The rabbit in church

We were at church for 4 hours recently, in the parish of Nyarusange, where we have already done a lot of work with the school, in both education and construction projects. It now feels like being among friends and the time passed quickly, perhaps partly because we were, of course, the ones who were the main speakers. (I still don’t like the word sermon, it somehow sounds much grander than what we usually do).
There was one particular moment of real spiritual power and reality. A young man got up to speak about his return to faith. That is not so uncommon, but his aunt followed him to tell more of the story. He is an orphan living with her and in his worst days had been stealing from her. We were able to pray with him and there was a palpable sense of God’s presence in that loving community which so wanted this young man to succeed and to stick with his decision to follow Jesus. It was lovely, too, that attention was focussed on one person for a while. One of our difficulties is the sheer scale of need here and individuals often seem to go unnoticed and are not well cared for even in Christian circles, simply because there are too many people.

And the rabbit? The aunt had brought a special offering to thank God – vegetables, fruit and a live rabbit. I was wondering what would happen to them, but I found out at the end when the auction was announced! It was handled very competently by Ephraim, a student at the Anglican College in Kigali. Perhaps it was part of his training….
We contented ourselves with buying a couple of pineapples, the local speciality.