Tuesday's Blog.

It was a very long night for the pastors and insomniac Hannah!  Taking advantage of this rare opportunity, with most pastors of the diocese in town, the Bishop held a meeting which continued until 1 am.  Then at 2.57am, as predicted on the Feast of the Assumption, the rains came and thundered down for an hour on the tin roof of our rooms.  Andy amended the teaching content of his sessions this morning to include some rousing activity (acting out putting on the armour of God) in response to the pastors’ sleep deprivation.  Then further alterations to the teaching programme ensued as the pastors had a plethora of questions they wished Andy to answer on the topic of baptism in the Holy Spirit and water.  Meanwhile in the very chilly garden, Jonathan, Grace and Isobel continued with the video interviews in relation to the Support A Parish programme.

At about 1pm the Bishop drew the conference to a close and after lunch the pastors dispersed to their various parishes, keen to be home before the worst of the rain arrived.  We loaded Pastor Wilson up with a good selection of teaching materials for his long journey back to the remote village where he is currently starting a school in a converted old church building.

Later in the afternoon we wandered along Byumba’s dusty orange main street to visit the Hannah Ministry.  Set up to support orphans and children with HIV, the Hannah Ministry organises ladies to sew and weave traditional baskets.  These products are then sold to enable children to be fed a nutritious meal on a daily basis, as this helps their HIV medication to perform more effectively.  Andy examined all their wares and selected a new collection of baskets to replenish his stock back in UK, which will in turn be sold to support these ministries in Rwanda.

Next came the selection of banana fibre cards, manufactured by another group of ladies in the vicinity.  At the cathedral we met Jane, who is in charge of this enterprise and together we unloaded her boxes of hand made cards, checked, sorted and counted the packs as we laid them out all over the benches at the back of the cathedral, so that once again Andy could replenish his stock. 

This evening in our team meeting, we talked through tomorrow’s programme and suddenly realised that Pastor Juvenal, who had invited some of the team to dinner tomorrow night, had just left for a few days in Uganda!  Clearly there will be yet more alterations on our very fluid timetable! But it all helps us to trust the Lord that we can do what he wants us to do.

Tomorrow we will all be visiting King Solomon Academy to have time with the teachers and children. Should be fun. So until then….

Good-night.

Grace, Isobel, Hannah, Paul, Jonathan and Andy