Dear Friends and Family,
Our month in Rwanda and Kenya was exceptional. God blessed us by allowing us to return to Rwanda on this mission trip! We appreciated your prayers and support during this wonderful time. Our expectations of this trip were fulfilled! We had wonderful ministry opportunities with English as a Second Language in two different cities (Butare and Gisenyi), and also had opportunities to encourage many people that we knew when we lived in Rwanda before as missionaries, including some very unexpected visits! We had an extra blessing that we didn’t realize we’d have – spending 2 days at an orphanage with 106 children.
Week One: As we got off the plane in Rwanda, Scott & Paula were amazed that they were able to speak Kinyarwanda (the language of Rwanda) fairly well! It was exciting to visit with nationals that we knew before, especially Samuel and Peace and their four children. He is a local Baptist pastor and she teaches at an elementary school. We were also glad to see the Child Evangelism Fellowship work that we started so many years ago is now thriving again. And it was nice to touch base with old missionary friends. It was also wonderful that one missionary friend who went back to our home soon after the genocide, had saved a few boxes of things from our old house. Most of the items were Kinyarwanda Bible lessons, tracts, and training materials plus the visuals to go along with the lessons. We were glad to be able to share the materials with the CEF of Rwanda and others who we had trained during our years there! It felt like a miracle to have the teaching materials available now that CEF is going strong again!
Week Two: We really enjoyed the two weeks of teaching English as a Second Language. We spent the first week in Butare working with University students. There was a morning and afternoon class with around 30-35 students per session. Most of them were intermediate to advanced students. We had planned on teaching 6 different subjects per person – with a total of 36 subjects available.
Some of the subjects we chose encouraged great conversations, like the class on Sales and Customer Service. There was one student, Gracion, who made furniture for a living. Scott used him as an example and the whole class really got into talking about how he could make more money by asking questions to discover his customer’s needs and by having furniture available for them to look at before purchasing.
One fun class was when Zack taught the students how to make sock puppets. One man in particular really understood the concept and had a blast. Zack presented Mrs. Betty with a puppet to help with English learning. She and the students loved it. We did a puppet show as an example of how to use the puppets in teaching. Several men who help in their churches thought it would be wonderful to use in the children’s classes.
Brian taught architecture one afternoon. He had gone over some architecture plans with Mr. Rick the night before and used a blueprint of a cheese factory that had been built by the Southern Baptists a few years ago. Brian talked with the students about the proper techniques of architecture and how important it is to build a building to last.
Weather in America was an interesting class taught by Heidi. She had National Geographic pictures of different kinds of weather from around the US. The students enjoyed looking at the snow pictures. Betty brought out ice shavings from the side of the freezer. It looked and felt like snow and the students couldn’t believe that people would actually go outside to play in something so cold!
Courtney taught a class about Hershey, Pennsylvania. Betty did an introduction by saying, “I need a kiss! Does anyone know what a kiss is?” She was expecting me (Paula) to come up and hand her a Hershey’s kiss. But after comments that they knew what a kiss was, one of the students, Claude, stood up and said, “That would be me” and gave her a kiss on the cheek!! Too bad the camera wasn’t in hand at that moment! Then Courtney told about Hershey, PA and we passed out chocolate kisses to everyone!
American Farming led by Paula was fun because comparisons were made with Rwanda farming and US farming styles, amounts of cattle, food grown, and other differences. Pictures of tractors and combines produced questions about why we would want to take jobs away from the workers and use a machine!
Week Three: In Gisenyi, most of the students were beginning English students. For example, instead of advanced vocabulary about farming techniques, we taught the basic words for foods and animals on a farm. There were a few intermediate students and also a few that knew absolutely no English besides, “My name is”.
We had movie day both in Butare and Gisenyi. We brought “Facing the Giants”. In Butare, there was great conversation and questions about the movie and also the English. In Gisenyi, they missed a lot of the movie from lack of understanding, but seemed to enjoy it. One of the main comments was that in Rwanda “Men don’t cry”. They had trouble with the main character “saving face”. But were interested in the gospel message that was throughout the movie! It led to great discussion of the gospel!
