Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Psalm 126:5 An important part of Getting to Zero is helping vulnerable children remain in their families. One such group are the children of commercial sex workers – mothers who will often leave their children alone at night to work the streets. This month we are celebrating that 44 women in Busanza, Rwanda recently graduated from a program in their church that trained them in income generating tools to help them move out of commercial sex work and into sustainable livelihoods. Orphan Care teams from Saddleback had spoken into the lives of these women during their training, sharing with them the value of their children and their children’s need for attention and care from their mothers. When a team returned again a few months ago, they were given a glimpse into the truly transformative power of that message. 
Josephine, a young mother of two, stood to share her testimony. Her life had been marked by extreme loss and pain. Desperate to survive, Josephine entered into commercial sex work as a
means to provide for her and her children. Feeling trapped and hopeless, she could not see how she could care for and love her children. She had already formulated in her mind the plan for where to abandon her children when she walked in to hear the Orphan Care team share their message of hope that day. God opened her eyes to the important role she had to play as a mama to her two little ones. 
Through the support of her church, Josephine was ready to become an attentive mother to her children. Josephine’s eyes were opened and her heart towards her children changed when she learned the principles of Trust-Based Relational Intervention, or TBRI®, at her church. Within a community of other women with similar life experiences, Josephine was equipped with knowledge on how to foster connection that builds attachment with her children, disarm fear, and give voice. These practical interventions infused Josephine’s parenting with hope that she could be the loving and supportive mother her children need, and the community at Mama Joy’s encouraged her to persevere through the challenges this paradigm shift would bring. 
Coupled with their newfound parenting skills through TBRI® education, the women at Mama Joy’s church also learned income-generating modalities that would enable them to have a trade that could support their families. The women were taught how to use sewing machine to make beautiful clothing, purses, and other goods and also learned how to handcraft jewelry. These life skills offer the women holistic interventions to generate wealth outside of commercial sex work. The women are also equipped with knowledge on wealth stewardship through savings groups, allowing them to learn how to manage their income, invest, and grow their wealth, helping build a solid foundation for future financial stability and success. The support of their local church and Mama Joy has equipped 44 women just like Josephine to learn practical life skills to provide for their families, leave commercial sex work, and be caring, present mothers to their children. We praise God for how He’s re-writing their stories, taking them from pain and desperation, to joy! If you would like to become a Rwanda sponsor, connect with us via email at orphans@saddleback.com or learn more about giving now at www.saddleback.com/sponsorship!
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The Orphan Care Initiative is in the midst of working with the country of Rwanda to achieve a momentous goal - closing each of the country's orphanages and getting each child into a loving, lasting, legal family of their own through Saddleback Church's unique missions model, The PEACE Plan. The history of the PEACE Plan in Rwanda is an amazing testament to the transformational work God can do through local churches: In 2003, the sixth and current President of Rwanda, Paul Kagame read a copy of the book, The Purpose Driven Life. Barely nine years had passed since the horrendous Rwandan genocide that began on April 7,1994. Over the course of 100 days, it took the lives of one million Rwandans and left one million children orphaned before ending three months later. After reading the book, Kagame had a vision to make Rwanda the first Purpose Driven nation.
At the same time, while Pastor Rick Warren was speaking in South Africa in 2003, the PEACE Plan was born—Planting Churches that Promote Reconciliation, Equip Servant Leaders, Assist the Poor, Care For the Sick, and Educate the Next Generation.
The vision was to mobilize local churches and ordinary people, empowered by God, to make a difference wherever they are. Together, they would fight the five Global Giants of spiritual emptiness, self-serving leadership, poverty, disease, and illiteracy.
A year after reading The Purpose Driven Life, President Kagame invited Pastor Rick to implement his newly-announced PEACE Plan in Rwanda. It quickly became a reality to form a partnership and have Rwanda serve as a model to the world.
As Pastor Rick says, “It would be just like God to take a small nation like Rwanda, on which the world turned its back in its greatest need, and use it for God and for good.”
To implement this plan, Pastor Rick began commissioning Saddleback members to go to Rwanda in small groups. Through the PEACE Plan in Rwanda, the church began working together with the public, private, and faith sectors of the nation, to help lower the poverty rate, empty orphanages, provide health care, train pastors, and offer education. To date, over 2,000 Saddleback members have gone on mission to facilitate this national strategy to mobilize local churches.
“I could take you to 10 million villages around the world where the only thing there is the church,” Pastor Rick says. “The church is the biggest organization on the planet and has the most potential to do good if mobilized.”
Today, over 4,000 Rwandan churches have partnered with the PEACE Plan and have mobilized thousands of volunteers to serve and invest in their communities. Many have completed a three-year intensive training and are offering everything from micro-savings clubs to training programs for farmers.
