Weekend Update

Sorry, late again. The internet was down all morning here in Gisenyi.

What a crazy weekend!! The last two days have been absolutely phenomenal!! Here is just a quick overview.

Saturday started like most other days. We got up and everyone headed off to the school worksite. We worked at stuccoing the interior walls and lugging cement all morning. We made some great progress. Oh, and we hung the Canadian flag at the end of the building. It fits right in. From there we went to Simone Pierre’s church where we walked into a building and were greeted by hundreds of people who were cheering and clapping all for us. It was humbling, but all the praise belongs to God and the way that His great plan has been unfolding. We are simply his tools, and we are very grateful for that. While we were with those people folks we handed out the school supplies, the new school uniforms and then moved outside to distribute the goats and chickens. We were able to raise enough money to give away 84 goats. At first we thought, great, some people now have some more milk or meat. But these goats mean much more. In Rwanda there are different classes of people and it is based on certain possessions that you have. Because these people received goats, it moved them up in that class and for some gave them an occupation now.

Sunday was an unbelievable day. These people know how to praise God. We went to church in the morning which was filled with loud, upbeat music with everyone dancing and praising God without any hesitation. It can’t be explained in words the way that these people glorifying God in word and action. I (matt) gave the message in church . It was translated into two other languages, so that was a new experience and Wayne and Sylvia had the awesome privilege of serving communion to the congregation. After that Colleen gave her info session on proper care during pregnancy to about 80 mothers while the rest of the team went to play with the Sunday school kids.
After church we headed out to do a little bit of site seeing. We went to the RC (Congo) border, we seen some of the devastation from 1994, then we went back to the restaurant we ate at a couple of days ago. This time though we got in a boat and traveled over to see some hot springs, over to another beautiful island and then back to the shore where we had a couple hours of traditional music, dance and a performance by local acrobats who Simone Pierre once had in his care. We closed the day off with a meal and then hit the hay. We needed this day of relaxation. We will be putting a big push on Monday morning so we can have this building done by the time we leave.
God is good! We are changing everyday and understanding more and more about what it means to have a true and solid faith in God. Keep praying for us. And again, leave some comments below as it is a great encouragement for all of the team members. We miss you and love you all.