Out of Rwanda, with a dream

By Florence Drent

I WAS BORN in Rwanda, along with my identical twin sister. Before our first birthday, war broke out in our country -- and we became refugees.

We moved first to neighbouring Uganda, and then to Congo. Both countries also had wars, and we ended up in Uganda, seeking a peaceful place to settle.

I grew up in refugee camp run by the UN, in a valley in western Uganda -- a place which became like our homeland. We were able to have a farm, where we raised cattle. I completed elementary school and earned a UN scholarship to attend one of the best high schools in the capital, Kampala.

In high school, away from home for the first time, I began to experience a lot of new emotions: hatred, lack of identity and a feeling of being dehumanized.

These experiences made me understand the pain my parents often expressed as I was growing up. All this inspired a burning passion within me, to see unity instead of division between people -- and I wondered how it could be brought about.

Jesus the answer

At high school, I discovered a group which seemed to exemplify unity, called Scripture Union (SU). I attended a Christian drama they put on, entitled Jesus is the Answer. I realized that I 'knew about' Jesus -- but I didn't know how to make a commitment to him.

So a friend helped me to kneel down and receive him -- and from that point, my life changed. I felt I had found the key to fulfill my dream of ending conflict and bringing unity. I no longer felt dehumanized; now I had the certainty that I was a child of God. Immediately, I started spreading the good news, beginning with my family. At my school, I was able to organize their first SU conference.

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Safety in prayer

In my last year of high school, the war instigated by Idi Amin broke out in Uganda. I remember that at one point, my sister and I were running away from gunfire in Kampala -- and as I stopped and prayed, God gave us directions so we could reach safety.

In spite of these turbulent times, I was somehow able to graduate from high school with high marks. After graduation, I prayed -- and felt led to Nairobi, Kenya. I was quickly drawn to other immigrants who had fled war zones.

I joined a team of Christians. My heart was particularly burdened for young women who were looking for security in relationships with men.

Marriage and ministry

In Nairobi, I met and married a young Rwandan man named Joseph, who was studying at a Lutheran seminary in Germany. He also had a burden to reach out to youth. We were married in 1983, and a few months later moved for a year to Paris -- where we were ministry coordinators for immigrants.

Just before returning to Uganda, I had a striking dream. I saw a large group of women in a valley, with many children. These women were struggling to escape from the valley.

I was standing on a small hill stretching my hand to them, and telling them: "Jesus is the only one who will be the answer to your needs." I felt myself helping them to get out of the valley. When I told Joseph about the dream, he said: "God is going to use you, to have such a ministry."

Settling again in Uganda, it didn't take long for me to see the mothers from my dream: they were the women in my neighbourhood -- suffering in poverty, with HIV/AIDS and other illnesses.

But I found myself fighting an internal war, because I was afraid of getting infected with HIV... PART 2 to come...

June 5/2008