Fire, Kinyarwanda convention

Good news: my electricity returned on the third day! Now I don't have to go to bed at 7pm anymore!

Funny thing, on the first evening of the blackout, my landlord sent me a text message—shortly before I dropped my phone in the water—stating: "Sorry about the fire at your place. Will be sending a technician out tomorrow."

"Fire"? I don't see any flames. Or any smoke. What was he talking about?

I asked Bernard, the brother who is my neighbor. He said that the word in Kinyarwanda for "power" (electricity) is the same as "fire." OK, I thought, so someone would be coming the next day to fix the power problem.

But as proof that misunderstandings can occur, especially across cultural and linguistic lines, a brother in the congregation called a few days later to ask me if my place was still burning. I should have said: Yeah, do you want to come see it? Bring a chair.

No, I said, my house is not and was never burning.

Then, later that evening, I mentioned this strange question to Bernard. He said, no, Brian, your house really did have a fire. It started in your neighbor's place—which is physically in the same house as yours—and they put it out quickly, but it damaged the power lines. Bernard didn't tell me on the evening it happened because I had some guests visiting at the time (sitting in a darkened room with one candle) and he didn't want to bother me.

So, all's well that ends well. My house was saved from incineration, even without my knowing it. I learned another example of Kinyarwanda usage. And I'm back in the cyber world to tell about it.

On Thursday, the day before the Kinyarwanda convention, there was a good-sized turnout for field service. We still had a stack of over 500 convention invitations, and since this was the last day we could use them, all were encouraged to take as many as they wished. I had this notion of bundling up a large stack and tossing it in the middle of the open-air market, but instead my partner and I faithfully followed instructions and distributed them individually to passersby, businesses, and students at a college. In about two hours we placed close to 300! (When you don't speak Kinyarwanda, the conversations are bound to be very brief: "Convention. Bible. Stadium. Free. You are welcome.") We also placed some of the new tract as well, in English.

After a relatively uneventful next two days, on Sunday afternoon I attended the convention. As everyone expected, it was a packed house. I wanted to see how they would pull it off, from a technical standpoint. There were many screens placed at various locations throughout the stadium.

My tie is color-coordinated with the convention badge. Very important!

Wow! Look at the screens!

The section I sat in, with a rather unhappy kid in the foreground.

As close as I could zoom in to the stage.

My first thought, since I came during the lunch break, was to find somewhere to sit and eat a couple of hardboiled eggs I brought. But I couldn't get 10 feet without being stopped by someone I either knew or who wanted to introduce himself. Every kid I passed wanted to stop and shake my hand. When you are the rare non-African person at a convention, you are quite the celebrity! So by the time I found a seat (at that point there were no seats in the shade, only in the sun), I had 5 minutes to scarf down my eggs.

It was then that the program started. And our section had its own screen! It was very entertaining to watch Biblical characters speaking Kinyarwanda in the video drama. The sound quality was excellent, but the picture cut out several times, so a brother had to be on hand to restart it.

So now I can say I've been to a Kinyarwanda convention. I didn't understand much, but it was a great experience! Peak attendance was 11,589, with 189 baptized.