Today is our last day with our church. In the morning we met with the President of the church and he gave us the outline and the goals of the Church’s five year plan. Everything that they have set forth is completely in line with what the PEACE plan suggests. They started it back in 2006 and it is still going on today. After our meeting we went across the street to visit the school kids. They were so excited to see us!
We all piled into the van and went to see the Friends Peace House. This is a house that counsels people that were affected by the genocide. They counsel widows, genocide orphans, prisoners, prisoners that are released and the prisoners wives. They team the prisoners wives with the widows so that they may counsel each other and get answers. The wives have to go to their husbands and ask them if they are willing to ask for forgiveness from the widowers, if they wish to ask, the wives will usually only grant forgiveness if the prisoners are able to answer some of the questions they have, along with telling them where their loved ones are buried. When a prisoner is released, they have to go through a counseling process either from the friends peace house, or other similar peace houses.
After our visit to the Peace House, we went back to the church and the school has a dance group that was going to perform for us. The girls and boys started out by singing a few songs and then the girls did some traditional African dancing for us. They were really cute. They pulled my team up to dance with them for a little bit while I video taped them. They were so intrigued by the fact that my computer could video tape them and they could see themselves.
We then proceeded to Bourbon Coffee so we could all get lunch. Shawn was there and after lunch, Darwin left to go preach PDL on the radio. After he was done, Pastor Gasparrd, Darwin, and Augustine came back to Bourbon to pick us up.
We left to visit two of the groups connected with the church that teach people how to read. It was great to see these two different groups of people sitting in this little room facing a chalkboard learning to read, children and adults. On the way back to the church from the second group visit we saw the ladies from the basket making group. They were really excited to see us again, as we were excited to see them again too. We visited with them for a few minutes and prayed for them once again. On the way out this little boy kept jumping on the back of the van, Jean Marie kept stopping and he would jump off but by the third or forth time Jean Marie stopped the car really fast, got out and chased him down. The kid got scared and Jean Marie and the pastor took him to the side of the car and talked to him, I think Jean Marie even spanked him. It was pretty funny.
We headed back to the church for a farewell. Pastor Gasparrd had a group of people there that we had met throughout the week. Phil got up and preached to them and then we were asked to stand before everyone as a team. I told them that we were sad to leave them all. That each one of them had touched us in such an incredible way. We had come to Rwanda to teach them, but they had actually taught us. I explained that they showed us that no matter what was going on in our lives we could still have joy. That joy is something that comes from within and happiness is only an outside thing. We do not need happiness to experience joy, and that is what they had and we needed more of. They have so much joy and live for Jesus and it was such a blessing to see that. After I spoke to them, they all gathered in a circle around us and held hands and prayed for us. It was incredible. It was such an awesome God moment. You could feel the love they had for us and the love of Christ in that room. They were God’s protective hedge surrounding us.
Afterwards, we headed to Pastor Gasparrd’s house for dinner. He lives on church property. The dinner was a feast and it was delicious. We talked for a while and then Augustine shared his testimony with us. What an incredible testimony he has. When he was a child his father told his mother that he is not his son and that she needed to go find his father. So when he was 2 years old, she took him to the northern part of the country and dropped him off with his great grandmother. They did not want him either but because of the situation they took him in. He was raised with a family that was not only suffering from extreme poverty, but also did not accept him as family. He was not able to pay for school, but he would hang around the school and ask the teacher if he could attend. They let him in but he could not afford the books. They even told him that he wasn’t good enough to attend the school. In 1994 as he was about to graduate from secondary school the genocide happened and his entire family was killed. He was not able to finish school then so he fled to the forest and joined the army. He was a driver for the soldiers was therefore protected from being killed.
After the genocide was over and life started moving on he met a pastor from the Friends Church in Kigali. When the pastor asked him what he could do he said he could play the guitar and the piano. So the pastor asked him if he would like to come to his church and lead the worship. He agreed and they paid for him to come down. Once he started working at the church and saved enough money he bought a car, but he did not take the test to get a driver’s license. Instead he paid a cop some money and he gave him a license. He was pulled over one day and the cop said that his car was involved in an accident that killed 2 people, which wasn’t true. When the cop tried to pull up his license in the system he could not find it listed. So he asked him where he got his license and Augustine told him that he paid a police officer and got one. Because of this and the fact that he was being accused of being in the accident, he was arrested and put in jail. Once he was in jail he had many of the genocide prisoners trying to make him their “wife”. He met a man who had a great deal of power and influence not only in jail, but also during the genocide and was now involved in the prison ministry. He asked Augustine where he came from and what he was doing and once he told him that he was working for the church, the man offered him protection on the basis that he would also work for the prison ministry. His cell mate was also a man that was in the prison ministry and he knew English. So Augustine started taking English lessons from this man. He learned everything he could while he was in prison. People from the church would come and visit him at times and bring him food. Anything that he received he gave either to the man that was protecting him or to the man that was teaching him English. His sentence was only for 6 months but because their court system takes so long because of all the genocide prisoners, he could not get a court date any sooner. In order to be released from prison you have to go before the court, confess your crime and ask for forgiveness. Even some of the genocide prisoners that are actually innocent have to ask for forgiveness unless it can be completely proven that they actually were not involved. You see if someone from a particular household is involved in the killings, it is assumed that others in the household are involved as well and all are arrested.
Once he was released from prison he went back to working for the church, however the pastor that was there was no longer working there. Instead it was Pastor Gasspard. He allowed Augustine to come back to work and to live on the church property once again. He began teaching English to people and started making more money that way. He wanted to go to college but the college that he wanted to go to said they could not offer him a degree because he did not finish secondary school. They allowed him to come to class anyways and study even though he would not receive a degree. He began studying computers and after the first week he was excelling above the rest of the students. They began asking him for help and he began teaching them. Because of this, the rich students that had their own cars would pick him up for school and take him back home in return for his help. He has now started his own computer company and still works out of the church. He teaches English and still helps with the worship in the church. He has his own house on the church property and he is getting married in August. He has come such a long way and he is so thankful to the Lord for everything that he has. He compares his life in prison to that of Paul’s when he was in prison he was protected by the Lord, just as Augustine was in prison and was also protected by the Lord.
1 comment:
What an amazing testimony he has. Thanks for sharing with us. :) You really are meeting some incredible people there. :) ~A
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