgum grain for a profit. Her business has become five times more profitable thanks to the help of her access to micro credit.

Children living near the Mubago AEBR Church

Rabbits like these provide an important source

of meat and income for families struggling

to overcome poverty in Rwanda.

Land of a Thousand Hills

GUARDIANS OF HOPE

RWANDA

Rwanda is known as the land of a thousand hills. As we travel this week through the seemingly endless vistas of steep mountains covered in terraced farms and sparse forest, we have been blessed by the songs of the Guardians of Hope and their testimony to God's grace.

As Canadian Baptists, we have been serving in Rwanda over the past five years working in partnership with L'Association des Eglises Baptistes au Rwanda (AEBR). This Association of Baptist Churches began in 1966 and today consists of 30,000 members worshipping in 183 local churches and approximately 300 chapels throughout this small country in central Africa.

Our friends and Canadian Baptist Ministries colleagues Kathleen and Bruno Soucey with Farming God's Way instructors Carl Shmidt and Willhelm Els from South Africa.

We have had the joy of staying with our CBM team mates, Bruno and Kathleen Soucey, and their son Ben. From their home in Kigali, Rwanda's central capital, we have made day trips into both the Eastern and Southern provinces bordering Tanzania and Burundi.

The Soucey's joined CBM at the same time as our family, and it has been such a gift to finally be able to visit them in their home and see first hand the great work they have been doing through integral mission with the AEBR. One of our highlights, has been getting to know pastor Gato and the AEBR development team who work with the Souceys in strengthening the work of the church in reaching out to the physical and spiritual needs of the poor.

This week, Bruno and the team are hosting Carl and Willhelm from Farming God's Way in helping improve agricultural practices in Rwanda's Eastern Province. Canadian Food Grains Bank has recognized the spiritual and practical impact of this ministry as it has been an effective ministry throughout Africa. We look forward in seeing the difference this makes within the communities benefitting from the training.

Kigali, Rwanda

One of the visits we made earlier in the week was to a homeless family living in Kigali Rural. Much of Rwanda lives in poverty, surviving on less than a dollar a day, but even among the poor you find people struggling at the margins. Often it is here that we encounter single mothers and widows living with HIV and AIDS. Anne Marie Kankera, was abandoned by her husband after discovering that she was HIV positive. Frightened for her own life and for the future of her seven children, bad turned to worse when their small house collapsed, leaving the family without anywhere to live.

Anne Marie had become a member of the Guardians of Hope in her AEBR church, she was encouraged by the prayers and concern for her family. The small congregation is made up of people like Ann Marie struggling to improve their lives and looking to Christ for Hope. They meet in an dusty stone building on the outskirts of Kigali. It so happened that the congregation had been constructing a small barn for pigs and goats. When they learned of Anne Marie's need, knew there was a more important use for this small stable, and so they converted the small adobe barn (only 6 feet by 12 feet), into a two room house for the family.

Life is not easy for Anne Marie, or her children, but she gives thanks to God and to the Church for the compassion and grace they have shown her family.

Anne Marie and six of her seven children

(if you look close, you can see the babies feet peeking out behind the eldest sister's back).

Please pray for both Anne Marie and young daughter who have AIDS. Through the Guardians of Hope both mother and daughter are receiving medical treatment and support, and the family is benefitting from a kitchen garden and rabbits which they raise for meat. Their family has been growing beans all around their home. Through odd jobs, Anne Marie is working hard to feed and keep her children healthy. Through the Children's of Hope program the kids are receiving school fees and basic help.

If you would like to hear more of her story, we have an interview with Anne Marie that we will be posting on our podcast site early next week.

What's Around the Corner?

Travelling along narrow mountain tracks in the back of a truck with the always jovial Isaie Gakwerere, the Guardians of Hope program officer for AEBR Rwanda. Isaie brought us to visit Guardians living in Gikongoro in Rwanda's Southern Province.

Once we return to Kenya next week, we'll be posting more stories and podcasts of the work of the Children of Hope and Guardians of Hope in Rwanda. Thank you for keeping our family and these ministries in your prayers!