Rwanda News from Rev Jackie
In August I visited Kigali once again, primarily to experience the One Song Festival which was hosted by Rwanda for the first time. This event is held annually with cathedral choirs from Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and for the first time South Sudan whose choir travelled for two and a half days overland! Sadly due to the situation in Burundi their choir couldn’t attend but over 500 choristers were welcomed to Kigali.
The choirs sang a variety of choral pieces, from traditional many part harmonies in Eng-lish to their local favourite songs in Swahili, Kinyawanda and Buganda for example, some were quite humorous and included traditional dance and drumming.
Pastor Manasseh was extremely proficient translating for Archbishop Dr Luke Urumbi (retired) of Uganda at the evening services and daily training sessions.
On the Saturday we were to baptize 8 young adults from Kanyinya in the baptism pool at the cathedral, unfortunately although we were gathered at 8am, there was so much going on with the Festival that the pool wasn’t filled. So we had a couple of hours singing and dancing in the cathedral. Pastor Cedric asked me to address the candidates, think-ing on my feet I decided to use words from Hebrews 12 as the Olympics were in full flow. Memo: put self in context before opening mouth. In Kanyinya there are no TVs no radios possibly no newspapers. Eventually we were ready to baptize, I slipped on the top step and was caught just in time. We only had about 18 inches of water which made it difficult to get the people fully under.
Pastor Cedric’s passing shot was….It’s good you’re coming to Kanyinya tomorrow as you can preach! Off I went to One Song, then to the local Italian with Apollo for dinner. By the time I got to Mercy House I was too tired to tackle a sermon, so up at 5 Sunday morning and managed to prep some sermon notes…..this is so not me! I have no idea what I said except for using the theme of baptism as we were baptizing 6 youngsters that morning. Service in the field as usual, the font? A saucepan!
Apollo came along to translate for me, and held an umbrella to protect me from the sun.
As usual the service was lively, having seen the bishop and cathedral staff join the danc-ing at One Song Cedric and I decided to give it a whirl…..no the video will not be shown. I’m happy to say that the church and pastor’s house are being constructed in time to give shelter from the ‘big rains’ which will start soon. An empty container which loitered full of junk in the cathedral grounds has been emptied, moved to Kanyinya and painted up to use for storing the chairs etc.I am returning to Kigali in November for a couple of weeks and will photograph the progress of the building.