Kingdom Seekers' Journal

Hello Everyone,

As most of you probably know by now, I have returned from Rwanda back home to Portland. I have written a synopsis of my 6-month experience in Rwanda and would like to share my reflections with you all. The comments are not comprehensive by any means, but I think it will give you a good idea of what I experienced and how it affected my life personally as well as the lives of the people I had the privilege of serving.

Since the paper is quite long, I will be posting it on my blog in three installments. The first section discusses "Ministry and Cultural Learning Experiences." The second section is about, "What I Learned About Myself, God and My Calling" as well as "How Western Seminary Prepared Me for The Internship." The final section addresses "Where God is Calling."

I hope you are encouraged and blessed as you read about what God has shown me while I was in Rwanda as well as what He has accomplished through your faithful giving and prayers for Rwanda.

Co-laborer with you,

Andrew Bernhard

Ministry and Cultural Learning Experiences

As I reflect upon my internship experiences over the past six months, I would like to make a few summary comments for the benefit of understanding the value of my time in Rwanda.

First, I would like to thank all the people who have invested their time and energy in teaching me about the culture and language of Rwanda. Specifically, I want to thank Benjamin Nkusi for inviting me to serve with African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries (ALARM). I appreciate John Samvura and Jean Bosco Ntakirutimana for volunteering their time to teach Kinyarwandan to me and introduce me to their friends and family from Gisenyi. I also thank Andre Mfitumukiza and Alivera Nyirampirwa for hosting me in their home and demonstrating true hospitality to those in need—the refugees of Goma. I thank the staff of ALARM for their service to make this trip logistically possible.

During the first few months of my stay in Kigali, the household of Andre and Alivera was a safe and secure environment and was a home base or starting point to begin exploring Rwandan culture and language. In their home or Inzu, my world began to expand as I was introduced to many visitors and family members coming and going from the house. Even as I moved on into ever-expanding environments of exploration and learning over the course of the six months I lived in Kigali, home was a place of refuge I could always return to. What did I observe and learn while living in the Rwandan Inzu?

In Rwanda, hospitality shown to visitors and solidarity among family and community members are core values the people intentionally foster and uphold by sharing food, conversation and resources with one another. I lived within the context of a traditional family unit as well as a household of single, unmarried young men. In both living arrangement in Kigali, I observed the privileges and responsibilities among the higher class of society in Kagugu and lower class in Nyamirambo. One case in point of Rwandan traditional family solidarity that made a great impression on me was Andre, Alivera and their children’s acceptance and integration of a refugee family from Goma, Congo into their home by: preparing food together, completing chores together, relaxing together, and worshiping together. Even while living in close quarters, the two families did not complain or argue, but accommodated and graciously flexed with the changes.

In the case of John’s bachelor household in Nyamirambo, I was able to understand the cultural expectations placed upon him and his friends as unmarried, employed wage earners in urban Kigali to provide for their families back home in rural Gisenyi. I also was touched to discover how each one living in the house is financially assisting one another to slowly realize dreams of having families of their own by contributing towards the engagement process. I believe this is a good example of how solidarity is practiced in Rwanda among the single population.

As I moved further out from the cultural epicenter of the Inzu into the ministries of ALARM, I had cultural interaction with Rwandan young people eager to learn English. The first class I taught was the Youth Reference Group (YRG), an evangelistic team joining together from local churches around Kigali. The second group I taught was at the Institute for Womens Excellence (IWE) in Rwamagana, a town an hour outside of Kigali. In both cases, many students were at first reserved and yet quietly polite when asked a direct question; it was difficult to receive feedback in the beginning which was frustrating and made it difficult to make proper readjustments to lesson content. As I continued attempting interaction with the students inside and outside of class, I learned more about their day-to-day lives as well as their hopes and dreams for the future.

Both YRG and IWE incorporate orphans of the genocide into their groups. From a few students I got to know in the classes I taught who trusted me enough to share, I learned, despite outward appearances, orphans in Rwanda face many life challenges which include: caring for physically and mentally ailing siblings affected by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; struggling to find sufficient food to eat; and raising enough money to pay for school fees. In spite of life’s challenges, the students have dreams of becoming singers and musicians, poets and even elected officials in government.

The main question I strove to answer in teaching Rwandan students was: how do I give the young people under my care hope; how do I inspire them to see beyond their immediate circumstances? In the case of the YRG, I invited them to: visit Kigali’s U.S. Embassy Culture and Information Resource Center; receive an orientation at the library there from the director, Charles Mugabo; and obtain a library loan card to check out books. For anyone to have access to a large borrowing library without attending a University is virtually impossible. When Charles honored my request, I was very please to tell the students of their newfound opportunity. When the students heard of our field trip and the possibilities of checking out books—some of them for the first time—the energy of the group lifted. I felt the occasion was truly an answer to prayer and a highlight of my ministry in Rwanda.

