Rwanda Trip – Sep-Oct 2009

I would like to tell you a little bit about my trip to Rwanda in the fall of 2009. Our home church in Oregon had sent a short-term missions team to Rwanda in 2008, and we were going on a follow-up trip to assist in the ongoing ministry of Emmanuel Sitaki, whom the Lord is using to minister to widows and orphans, and also provide teaching for church leaders.

We had the following goals:

• See how the widows were doing with their sewing business, provide them with additional help and help them open a shop in the capital city.
• Begin construction of a new workshop for training young men in the carpentry trade.
• Talk with Rwandan pastors about the Chronological Bible Lessons and make contact with a translator to translate the Bible Lessons into Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda.

I’m thankful for the opportunity to go to Rwanda and see things for myself. You can hear the names of places, about the sewing co-op, and the wood-working shop, and more importantly the ERM staff and the people they serve, as well as the churches and the believers that attend them, but there’s nothing like seeing it in person, and interacting with people face to face.

I was glad to be able to present the Chronological Method of Evangelism and Church-planting to a group of pastors, who received us well.  What I appreciated even more was the opportunity to sit down one-on-one with a few of the pastors and to share my heart with them.  We also met with a translator to make preliminary arrangements to translate the Chronological Bible Lessons.

We were thankful for the opportunities that we had to share our testimonies and to teach, but it just confirmed to me the need to have a comprehensive Bible teaching program in the language of the people, so that they can clearly understand the Bible, and more importantly the God of the Bible.  I have come to believe that the job teaching of the Chronological Lessons, and of translating them into Kinyarwanda really needs to be done by missionaries there on site in Rwanda.  Pray with me that the Lord will raise up several missionary families who will have the heart to do this.