Official Chinese group!!

Yes, we have received word from the branch that we are now an official Chinese group! This is the exciting news we have been waiting for! It means that now we can have weekly meetings, as well as other arrangements.

By the way, I gave the first live public talk on Sunday, September 4—up to that time we only had recorded video public talks from Taiwan. That meeting was attended by 7 Chinese persons, basically two families.

The makeup of the Chinese pre-group has fluctuated over the last year and a half, with constant coming and going of publishers. This is one reason why the Chinese language class has stretched over two years. However, our becoming a group now will, as the saying goes, ‘separate the men from the boys.’

Here is a photo of the group, taken when we all went out to celebrate at a restaurant:

(from left to right) David, Fernand, me, Innocent, Odile, Benjamin G., Nicole, Benjamin M., Lyevin, Blaise, Heritier

Typical day at the cart: earthquake, medical emergency, Chinese (finally)

OK, we’ve been doing the Chinese cart for over a month and a half now, and most of the time it has been uneventful: Chinese people may take a quick glance at our cart and then move on.

But this particular day, September 10, was definitely one to remember. First, about an hour and a half into our stint, I noticed that the sign on the building we were standing in front of was shaking. I pointed this out to Benjamin, my partner, adding that it was probably a plane flying overhead. No, he said, it is an earthquake. What! An earthquake?

It turns out he was right. It was indeed an earthquake, one of magnitude 5.9 with an epicenter in northwestern Tanzania that killed several people and was felt in all the East African countries. It should be noted that earthquakes are a rare occurrence in the Great Rift Valley.

Then, as we were discussing this, a dramatic thing took place across the street at the hotel. The second floor of the hotel (or first floor, for anywhere outside the U.S.) has a room where a bunch of people were watching a soccer match originating in the U.K. Every so often you would hear loud cheers coming from the room, which opened out onto a balcony with the overflow crowd. Then, suddenly, dozens of African guys spilled out on the street, some wearing nothing but underwear, and shouting in a language that Benjamin said was definitely not Kinyarwanda. There was mass confusion that went on for several minutes, until a van pulled up containing a group of Europeans (which caused me to believe there was going to be a riot), and then finally another van into which one of the Africans was carried. It happened that this guy fainted as a result of the earthquake, and his friends didn’t know what to do until someone finally got a vehicle and carted him off to a hospital.

As if this were not exciting enough, a few minutes later three Chinese men approached our cart and began to ask questions! We had a good discussion with them, and they ended up taking literature. This was the first time any Chinese people had come to the cart!

This experience is worth writing home about, wouldn’t you say?

Can an astronomical phenomenon be an answer to a prayer?

Answer:  Yes!

Of course, it happened in Joshua’s time.

But let me relate my experience, and you be the judge.

It was awfully hot here in Kigali the last few weeks of August. This is typical of the weather in July and August, and fortunately, many pioneers are close to finishing their hours for the service year, which was my situation also. So during this time I was just conducting studies and otherwise not doing much else.

In hot weather I don’t have a lot of energy, so even just getting out of the house to get lunch took effort. So I asked Jehovah, “Come September, when I have to get serious again, is there any way you can give us some weather that is cooler?” Usually the first of September I try to put in a full day of preaching, morning to evening, and I wondered how I would last all day in the heat, since hmmm…when was the last time I put in a full day?

Well, guess what. On September 1, I was preaching all day with my friend Jacques from the Remera French Congregation, and we noticed in the morning how cool it was. It seemed, in fact, that the sun was less intense than usual, less bright and less hot, though there were no clouds in the sky.

It turns out, when Jacques checked his phone for news, that there was a solar eclipse that day! The eclipse’s path cut through a wide swath of central and southern Africa, and reached totality in Gabon, Congo, and Madagascar. So in Rwanda, we had a partial eclipse. But even in cases of 80% totality (which is what we had), you can’t see the moon blocking the sun—because the sun is so bright—but the reduction of the sun’s intensity is noticeable.

We finished the day after 8½ hours of preaching, and the weather was pleasant and bearable.

So was this the answer to a prayer?