Blessing from Rwanda

We hope you all enjoyed the celebration of our Savior's birth
yesterday and we would like to wish you all much health and happiness
in the coming New Year. We have been working on a brand new look to our
website that we hope to unveil in the New Year and we're excited to
have this new format to keep you all up to date on the progress in the
Rwandan Vineyard. Our heartfelt thanks for your continued support and
may you know the richness of God's blessed presence and provision in
the coming year.

Significant progress

With 16 of the 18 pillars in place and the casing for the overhead
lintels almost complete, we feel very encouraged to be near completion
of the first main phase of the building. There is a great sense of
pride amongst the people to be part of something so significant in
their village – and all for the glory of God.

Work in Progress

The work is going well with many folks from the church volunteering
their time to help with the manual labor. Please pray it does not rain
hard this Sunday as we will be a bit exposed. This is all very
exciting. Again, many thanks for your help.

No threshold church

Casing for pillar

Progress is being made with the construction of pillars for the church
building. We are doing 2 pillars at a time to economize on wood for
casings. Church was bright and airy yesterday as much of the bamboo
walls were set aside to dig foundations for the pillars.

Daniel at church

I saw our miraculously recovered burn victim Daniel looking so happy
yesterday at church and wanted to share this picture with those of you
who supported his recovery through prayer and finance.

Making way for the first of many pillars

It seems so timely that as we see a number of 'Pillars' being raised
up among the leadership of the church that we are also raising up the
first pillars of the actual building. We are grateful for the pillars
of the building but even more so for the pillars in our faith community
where the real kingdom work of our Lord is taking place.

The Building Site

Digging foundations

Store room

Silvere giving direction

The church property was a hive of activity this morning at 7.30. Eight
young men were hard at it. The steps to the second level are near
completion and the Store room is built. Foundations are being dug and
the first pillars being constructed from concrete and reinforced steel.
Many thanks again to our partnering church friends for the great
fundraising work. We will keep you updated on further progress.

End wall of church building

The next major stage in our Building Project will be to extend the
main building by 3 meters (10 feet). It will require building a
retaining wall about 10 meters wide and about 5 meters long on each
side. This will be a huge task but as you can see from the bamboo walls
which need maintaining after every heavy rain, we need something more
weather proof. Initially we used flour bags filled with soil as an
affordable retaining wall but again the weather has taken its toll and
this could never support a brick wall and concrete floor. Again many
thanks for every donation, big and small, that is helping to put a
place of worship and community development in this Rwandan village. We
are excited to see the work progress and to keep you in the loop as you
help to make it all possible.

First retaining wall at the Muyange Vineyard Church

The first retaining wall to allow access for trucks to the main
building is now complete. It required 4 truckloads of rocks as well as
sand and cement. Six of our people worked for one week to complete the
wall. The next job will be to put stone steps in to safely get from the
main level to the Community room below where 15 women from the 'Joy
Sewing Co-op' work every afternoon. This room is also used three
evenings per week for English lessons and on Friday evenings for the
men's meeting. This is also where the Children's church meets on Sunday
mornings. The next major step in the building project will be to build
the 'great' retaining wall for the church building and to lay all the
foundations for the walls. We are so grateful for all the support from
our partnering churches to make this dream of our local community a
reality. Bless you all.

Folks from the Muyange Vineyard receiving their goats

This afternoon we had a little ceremony at the Muyange Vineyard to
pass out the goats that were donated as Christmas presents last year.
It was a long process to purchase the animals and choose the
recipients. Some folks were not able to make it today and will get
their goats next week. It was difficult to choose who should get a
goat so we asked six of our small groups to choose two families who
were most needy and best able to look after a goat. For many of these
families, owning a goat or two can make the difference between a child
being able to go to school, or have footwear, or not. Many thanks to
all of you who gave each other goats as Christmas presents, you may
feel very pleased with the results.

Katie and Shauna

Shauna's older sister Katie arrived in Rwanda last week to spend a gap
year teaching English. She is adapting very well to this very
different culture and we want to wish Katie much joy and success
during her stay here. Katie has been a great help in running our VBS
this week.

David being assisted by Antoine and Ernest in leading a game

David Humphries first came to spend a summer vacation with us in
Rwanda 4 years ago when he was 16. This year is his third visit to us
and it has been wonderful to see this young man grow in confidence as
he shares his gifts with young people. He is so enthuastic and a joy
to have around. He will return to the UK in September to continue his
Theology studies at Queens University Cambridge.

