The proud owner of a goat signs her contract

Brendan and Antoine with the 9 people who received a goat today

Today in the village of Muyange we presented 9 goats to members of our congregation. Funds were donated by friends of the Takeley Christian School in the UK. All who received goats today are members of farming projects that are run by 3 of our home groups. The last few harvests have not been great due to rain failure so the goats are compensating greatly for the poor harvests. We are using some of the 'Send a Cow' rules for example the first female kid born must be passed on the another person. There are 2 people waiting in line for each goat to deliver and it is also their responsibility to see that the animal is well cared for. 2 of the goats are already pregnant. Each recipient signed a contract laying out the rules. Thanks to all our friends in and around the Takeley area who made this possible and blessed so many this Christmas.

Goat project gets under way

Here are 2 of the 9 goats that will be presented to members of the Kigali Vineyard next Tuesday. We will be having a little presentation ceremony at our church building to launch our 'goat project'. More pictures and the full story to follow.

Joel and Brendan handing out food parcels

This morning we had a great Christmas celebration at the Kigali Vineyard. Worship was very lively and Spirit filled. Thanks to donations from the Halifax Metro Vineyard and the St Louis Vineyard we were able to continue our tradition of handing out food parcels for Christmas. We distributed 80 parcels to adults with 50 parcels of biscuits and candy for the all the children. Everyone was very happy and a special collection was taken to decorate the building for the Christmas day

Antoine and Florence get married

On December 18th Antoine and Florence were married at the local sector office. We celebrated at our home with 40 friends and family. The formal church wedding is scheduled for early March and we are looking forward to a wonderful day.

Antoine shows John one of our farming projects

Last week we had the pleasure of welcoming John Bathgate from the Almond Vineyard in Edinburgh. We enjoyed showing John all that is happening in the Kigali Vineyard. Our basket weavers were blessed that John and the team from Metro Vineyard Halifax bought all the crafts they made over the past months. We are glad to add Scotland to the growing list of Vineyards connecting with us here in Rwanda.

 

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Antoine and his fiancee Florence

Antoine recently anounced his engagement to Florence. They are planning to get married in March 2009. Antoine has been a key person in the planting and establishing of the Kigali Vineyard Church. We are confident that he will play a major role in the planting of many churches in Rwanda. 

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Ladies from our church weaving baskets

10 ladies from our church continue to work 2 days per week to earn some cash by weaving baskets. On other days they look for payed employment of work in their gardens. The income from the baskets is used to help pay school fees and to buy shoes for their children. It takes about 3 days to make one basket and they sell for between 7 and 10 dollars depending on the quality. All of the money goes directly to the ladies. So far we have sold all our baskets to visitors from abroad. We are praying for a more permanent market.

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3 of the 8 couples to get married at the Kigali Vineyard on Nov 2nd

We celebrated a momentous occasion in our village on Saturday when 8 couples from our church were married. There were over 500 family and visitors and we had a wonderful time together. Antoine who was commissioned as the first Rwandan pastor last Saturday officiated over the ceremonies.

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40 people attend 2 day seminar at Kigali Vineyard

Beth Wood who co-authored the 'Kingdom Among Us' taught a 2 day seminar at our church this week. It was an amazing time and we learned much about kingdom development among the poor which is a real focus of our church. We enjoyed lots of fun and some great prayer times together. 

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Pat Val Beth Karen and Larry

We have had a wonderful week of teaching, worship, fellowship in our church with Larry, Karen and Beth from our home church. We have been so blessed with all that God has done this week.

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Clarette Larry and Ananie in

This week we have our Pastors Larry and Karen Levy and our friend Beth Wood visiting from our church. Larry and Pat went to visit the Vineyard Church in Burundi and Larry taught on the sewing seeds in the Kingdom of God. We had a great time with 25 of the leaders in the church there and a lovely time of fellowship with Ananie and Clarette who pastor the church there. They are a growing church of about 500 and we look forward to developing our relationship with the Burundian Vineyard.

