April Prayer Letter

April 27, 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

This morning we took Emily to the airport. She will be away for another 3 months at Rift Valley Academy. Saying goodbye was not easy, but it was a bit easier knowing she likes RVA and the people caring for her. While we did not do too much while she was home, we did have a great time dying Easter eggs and going to the Akagera game park (with another AIM missionary, Melissa Smith).

In our last email we asked you to pray about a series of meetings that took place last week concerning the Bible college (FATER/Rwanda Institute of Evangelical Theology) and its independent legal status and accreditation, moving from French to English as the main language of instruction, and exploring the potential for partnering with other institutions as we seek to make best use of the Rwandan Evangelical Church’s resources.

We are praising God as all the meetings went well with no major road blocks. We still need to pray that everything continues to move forward and that God’s will is made evident concerning possible partnerships. It is clear to us that until the partnership decision is finalised we are in limbo and cannot begin construction.

So what will we do in the mean time? No twiddling of thumbs here! We will continue our Kinyarwanda language study as well as look for opportunities where our skills can be of help to those around us. While that sounds a bit vague for now, we hope to finalise it very soon.

Thank you again for your prayers for our family and ministry.

Mark and Lisa & Emily Sudman

Prayer Requests for Special Meetings

Dear Family and Friends,

Our colleague, Bruce Rossington, just sent out a short prayer letter that we thought stated our prayer requests for the coming week well, so rather than come up with our own wording, we will use his.

We would like to ask you to pray for a series of meetings that are due to take place this week (Tuesday to Friday).

The Bible college (FATER/Rwanda Institute of Evangelical Theology) is at a critical stage in its development, as it seeks independent legal status and accreditation, moves from French to English as the main language of instruction, and explores the potential for partnering with other institutions as we seek to make best use of the Rwandan Evangelical Church’s resources.

It is an exciting and challenging time and busy people from Rwanda, Uganda, UK and USA have blocked out time in their diaries to give the issues the detailed consideration that they demand.

Please pray for us all this week:

- That the key people would make it to each meeting
- That we would communicate effectively, despite linguistic and cultural barriers
- That graciousness would abound
- That a passion for God’s glory and the good of his Church in this region would sweep away self-interest
- That we would finish the week in unity, having agreed on how to move forward

Above all, pray that the Lord’s will would be done, despite, and even through, our weakness.

These meetings are crucial to us, the Sudmans, because the final decisions will impact the future direction of the construction which we came out to oversee.

Also, Emily leaves April 27 for Kenya for another 3 month term at Rift Valley Academy. Please pray we have a good final week together.

In Christ,
Mark and Lisa

Apology

Sorry for the delay in adding to the blog. We have many stories to tell, but little time to write them down at the moment. I hope to catch up in a week or so.

Please keep praying about our car. The owner says the paperwork is very close to being completed. We are still waiting...

Blessings to you all.

Day of Mourning

This morning the sun rose as usual. The birds are singing. There is a thin fog hovering over the city in the valley just below us. Overhead the sky is gray. Mornings like this could bring rain or it could clear up in an hour or two. The day has begun like any other day in Rwanda.

Except it isn’t.

There is a silence outside. No crews working on the house across the street. No voices of neighbors greeting one another on the road. Not even the wheelbarrows full of plastic bidons of water rattling up on down the road. Today is a national “holiday”: Genocide Memorial Day or some have called it the “National Day of Mourning”. 15 years ago today 100 days of hell broke loose in this small country. During that time over 800,000 people were horrifically and systemically killed. Hundreds of thousands more were maimed, tortured, left for dead. Yet they survived.

We have heard snippets of stories from real people:
“My aunts and uncles were killed and buried in a mass grave.”
“My family had to identify the bodies of our relatives who were thrown into a shallow grave after being killed with a machete.”
“I hid in the bush with my baby on my back. We only had the clothes we were wearing. It was pouring down rain everyday. We were soaked, no food, no water, no shelter.”
“I saw my relatives being hit in the head and slashed with machetes.”
“My father had his eye poked out and his leg slashed.”

These are what people who we know have said. We know only a handful people. There are thousands of stories which are being remembered today.

