20 years ago in a marquee in St Andrews at CLAN Gathering, I was prayed over alongside my wife (at that time my brand new fiancée). As the couple were praying with us, they spoke over me that I would serve God with my hands. At the time, I assumed it was in reference to the Sports Ministry I was involved with, but I was wrong. Over the course of the next few years, I went on a journey with God that led me to my current work with Photography.
God’s call over this area in my life was to use my skills to tell the stories of Christian Organisations and the way God was transforming lives through them. This led me to working with organisations like Tearfund, Christian Aid, EMMS, SU Scotland and many more. Eventually, the path God was leading me along led to me joining Comfort International at the start of this year.
There is, of course, much more to this testimony than I have shared here – and I’d gladly go more in depth with you another time! I just wanted to give some context to my part within Comfort and my recent visit to Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. I won’t go into lots of details in my trip blogs, there was far too much that I experienced, heard and saw to do that! Rest assured though, we’ll be sharing more in depth testimonies as the weeks go on …
Through my work with other organisations I have visited Africa many times, 3 of those visits were to Rwanda. So, when I stepped of the plane after delayed journey to Kigali (a day in Istanbul due to delays was not in my plan…) it was great to feel the familiar warmth of Rwandan air and the familiar sights, sounds and smells of Kigali as I travelled to the Good News Guesthouse.
The aim of my trip was to visit and familiarise myself with some of the Comfort Projects in Rwanda and the DRC, but mostly to create a good bank of photos and videos for us to use – centred around individual testimonies where possible.
My first experience of Comfort’s work was incredible! I took a taxi to the Kigali Convention Centre and met David Gasana along with a group of the kids from Street Kids Project at Gatenga. Street Kids Rescue aims to return children to their family home where safe and appropriate. All of the children on our projects get healthcare, education at a local school, nutritious meals and the love they deserve. Thousands of young people in Africa are sleeping rough. We have found children as young as 4 sleeping on landfill sites or in holes in the ground. These children are often victims of abuse and are forced to eat discarded or rotten food.
The group from Gatenga had been at the convention centre getting some health checks done and were just about to head back to the Gatenga Project for the day, so I joined them for the walk. David being David – it took him about 2 minutes to have the whole group walking down the street exuberantly singing ‘I am a friend of Jesus’.
Spending the day with the group at Gatenga was great, if you’ve never visited or met them, they are an incredibly friendly, playful group of kids – always happy to pose for the camera which made my job a bit easier! While I was there, they played, they ate, they worshipped and they learned. Hearing some of the testimonies of God’s work in their lives was incredible and humbling to hear.
Later on that first day, David took me to visit the Comfort Transformation Centre (read the latest news about the CTC here) construction site. We visited with Louisa, Grace and Rebekah who have not long finished a 6 month placement volunteering with Comfort Rwanda. It was great to visit the site I had heard so much about. The vision for the CTC is incredibly exciting and I’m looking forward to when the construction is complete and the building starts fulfilling its purpose and more testimony of God’s goodness will flow from the work there.
