Final week before heading out

We are now 6 days away from leaving here heading to Rwanda and Burundi.  we are getting excited as a team but also facing some spiritual attacks, personal illness, families, etc.  The evil one really does not want us to go on this trip but God does.

Please pray for our team as we make our final preparations this week; Barb, Robin, Carolyn, Suzanne, Danny, Jason, Diane and John.  Also for Peace and her leaders in Rwanda and Burundi and all of the people that we will be making contact with while we are there.  We have some long travel over and back, leaving the U.S. and Canada Friday to London 6 hour layover, then to Nairobi on Saturday with another 7 hour layover then to Kigali Rwanda arriving at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday.  We will be in Kigali for 4 days then we make a short 30 minute flight down to Burundi landing in Bujumbura the capital.  I think I mentioned earlier that Burundi is now considered the poorest country in the world with the average worker making $0.87 cents a day and that is to provide for their entire family(less than $300.00 per year).  Rwanda is improving some since the genocide in the 1993 but now 70% of the population is women (most men died during the genocide or AIDS).  Some reports say that the work force in Rwanda is 90% women, so you can see the need that we face there in helping them with micro enterprise and training so that they can provide for their families.

Thanks for praying.

Peace Nihorimbere is the leader of Women of Global Action for Central Africa

Peace Nihorimbere is the leader of Women of Global Action for Central Africa.  She is from Burundiand a survivor of three genocides in her country, which coincided with the genocide in Rwanda.  Her brother was killed in the genocide in Burundi in 1972.  Peace and her sisters, who were at boarding school, had to hide each night to escape attacks.  In 1993 Peace and her three children fled Burundi, lived with her sister in Switzerland and then settled in Canada. Eleven years later, God called Peace to return to Burundi to help rebuild her country.  She directs ministry to women and children, particularly widows, sharing the gospel and love of Jesus, coordinating micro-enterprise projects to provide women with a means to support their families, as well as coordinating ministry throughoutCentral Africa. Peace is an incredible example of God’s faithfulness and grace and is allowing herself to be His instrument to touch hundreds of lives in this region and beyond.

Recent background in Burundi

Burundi's first democratically elected president was assassinated in October 1993 after only 100 days in office, triggering widespread ethnic violence between Hutu and Tutsi factions. More than 200,000 Burundians perished during the conflict that spanned almost a dozen years. Hundreds of thousands of Burundians were internally displaced or became refugees in neighboring countries. An internationally brokered power-sharing agreement between the Tutsi-dominated government and the Hutu rebels in 2003 paved the way for a transition process that led to an integrated defense force, established a new constitution in 2005, and elected a majority Hutu government in 2005. The new government, led by President Pierre NKURUNZIZA, signed a South African brokered ceasefire with the country's last rebel group in September of 2006 but still faces many challenges.

Burundi is slightly smaller than Maryland with a population 8.4 million with 2.9 million employed with a good wage of $.87 cents a day if you work with a labor union.  Burundi is now considered the poorest country in the world.

Rwanda and Burundi were the same country until colonization when they were split so the ethic groups are pretty much the same with Hutu at 85% and Tutsi at 14%.  

Religion is: Christian 67% (Roman Catholic 62%, Protestant 5%), indigenous beliefs 23%, Muslim 10%

Recent background in Rwanda

In 1959, three years before independence from Belgium, the majority ethnic group, the Hutus, overthrew the ruling Tutsi king. Over the next several years, thousands of Tutsis were killed, and some 150,000 driven into exile in neighboring countries. The children of these exiles later formed a rebel group, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), and began a civil war in 1990. The war, along with several political and economic upheavals, exacerbated ethnic tensions, culminating in April 1994 in the genocide of roughly 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. The Tutsi rebels defeated the Hutu regime and ended the killing in July 1994, but approximately 2 million Hutu refugees - many fearing Tutsi retribution - fled to neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Uganda, and the former Zaire. Since then, most of the refugees have returned to Rwanda, but several thousand remained in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo (the former Zaire) and formed an extremist insurgency bent on retaking Rwanda, much as the RPF tried in 1990. Despite substantial international assistance and political reforms - including Rwanda's first local elections in March 1999 and its first post-genocide presidential and legislative elections in August and September 2003 - the country continues to struggle to boost investment and agricultural output, and ethnic reconciliation is complicated by the real and perceived Tutsi political dominance. Kigali's increasing centralization and intolerance of dissent, the nagging Hutu extremist insurgency across the border, and Rwandan involvement in two wars in recent years in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo continue to hinder Rwanda's efforts to escape its bloody legacy.

The country is the size of Maryland with a population of 9.9 million people.   4.6 million are employed with an average yearly income of $1,000 US.