Of Co-operatives and Churches.....

Ok thoughts shall speel....

I have been visiting many co-operatives over the last few weeks here in Rwanda and have been challanged and humbled many times over. I will readily confess my initial nervousness when visiting these co-operatives, not knowing what to expect or what we would be doing. We have visited several and have interviewed people, joked with kids, picked aubergines and prayed with those we have met. It has been eye-opening.

For me the prayer has been the most immense. It is extremly humbling for all of us to be asked to pray for individuals and groups we have met, as in my eyes at least, their faith, hope and love far outshines my own shallowness. But then again, I have come to learn that that very idea is turning the focus again back on ourselves. We serve a great God and all approach Him on exactly the same way - as sinners saved by the Great High Priest whose name is Love. This story has never been about us, it is all His Story. It has been a privlege to pray with these people, and has been an encouragement for all involved. As always I feel we learn way more than we could ever ever give.

As for the co-operatives themselves, often the government here will refuse to let certain areas of land be cultivated by individuals, instead letting groups apply to do certain activities there. And so the co-operatives come into play. The group we have been working for, Coeur Joyeux, will supply initial capital to get the projects off the ground, and then the groups will work together doing whatever activities they have applied to do.

The range is quite impressive. One group we visited cultivated potatoes (we were practically at home!), another built ponds where they grew fish. One grew a paper crop, another had goats, while another taught its members to sow and make clothes to be sold at the market. Several kept rabbits to be sold for food to the hotels in the area.

And the work done is amazing. One group we met were made up of people who were all HIV-positive. Another was made up of widows from the genocide. All were close-knit communities working together for the good of all, not just themselves. Many of the individuals we met were far from the city where the wealth and aid does not filter along to, and talked of how before the co-operative they had little hope, and felt alone and abandoned, often having lost members of their family to the genocide, disease or the passage of time. When we met them things were different.

I am struck afresh with how Biblical it all sounds. The communites were like families, with the individuals serving and loving each other, carrying each others burdens and caring for those who needed it most. By themselves they could not have done the work we saw. It reminds me in some ways at least of what I read of the early Acts church. Perhaps something we in the highly individualistic West have lost?

All is of course not rosy (is it ever?). One group we met were building a bakery but did not yet have the nescessary funds. They were destitute and their stories would have shattered anyone's heart. Many were genocide survivers, and without the money to start the work of the co-operative they were still desperately poor and in a dire situation.

But this tragedy still held hope. If they can get the funds to finish the building process an entire community of 45 people will be able to supply for themselves and raise the money to pay for their kid's education, to expand and diversify the crops they grow and build and improve their local communities. All things we most certainly take for granted and would most likely curse the name of our Maker if we were ever forced to do without.

Each story is both tragic and infused with the grace of God. One girl from this co-operative, Olive, told us of how she lay on the floor of her home in 1994 (when she would have been 5 or 6 years old) and listened as men outside discussed whether to raid and kill everyone in the house now or wait until later, as they wanted homes to destroy later on that evening. This girl's story can be told as they chose to passover the house for now. She ran. Her family experienced horrendous hardships. During the genocide her mother was raped by 7 men in the one night, from which she derived HIV.

I know not what to say. Instinctively when hearing of such things our hearts break. As they were created to. And if I'm honest I lash out at God in anger, asking how He dares to let such things occur to His children, to those He claims to love. But I have so so much to learn. I realise that God loves and aches for these people more than I ever could. He mourns and detests the actions of mindless hate, as well as the apathy and blindness we in the West often choose to wallow in, often by default. I am humbled by the faith that people like Olive and her mother show, and I am ashamed when I listen to them sing to us of God's provision and love. They know Him more than I have yet dreamt.

Olive speaks of how the community she is now a part of is like her family, both for her, her five younger brothers, and her mother. There she feels love and acceptance, and knows that when she struggles, there are those who will carry her. She thanks God for His grace and love. And in that moment, in that community, I catch a glimpse of the Church Jesus lived, suffered, died and rose again for.

God is sovereign. I will never claim to understand Him or His ways. I can't begin to answer why such dispicable atrocities occured. But I do know one thing. God loves these people more than we ever could. And He knows what it means to watch those He loves suffer undeservedly at the hands of cruel men. He watched His Son tortured and murdered in one of the most horrendous ways imagineable. He knows their pain, and for each of us, no matter where we are, we are not alone, even in the darkest times.

The co-operatives showed me hope. They showed love to each other and provided oppurtunites they could not have had alone. Again we have much to learn from these 'families', these 'churches'.

I have gone on too long. What I have monologued was not what I intended. I meant to talk of how the models of co-operatives work and empower people, and to encourage us to perhaps seek out co-operatives we could pray for and provide the initial capital for. But tales tell themselves and I have ended up somewhere completely different. As my time in the internet cafe runs out I ask again for prayer for these groups. We serve the same God of miracles our brothers and sisters trust and praise for His love and provision. Maybe we need to again seek Him and His Face so that our faith isn't dependant on our fragile circumstances.

But most of all we need to pray for our brothers and sisters. We have much to learn of service, community, selflessness and love from these groups. In the co-operatives when an individual suffers, the whole group suffers. Equally when our brothers and sisters suffer, either in Africa, S. America, Iraq, Iran, China or even just in little Norn Iron (perhaps cast out of their Belfast homes by racists, or sleeping without a home in a bus shelter, or struggling to make ends meet for their family), we all should suffer. We are one body. And we are not alone. So how should we love?