Monday - update 2 From Kelly

You're probably wondering why there are two posts from us today, however Taylor and Sammie's school returned from Spring Break today and we promised their teachers that we'd provide a daily update from them both during this week that school has restarted.

We just now returned to the hotel and it's 10:30pm. It's been a highly meaningful day for the adults in the group and a pretty easy one for the children. The only event the children needed to attend with us today was rained out. And when I say rain I mean buckets pouring down like you've never seen before! But, Africa is prepared and it dries very quickly here. People do not stop working, they just take a break until it's merely sprinkling and then back to work again.

Eric and I, along with Amanda and John started our day rushing to the church to meet with the leadership there. Upon arriving we immediatly were driven to a local official's office. I believe he was the deputy-cell director for a sub-section of Kigali. This man had people waiting to see him lined up on a bench in the hallway just like you'd see in any other office in America. I was never able to catch his name as he didn't really make an effort to make it clear. Pastor Osee and our interpreter told this official why were were in Kigali and how Saddleback Church has partenered with his church (and all of Rwanda) to support the PEACE initiave in the country. We asked for an overview of his cell (over 30K people live there), over 40% unemployment, and a lack of educational resources for his community as well. We could tell that he was asking our interpreter what kind of money we'd be contributing to their community. We had to make it clear that we were not there to give him money. We were there to work through the church to promote the vision of the PEACE plan to which the church is committed and his government as well. We explained that his President Kigami and our Pastor Rick Warren were working from the top down and their programs will trickle down to the cell level. However, it's also up to the cell leaders to work on improvement in their cells from the ground level. Working together, they will meet in the middle. As this was a very interesting meeting were were excited to promote the vision of Pastor Osee's church to this local leader, and then walk back to Osee's church.

The second meeting of the day was with the lay church leaders, and what they call small groups. We were very suprised to find that the small groups here are NOT at all what we call them in the US. The Burton's and the Lim's split the 6 groups in half and met with them to hear what this church is trying to accomplish at this level. The people hear have a big heart for their community, but as you can imagine, they are trying to eat an elephant of problems all at once. Each of us, as couples, described Saddleback's small groups and ministries... because there are differences. The differences we described elicited some excited looks from many, however it's difficult to tell exactly how much was understood.

The last stop today was a muddy walk from the church to another local leader, a sub-leader to the deputy we met earlier. By the time we arrived, after walking through a mixed home and mud-hut neighborhood, it was dark. This leader repeated the same issues we've been hearing since our first conversation, and also had an expectation of financial support. Again, we were clear at explaining our purpose for being there and for supporting his community through programs at Pastor Osee's church. On the way back from this meeting, while walking in the muddy road in the dark, I asked one of the other Pastor's from the church, Tito... if our visit and our information brought information they were expecting to hear. He answered with a chuckle and said simply our information was timely. :)

Tomorrow our team here will visit the Genocide Memorial, continue VBS at the church for the children (rain or shine), and have one final meeting with the women of the church. That will be the end of our mission work here as well. On Wednesday we have a day to debrief, write our report to Saddleback church, and go on Game Drives in Akagera.

Until tomorrow... Bless you all!
Kelly