Over the course of my interactions with the students at IWE, I also saw God answer prayer in my attempts to relate with the girls while teaching English. Since the beginning of the year, the government abruptly converted schools lessons usually taught in French to English to meet Vision 2020[1] modernization goals. Students and teachers alike are faced with a steep learning curve transitioning into an English-speaking environment. Serving as an English instructor at IWE in the midst of the transition, my task was to initiate English conversation in the class. Since I do not have a background in Teaching English as a Second Language, nor did I have a lesson plan prepared at the time, I was teaching by trial and error. After initially presenting reading comprehension lessons without much success and a looming lesson on verb tense approaching, I finally prayed, “Lord, can you show me how to teach these concepts in an understandable fashion?” I received the idea of using a soccer ball to illustrate how to use the verb tense in real time. The girls seemed to appreciate moving around outside, catching a ball and learning grammar at the same time. The ball was a perfect medium to use at the time with the limited resources the school possessed. The girls also enjoyed singing songs with vocabulary repetition like: “O, Be Careful Little Eyes What You See” and “This Little Light of Mine.” I also learned Kinyarwandan from the students through simple songs like the following: Ninziza yangirie neza, mutima wange, himbaza iyo mana, which roughly means: my heart is thankful, because God is good to me. As we sang together and played together, I began to realize God’s presence was breaking down unseen relational barriers, which existed before.

As I continued to push still further in my cultural learning experience outside of ALARM’s environment, I began to venture into networking with other ministries based in Kigali. Networking and expanding my contact base was crucial in order to diversify my culture and language learning opportunities. Benjamin assisted me in networking by introducing me to Ceaur Joyeau (CJ), a Rwandan led Non-Governmental Organization serving the Rwandan communities through tuition sponsorship of orphans, micro-finance loans to women, and evangelistic outreach to the community. When I was available to help, I was able to initially teach the staff a few lessons of English and later on introduce the idea of drafting business plans to financially budget and plan for current and future ministries. Roger, a business administration graduate, is currently drafting business plans for all existing ministries and for the operation of a new hotel CJ hopes to build near the Bugesera airport; construction should begin as early as 2010. The legal representative, Janvier Batungwanayo, and the assistant administrator, Justin Bisengimana, are both young and eager to learn new ideas to make their organization more effective. It was fun for me to teach them new ideas and watch them integrate what they learned into their organization's operations.

Moving still farther passed Rwanda itself into the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp outside Goma, Congo, I was brought into the reality of a refugee’s uncertain and unpredictable life caused by war. Many of the refugees in the camp we visited in North Goma were about to return to the homes that they fled a few months earlier due to the conflict instigated by the Tutsi rebel General Laurent Nkunda against the Congolese army. With the economic downturn in the west, aid supplies such as food and other essentials are becoming fewer in quantity. The general feeling in the camp was one of desperation for survival. I joined a team distributing clothing to pre-selected men, women and young girls. We faced two realities: those who received something and those who received nothing. One group of people hoped they might receive something and left empty handed. In the other group, old women danced like young girls, laughing and hugging us as they received their colorful wraps we had given them. What I saw in the camps confronted my American ideals of controlling destiny according to my abilities and achievements; what I saw revealed my powerlessness to overcome oppression, injustice and insurmountable needs. I was confronted with the reality: God is the one who feeds and cares for his creation with love allowing the evil and righteous to grow together under his providential will until the time of judgment commences. Even though there are vast needs in the North Kivu region, on a personal level, there are opportunities to help financially on a limited scale.

During the trip, God challenged me to trust him with my finances by waiting upon resources from home and giving to those in Rwanda who requested assistance financially. At the time I left Portland, I was anxious about my financial situation, because I did not have enough money to meet my allotted budget. But, through the faithfulness of those who contributed back home, God showed himself faithful in supplying all my needs above and beyond my expectation. With the surplus, I was able to pay for two students’ secondary school fees that would not otherwise be able to afford school on their own. One student I sponsored, had a father die years earlier of AIDS and currently has a mother suffering from the same disease. The other student was a twenty-four year old orphan without either parent. She had finished five out of six forms in secondary school without successfully completing her education due to lack of funding. In both situations, I felt God was teaching me to trust him with my financial resources and give generously as I was made aware of the needs brought to my attention.

In other situations, as I opened myself up to serving the Lord outside my comfort zone, God brought ministry opportunities to me. One instance dealt with taboo subject of fornication. After several months of building a relationship with my barber, he approached me with a request to financially help his sister, Joelle, who was in the hospital. He was very quiet and reclusive when he talked about the emergency. At the time, I did not know if she was ill or was hurt, so I agreed to go with him to see her. When I arrived at the maternity ward with him, I quickly realized she had delivered a baby out of wedlock. In traditional Rwandan culture, women who became pregnant without a husband were thrown into a lake and drowned. Even to this day, the topic of fornication is taboo and brings great shame to a family. After buying some milk powder and other baby supplies to help her, I realized my friend trusted me enough to invite me into his culturally sensitive family crisis.