January 16, 2012, 3:34 EST – Brazzaville, Republic of Congo
Another great day in Brazzaville! We started the day at 8 a.m. at the HOPE Congo offices with morning devotions. I led the staff through morning devotions, studying Romans 5: 1-8.
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
I’ve repeatedly come back to this passage during my time at HOPE. It is so encouraging and poetic, and it puts our daily trials into a larger perspective. Later in the day, when our loan officer was leading his clients through devotions during a repayment meeting, I heard him allude to the Romans passage that we reviewed during staff devotions. Daily staff devotions are core to our mission at HOPE International: we must be spiritually fed as staff members if we are going to minister to our clients. Continue Reading…
Today was a wonderful day. I had a chance to visit two Anglican parishes where we met with members of our savings groups. One parish was in downtown Kigali, and the other one was about one hour away from downtown. It was so encouraging to meet the group members and hear their stories. It was also a nice opportunity to get to know our staff better. Chris Ordway and I traveled with Marie Jeanne, our lead trainer for our Anglican Church program; Kayira, our field coordinator for the Kigali diocese; and Panina, who is the director of programs for the Anglican Church in Kigali. 
I arrived in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, in the mid-afternoon today, after about 24 hours on the move. The flights were amazingly uneventful—praise the Lord!—and I’m excited to be in Rwanda for the first time. This is the home of our largest savings program, a church partnership with the Rwandan Anglican Church, and I will spend most of the next two days in the field watching our savings groups in action. I will also be visiting Urwego Opportunity Bank, one of the largest microfinance institutions in the HOPE network. 
![Before Eveness Mulungu joined the Walusungu (“mercy”) savings group through our church partner in Malawi, she faced days where she and her family ate animal feed because they couldn’t afford human food. But that changed when she joined the savings group. Eveness used her first group loan of about $1.70 (U.S.) to start a business selling doughnuts and beans.
“By the end of my first cycle I made $140 (U.S.),” Eveness shared. “My life is no longer the same now; [I] was regarded as no one in the community. ... This was the first time in my life that I ever touched and owned big money like this!”
Pictured: Eveness, with her husband in front of their piggery—a third successful business that she operates.](https://blog.hopeinternational.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)