Friends and partners

We received the following letter recently from Paul and The Living Church.

"Our dear beloved Friends and partners in this Journey of building the peace of our Lord in our world.
I start by greetings and warm best wishes from Rwanda.
Thank you for praying for our country in this healing period after the Genocide all this time we have nursing the wounds left by it. You have prayed for us, visited us or even supported us in any way or whether given your funds in any way to support Rwanda.
God has done tremendous things over these years through His people.
1. Good leaders – God has given us wonderful leaders especially our president. He has been an answer to move Rwanda from dust to beauty. Some people don’t see it but we see it here in the country. Rwanda had no institution after the genocide so the government and the church and people all built from scratch. Rwanda was full of despair, misery, hatred, devastation, manipulation and discrimination were full in the minds of people and worst of all human life was almost non existence. People’s hearts were full of hatred, people were hopeless, and our identity as a nation was wrapped in shame, guilt and self pity. The church stood and prayed without ceasing, the government did a wonderful job to set up a good governance system and all together as one built human life, self confidence, self esteem, human rights, and mostly the hope for the future. The church organized things like Hope Rwanda which brought hope in the hearts of people. The church also had the intersession teams of people who called themselves Watchmen and through their ministry God has sent forward prophecies some of which we have seen and others that we are looking forward to be part of. I personally thank all of you for standing with us in prayer, support, and ministry to Rwanda you are friends indeed. Many things have been done by the church and government hand in hand. Reconciliation and healing of the nation plus Hope building. We thank all of you, we know we are not alone but very many people including you are standing with us. So don’t grow weary or tired keep praying and supporting us because we have seen what prayers can do to our country and we have learnt that good friends like you can make one stand his feet and move forward. Now any Rwandan can go anywhere, do anything just like anybody else and all of us proud to be called Rwandans.

2. The elections were well organized – the wounds, shame, guilty and self-pity can’t be over just in sixteen years but despite all that Rwandans have come to think beyond that. Though some people still hurt, others have genocide ideology but we are rising above it. We have seen the best elections in Africa. If we say saw we mean it because we were part of it. It was calm, free, and fair. Our good leader is still leading us and we pray for him not to turn out like all other African leaders who end up being dictators and we have faith that he will finish his course well.

3. Ministries serving the community are becoming everyone’s mission like at our church the living church(which is a reconciliation church) we support children coming from very poor families by contributing something little to their school fees, we have a program of micro finance to the widows in our church and we see them change their life, we have taken over 70 children from the streets and now most of them have reunited to their families and others we accommodate them, we do all we can though it’s a drop in the ocean, we do healing and reconciliation retreats with pilgrim center, practical reconciliation with comfort Rwanda and we have seen true reconciliation though like I said earlier we pray we could do more, so you can see that work is being done in our country and we are all part of it. Without friends and partners a country like Rwanda would never have stood on her feet again, thank you.

Special thanks to Pilgrim center for reconciliation USA, Comfort Rwanda, International Leadership institute and all of you individuals who have stood with us. Keep standing with us in building the kingdom of God by building people’s lives.

Thank you for praying for us as the Rwandan church and government to go on in building our nation.

Many blessings you all

With love from Pastor Paul and Odette Ndahigwa, family and church.

Once again thank you very much for Loving us."