Thanksgiving In Rwanda
by Randy Robison
"Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
his love endures forever." (Psalm 107:1)
It has been ten years now since I spent my Thanksgiving holiday in the post-genocidal environs of that beautiful African nation. LIFE Outreach International was just beginning to help break ground on what would become the Fred Nkunda Life Center – a home for many of the hundreds of thousands of children separated or orphaned by the bloody civil war of 1994.
I remember waking up that morning to the sound of soldiers’ boots pounding the streets as they jogged past the missionaries’ house, chanting in a language I could not understand. The soldiers did not strike fear in our hearts. To the contrary, these soldiers were keeping the peace. Yet these soldiers were also a reminder that although the violence that shocked the world had abated, I was still waking up in an unstable country on a continent more familiar with death than any other in the world.
After spending the day shooting video for Life Today, we returned to the missionaries’ home to a pleasant surprise. The wife of the orphanage’s head engineer – both of them from Canada – had graciously prepared a traditional American Thanksgiving meal of turkey, fresh vegetables, cranberry sauce, and fruit salad.
We ate our dinner on paper plates and sat in chairs without a table. The soldiers jogged by again at sunset. We were tired from the long day in the hot sun and emotionally overwhelmed by the children we’d seen and the stories we’d heard. Yet, we were truly thankful.
A decade later, the things that struck me that Thanksgiving Day in Rwanda still come to mind. As I sit down with my children this year to celebrate the holiday, I am thankful for my family. I’m grateful that my children have a mother and a father, plus an extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. My children never have to worry about their next meal, or whether they will sleep in a bed at night, or if the police will come take their father away, never to return. For that, I am thankful.
I don’t have to worry whether my sons will be forced to fight in a war before they’re old enough to drive. I don’t worry that my daughters will be stolen and sold into prostitution. I worry about whether my daughter’s soccer team will win first place in their division, or whether or not my son will improve his “B” to an “A” by the end of the fall semester. For that, I am thankful.
It also brings me great satisfaction to know that so many children around the world that face the hardships my children will never know are being cared for because of the work of LIFE Outreach International. I know that Hope, the blind girl I saw in a Chinese orphanage, now lives in Detroit and has had corrective surgery to restore some vision. I know that dozens of kids who used to lives in the dumps of Mongolia or the sewers of Bolivia now have a home with a Godly adult who cares for them. I know that many children will run and play today, instead of lying sick in bed, because their water now comes from a fresh well. I know that countless children in Africa are alive this Thanksgiving Day because they received soup from a feeding center in a time of desperate need. For that, I am thankful.
The world is a mess. Just pick up a newspaper or turn on the television and you’ll see. In many ways, America is, too. There are things that we must change in order to maintain the vision of our founding fathers. But the blessings in our lives and the blessing that we can be in the lives of others redeem the times in which we live. And for that, we can all be thankful.
This Week
Count the blessings in your life, then find a way to be a blessing in the life of someone else.
Prayer
"Father, thank you for your bountiful goodness, for your provision, and for the ability to share your love with others. Help me show my gratitude to You by giving someone else a reason to be thankful this week."