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17 new believers are baptized

In July we celebrated our third baptism ceremony. We had 17 people this time and we were very blessed to be able to use the pool of a christian friend in our neighbourhood.

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Surgery and Family reunion

In June Val was in Nairobi for surgery. The procedure went very well and Joel was able to come down from school to look after her on her first weekend out of hospital. Pat and Brendan came later to take over the home care when Brendan's school was out. After 3 weeks recovery Joel's school year was finished at RVA and we all returned to Rwanda. We were so blessed with the accommodation provided for us by friends from the US and Canada. We were also thrilled that circumstances allowed us to have Joel home for school this year. The Kigali International Community School is up and running and Brendan and Joel are both attending. They are both really enjoying their new school.

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Seven good friends from the US

In May we had a team from the St Louis Vineyard come to visit. They came to see what God was doing through the Vineyard here and to see how they could join us in the work. All but one of the team had missions experience and they came well prepared to minister to the church. We had times of worship, Kids ministry, Training sessions etc. While they were here we moved house and it was great having all the extra hands.

We made some wonderful new friends and look forward to developing a long and blessed relationship.

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Our new rented house under construction

Following lengthy discussions over many months with our landlord about rent hikes, we finally found a smaller but nicer house at a reasonable rent in our neighbourhood. We ended up living in 4 different houses over a 2 month period as our new house was behind schedule but it was worth the hassle and we moved into our new house in June.

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Dempseys and Finnertys helping out in the fields

Our internet has refused to attach files this past week so here is the picture that should have accompanied the piece below.

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Visiting a Farming God's Way project on the outskirts of Kigali

Sorry for the long silence on this Blog site. The past 6 months have been full and busy that it has been difficult to find time to report on it all. Let me give a brief summary of the main events.

In April we had a visit from Linda, Michael and Izzy Dempsey from our home church. It was good to connect with folks from home and we enjoyed giving them a taste of daily life on the mission field. Together we visited a number of the development projects that are happening through the local Vineyard church and spent some time working in the fields with our 'Farming God's Way' teams.

 

 

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Rwandan Vineyard's Discipleship for Developement

The weather has been strange here in Rwanda lately. We seem to have missed out on a dry season altogether. Two of the small groups from our church have embarked on a very ambitious business scheme. They have rented more than 5 acres of land and are preparing to plant beans as a first crop. Not too much profit but safe. It is hard back breaking work to get the land ready for the first planting but future crops will be much easier as 'Farming God's Way' does not require digging again. We are praying for the rain to hold off another few days to get the rest of our 80 kg of beans planted. We are short on fertilizer so we are fertilizing with prayer also. Please add your prayers to ours that this aspect of God's kingdom among us will bear as much fruit as the lives that have been changed through faith in Jesus. The picture shows 9 members of our Tuesday group preparing the soil for planting.

Coventry Vineyard Visit

For the past week we have been blessed with 2 visitors from the UK. Germain Ndaruhutse who is a Rwandan living in England and Nick Sutton who pastors the Coventry Vineyard with his wife Vicki have been checking out our development projects and doing training with some of our small groups. We've been to visit 3 genocide memorial sites and have had some great times of fellowship. Our Sunday service ended with a time of real celebration where most of the congregation including Germain danced in the traditional Rwandan style. Afterwards we got together for a group photo with Nick in the center. We look forward to developing a lasting relationship with the Coventry Vineyard.

Gathered at the shore of Lake Muhazi

A few weeks ago we had our second Baptism ceremony on a sunny Saturday morning and this time we decided to go to Lake Muhazi about 40 km outside Kigali. We hired 2 busses and pickup was at 9.00 am by our Church. Some who wished to come were disappointed and we ended up with 47 people at the lake. We arrived at 10.30 and had to take a number of boats to the other side as there were fewer reeds and less chance of snails carrying bilharzias (one of the many less desirable tropical diseases in this area).

We had 17 people who were baptized and it was a very joyous occasion. The busses and the boats reverberated with songs of praise. At church the following day we heard many powerful testimonies of God's wonderful work in bringing people into a life enriching relationship with Him.