Bacon & Lemon Drizzle Cake

My thoughts are now turning to coming back to the UK on Sunday as well as for a Bill’s breakfast with bacon and lemon drizzle cake in Grange Gardens – anything really as long as it’s not an omelette or a banana!

Leave here on Friday for Kigali and then fly out to London, via Nairobi, on Sunday evening.  Heading up to Ware on Monday, after meeting daughter Jenny in London, for a two week ‘mission’ training course – timing couldn’t be better as will be good to talk though a number of issues that I’m having to deal with here, with people who have gone through similar experiences. Then back in Lewes on 5^th August for a week before heading back out here leaving UK on 12^th August.

Some local colour

Have included a few random photographs from my week – a shot of some rather colourful houses that are going up close to where I live, a lovely old chap who I didn’t realise was behind me watching me take the picture of the rather colourful houses. He almost knocked me out, with the wood he was carrying on his head, when I turned around but he was very happy to have his picture taken. And, some local wildlife – would like to say it was huge but it was quite small really.

Local character

Local wildlife

Still trying to deal with the daily challenges and frustrations – sometimes I deal with them well and sometimes I don’t. I’m trying to understand why I don’t and what it is that makes me get frustrated, impatient and sometimes annoyed. Have always thought of myself as an easy going short of chap with lots of patience and tolerance but I have to say at times here you do need patience in bucket loads to get through the day.

On the other hand, there are moments that make it worthwhile – yesterday I preached at a rural church that is still in the process of being built so we had a sort of open-air service with around 250/300 people.  I confess I am not a trained preacher but I seemed to hit the mark yesterday as had around 60 people come up afterwards to ask for prayer and there was joyful celebration in a way we don’t seem to have at home.  I also have to confess, my preaching did follow a very powerful testimony that moved me to tears and I was sitting there wondering how I was to follow it.

Here in Rwanda, the power of testimony is wonderful.  Since the 1994 genocide, people have been encouraged to share their stories, many as you can imagine horrific, but it is through this sharing that has allowed much healing, reconciliation and forgiveness. I have heard many testimonies over the years and it’s also good when we share too as it shows that us Westerners also have been through problems and difficulties and not so much the easy life many here may think we have.

I had one of the guest house security guards come into my office earlier to thank me as I had helped him sort out problems he was having with headaches and his eyes.  I was able to speak to a UK doctor, who is working here, and she was able to tell him he needed glasses and fortunately, the team who is here with her, was able to kit him out with some sun glasses and some prescription glasses they had brought out with them as well as a hat to keep the sun out of his eyes so he was a very happy man!

Last night going home, I shared a lift in a Land Cruiser, with eight pastors on the way to the house.  I was sitting next to a woman pastor who had a very young baby strapped to her back (as they do in Africa – no posh prams here!), her very young daughter falling asleep half on my lap and half on her's and me sitting there holding an inflated beach-ball (don’t ask!). The thing I’ve noticed here is that when you are being driven anywhere, you never go straight to where you are supposed to be going, you go off somewhere else and they never tell you where you are going.  Usually it’s to go and buy some airtime or drop someone off or pick something up but eventually you get to where you are going if a bit late but that’s all part of the experience of being here.

This will probably be my last post until I am back here on 13^th August.