Freeman Oct 2020

The art of making the most of the COVID-19 pandemic

Dear friends and family,

How we have been able to provide care:

• Food and supplies

• School packets

• Private piano lessons

Children’s basic needs

During the events, or should I say non-events, of COVID-19 season, it might be easy to assume that a mission out in Rwanda could be stagnant. However, here in Rafiki Rwanda it has been anything but stagnant! We have found the art of making the most of this time and continuing to minister to the needs of our students! At the end of March, we said goodbye to our students and normal everyday life and entered a lockdown for a whole month! I made comments about surviving that in my last newsletter but let us consider what was going on with our students. Many Rwandans work for their food day-to-day. A month lockdown was quite devastating! As we moved out of the lockdown it came to our attention that many of our students did not have sufficient food or other basic needs. For our day students, our generous teachers raised money for us to buy supplies and distribute them. Our resident students, who are out with their relatives or foster families, also received packages of supplies provided by Rafiki. It has been a joy to meet people in their need! It has been a joy to fellowship with our students and their families in their homes and experience Rwandan hospitality! It has been a joy to taste African milk tea with lemongrass instead of ginger!

Along with the basic needs of food and supplies, our teachers have also put together packets of schoolwork to keep our students’ love of learning alive and their brains active! During this time, each student’s family can come to the Rafiki gate and pick up the school packet, and the ones who are further away get personal in-home delivery!

Piano Lessons

Although classrooms are still not allowed, I have not been stopped from providing socially distanced and fully masked piano lessons! Because during the normal school year our primary students leave before I am finished teaching secondary level classrooms, they usually miss out on any private lesson opportunities. Not with COVID! I am putting all my focus on primary level students that are close enough to walk to school and it has been a great success! They are ecstatic every time they have a lesson and their enthusiasm is a wonderful encouragement to me in this season. When I took my trip back to the U.S.A. in August, I told the students that I would be back after my nineteen-day visit (they were all concerned that I was leaving forever). Bernice, a primary five student, counted every day and then showed up for a lesson though I had not called any students to come back to lessons yet! Of course, I gave her a lesson right then and there! We are all ready for school to be allowed again, but these lessons bring a foretaste of that happy day hopefully in the near future! For now, these young students are getting a musical experience they might never have had!

There is much work going on at Rafiki and much opportunity to minister to these kids! Please pray for Rwanda to open schools soon! It is my joy to bring the gift of music to these kids but I cannot do it without you! I need your prayers and your support!

This year I am raising money for a car and I am low on funding! I know the Lord will provide. Would you consider supporting me?

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