The Kanombe Church

Pastor Julius, the head pastor of the Kanombe Church, came to visit us the next morning after we all had some sleep. Ebralie left early to visit her mother, so I met with the pastor to show him the gifts we had brought. Before the trip, I had asked for donations from people I knew that I could give to the people of Rwanda. Ebralie had said that what we discard in America is welcomed in Africa. I took this to heart, and brought 150 lbs of gifts. The main gift I brought were T-shirts from the YMCA, given to me by a family friend, Judy Sumislawski, who works for the Middle Tennessee YMCA. Judy gave me 270 shirts of all sizes that had been left over from various membership campaigns and other outings. To me, these were the type of T-shirts that stay stuffed in the back of the drawer. But when Pastor Julius saw the shirts, he was overjoyed. He particularly liked the YMCA saying on all of the shirts – “Building strong kids, strong families, and strong communities”. He repeated this saying in English a few times with great passion, smiling with approval. These were just white cotton T-shirts with colorful decorations. But to Pastor Julius, the shirts were like fine fashion clothing.

As we laid out the shirts, he particularly liked the children’s shirts we had. He wanted to give them out to the children’s choir, named “La Victoire”, which is French for “The Victory”. We picked out 36 shirts of various sizes for them. We also had 15 nicer collared shirts for the men’s choir, and gave them about 80 shirts for the regular choir and the church elders. Pastor Julius was so excited about the new “choir robes” that his church would have.

At church the next day, we arrived just before 9:30 am. The children came running up to us when we arrived. Many of them spoke a little English, and said “how are you”. We had also learned some Kinyarwanda, and replied “amakuru”. We first toured the new sanctuary that was under construction. This new facility would be significantly larger than the current building. We would later learn that a larger sanctuary was definitely needed, as the church would be packed for service. It was interesting that this new facility, like buildings throughout Rwanda, was only partially built. It was common to build as much as possible with funds available, and stop when the money ran out. Building would resume when more funds were available. The builders just had faith that the funding would come in time. Ebralie said that First Presbyterian Church of Nashville was assisting with funding, but they found through experience that it was best if the US church did not try to provide all of the funding. Rather, it was important that the local church lead the effort and felt totally vested in the project. If projects were mainly led, funded, and driven by the foreign church, the long-term success of the project was much less sure. In post-genocide Rwanda, there were many well-intentioned but ill-conceived projects from Western churches that did not produce the benefits commensurate with the time, money or effort invested. This outcome was primarily a result of the process being pushed from outside Rwanda, without the inside perspective or local ownership of the project.

We were seated up front for the service, and greatly enjoyed the music performed by the choir. Their voices had such passion, and with only a goat-skinned drum as accompaniment, the songs had a distinctive African flair to them. At a point in the service, Pastor Julius instructed the children’s choir to come behind the sanctuary, and I met them there with the shirts we had for them. I soon learned that their excitement over the shirts exceeded that of Pastor Julius. They all quickly changed into their YMCA choir robes, and then lined up in front of the congregation to perform. It was a beautiful sight, with the children singing and smiling, wearing their new shirts and praising God through song. The YMCA of Middle Tennessee now had 36 little ambassadors wearing its shirts in Rwanda. Building strong kids, strong families, and strong communities indeed!