Dear Supporters,
This year has thrown us some curve-balls, most notably with Gerrit’s ill health. Despite facing death several times earlier this year, Gerrit is slowly on the mend and Project Ubumwe continues to grow!
Thanks to our faithful supporters and partners in South Africa, Rwanda, and the United States, Project Ubumwe is about to complete it’s second 6-month reconciliation program in THREE prisons for 2016! Our finances have been stretched thin but our faith in the power of Project Ubumwe’s message to the world has not wavered. Even when our hopes were down, our partners at Prison Fellowship Rwanda have faithfully continued to counsel genocide prisoners, their victims, and their families. The second program for 2016 is about to culminate in three community events with prisoners from Rwamagama, Ngoma, and Bugusera being given the opportunity to repent their crimes and ask forgiveness in public.
These incredible breakthroughs in Rwamagama, Ngoma, and Bugusera are the result of incredibly hard work performed by the 12 Project Ubumwe chaplains – on the ground – in communities still torn apart by the 1994 genocide. Our chaplains spend six months identifying prisoners willing to confess crimes, finding the affected victim families, finding the perpetrator families, giving pastoral counseling in prisons and communities, before finally bringing all the affected parties together. Chaplain Noel pictured below is one of those chaplains and he will be featured in the upcoming documentary, “Mbabarira”, about Project Ubumwe and reconciliation in Rwanda.
We are also extremely grateful to Pastor Deo Gashagaza and Guma Alexandre of Prison Fellowship Rwanda who continue to break down barriers in communities and government as they seek to bring God’s healing to every genocide prisoner and victim who have not yet had the opportunity to be counseled and reconciled. Thanks to their work, the Rwandan government is opening doors as hundreds more prisoners and communities want to participate in Project Ubumwe.
Our biggest obstacle at this point in time is financial. Project Ubumwe is bursting at the seams and we ask our supporters to consider making end of year gifts to deliver the promise of reconciliation in 2017.
Finally, the Board of The Word For All Nations decided that Gerrit needs to focus on his recovery. They asked me to take over as interim CEO and I readily agreed. My trips filming Project Ubumwe in Rwanda, seeing Gerrit’s work on the ground, revealed to me incredibly powerful transformations in broken people that can only be attributed to God’s grace.
Blessings to you all,
Thabo Wolfaardt
