First ever English regional convention in Rwanda

It was a milestone, a history-making event. We had, for the first time in Rwanda, an English regional convention!

Since there are only two English congregations in Rwanda, both located in Kigali, obviously we didn’t have the wherewithal to put on the 50 or so parts needed for a regional convention, though circuit assemblies are not a problem. But in the past, most of the publishers just attended a Kinyarwanda convention, leaving only a few (including me) to find a way to get an English program. Here are some possibilities: travel to Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, the U.K., or the U.S. But there is expense involved in doing that.

But only a few short weeks ago, it was announced that from August 19-21 we would be having a streamed (recorded) program in English! We would use the double Kingdom Hall in Nyamirambo, where one of the two English congregations is located. This was a logical choice, because although in Remera we have two auditoriums, the parking area in Nyamirambo is far larger.

There were two screens set up in each Hall. The program, from what I understand, was recorded from the Jersey City Assembly Hall, U.S.A., back in May—three months earlier—and featured almost all speakers from Wallkill Bethel, which is why I didn’t recognize many of them. So we got top quality! And everything with an American accent!

The result was that we had a peak attendance of 198. With three baptized! This included my student David Minani. In August 2015, David started studying with a brother named Bosco in the congregation, since the two were classmates in school. Bosco completed the Bible Teach book with David, but since Bosco is new in the truth himself, and hadn’t even started the God’s Love book, he wanted someone with more experience to study the second book with David. So that is how I ended up with this study. So now Bosco is about one chapter ahead of David in the God’s Love book. So this means that David got baptized a year almost to the day from the time of his first study! That is something you don’t commonly see these days. David is making remarkable progress, even having privileges such as helping to put together the territories for search work and setting up the Chinese witnessing cart. Oh, I should also mention that he is part of the Chinese pre-group. We told him he couldn’t participate in the cart activity until he is baptized. Well, now he can. Also, he wants to be a regular pioneer at the first opportunity. The sky’s the limit!

The three baptism candidates. It was somewhat strange to see them answering the questions of a recorded baptism talk speaker. The speaker even said after the first question, "I didn't quite hear that answer." So they had to say "yes" twice to that question!

Bosco, David, and me