January 15, 2012, 11:26 EST – Brazzaville, Republic of Congo
The Sabbath begins with a 9:00 a.m. church service at Rehoboth Church in downtown Brazzaville. This is Manny Palis’ (our managing director of HOPE Congo) home church, led by Pastor Ndeke. It’s a very large church—our service had about 1,500 attendees—and Peter got the chance to deliver a brief devotion and talk about HOPE Congo’s work in the city. It was a wonderful service, with beautiful singing and a heartfelt message from Pastor Ndeke about the importance of family. The service lasted for a solid three hours, so we left the church spiritually fed but physically kind of hungry. 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. 
