Dear Family and Friends,
The boys and I arrived in Nairobi Sunday afternoon. We will miss Rwanda and Congo, but it feels good to be onto the next step of our journey. The first thing the boys wanted to eat once we dropped out bags off at Mt. Carmel-the Church of the Nazarene Guest House-was pizza. It wasn’t quite Pizza Hut or Papa Murphy’s, but still tasted pretty darn good.
We had a very full day today. Our first stop was at the David Kendrick Elephant Orphanage where we saw twenty elephants from aged three-months to two-years. We also saw the cutest five-month-old rhino I’ve ever seen. We were even able to pet some of the elephants and the rhino for a few minutes. After this we stopped at Maasai Weavers who weave handmade rugs (we have several at home already, but I may have picked up one or two for Shelly J).
Our next stop was Africa Nazarene University just down the dirt road a couple of kilometers. I can’t believe how much ANU has grown up since I was there last. Rod and Sarah Reed are at General Assembly in Orlando so we didn’t see them, unfortunately. Sarah arranged our room at Mt. Carmel as well as a driver for their car while we’re here. It was very nice to see Daryl and Verna Stanton again as well as Gift Mtukwa (a former student who is now a lecturer in the Religion Department).
Our next stop was Kitengala Glass where we picked up several paper weights and a few hand blown glass mugs. Kitengala makes beautiful “bush” glass. Jimmie especially liked their glass and picked up half a dozen paperweights for himself and Christmas presents. I found a paperweight that looks like the Palantir Stone in Lord of the Rings.
After buying our glass items, one of the workers at Kitengala showed us a suspension cable footbridge that goes across a small canyon in back of Kitengala. The boys and David, our driver, walked the 200 or so yards across the 100 foot deep canyon. I stayed behind and took pictures as I had had enough of suspension bridges when I was in Ghana in 2007. David and the boys thought the bridge was one of the more incredible things they have ever done. One more serendipity on the journey.
The sun was beginning to set by the time we made it to Giraffe Manor. We weren’t there long, but all of us loved feeding and “kissing” the giraffes (if you put a giraffe food pellet in your mouth, the giraffes will lick your face from your chin to your forehead with their fourteen inch tongue raking the pellet from your mouth into theirs. Sometimes you get giraffe tongue in your mouth, which isn’t too pleasant, but it’s not worse than getting licked by a cow). Chuck said Giraffe Manor was probably the coolest thing we’ve done so far.
By 6:30 p.m. we finally made it to the Carnivore where we stuffed ourselves full of crocodile, roasted chicken, ostrich, beef, lamb, pork ribs, sausage, and turkey all roasted over a huge coal fire. It was incredibly delicious. Jimmie and Chuck had a eating contest to see who could eat the most meat. Jimmie won-but just barely.
Tomorrow morning we leave for our long-awaited wildlife Safari at the Mara Intrepids tented camp in Maasai Mara. Tomorrow is also Shelly’s and my 25th wedding anniversary. J. Thank you for putting up with me for over half your life. You make me a better man!!!
Here’s another flashback from a week ago in Gisenyi:
Gisenyi, Rwanda-June 15, 2009 (Monday)
Simon and I visited Adele and Esperance today (June 15). Every time I am in Gisenyi I see Adele serving somewhere. Whenever there’s a child feeding day, she’s there. The other day after the cassava harvest at Ndengera, she was handing out four kilograms of cassava to one child from every family. Before this trip I knew Adele’s name, but none of her story.
Adele’s “husband” is a former pastor. A few years ago he went to Congo saying he had a business there. While he was there he met a lady and made her pregnant. According to Simon this was not the first time he had done this. Simon says that over the years this man has often left Adele for “business” in Congo, leaving her for six to twelve months at a time. Each time he’s come home long enough to make Adele pregnant and then leaves her again. What a CREEP! About a year ago he came back once again to Adele in Gisenyi and cried and repented in church in front of God and everyone. He told Adele and everyone else in the church how sorry he was for how he had hurt her and the children. He assured Adele that he was not going back to the other woman again. Adele welcomed him back and history repeated itself: Adele became pregnant and he left. Hopefully this is the last she ever sees of him. Thank God, Adele is not HIV positive.
On our way back from delivering the Pineapple press to Gahinga, Simon told me about the Gisenyi Church’s microfinance program for widows, abandoned wives, and single women originally funded by World Relief. Forty-two women have been helped with short-term loans. Simon Pierre says that the Gisenyi Church first gives a woman a loan of $60. Once she pays that back, they will loan her $100. If she proves trustworthy with a $100 loan, then they will loan her up to $200. Once a women pays back a $200 loan, then the Gisenyi church recommends her to a bank if she needs a loan for a larger amount.
