By Dylan Fricke
Hello everyone!
I’m just going to share a little bit of my experience here in Kigali Rwanda. A verse that has been more than true about this trip is Matthew 18:20: “Where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them.” This country is incredible. The culture is so different from what we are used to back home. The traffic is all over the place. Most of the vehicles are models that are not heard of in the states. The semis are all foreign cabovers that no one will let me drive :). The majority of the people here value the relationship you create with them more than money. They see it as a great blessing that we would take time out of our day to visit their groups, help with small projects, entertain their children, and pray with them.
We have gotten to do a bunch of different things, from helping build a new outhouse to dancing in celebration for 1 year of a very powerful women’s group. At the end of each women’s group we attended Charlie would say a thank you and some encouraging words to them and then one of our team members would pray for them. After we would pray for them they would pray for us, and when they prayed for us we could feel not only the spiritual atmosphere change but also we could at some times feel the wind increase and flow greatly through the place we were at. They have a very large amount of faith and trust and believe in God to provide everything they could need. We were given the opportunity to pray for healing a couple different times and when we would pray, not seeing a physical result immediately, they would say that they are trusting in The Lord to complete it.
The Rwandan people have great hospitality when you are a guest to their organization or guest in their home. Our team is incredible. It is very uncommon to have a group of people together for a long period of time and have no tension between people. We have had great worship times and prayer times where The Lord has revealed a lot of things to us each specifically and as a group. There have been a few difficult challenges with this trip, the first is the language barrier. This language is very difficult to pick up on because the words don’t sound like our words at all. The second challenge is my wife Brita’s pregnancy. It started out alright but a few days in the baby decided it doesn’t like the Rwandan food 🙂 I know some people would say it wasn’t a smart idea to have her come with and we would have agreed with that if we didn’t feel God’s calling for all three of us to go. The team has been so incredible in helping making her feel as comfortable as possible. We were even given the opportunity to go on a very special date at a very nice Italian restaurant in Kigali. Completely coordinated and set up by our amazing leader Charlie!
I am coming home from this trip humbled. Humbled by how people live in mud huts but have greater faith in The Lord than I have ever seen. Humbled by realizing how blessed I am to have grown up in a home with protection, stability, schooling, and love. One thing I wish our culture would take from the Rwandan people is the Umuganda day. They come together as a community/village to work on projects or clean streets and yards.
Thank you to everyone who has been praying for us through this trip it has been an incredible opportunity!
Love,
Dylan