According to Kay Warren, co-founder of Saddleback Church, ”When we first visited Rwanda, we had no idea what we were doing or what we had to give. But we brought what we knew, which was the love of Christ.”
Saddleback leadership saw that the magnitude of churches in Rwanda were located where healthcare facilities were lacking. They envisioned a model of training church members to provide medical care. Today, over 9,000 trained health volunteers serve families in villages that would have otherwise never received medical treatment.
Today, Rwanda is one of the cleanest countries in the world, thanks to decrees from President Paul Kagame. Each month in the capital city of Kigali, citizens—including the president and his cabinet—participate in picking up litter on a public clean-up day. Additionally, PEACE has helped reduce the poverty rate in Rwanda by 11 percent, and has worked toward emptying orphanages so that every child has a home.
Over the past 20 years, Rwanda has experienced exponential growth and is ranked among the fastest developing countries in the world. Pastor Rick credits God for blessing Rwanda because they have chosen to forgive, are willing to work together, have trusted the Lord, and have persevered.
“The mission of Rwanda was not to create a dependency on others,” says Pastor Rick, “which is why the PEACE Plan has thrived so well there. The PEACE Plan is built on the Great Commandment that says, ‘Go and teach them’. People need trade, not aid. They don’t need a hand out, they need a hand up.”
In 2014, during a church service honoring the victims of the Rwandan genocide, Saddleback members celebrated the partnership and efforts of the PEACE Plan in Rwanda. Reflecting on those 10 years, President Kagame shared about Rwanda’s efforts to move on from the past and educate a new generation to impact the future.
“Our relationship with Saddleback has contributed to the renewal of our country,” President Kagame said. “We continue to work together with friends to ensure our future no longer holds fear, but opportunity.”
If you would like to go on an HIV/Healthcare PEACE trip to work alongside local churches in Rwanda, email us at
HIV@saddleback.com or call 949-609-8555.
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What can two young women of Orange County without education in
social work or experience as parents do to help churches in Rwanda care for
orphans and vulnerable children? That was the question Lauren Franco and Amanda
Schaefer asked themselves as they stepped out in faith on a recent Orphan Care
PEACE trip to Rwanda. They discovered the only qualification needed to make a
difference is being called by God. In this article originally posted by Saddleback Women, Lauren and Amanda discuss
their unique experiences as the youngest women on their all women PEACE trip to
Rwanda and the lessons they learned about how God qualifies those who are
called.
How do you know the best way to invest your life when the world
says you are too young to make a difference? As the youngest members of the
Women’s team taking a PEACE trip to Rwanda, Lauren Franco and Amanda Schaefer
wrestle with their inadequacies.
“Beth Schwartz, Women's Minister,
assembled a fantastic team of 17 women leaders for this adventure. I’d never
been on a PEACE trip before,” explains Lauren, “and worried my youth might be a deterrent to the team. I had no
teaching experience. No years of wisdom and skill to guide me. How could I
possibly spread hope, encouragement and solidarity to the Rwandan people?”
As Millennials, both Amanda and Lauren also knew they had to
overcome the poor reputation their generation garners. “With social media, we are on our phones
24/7. Sometimes people think we have the world at our fingertips, yet we lack
direction,” Amanda says. “It
was incredible to be mentored by the women in our group who created a nurturing
community ripe for growth. Despite the age differences, everyone in our group
shared the same values. All of us wanted to infuse Christ into the lives of the
Rwandan people. Since the genocide in 1994, the country has gone through so
much, but we were completely blown away by the abundant forgiveness and love
the Rwandan people have for their neighbors, church and country.”
“I carried a
deep apprehension of never being able to measure up to the women in the group.
My place at the table didn’t seem real – the anxiety about my age was driven by
fear. In that outbreak of insecurity, I checked my heart to find the source of
my fear,” Lauren explains. “My
darkest day ended in tears knowing I had to teach a devotional the very next
day. With fear, I open my Bible. God led me to the story of Mary, the mother of
Jesus and pointed out Mary’s age. She wasn’t more than a teenager and yet God
chose her for possibly the most honoring task of all – to be the carrier,
nurturer and mother of Christ.” Knowing obedience, not age, was more important
to God provided a turning point for Lauren and the group’s younger women.
Lauren continues, “I
was an average churchgoer before this trip. I felt God calling me to go and
wanted to be obedient.” Amanda adds,
“The PEACE Plan’s beauty
is that it is not about us or what Saddleback can do, but all about the light
being shed on the churches and pastors in Rwanda, making them the heroes, not
us.”
Despite the devastation and heartache Rwanda has endured, it is
now an example to the world. The wreckage and brokenness of the country have
been transformed into the most forgiving and joyful body the group had ever
seen. “Grace seeps into every
crevice of this country and should push us to set aside denomination, take up
unity, let go of differences to take on love, and give our pain to God and take
on joy instead,” says Lauren.