In one book I read these statistics about children survivors (1995 National Trauma Survey by UNICEF):
99.9% witnessed violence
79.6% experienced death in the family
69.5% witnessed someone being killed or injured
61.5% were threatened with death
90.6% believed they would die
57.7% witnessed killings or injuries with machete
31.4% witnessed rape or sexual assault
87.5% saw dead bodies or parts of bodies

This is just the children. It does not specify how old these children were who were surveyed but assuming they were up to 18 years of age, now these children are from 15 – 33 years old. Maybe the young ones have forgotten the images but none of them can forget the struggles they have had to live with; many without a family support system, without education because there were no funds, without … well, the list goes on and you can fill in the blanks.

Today there will be “commemorations” throughout the country. The main one will be just up the road from us at a Memorial site called “Nyanza”. The president will come there and “officially” open the site. There has been work going on for weeks along the main stretch of road near us – cleaning up, tree planting, new signs, fresh paint – all in anticipation of the president’s visit. The BBC radio has said that 1,000s of Rwandans will go there today to pay their respects and to see the president. What the president says today will be very important to the healing of the country.

We have questions which are very difficult for us to ask and even more difficult to get answers for:

15 years ago 15% of the population was targeted by the majority of the population. Someone on the radio today said that while it was neighbors attacking neighbors, she sees the event as a mass hatred. The killers were in essence brainwashed through propaganda until a mob mentality was established. The mind set was not “I’m going to go kill my neighbor today.” It was “Those people belong to a group of people who we’ve been told are bad/evil/oppressive. We need to eliminate that group of people for the good of the country.” But my question is: How are those who killed, those in the majority of the population, how are they spending today? Many have repented and asked forgiveness. Many are still in jail. Many may be living in our neighborhood or attending our church – but we don’t know. But what images do they have? What do they tell their children? Did their children witness their father killing their neighbor’s children – the friend they walked to school with and played with on Saturdays? Are those people still brainwashed? Do they still believe the demons in their head that those other people are evil?

What about those who refused to be brainwashed? Instead of joining the mob, they reached out to save and rescue – many of them being killed because of their kindness and courage. What became of their orphans? What are their families commemorating today?

The country will never forget and the motto is “Never Again”. But, how does a country move on? How does a country heal? All of this is too overwhelming for me. It is too big for my mind.

Unfortunately, it is not only Rwandans who live with horror in their memories. Congo has millions dead in the last 10 – 12 years because of conflict, lack of medicines, lack of food and water and proper hygiene. Uganda has been plagued by the Lord’s Resistance Army for years and years. The children live in fear of being abducted into the army and those who are will have R-rated images in their heads forever. Then there is Chad and Sudan and Somalia and …

Sunday is Easter.

We pray that the HOPE of Salvation and Forgiveness and Reconciliation will be preached throughout this land of Rwanda and beyond.

2 Corinthians 5:17 - 6:2 (NIV)

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

As God's fellow workers we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain. For he says,
"In the time of my favor I heard you,
and in the day of salvation I helped you."

I tell you, now is the time of God's favor, now is the day of salvation.

Emily Home!

April 2009

Dear Family and Friends,

It is great to have Emily home for 4 weeks for her semester break from Rift Valley Academy in Kenya. She has had a great semester, made friends , kept her grades up, and cut her hair a bit. We are looking forward to a short family vacation after Easter.

Next week is a week of mourning all over Rwanda marking the 15th anniversary of the beginning of the 1994 genocide. This morning we went to the Kigali Genocide Memorial. We had wanted to go there earlier but waited for Emily so she could go with us. The Genocide Memorial is not the typical kind of place that you might want to visit as a tourist (or a resident for that matter), but is a place that you must go to. It tells of the history leading up to the genocide and its causes, how brutally 800,000 men, women and children were killed in about 3 months, sometimes by friends or neighbors. There is also a mass grave containing over 250,000 bodies. When we got home Mama Fifi, who works for us in the house, told us that 3 of her family members are buried there. I shed a few tears at seeing pictures of some the children who were killed and reading descriptions about them and their families, and also when seeing the skulls of victims, some of them with large holes smashed in them.

I seriously doubt this kind of thing will ever happen again in Rwanda, but it does say something about the spiritual maturity of the church 15 years ago. Our hope is that the Theological college will train up godly pastors who will help the Rwandan church to grow into the pure and holy bride God intends. If you would like to see more about the memorial go to
http://www.kigalimemorialcentre.org/

Please continue to pray that our car situation works out soon and for our granddaughter, Abbey, who is still having a few tests on her kidneys. Praise God with us as Lisa and I celebrate 31 years of marriage next week!

Thank you again for your prayers for our family and ministry.

Mark (for all)