Refugee Camp

This week I went to Nakivale, a refugee camp, about 1 1/2 hours south of here towards the Tanzania border. People staying here are refugees mostly from Rwanda and Congo. We have 3 very strong churches within the refugee camp and then 3 others in neighboring villages. So we met here to elect officers for our church association's women's committee. Here are the elected officers. The chairman was elected from
our Runyankore service in Mbarara. The meeting took about 5 hours (nothing is ever in a 'hurry' in Africa) and we had to translate between several languages....English, Runyankore, and Kinyarwanda (spoken in Rwanda). Other languages used there are Kiswahili and French. It was really good to meet some of the ladies from some of our village churches. We hope to come back here and do some training with the youth at the end of December and then some health teaching with the women next year.

Here is a picture of the biggest church within the refugee camp. The church is on the right and someone lives in the small house connected to it who watches after the church. There are branches on the roof in order to keep the tarps and roofing from blowing away.




This is inside the church. They have 'Merry Christmas Jesus is the Savior' written on the front wall year-round. The benches on the right are made from mud like the rest of the church. It's really encouraging to visit this church...they are so 'on-fire' for the Lord. Their pastor is a refugee from Congo. They work one day a month out digging in the fields and sell their produce to raise money to use for the church 'up-keep'. I guess when you have everything taken away from you like these refugees you learn to really depend on the Lord for everything and truly worship Him for His faithfulness. I've got a lot to learn!