Amanda echoes Lauren’s
beliefs. “I was heartbroken
seeing the street kids living in homelessness. Yet the local church cares for
them. Some parts of the world lack many things: material comforts, medicine,
education, electricity. Even in these situations, in this particular country
hope abounds.”
The team experienced situations very different from their
comfortable lives in Orange County. “We visited heart-wrenching memorials to genocide victims. Everyone
in our group was deeply affected by that. It was also distressing to meet girls
forced into the sex trade or who became drug dealers because that was the only
way they could support themselves,” Lauren explains.
God’s light overpowered all the darkness. Amanda explains: “It was uplifting to witness the
church in action. Whether in the capital of Kigali or Kibuye, a rural city, the
church is working to ease the pain of HIV/AIDs patients, closing down
orphanages and reaching out with God’s love to those who suffered the gravest
inhumanities. In one town, we participated in Umuganda, a service day. The goal
was to build a gutter to prevent flooding during heavy rains. The entire
community shared a passion for this, desiring to be unified, working together,
despite differences to build a better city.”
Amanda continues, “We
taught The Purpose Driven Church, but most were already living it. Faith is a
living action. Their faithfulness to God is inspiring. Rwandans are teaching
each other and the world, you can’t snuff out hope, you can’t smother it. Hope
exists because Christ came to this earth.”
Amanda and Lauren encourage other women to step out of their
comfort zones to participate on a PEACE trip. Both agree their most profound
learning was a renewed trust in God. “He met us every time we questioned ourselves. He provided love by
surrounding us with a strong, safe community of Saddleback women,” Amanda clarifies. “He gave us a new perspective on our
blessings. His light will continue to burn when all the other lights go out. We
hold more strongly to his hope because we were warmed in places we didn’t even
know had grown cold.”
“Pray about
going on a PEACE trip. Be willing to be uncomfortable,” says Amanda. “Ask God, ‘Where do you want me to
go? I’m ready to go where you are leading.’” Lauren adds, “Maybe he isn’t leading you to go on a trip
now. For example, while financial support is needed, the young moms on our trip
were encouraged by those in Orange County who cooked family meals, drove their
kids to practice, cleaned their homes or simply prayed. Invite God into your
plans. He will respond. You will be forever changed by abandoning your fear and
placing your trust in God.”
Blog re-posted from Saddleback Women. Check out the original blog post and more from Saddleback Women here.
God can use your unique skills and passions on an Orphan Care PEACE trip! Email orphans@saddleback.com
or call 949-609-8555 for more information.
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Something miraculous is
occurring throughout Rwanda. Orphanages once full of children are being shut
down as children are being adopted into families of their own. These children
who have experienced great trauma and loss require a greater level of connection
and care from their parents and families. To meet this need, local churches
throughout Rwanda are now sharing the life-changing tools and training of
Trust-Based Relational Interventions (TBRI).
Researched and developed
at Texas Christian University, the skills taught through TBRI have enabled
adoptive families to connect with their children in healing ways, fostered
healthy reunification of families, and encouraged families at risk of
separation. Parents are being equipped and supported by their churches to build
healthy connections with their children. Take a look at this video highlighting
the power of transformation TBRI has had in local churches throughout Rwanda!
Are you interested in helping equip more churches in Rwanda
with the life-changing tools of TBRI? You can serve on an Orphan Care PEACE
trip and support the local church in emptying orphanages and adopting children.
Email
orphans@saddleback.com
or call 949-609-8555.
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In October 2016, a group of women from Saddleback Church took a PEACE
trip to Rwanda to serve local churches in the areas of Orphan Care and HIV/AIDS.
Comprised of core women’s ministry leaders, the trip brought together women
ranging from college students and recent graduates, to young mothers and career
women, to grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Together, these women found that
their diverse hearts were weaved together by the common vision of empowering
the local churches of Rwanda and living out the Great Commission in their daily
lives.
Many of the women who served on this trip harbored deep
insecurities and questions as to whether God could use them in Rwanda. Whether
they felt too young, too old, too sensitive, too feminine, too inexperienced,
or too small in the kingdom, God met them in their doubts and empowered them to
serve His Church. As Lauren Franco, Women’s Communities intern and team member
stated, “The Great Commission isn't subject to one gender, or one age group.
It’s all of us. We’re all called to go to make disciples of all nations.” These
women discovered the truth that everyone can be used on a PEACE trip. No matter
what your background, family history, or experiences are, God can use you!
Take a look at this discussion about the HIV and Orphan Care
PEACE trip featuring several women who served on this trip as they discuss what
God taught them in the process:
Are you ready to take your next step of faith by going on a PEACE trip? Join us January 22nd at PEACE Practical on the Saddleback Lake Forest campus to learn more about Orphan Care and HIV ministries and how you can GO or support what our church is doing to live life on mission. Please email orphans@saddleback.com or call 949-609-8555 with any questions!
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