This day started with us going to the church at 9 for a meeting with the HIV/Aids and support groups that we met earlier in the week, along with many members of the church. Pastor Gasparrd spoke to them for a while telling them some of the proverbs from the Bible on poverty and what Jesus said to do about it rather than begging. Afterwards, Phil got up and spoke on how much the mean to all of us and how God cares and we care about them. Then Robert spoke on PDL for a little bit. After that I gave them the Jesus film to watch in their own language.
We left the church and went to Bourbon again for lunch. Shawn met us there while he waited for Andrew to show up for a meeting and we ran into some of the Saddleback staff over here. Robert left to meet Augustine and Pastor Gasspard at the radio station where he was going to talk about PDL. He spoke on the radio for an hour after which we picked him up from the radio station and drove out to “Geetaramo” to visit one of the sister churches of the Friends Church. It would normally take about an hour to drive out there except for the fact that we had to stop at a bank for Augustine to make a transaction. Since this was a little bank outside of town and everything is done by hand, what would have only taken ten minutes in the States took almost forty minutes here. While we were waiting I was journaling in the van, to my surprise my screen was being read by one of the local boys to the other three boys standing with him. I kept closing the computer and they would just laugh. The boy that could read English started flirting with me. Trying to give me the “eyes” which was funny on the one hand, but disturbing on the other since he was only about 14 years old. We finally arrived at the little church that was still being built. They were putting in a baptism pool, but it was basically just a large mud hole in the ground that was very deep and not very wide. We visited there for about fifteen minutes and then headed back since we did not have a lot of time left. As we drove back, we drove past a genocide memorial. I wanted to go and visit it, but because the main building was still under construction the only way to go in was to have papers authorizing the visit by the local government. So I just took pictures from the car. We just drove by “Bar Happyness” and “Club Spic”. There is obviously no western influence here at all!
Our goal was to be back to Kigali by 5:00 because the Rwanda film festival was happening and tonight they were showing a film on the genocide called “Shake Hands With the Devil”. I did not think we were going to make it in time so I called Caroline and Jade and told them to go ahead and leave Bourbon and head over to the hotel where it was being shown, which was a couple blocks away. However a few minutes after I made the call, we were back in Kigali. So rather than heading back to our church to drop off Augustine and Pastor Gasspard, I asked Jean Marie to drop us off at the Hotel de Milles Collines (Hotel of a thousand hills), the hotel were the movie Hotel Rwanda took place. We got there before the girls and were met by a few people from Saddleback, including Catherine from the plane. About ten minutes later Caroline and Jade walked in with Shawn. The movie that was supposed to start at 5:30 didn’t end up starting until a little after 7:00 because they were having trouble getting the big inflatable screen to blow up. So instead they brought in a big retractable screen to show the movie on. Jade and Caroline left because they were too tired and Darwin left because he wanted to prepare for his speech on the radio. The movie was incredible. It was a take on the Genocide from the point of view of the General that was stationed here in Kigali from the UN. I would highly recommend it to everyone.
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