About 60% of the women pay back the loans in full. Simon says the payback rate would be much higher if there was one person responsible to work with and encourage the women in developing viable businesses and then hold them accountable to pay their loans back. With so many projects going on, Simon simply does not have time to regularly supervise the twenty or so women currently in the microfinance program.
Adele was one of the first women to participate in the microfinance project. Because her husband often abandoned her and she had no other way to support herself and her children, Adele applied for a $60 loan. She quickly paid off that loan and then paid off $100 and $200 loans as she grew increasingly successful in selling secondhand bottles and buckets that had been used for cooking oil, water, or even paint. It didn’t sound like a lucrative business to me when Simon was telling me about it, but he assured me that she made enough money to pay $2,000 cash for her house four years ago with absolutely no help from her husband.
I told Simon that I think Adele is the perfect person to serve as the microfinance project manager. The women in the program need someone who has navigated the same rough waters as them who can give them wise advice, encouragement, prayer support, and hold them accountable. Adele is a perfect fit for this position. Simon says that $50/month will fund this position.
Adele’s house is small and cramped with dirt floors, but it’s paid for and it’s less than a five minute walk to Ndengera. There is a storage room and then two rooms that are used for a living room and a bedroom. Both of these rooms are about 8 X 10 feet. Adele and her children sleep in one room and then another woman, Esperance, and her five children sleep in the other room.
Esperance’s children started coming to the Gisenyi church’s feeding fifteen months ago when their mother was sick in the hospital from complications of HIV/AIDS. Adele knew the children had nowhere else to go so she invited them to stay with her and the children. Adele is another Veronique, giving the very little she has so that someone else can simply live. Adele is a true Christian.
The oldest of Esperance’s children, who is eighteen, hauls heavy loads back and forth between Rwanda and Congo. Simon says it’s a miracle she has not become pregnant as carrying loads is very dangerous with many places where women can be raped. Along these same paths there are many men who proposition young girls with money for sex. Many of the young girls/women are so hungry and weary with their hopeless lives that even less than a dollar is enough to entice them to give their body to such men.
If having a worthless man for a husband is not bad enough, Adele’s oldest daughter, Mwamini, is slightly mentally challenged. Simon thinks the bead making project will be a good fit for her abilities. The additional income will be a wonderful blessing for their family.
Speaking of the bead project, the first day we were here in Gisenyi it was exciting to watch each member of the Hawaii work and witness team walking around with an arm full of necklaces and bracelets per person. When the Point Loma team to Rwanda was in Gisenyi (this is a different team than the one we worked with in Bukavu), they bought over $1,000 in beaded merchandise. I’m bringing back with me two hundred sets of necklaces, bracelets, and earrings.
I’ve been to the Ndengera workshop several times and have been very impressed with how well the bead women and banana leaf young men work together. Simon told me that when they first moved the project from the Gisenyi Church to the Ndengara building the banana leaf guys worked in one room making cards and the bead making ladies made their beads in another room. One day the bead-making ladies asked the guys about working in the same room and they all thought it was a great idea. Working together has worked so well that they can’t even think of working in separate rooms now. Simon says they complement each other’s businesses wonderfully. Sometimes the ladies help the young men make cards and other times the men will help the women make beads. Both groups enjoy being able to talk, laugh, and pray with each other while they’re working.
When Jimmie, Chuck, and I were the Holocaust Memorial in Kigali, Rwanda, I saw a poster with the following saying on it: “In Kinyarwanda it’s said: ‘A cow learning to eat starts with the fence.’ In Rwanda the fences are made of plants and this means that the starting point is always close at hand.” This saying made we wonder: what is the starting point for tough situations like that of Adele and Esperance and their children? Every time I come in contact with one more seemingly unsolvable life situation here, I am learning to ask: What’s the starting point? I may not be able to make all the pain go away, but, God helping me, I know I can do something to make what is a horrible situation just a little bit better.

