We arrived on Friday night and the view from the church was amazing. On one side you could see lake Kivu (one of the great lakes of Africa), to the opposite side you could see an active volcano glowing red in the night and in front of us was the border of DRC less than one mile away. There is hardly a place on earth that is more beautiful but I can assure you, there are few places on earth that are as spiritually oppressed as this place.
After we arrived we began teaching DBS and prayer walking through the town. The first lesson is about obedience and how you cannot love Jesus if you do not follow his command. Since the power was out we had to stop earlier than we expected so we just went home.
The following day was Saturday and Umuganda (the day where everyone in Rwanda is "required" to work in their neighborhood). So we got there and helped them work around the church. Following lunch we began teaching again. By the time we had finished our work for umuganda and had lunch Kristin had called to say that the battery in the car was dead and that she was stuck at home. In addition one of the other wives called to say that as she was driving down our road when her brakes went out. We knew Satan was attacking so we just kept praying for our families and our work. As we finished the lessons I received a text from Kristin that said, "Grace accidently turned the guest shower all the way on instead of off and it burst. Pipe has separated from the wall. Hopefully not too hard to fix". I just kept praying. As I pondered our work and our problems at home I said to myself, "Satan, you have been hitting us hard but if you think you're going to stop this work you're going to have to try harder than that". Should not have said that. Within 5 minutes of that statement Kristin called to say that Aaron had fallen (actually been pushed) off the top bunk and hit the back of his head on the window sill and had to have stitches. She was going to have to take him to the ER in Kigali because I could not get there to suture him myself.
Well I have to say that it was hard. I wanted to come home and fix it but I couldn't. We all knew we were doing important work and we were in a battle.
The following morning, Felix, our Rwandan friend who went with us was invited back to follow up on the training. He reported to us at lunch that about 8 people from the training had come to church. One of them was a Muslim women who had gone home and told her Muslim husband that she had accepted Jesus. As you would expect, he beat her. She came back to church the following morning and said that she didn't care and that she was going to come to church and obey Jesus.
For those of you who struggle with or believe that direct spiritual warfare is "antiquated" or not real then my answer to you is that you may not actually be in the fight. The Bible warns many times about Satan and his craftiness and persecution of believers. I can give personal testimony that Satan is real and is present in the lives of believers of Jesus. We are easily distracted by his works and if not for the power of the Holy Sprit we might have missed the redemption of a lost sheep this weekend.
We all ask that you pray diligently against our common enemy and that our families will be protected as we continue to go out and make disciples in Rwanda.
