Friday

We started our day by going to a church that has a ministry for some of the street boys around Kigali. The young boys are placed in a home with a house mom in charge. The older boys are trained with some remedial skills to get them ready for schooling. Once they show that they have potential to succeed in school they are provided with the school fees so that they can begin or continue their education. They just had one of their boys pass the national exam and will go to university. He wants to study journalism.
They have formed a soccer team that competes in various tournaments and Bow school district donated some of their soccer jerseys for these boys. I wish I had video of their faces and could record the cheers that erupted when we showed them the jerseys. It was really cool to see their appreciation. We set up stations where we were going to do crafts with them, give them new underwear, and provide some basic medical attention. The director of this ministry was then trying to organize the boys into groups to determine who was in need of medical attention and so she asked who needed to be seen and 80% of the hands went up. Then Rich (our missionary friend) told the boys that he would be the one providing the medical attention and not all these beautiful girls. Then he said, "So who now needs to be seen?" About 50% of the hands went down! So funny!
I helped Rich with the medical stuff and Kayla helped with the craft station. We had the men of the team distribute the underwear we brought. You would think that giving out underwear seems a little odd....but to these boys it is a luxury...when you have a little bit of money and you are hungry....you will buy food and live without something so basic as underwear.
After lunch we went to visit with some local widows that survived the genocide and hear their story. I think that Pastor Kevin captured Beatrice's story so well...so I highly recommend you go to his blog and read about this amazing woman and see for yourself the wounds that she has endured. Go to www.kevintwombly.com and click on the link to his blog. It's worth it. It's powerful!
We ended the night with an outreach. We arrived at a church with a large field on the property. There were at least 100 people there already...mostly children. It was not long before the crowd grew to about 300. We started with them leading us in worship on the field beside the church. We had brought microphones a projector and a screen and keyboard. All the children wanted to dance with us and it was a blast! so much fun to dance with them and share their joy...it was contagious! The low point of my day came when Moses called me over to pray for a young girl who told him that she has no where to go. Both parents had died and she was in an orphanage and a couple came to adopt her, but once she arrived home with them, they only wanted a house girl and they mistreated her. So she is now on the street and she just knocks on different houses each night asking for a place to sleep. It was awful. Again, I am overwhelmed with a feeling of helplessness.....what really can I do? I can't just take her home with me as much as I might have wanted to! So I do all that I can. I pray with her and for her and I trust that God will protect her and give her a HOME, not just shelter for a night. Moses gave her his contact info and he will try to follow up on her. Her name is Diane. Pray for her!