Liberty Bible Church Pastor Larry Rounsley was amazed by the number of people he saw walking the streets.
After three flights, two layovers, a night’s sleep and a Sunday morning church service, Rounsley found himself on roads that he said best the experience of the Indiana Jones ride in Disneyland. He was on a three-hour drive from Kigali — the capital of Rwanda — to the small town of Gisenyi and he could see masses of people out his window the entire time.
Rounsley — with 21 other local people and one pastor from Idaho — returned from a 17-day mission trip to the small town near Rwanda’s western border on July 4. While there, the group helped build four classrooms, got a medical clinic into working order and saw the fruits of two years of charity work from the church and six others from across the country.
Their goal: to help a fraction of those masses to get back on their feet.
The whole thing started two years ago when Pastor Simon Pierre Rwaramba visited Liberty Bible Church in Salmon Creek to tell his story of surviving Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. After he spoke, “We knew we had to do something,” Rounsley said.
The church signed up to work with the Ndengera Foundation, a community group that Rwaramba and his wife started to help children orphaned by the genocide and the AIDS epidemic. The foundation now operates the school and medical clinic.
During the trip, the 23 split into smaller crews. One spent most of the time building the school rooms. The other spent the first half of the trip getting the clinic ready and the second half treating patients.
The clinic was an empty shell when they arrived, the group said. They added furnishings, equipment, power and toilets; they built exam tables. The group had collected 34 suitcases full of medical, construction and vacation Bible school supplies in Southwest Washington. They lived out of their carry-ons to make room for the supplies in their checked luggage.
“It’s probably the nicest clinic in northwest Rwanda,” physician Chris Finley said. “And it’s really well-stocked.”
Dr. Manu, a Rwandan physician whose last name wasn’t pronounceable for anyone in the group, is now in charge of the clinic. He recently e-mailed Liberty church to let them know it has been busy since they left.
The church and civilian group is trying to allow the people to be self-sufficient, not dependent on foreign help, Mindy Chumbley said. “Sometimes you can throw money at a problem and can create more problems and despair. That isn’t what is happening here,” she said.
The school gives the kids options for the future, Chumbley said. Otherwise “their option growing up was to steal or go into prostitution.” Now they can learn a trade, she said.
Church members have been sponsoring children. A $12 monthly donation provides them with food, but that program will end in December.
Liberty and six other churches, operating under the name Gisenyi Rwanda Orphans — GRO for short — collected $12,000 and used it to purchase 10 acres of farmland in Rwanda. On the trip, the local members report, they saw potatoes and onions starting to grow. Starting in December, the land will be one of the orphans’ main food sources.
The church also bought 200 or so goats, which were handed out to orphans and widows to “provide milk, cheese and whatever else,” the group said.
They are looking at things differently after returning to the states.
It was rewarding and fun to interact with the children and people, but the trip was difficult and the “hardest work of their lives,” said Finley.
Sometimes Finley’s voice quivers when he talks about the trip. It isn’t because the emergency room physician from Southwest Washington Medical Center is the emotional type. It’s because “some of the impact can’t be verbalized,” he said.
Other group members were struck by the poverty and hope they saw in many of the people’s faces. “We’re just regular people,” Michelle Kastine said. “We’re not specialized to go into the real world.”
Rounsley was especially struck by the availability of food and goods in Southwest Washington that are nonexistent in Rwanda. “If you go to Rwanda then to Costco, it’s pretty challenging,” the pastor said. “I went to Lowe’s last night and just had to leave.”
It’s hard not to take action to help once you know what things are like, Chumbley said. She will continue to raise money for her cause and is working to promote a charity golf tournament at Tri-Mountain Golf Course in Ridgefield on Aug. 23.
Last year, the tournament raised $16,000. The funds raised this year will pay to build a well at the school when another group travels to Rwanda next summer.
If they raise enough money, it will go towards a “wish list” of updates, the group said. Those include roofing the last exposed classroom at the school and setting up a tilapia farm to provide additional protein for the food program.
Paul Suarez: 360-735-4530 or paul.suarez@columbian.com.
