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CRC Visit Clarifies Needs of Rwandan School and Churches

November 21, 2018

Tracy Anderson

On a visit to Rwanda this past September to make connections for ministry, four leaders from Oakdale Park Christian Reformed Church in Grand Rapids, Mich., took time to visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial outside the city of Kigali.

With a population of 1.1 million people, Kigali is the capitol and seat of the government.

The memorial site, one of six in Rwanda that commemorate the eruption of tribal violence in 1994 in which as many as 500,000 people died, serves as the burial place of more than 250,000 persons killed during the massacre.

“Here is where we visualized and heard what could be termed as unbelievable stories of Rwandans killing Rwandans,” said Maseruka “Claude” Ngendahayo, a pastor at Oakdale who was in a refugee camp in Congo at the time of the genocide.

Some members of his family were killed in the massacre, and memories of them and of that era of widespread violence were sharp in his mind while visiting the memorial.

As a way to mark the path Rwanda has taken since the genocide and, especially, to help the church in his homeland grow, Ngendahayo and his wife, Florence, took Rev. Emmett Harrison, pastor of Oakdale, and Tracy Anderson, an Oakdale deacon, on the two-week trip to Rwanda. With the help of funding from Resonate Global Mission, their goal was to work at establishing partnerships with two churches and a school in Rwanda.

“Our desire is to partner with fellow Christians across international borders,” said Ngendahayo, a Pentecostal pastor who came to the U.S. with his family from Rwanda in 2013 and began a church with other Rwandans that began meeting at Oakdale as a “nesting” church plant of the CRC congregation. Ngendahayo is also in the process of becoming ordained in the CRC.

“Because of genocide, Rwanda is a country of young people in congregations, and among them there is a pervasive sense of determination and hope and of writing a new chapter in their history,” said Harrison, who was invited to preach at churches during their trip.

“People welcomed us in a very hospitable way. On our end, we want to use all of our resources and tap into the resources of the CRC to help the people in Rwanda grow their churches.”

Ngendahayo explained that Rwanda, a landlocked country in East Africa, is a former colony of Germany and Belgium, respectively. During the push for independence in the 1960s, persecution of the Tutsis by the ethnic majority Hutus began, forcing families such as his to flee into refugee camps in Congo and culminating in the mass killings of 1994.

After the genocide, local churches stepped in and played a key role in “mending society,” said Ngendahayo.

“Through the reconciliation of both ethnic groups [Hutus and Tutsis], the ministry to the wounded, the making of peace between the victims and their victimizers. . . . there is evidence of the healing that has taken place.”

Rwanda is now a safe country, full of clean streets and communities. A new international airport is being built. It is not a police state.

But the government, which once viewed the church as a significant force for transformation and helped to fund reconciliation efforts, has begun to change course and is clamping down on churches and mosques. Officials say the country’s houses of worship are growing too fast and some are located in dangerous buildings.

Early in 2018, for instance, the government closed churches for not meeting building standards that, said Ngendahayo, had not been properly communicated to churches.

In addition, the economy is still crippled, health care is hard to access, and, as the population grows, good housing remains hard to find.

Even before the trip, Ngendahayo and his congregation had been supporting two churches and the school. But as challenges have mounted, they saw the need to increase their efforts.

With this in mind, Ngendahayo and Harrison agreed to make the trip to see what Oakdale and the CRC might be able to do to support churches and related institutions.

“We want to find the resources to help churches in Rwanda so they can work together to help others in ways that benefit everyone,” said Harrison.

In Rwanda they visited the Kigali Mustard Seed School, an elementary Christian school that is in need of desks, computers, mobile classrooms, books, and teacher training.

They also visited two Elohim International Church congregations in different provinces of the country and participated in conferences put on by the churches.

“Both of the congregations that we visited, and want to be working with, have blessed us with their commitment to ministry and consistency in prayer and in seeking God,” said Ngendahayo.

Both of these churches, however, are finding it hard to comply with government standards. As the government puts increasing pressure on churches, these communities that have helped in bringing peace to Rwanda are facing hard questions about their future. They are being required to pay higher rents and at the same time meet new government requirements.

“Now the pressure from the government is threatening many churches, the Elohim churches included,” said Ngendahayo.

The representatives from Oakdale came away from East Africa with a list of ways they would like to help the churches in Rwanda: by means of pastoral leadership and educational care with the help of RaiseUp (formerly the Timothy Leadership Training Institute), by teaching farming techniques and new technologies, perhaps with assistance of World Renew, and by helping the women in the communities develop their crafts into marketable businesses.

“I was glad to be part of the team that went to Africa,” said Tracy Anderson. “We could see that God is at work and that these churches and the school are spreading the Word, but they need help to keep spreading that Word.”

The relationship between Oakdale and the Rwandan group developed quickly once the congregation of members from East Africa began holding its Sunday service at Oakdale. What began as one church meeting inside the other soon developed into a full partnership, highlighted by the recent trip, said Harrison.

Harrison recalled that, at one point during the visit, children lined up outside the Mustard Seed School and performed a short program of singing and dancing. “These children and their families have very little by way of material possessions but are rich in faith and overflowing joy,” he said.

About the visit he added, “We experienced a warm welcome from people who have passion for the church. They have a heart for praise and worship, and they showed us hope and smiles amid pain, which was a powerful but not an easy thing to experience.”