A small house church resides in the poverty sticken village of Gitarama, Rwanda, where most people eat one meal a day (if that much) and where most have never even slept on a mattress. Attending church is also difficult, as the journey takes four hours round-trip. However, amidst all these challenges, their love for God is outstanding and in the last year the disciples saw many blessings (see Part I).
Update from Johnson and Norah Namei, from the ICOC in Rwanda:
It was an amazing journey for them and they showed great commitment to each of the appointments we had with them. One of the women could not be baptized with the rest because she had to work on legalizing their marriage. When she shared the challenge with her husband, he was so inspired by the seriousness the church has towards sin and he also decided to join his wife in studying the Bible too and get baptized. Right now we are helping them to do a civil wedding so they can get baptized after the wedding.
Last year, God worked out a miracle through the Ahendas and the Maleyas when they came to visit Kigali. They visited these people and wanted to meet some of their needs. They mobilized disciples in Uganda and Kenya to start a project of providing mattresses and blankets for each of the families of the disciples in Gitarama. There was so much joy on the day we went to hand out these items to them. We praise God for all those who gave and touched the hearts of many people in this community
Also, this year we had a Women’s Day. It was very successful for it met the goal we had of bonding the sisters. We cooked together, had make up and dressed up for a special lunch. In the afternoon, we played games, had Bible skits and short messages which were done in groups. I was amazed at how the sisters could preach short messages with conviction. It was an answered prayer for us to see the unity of the sisters that day.
The church has come a long way and we still need a lot of your prayers for us to overcome different challenges that we face as a church. Our prayer is that we will all keep fighting the good fight until the end of the journey. God bless you.
-- Johnson and Norah Namei and their two children (pictured on left)