Even so, when encountering situations of extreme poverty, I sometimes sense despair kicking my hope to the curb. I often ask myself: How am I to maintain hope in these kinds of situations? How do I keep my eyes on the possibilities of God rather than the impossibilities of the context at hand? One of the ways I cling to hope is by reminding myself that the stories I’ve been sharing from Africa, as well as my story and your story, are all part of the larger gospel story of hope, healing and redemption. God is at work whether we see it or not-in the obvious places, yes, but even more importantly where we least expect it.

I tell these stores to generate hope in you and in me-so that we are reminded that hope is stronger than despair, life and not death has the final say, the resurrection and not the cross is the final word about human life, whether we live in an American suburb or an African slum.

I write to encourage us to affirm the power of mustard seed faith-that one tiny act of hope and generosity can open up a very dark corner of the world to the light of Christ. This is the Christmas message (yes, I realize that I’m about 6 months early J): the light of God shines upon us all through the gift of one tiny baby born in a manger that was not so far different from the hovels in which so many of those I have met and love in Africa live. At Christmas and every day we celebrate that God himself was born into his own creation to redeem us from the mess we’ve made of God’s good world.

The Christmas message affirms that neither you nor I, neither Adele nor Esperance, or their children are alone. God himself has come to help every one of us. A theology of hope and a firm belief that God is always healing and redeeming, whether I perceive it or not, is what keeps me going in Africa.

I’m also learning more and more that God uses ordinary people like you and me-however insignificant and useless we may feel-to be God’s eyes, ears, hands and feet in the world. Jesus tells us in the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25 that when we minister to those in need, we do it not only for him, but to him: “I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. . . . I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”

With your prayers and gifts you are making a world of difference in hundreds of lives in Bukavu, Goma, Gisenyi, and Ghana. A house for Josephine and Julienne will make life a little more hopeful and humane for them, Baraka, and their other children. A job for Adele’s mentally challenged daughter is hardly a huge dent on global poverty, but it is one more mustard seed-sized rock thrown in the lake of God’s mercy, whose waves are rippling out into the far reaches of the Kingdom of God.

There’s an African story about a hummingbird that tried to put out a forest fire. When mocked by other animals, the hummingbird replied, “I’m doing what I can.” As a mustard seed people (Jesus’ parable of the mustard seed is in Matthew 13:30-32)), we may often feel like the hummingbird in this story. But in faithfulness to the Gospel-the good news of Jesus-God tells us, “Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.”
Following the gentle lead of the Spirit, I believe we are changing the world, making it a little simpler in Jesus’ name for people to feed, clothe, shelter themselves, and live lives of joy as God intends for us all. The words of an old worship chorus express well what I sense God has called me to do: “Maybe you and I can’t do great things . . . . We may not change the world in one day, but we still can change some things today. . . . In our small way.”
Each time we do something for one of God’s precious, but weak and vulnerable children, we are throwing a mustard seed-sized rock of faith into the lake of God’s mercy, creating ripples of hope, compassion, and justice. Thanks be to God!

Love and prayers,

Joe, Jimmie, and Chuck