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Staying Up Late for a Revival in Africa

January 22, 2025
Rev. John Rozeboom (right) stands with a pastor at the refugee camp he visited in Uganda.
Rev. John Rozeboom (right) stands with a pastor at the refugee camp he visited in Uganda.

Rev. John Rozeboom, retired pastor and member of Oakdale Park Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., said that fellow worshipers at Elohim Global Ministries Church, located in one of the oldest refugee camps in Africa, were surprised at his stamina when he joined them for a four-day revival in December.

The services, he said, went on morning, afternoon, and evening from Thursday through Sunday, featuring sermons, prayers, exhilarating music, and lots of energetic dancing.

On Friday and Saturday, when the services ran past 3 a.m., Rozeboom was still present and “won lots of friends,” he said. They told him he was the only “muzungu,” white person, who had ever hung in there all night. “Who knew? I was not out to set a record. I was just invested and joined in as a worshiper,” he said. 

Although he had a range of experiences during his time in Africa, said Rozeboom, being part of the conference with 500 worshipers every day at the church in the sprawling Nakivale refugee camp in Uganda stands out to him.

“There were four choirs, keyboard players, women and girls dressed in traditional and contemporary clothes of every color imaginable, men in suits, song leaders who were outstanding for their talent and vigor – and all of it was dedicated to worshiping God,” he said.

Rozeboom visited the camp at the invitation of Pastor Claude Ngendahayo and his wife, Florence, who are friends of Rozeboom and who traveled with him from the U.S. to see the work the couple are doing in that part of the world. Besides founding outreach centers in the Nakivale camp and elsewhere in Africa, Claude Ngendahayo is pastor of Victory CRC, which is part of and meets at Oakdale Park CRC. 

Rozeboom played an important role with other Oakdale members in helping Ngendahayo, a commissioned CRC pastor, gain approval for Victory to become an organized CRC congregation. Composed mainly of African refugees, the group had been working for several years to join the denomination.

Ngendahayo, who is originally from the Congo, was living in the Oakdale Park neighborhood several years ago when he met former pastor Emmet Harrison and, with members of the congregation he was leading, connected with Oakdale Park CRC.

In another CRC News story, Ngendahayo said: “We are so grateful for Oakdale Park’s welcoming heart.” The goal of his church, he said, has been to bring together people who were forced to escape their homeland during the Rwandan genocide of 1994. “We needed a place where we could pray and worship and express ourselves to God, and Oakdale provided it.” 

Having never been to Africa, Rozeboom said he wanted to see the ministries in which the Ngendahayos have invested their heart and soul, as well as to hear the stories of their family and friends. 

“Pastor Claude was also eager that I attend their four-day conference – a much-anticipated event for renewal and revival – at Elohim Church, and to join him to preach,” said Rozeboom, former director of CRC Home Missions, now part of Resonate Global Ministries. 

For him, he said, it was a deeply moving, faith-affirming journey. 

Prior to the revival, said Rozeboom, they were in Kigali, capital of Rwanda, which is built along a series of valleys and ridges full of brilliant green hills. With a population of 1.7 million, the city is known for its temperate climate, safety, and cleanliness. 

Rozeboom stayed for a time in Kigali in a house owned by the Ngendahayos, shared with young people who care for the place in their absence. Meals with family members and friends were a highlight, he said, but two experiences in Kigali touched him deeply.

“One day, the house was flooded with university students who came for dinner and an evening meeting of Abeho, which means flourishing life,” he said. “These young people are dedicated to encouraging each other as Christ-followers, and by a tithe of their small resources they befriend and assist a needy person or family. . . . I was deeply impressed with Abeho and to see Jesus’ love in action.”

The other experience, he said, was a visit to the Kigali Genocide Memorial, created to remember the hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Tutsis, who were massacred in over 100 days of violence in 1994. Remains of 250,000 of the victims are interred there.

“The memorial is stunning for its design and its portrayal of killing as well as the efforts in Rwanda after the genocide for reconciliation based on grassroots community processes for justice,” said Rozeboom. “It involves bringing to justice those who committed crimes and seeking forgiveness from victims. This hard work has been effective, I understand.”

The main focus of the trip, though, was to visit the refugee camp, a five-hour drive northward into Uganda. Home to more than 100,000 refugees from across Africa, the camp was built in 1958 to house refugees escaping the early stages of the conflict in Rwanda.

Besides Elohim Church in the camp, Pastor Ngendahayo, from the family’s new home and church in Grand Rapids, has gathered resources to open a school and medical clinic in the camp as well. 

The Nakivale camp is a bustling place, filled with people who speak many languages. Yet life there is hard, said Rozeboom. People own little.

“There is no running water,” he said. “Muddy water for household use is hauled from a well site a mile or two away by motorcycle or on foot. Drinking water comes bottled.”

The church conference started on Wednesday and ended with a long, lively service on Sunday. The church itself is a modest structure, featuring a 100-by-50-foot worship space, with a small prayer building nearby.

“The place was packed for most of the six services, especially in the evenings with more than 500 worshipers responding with ‘Hallelujahs’ to preachers, praising God, singing, and dancing,” said Rozeboom. “There is no TV, no NFL, and few modern distractions from worship attendance. Church and worship are spiritual and social centers in the lives of Elohim’s people.”

With the help of an interpreter, Rozeboom preached on three of the four days of the event. All of the preachers’ messages were based on 1 John 4:7: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God.” 

“It went pretty well,” he said. “The congregation laughed when I hoped they’d laugh, saying ‘Hallelujah’ from time to time, and looking serious, reflecting when I hoped they would.”

He emphasized that preachers, keyboard players, and singers led without songbooks or music charts. “They all worked from memory, calling on shared oral musical traditions for four days and hours and hours of worship.”

Now that he is home from the trip, Rozeboom said he has had a chance to consider the many lessons and times of warm connection he experienced with folks from Africa.

 “My love for Pastor Claude and Florence and their African family runs even deeper now,” he said. “I also experienced exponentially greater awareness of the plight of refugees – the half-thousand Elohim congregation, if not the 100,000 in Nakivale, a percentage of the estimated 2 million refugees in the world.”

As he thinks of how this huge group, scattered in so many places, can be forgotten and their needs often ignored, Rozeboom said, he takes comfort in realizing that Pastor Claude and Florence, and Victory CRC, assisted by Oakdale Park CRC, do what they can to help.

And especially there is gratitude, he said, “for Pastor’s Claude’s invitation, the encouragement from my wife [Linda], and the incomparably warm greetings and goodbyes from so many people in Nakivale and Kigali.”