3 Missionary Musketeers

  

Dinner together the Saturday before Father's Day 

with Hatches (office couple), Hoopes (MLS couple for eastern Uganda districts) 

and Birds (humanitarian couple).  We met up in Kampala on the same weekend, a rare occasion. 

 

Seeds of Miracles

 

There are no chance meetings. 

Last week our grandson, Elder Packer Evans, challenged the family to respond to this question, “How have I seen the Lord bless me as I sacrifice time for him?”  In our kitchen window at home, we have a small plaque that reads a similar question, “Have I seen the hand of the Lord in the lives of my family today?”  This week we have tried to focus on that question each day and realize more fully how the Lord directs our lives. 

This has been a bit of a stressful month.  Unknown to us, all 7 Districts in Rwanda and Kigali City each have a form who regulates donors.  This gives the individual districts and the city a heads up on projects being done within their boundaries.  This way they can be aware of the maintenance responsibilities that must be placed in their future budgets and staff workloads. There are so many well-meaning countries and organizations pouring money into Rwanda since the genocide, the government was beginning to lose track of them.  Plus, some districts had companies and churches doing work on top of each other while other districts have no help at all.  These JADF (Joint Action Development Forums) control who and what aid is being given.  For instance, our church put 18 boreholes in one district 10 years ago.  Those borehole pumps have not all been maintained and some are now unrepairable.  Others are very near additional boreholes placed in country by Japan.  In fact this specific district has 5 organizations placing boreholes within it’s boundaries while we recently found another district who is in desperate need with only one donor in fifteen years.  Therefore, the government asked several donors to move their efforts to another needy district.    We admire a government that is structured such so that our efforts are maintained after donations.

But back to my story…. We didn’t know about JADF.  When we became aware, we began to fill out paperwork to apply to become part of the Forum in each District.  One District was already upset with the church who had sent an MOU for the District to sign.  The District refused to sign until a church representative was a member of JADF.  Our Area humanitarian team who was managing the project became distraught not understanding all they had to do was apply and the Area Legal team became defensive.  Elder and Sister Bird were sent in to solve the issue.  When we found out what the problem was everyone was already on the defensive.  We moved ahead with the application and tried to calm everyone down.  Through this one experience we did research and found this JADF requirement was in place for all districts but some were more strict than others.  In Kigali City there are 3 districts who are all regulated by the City.  No wonder we had the city asking us for a commitment of where we were intending to spend money and how much.   For legal purposes this is something the church never commits to.  Now we have a conflict between the church and the local government. 

In not too recent past the citizens of Rwanda have been taken advantage of by some churches who came in, built up a congregation, collected a lot of money to build church buildings and then left with all the money.  In addition, they have had a problem with child trafficking as claiming orphanages wanted to relocate children in other countries promising to give education and care but instead turned out to be selling children.  Rwanda has become very protective.  Even our missionaries have had a few problems leaving the country to serve missions. 

At present, Education is a big focus in Rwanda.  This is a young adult country.  Most of the older generation, parents of these youth, were slaughtered in the genocide leaving siblings to raise each other.  Sibling relationships are very close.  The government, about 5 years too late, is now focusing heavily on advanced education.  The church is trying to get “Pathways” recognized but the Rwanda Education Ministry is leery of on-line schools and will not offer accreditation to Pathways. 

Now, after all this background you can see our month has been a little stressful as we have written letter after letter, fill out application after application and met with Ministry officials in almost every facet of the government, tried to explain to our legal team what is being required, tried to get appointments for our Area authorities with government officials yet being denied and in general not daring to move forward with our projects in Rwanda.  We have fasted enough this month we should have lost 10 pounds each, but sadly we haven’t. 

Now for our little miracle experience.  As we were ending our fast on Sunday, a knock came at our gate.  The guard answered and then knocked at our door.  A neighbor wants to visit with us.  We invited him in.  When he introduced himself as a past member of the ministry we thought he was a pastor.  Turns out he was from the Ministry of Education in Rwanda.  He is now on an Educational Board who is over education for all the countries of Africa.  He has moved to the Ivory Coast with this new position.  He is presently in Rwanda meeting with the Ministry to help them embrace and give accreditation for  advanced educational degrees from larger universities who offer online courses such as Pathways in business and technology.    As part of his assignment he works with the United Nations.  As such he has been living in the US (DC) for the past three years.  He knows of BYU.  He invited Elder Carpenter and Elder Ronald A. Rasband who are to be in country this week, to join their meetings today to plead their case.  Of course we have no direct communications with these brethren but we sent word up through the channels and are hopeful they will take advantage of the opportunity.  (We just learned they had a one hour meeting together.)

How did this man find us?  We passed his house on our morning walk and stopped to admire a flowering bush.  He saw us as he was leaving for his meetings and asked a neighbor who we were and where we lived.  He came to invite us to see the rest of his yard.  Oh how the Lord works his wonders.  In this one simple incident he may plant the seed for the future education of millions of youth in African nations.  Of course, this isn’t the only seed planted, or nourished, but as the many seeds grow in the garden a good crop will be harvested.   

To continue the story of Kigali City, the Commonwealth of Nations is presently descending upon Rwanda for their biannual meeting.  53 country dignitaries will attend.  The Rwanda government people are swamped right now so we are on hold for a few weeks.  Elder Rasband decided not to come since he could not get appointments with the President of Rwanda but Elder Carpenter, the Area President, is here. 

We will leave for Uganda after our District conference on tomorrow.  We have seven projects underway or to get started in Uganda so we will shift gears and check on those jobs for three weeks.  Once again we will meet with government leaders in hopes of gaining their support for projects suggested by our Stake Presidents.  After six months, we are getting smarter.  This first week we have four appointments with partnership organizations like, IRC, Water Aid, Water For People, Maji, and USAID.  We are hoping to find a good fit so we can join forces to implement larger projects and let that organization do the ground level work leaving us more free time to find other projects.  We are swimming in paperwork with all these small projects.  Small school projects are rewarding but a LOT of work.   Now that we have a few projects underway we will start posting some photos so you can see what we are doing.