Happy moment for Shauna at the VBS

Shauna has been with us for 5 weeks and has had many wonderful
experiences in Rwanda. She did some translation work and research for
International Justice Mission who she has been fundraising for in her
school in Canada for a number of years. She also spent some time with
'Lawyers of Hope' and visited a number of orphanages and a refugee
camp. She has been a blessing and we will miss her when she goes home
on Saturday.

Games at the Muyange VBS

Today was the last day of a 4 day Vacation Bible School at the Muyange
Vineyard. What a great week! We had on average 65 children every day
and 6 guys from our youth group helped lead the week's activities.
Katie, Shauna, David, Joel and Brendan brought messages each day and
helped to lead the games. The theme for the week was the heart. Monday
was the Soft Heart, Tuesday the Forgiving Heart, Wednesday the
Believing Heart and today the Happy Heart. Everyone gave themselves
wholeheartedly to the skits and much fun was had by all. This morning
in the final session there were about 75 kids and 5 came forward and
made decisions to follow Jesus as Lord and Savior. Thanks to everyone
who prayed for our VBS this week, God is so good.

Guitar class

With a view to bringing some more musianship to our worship team we
have started giving guitar lessons on Saturday afternoons. There are 6
beginners who are learning and we were blessed recently with a
donation of a new guitar brought to us from friends in Nairobi by a
visiting team from a Vineyard church in St. Louis.

Daniel in orange at home with parents, siblings and grandmother

Daniel's family are so blessed to have him back home. He has been able
to manage the one hour walk to church with his family on Sundays and
join in Children's church. The skin graft has taken well and there are
no physical handicaps as a result. Unfortunately the trauma of 4
months pain and suffering have taken its toll on Daniel's personality.
His Dad tells me he is eating dirt and that he gets quite hysterical
from time to time. Please pray for his emotional healing. Many thanks
again for all the support for Daniel and his family during this
crisis.

Update on Daniel

To all who have been praying for young Daniel, many thanks! You prayers are being answered. A friend of a friend here in Kigali has some medical contacts in the US who send surgeons to Rwanda periodically to work for a few weeks. Following a phone conversation with this lady we sent her Daniel's story and some pictures of his wound. She forwarded them to her contacts in the States who have a colleague working in Rwanda right now. He is working in a hospital run by Partners in Health about 2 hours out of the city and having seen the pictures of Daniel's thigh has agreed to do a skin graft next week. It will involve about one month of hospitalization for Daniel but will almost certainly insure his full and speedy and much less painful recovery.   Praise God once again for his provision.

Strength for today and bright hope for Rwanda's future

Ernest in red working with guys from 'Ten Talents'

As part of our ongoing project to get rabbits into as many 'back yards' as possible, we set Ernest up to build a rabbit hutch with the guys from 'Ten Talents International'. Part of what this organization has done is to train a number of underprivileged Rwandan boys to build and sell rabbit hutches. The hutches are top quality and Ernest is really enjoying the opportunity to learn carpentry skills that we hope he will eventually be able to pass on to some of the guys at the Vineyard.

Could someone go find the key?

Our first Children's Meeting

After worship on Sunday we blessed the children to go to their own meeting. They were very excited to have a children's meeting that is geared to their level of interest. So the sewing machines were moved to one side and the new benches set out and 3 of the ladies led the meeting with songs and stories. It certainly made preaching to the adults a lot less disruptive. Another win-win situation!

The morning sewing group in session

Today 15 women from our community began a month long intensive sewing class. Some are learning to use a machine for the first time and others are more advanced and already learning to make crafts from African gatenga fabric. The teacher Flora has her own business and produces quality crafts  herself. When the ladies are trained and producing their own creations we would like to find markets in the US and the UK for their products. Hopefully we will be able to post some pictures of the finished work at the end of the month. It is such a blessing to see the church buildings used to benefit the community. This is truly becoming a community center.

Turn aside once in a while

While walking to my friend Antoine's house yesterday morning, I turned aside from my stressful mindset to see the most beautiful blue flowers growing over the Carpenters wall. At that moment God 'spoke' to me that as He is the creator of this beauty, He is also in control of all His creation. Life threw some fairly stressful stuff at me yesterday but I was somehow at peace through it all. Thank you Lord for those little things that you put in our way to help us turn aside for a moment and realize that you are indeed Lord over all.

Daniel

Little Daniel was badly burned 3 months ago when he fell in a cooking fire. Last week Thursday we transferred Daniel to a small 7 day Adventist hospital which is so much closer to his parent's home. They still have to bring food every day for him and his aunt, who stays with him. It seems that the healing process and the possibility of a skin graft have been impaired by Daniel's anaemia. He is now on B Complex with iron. His midriff has healed well and it is now just his left thigh that remains to be healed. His dressing is now being changed daily. Please pray for complete healing for Daniel.