Miss Martha, our host in Gisenyi, has adopted one Rwandan girl and is in process to adopt two more girls. We were thrilled when she had us stay at the orphanage for 2 days. When we got there, we prepared a meal for 106 orphans, plus the staff. We were taken to the cooking house where it took us 2 hours to peel & grate carrots, chop tomatoes, cabbage, parsley, celery, & cut pineapples and avocados. We cooked the meat, added the spices, parsley, tomato sauce, tomatoes, & celery. The men in the cookhouse had the noodles cooking. We made salad of cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, pineapples, avocados and mayonnaise. Then we served the kids in the cafeteria. With the help of Mrs. K-Ellen and the main teacher, we gathered plates and began putting the food (including a nice bread roll) on the plates. Later we helped clean up and played with the kids for awhile.
As we were leaving the cafeteria, Tamari, one of our former Rwandan friends, was waiting for us! We could hardly believe it. She had lost her husband and 4 sons during the genocide and moved up to the orphanage to be a dorm mother and be near her 2 remaining daughters and their families.
We spent the next day playing games with the orphans. We played soccer, Magnetix, Yatzhee, and painted with water colors. They really enjoyed the different activities and we had a great time there!
Week Four: Our last week was spent in Nairobi, Kenya visiting Rwandan friends that now live in Kenya. The 2 families were our closest workers and friends during the time we lived in Rwanda and both had been able to escape to Zaire during the genocide. Because they were already pre-registered for a 4 month training school, and they had taken their passports as they fled, we were able to help them get to Kenya.
It was wonderful for us to spend several days visiting Michael and Edisa and their 4 boys, and Leonard and Florence and their daughter, Elsie. Michael is now the youth and children’s pastor of the Buruburu Baptist Church. Leonard and Florence work with Child Evangelism Fellowship and are teacher trainers all over East Africa! This was a priceless time for us! We are so glad that our good friends are doing well.
Notes from the rest of the team:
Zack: First of all, going back to Rwanda was an answer to prayer! I had always wanted to return since I was born in Rwanda. The biggest thing to me was seeing our old house in Kigali. Of course, things had changed because it had been 13 years since we left. The time we spent in Rwanda was too short. I do not remember much about the country itself from when I was young, but I wanted to learn the language. I did learn some important phrases like “Amafaranga angahe?” which means “How much money is it?”, “Muraho” which is “Hello” and the one word we heard everywhere, “Muzungu!!” which means “white person”. The small kids would shout it out and as a joke I shouted “Muzungu ari he?” which means “Where is the white person?”. The kids would reply that I was the white person! I hope to return to Rwanda some day!
Brian: For me the trip was a really humbling experience, since I had only known about how poor the people there actually are from what I heard about from what people told me, and what I had seen in newsletters. But to actually go there and experience the poverty first hand was really overwhelming at times. As far as souvenirs go, I did like that everything was so cheap. It was great seeing old friends, and making new ones, like the ones we made in the English Center classes, and seeing Michael and Florence, and their families. I liked the two game parks we went to, even though I didn’t get to hunt anything. I was amazed that we found everyone we were hoping to find, and I thought that was really incredible how much everyone had grown. This is a trip that I would wish on anyone. I loved it.
Heidi: Well, our trip was the answer to thirteen years of prayers and wishing on my part, so I really enjoyed myself. I liked teaching students and helping them with their English. However my favorite parts of the trip was seeing the people I remembered, and the countryside. I was so overjoyed to see Florence and her family, and Michael and his family. Another thing I had been hoping to do was to see our last home in Rwanda and to actually remember what it looked like. There were so many places and people I thought I would never see again. I thank God for allowing us the opportunity to have closure from the past. My heart is healed and I can now look forward to the future with a joyful and willing heart.
Thank you for your prayers and gifts toward this fabulous trip! God blessed in many ways!
Scott, Paula, Heidi, Brian, & Zack Pence and Courtney Elder
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