The Story Behind the Voices of a Once Muslim Village Now Worshiping Jesus
Today’s blog post comes from Michael Handler—storyteller, marketing strategist, and campaign manager for Awana.
This is the third in a series of blog entries that tells the story behind the filming on (+)MORE, the Awana global documentary film. Over the course of five months I traveled with a crew of film makers to seven different destinations in order to capture the story of what our amazing God is doing through the ministry of Awana. Perhaps the most beautiful places we went to was the country of Rwanda.
The ministry of Awana is only about a year old in the country of Rwanda. The missionary there, Alfred, has done an amazing job networking, training and bringing the importance of ministry to children to light. His laugh is engaging and he converses with passion and joy. The churches in the country seem to share these characteristics. I’ve been a Christian for a long time, and yet the praise and worship of the children and the churches we traveled to were some of the most amazing and life-giving. I can still close my eyes and hear the rhythms being clapped, see the dust rise up at the feet of kids dancing in syncopated beats, and the voices, the voices singing in a language I couldn’t understand expressed an emotion I could completely identify with, one of gratitude to the Lord. Each church we visited had some version of this. The common language of the Church in Rwanda seems to be one of hope, thankfulness and joy.
Let me fast forward to when we were on our way to see an Awana club that is described by my brother Charles Nderitu as one that is “not in our books,” meaning it was started by leaders who may have attended a training, but not for this specific place or location. As we are rolling up the hillsides in our van along roads adorned with coffee plants and banana trees, we have no idea what we’re going to see. We’ve just rolled out of a church where we had an emotional encounter with a family comprised of a grandmother, mother, son and daughter who’s been caring for the son (in his late teens or early 20’s) whose body has stopped working. Seeing their compassion has wrecked some of us. From this church, we’ve also brought along a couple people, one of which is a leader who is responsible for starting this club we’re driving to. Needless to say, the vibe in the van is off. Strangers mixed with exhaustion and emotions makes for quiet rides.
As we pull up to the ridge of the valley, we hear a roar of voices, and as we ascend over the edge of this natural bowl to get our first glimpses of what awaits below, we see a sea of kids, over 1200 and hear them praising God in song and dancing out of the joy that is bubbling over in their hearts. That alone is amazing. Yet when one considers that this place, a seemingly remote series of villages on the outer edges of Kigali, was once a predominately Muslim area, the amazing story of what God is doing begins to unfold. This club of 1200 plus children and youth would make most churches in America desirous of such numbers. Yet this club was started only a few months prior by a woman from a neighboring community who felt a desire to reach out to the kids here. I can’t speak for her methods, I don’t know her process of public evangelism, but I can undeniably say that this is a woman who embodies what all Awana leaders need to see themselves as, the hands and feet of Jesus reaching this world.
