I.R.T. - Kigali, Rwanda

The second day of our trip took us into Rwanda! We were able to visit and encourage some of the missionaries who work there and learn about their ministries.
This was a woman that we saw at the border who is just one example of what we see almost every day. I don't know if I will ever stop being amazed at what people can carry on their heads here. One time I saw a woman carrying a huge stack of long tree limbs on her head without holding them with her hands at all! It was incredible!

We were so excited about going to Rwanda that we had to take pictures of the signs at the border to prove that we were really there!

(View of Kigali, the capital, from one of the many hills that make up the city)

When we got into Kigali, we met up with some girls that are teaching at an international school there. We had been in contact with them before and had arranged to stay with them while we were in Kigali. I already knew two of the three girls, Amanda Moore and Kyla Kiser. They were both Harding girls and I have actually known Kyla since high school. It was really great to get to spend time with them. Their school is called Kigali International Community School and it just began this year. It was exciting to hear how well their school is already doing. They have had such a positive response that they don’t have enough room for the amount of students that would like to attend. They are currently looking into buying a building that would give them plenty of room to expand. Please pray that logistics and funding for that building, or another like it, will come through so that this ministry can continue to grow. They also have a need for more teachers as well. So if you know anyone who would be interested in living and teaching in Rwanda, they should check out this school.

We were very impressed with Kigali. The city is very clean, they have wonderful roads, and people actually somewhat follow traffic laws! Their power system is set up differently than ours also. I didn’t get a full understanding of it, but it sounded like they buy some kind of credits and then have power until those credits run out. So, if they pay for it, they can have power all the time. We were almost having culture shock being there…power all the time, high-speed wireless internet, really nice roads…we didn’t know what to do with ourselves! The first afternoon we were there we went with the teachers to look at a duplex that they are thinking about renting. They are currently living in the house of a furloughing missionary family, but will need a place of their own soon. This is a picture of the neighborhood that the house is in. We felt like we were in suburbia, not Africa!

We got to visit the hotel that was the inspiration for the movie, Hotel Rwanda. The movie was based on the true story of what happened here during the genocide. The movie used the same name and entrance sign, but the rest of the building was different.

This is Kyle and Luz Beard, they are members of the mission team in Kigali. The team is very focused on becoming integrated into the community. One of their goals is to build relationships with people and then bring them to know Christ through those relationships. Kyle is actually the head coach of the National Rwandan Women’s Soccer team. This is the first year for Rwanda to have a national women’s team, so the program isn’t huge or anything, but it’s still really cool! Kyle showed us around his office and we could see the national stadium from there.

(Where Kyle works)


(National Football Stadium)


(The back of Kyle’s car. Notice the “Native Texan” sticker – awesome!)


(This was a really funny sign that we saw when we were driving around town. I don’t know what it was referring to, but it made us laugh!)


(Too great a photo to pass up!)