Friday, November 20, 2009

A Beautiful and Muddy Country

Hi everyone...we typed this last night but the internet went down before we were able to send it. We are just leaving for the first night of the Festival of Hope. If anyone is up at your late hour, please be praying that the rain will hold.
Love you all...here is the update.
Rwanda Update: Thursday, November 19, 7:40pm GMT+2
Hi guys, We've managed to find a wireless signal and someone from our team is letting us use their laptop they brought. Wow, so many stories to share...
We got to Rwanda yesterday in the morning. We came to our hotel, had some lunch and then immediatley set out to do work projects. Some went to orphanages, some went to run eye glass clinics and we went to the local hospital to visit with the sick. There were three of us and we each had a translator. We probably prayed for about a 120 people or something like that. It was intense because everyone wanted prayer for healing. I'll share one story...
We approached a group of people outside one of the wards and we heard screaming. We approached and the noise was coming from a young boy of about 3 years old. Our translator inquired and told us that the parents thought the boy had a demon. He had been like this, frantic, screaming, terrified, for a long time. The translator who was also a local pastor had him brought into a back room to pray for his release from the demon. We felt just a tiny bit inadequate for the task. The pastor started praying for the boy and it didn't seem to be helping. Then he stopped and talked to the parents some more. He told us he didn't think it was a demon but instead a sympton of cerebral malaria. So we started praying for healing. That didn't seem to work either. So we stopped. The boy screamed the entire time. He was hallucinating that wild animals were crawling up his legs and attacking him. He kept pawing at his legs. I suddenly felt like Jesus just wanted me to speak words of love over him. So I started to do that while stroking his chest and face. After about five minutes of this I started weeping and he suddenly stopped screaming and calmed down. It was amazing. God is so cool. But he still wouldn't let me put his pant leg down which he was holding up as a way to avoid the "animals." I grabbed it and pulled it down and whistled a little tune. Then he pulled it back up and I whistled a different little tune when he did. Then I grabbed his pant leg again and did the same thing. And he pulled it up. We kept doing that, pulling it up and down and me whistling this funny little tune and then about about 20 times he started smirking. His eyes, cleared and all the fear was gone. It was beautiful. I could feel the large group around us breathe a sigh of relief. When we left about ten minutes later, he was still calm. It is such an honor to serve our God!
We also handed out packets of rice and soap to the patients we prayed with. Patients are responsible for anything they need. Medicine, supplies etc... they had to pay for entirely. Food and washing and all that sort of thing they had to provide for themselves..either through family or friends. The sick have to take care of themselves! It was a very intense afternoon.
This morning (Robin speaking) Caris and I went to run our first eye clinic with two other team members. It was great! We rode in a van for about 45 minutes on a road that was so rutted I didn't think we would make it all in one piece. Bouncing and shaking, honking to get the people to move aside so as not to run anyone over. (People are walking along all the roads all day and always smile and wave when the white people go by. We are quite an oddity.)
We gave the eyeglasses out to about 200 people today after testing them for what strength they would need. People waited patiently to come up to one of three tables, one at a time to receive their glasses. When I gave them their new pair I would say: "This is a gift for you from your friends in the United States who love Jesus and love you." It was such an amazing experience as all of the experiences are here. We are being blessed as much as we are a blessing, I am sure.
We have a specific prayer request that is very important: Every afternoon about 3 pm we get an unbelieveably heavy downpour of rain that drenches everything and makes everything a muddy mess. Tomorrow afternoon we start our first outdoor meeting at 3 pm. Please pray God will hold back the rain. Else the field we will be in will be an absolute mess!
Well, got to go. Caris and I gave out goats today. We will cover that later. Caris took about 150 pictures of the event. Quite the thing! We had a blast.
See you soon...Thanks for reading our letters. I know it is hard to imagine how it is here. We are having a hard time believing where we are ourselves!
Love to all,
Robin (and Caris)

1 comment:

Caris Power said...

If anyone asks from customs asks...we did not come into contact with livestock.