Tears of Joy and the Broken Church in the Hills

​The last seven days have been an absolute whirlwind of intense, holy, and heavy experiences. To be completely honest, I have cried every single day that I have been here. They are always tears of pure joy, sparked by the ways God keeps pricking my heart through the grace of the Rwandan people.

So much has happened that I need to break this down day by day just to process the sheer weight of it all.

Thursday & Friday: Passing the Torch and Receiving a Name

By the time Thursday arrived, I finally felt like I had completely hit my stride in the classroom. The clunkiness of working through a translator had smoothed out, and the connection with the 30 local pastors in our cohort was locked in.

On Friday, we held a pastoral Round Table discussion. We were joined by Dr. Bane Angles, a professor of pastoral ministry at Mid-Atlantic Christian University, whose own classroom cohort had wrapped up the day before. Listening to these grassroots leaders ask questions taught me a profound lesson: these men and women don't just need a week of information. They need long-term, continued support, resources, and structural mentoring to successfully implement biblical elders in their home churches.

After the discussion, we handed out certificates of completion. The atmosphere was pure celebration, but the true highlight was helping hand out the Rwandan Study Bibles. These Bibles cost $35 USD each, which in their world is an insurmountable amount of money—they would never be able to afford it on their own. For many of these pastors, this is now the single theological resource they own to feed their congregations. Watching their hands grip those pages was a moment I won't soon forget.

Then, the pastors completely floored me.

In Rwandan culture, it is a deep tradition to bestow a local name upon a teacher who has impacted them. The pastors had collectively huddled, chosen a name for me, and passed it to Bishop Theophile to present.

They named me Mahoro (pronounced mah-ho-ro). It means Peace and Tranquility. To be given a name that represents peace by people who have walked through so much historical turmoil is an honor that deeply humbled my soul.

Saturday: The Beautiful, Overwhelming Hustle of Kimironko

On Saturday, the atmosphere shifted completely. Bishop Theophile took us to the Kimironko Market—the largest open-air market in Kigali. I was genuinely looking forward to it, wanting to find a meaningful souvenir for Brie and Ben. I had been warned beforehand that the vendors would be aggressive, pitching their goods by calling out that everything is "almost free" because of the currency exchange.

But nothing prepared me for the sheer scale of the hustle.

Before we even crossed the physical threshold of the building, the overwhelm hit me like a wall. People started coming out of the woodwork. One woman targeted me immediately, repeatedly telling me her name and insisting that because she asked me first, I was obligated to buy from her. Every few seconds, she would pop back up in my line of sight to remind me she was still waiting. Other vendors pressed in, locking eyes and saying, "I have children," or "I have a family, please buy from me."

Knowing the deep poverty driving their desperation broke something inside me. I felt so consumed with empathy that I wanted to buy something from every single person who spoke to me, but I physically couldn't. The noise, the packing of bodies, and the emotional weight became so intense that I nearly had a full-blown panic attack. I had to get out of there. We navigated the crowd, and I retreated from the market as quickly as possible just to catch my breath.

By Saturday night, the landscape of our team changed. Dr. David King (MACU's counseling professor) had left earlier in the week, Dr. Angles flew out Friday night, and on Saturday evening, Frank Reynolds and Scott McClimans boarded their flights back to the States. Suddenly, I was the last Westerner from our team left on the ground.

Sunday: Preaching in the Dust of Rweru

If the first week belonged to the classroom, Sunday belonged to the wilderness.

I piled into a vehicle for a 90-minute drive out to a town called Rweru in the Bugesera district of eastern Rwanda. As we left the paved roads of Kigali behind, the reality of rural poverty came into sharp focus. We passed miles and miles of simple mud-brick homes with absolutely no running water. I found myself getting choked up repeatedly during the drive, just witnessing the stark vulnerability of the landscape.

We were heading to the Rweru Parish, a congregation belonging to the Harvest Christian Church. A few years ago, the Rwandan government closed over 10,000 churches across the country due to strict building and safety regulations. Before the closure, this local church had a vibrant congregation of over 300 people. Now, because they are legally barred from using their church building, they are forced to meet in an alternative space.

The "church" was a tiny, cramped mud-and-brick hut, packed to absolute capacity with men, women, and children sitting shoulder-to-shoulder. It felt less like a Sunday service and more like a hidden, underground small group from the early book of Acts.

I was given the incredible honor of preaching to them. Back home, a standard sermon might run 20 or 30 minutes. In that mud hut, through an interpreter, I preached for a full, uninterrupted hour—the longest sermon I have ever delivered in my life. The text didn't matter; the translation lag didn't matter. I felt a supernatural connection to those people. I didn't feel like a visitor; I felt like I truly belonged in that room.

And then, we danced.

Joy is a cultural mandate in the Rwandan church. When the music started, the room erupted into traditional church dancing. I didn't sit on the sidelines; I jumped right into the middle of the room and danced with them. They absolutely loved it. I don't think they see many Americans throw off their reservations and dance in the dust of a mud hut, but it completely broke the ice.

Despite having virtually nothing by worldly standards, these beautiful people pooled their meager resources and surprised us by preparing a massive feast at the end of the service. They loved us with everything they had. I went into the hills of Bugesera thinking I was going to bless a struggling church, but I left that dirt room realizing that God had used them to completely convert and bless me.