Growth on Ground

The Bridge2Rwanda mission includes sending borrowed talent to make a difference working alongside the people of Rwanda. Team members often find that the experience cultivates personal growth within themselves.

Mark Darrough is a Bridge2Rwanda project leader and has been in Rwanda since October. Read about Mark’s experience – the following is an excerpt from his blog, markdarrough.blogspot.com.

And the darkness did not comprehend it….

I have never been overly public with my belief in God, rather keeping to myself, and sharing with friends, the principles that lay deep within my cluttered conscious.   So here’s to a new experience, a putting aside of timidity, an exposure of the innermost.
I want to try and relate two events recently experienced, as I believe one explains the other.  The first, which within itself is of little interest, was my decision to read from beginning to end the book of John; but to read it with the captivation and enthusiasm that I usually reserve for Hemingway or Sports Illustrated.  I was mesmerized by John’s opening words:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.  All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.  In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.  And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it … He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him.  He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.

The greatest masterminds of literature cannot match the beauty and simplicity of John the fisherman, and as I read on, I began to develop a new understanding of God’s awesome love of a very flawed mankind. 

I finished one morning and that afternoon packed my camera and began walking towards the Rwandan countryside.  Walking out of the gate, the house day guard, Musevini, asked where I was going.  I pointed towards the hills west of Musanze.
“Mark, do you know how to get there?”
I told him no, not exactly. I figured I’d just walk towards them.
“Those clouds…the rain is possible.”
Well Musevini, let’s hope it holds off, but my rain jacket should perform if it doesn’t.
But the rain held off, and I soon entered a world so pleasant and serene that my mind reached the rare state of living in the present. A narrow dirt road lead me out of town, soon winding through fields of maize and adobe brick huts, where old women peered out of dark windows and men pushed their packs of goats.  Tiny barefoot children ran wildly through hidden paths in the corn to fight for the chance of holding my hand.  Lines of young men coming from the fields passed by, straining under the weight of their potato bags.  The road soon darkened under a clove of enormous eucalyptus trees, then turned towards the hills I’d been aiming at. Ahead of me was a mother and her son, with their loads balanced on their heads, returning home to a village sitting neatly in a valley next to the hills.  The road bent back towards Musanze, so I continued on a path of volcano rocks that weaved its way up to a point where I could see the darkening valley before me.  And what a sight.  Fog seemed to cling to its crevices, but I soon realized it was a great collection of smoke coming from the many families cooking their dinners below me.  

Standing there I couldn’t help but think that this same valley, with its farmers living contentedly off of the land that they toil, was filled with blood only fifteen years earlier.  How was it possible that what I saw, the things that were made through Him, was so recently a land of incomprehensible despair and evil?  As old farmers with weathered faces and deep-set eyes passed by with their machetes, my mind whirled.  Did that same man kill another?  Was that same machete used on human flesh?  I was overwhelmed to be among those who had seen, and maybe who had been possessed by, such evil. 

How did this land experience such a remarkable transformation?  For those arguing that a loving God could not allow such evil, I think John would respond by saying that only a loving God could create free will, and because of this free will, man can choose evil.  Yet He loved the world enough to give his Son for its redemption, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.  The darkness that once shrouded this valley gave way to the light of a very loving God.

 As I reached the top of the hill it was nearly dark, but fortunately on the other side laid the highway from Gisenyi to Musanze.  I began walking towards the lights of town, passing the silhouette of Muhabura volcano to the left, as a shuttle crammed tight with Rwandans slowed to a stop ahead.  Surely the sight of a lonely white man walking with his tripod and camera, so far from town at night, gave them good reason to inquire. I spoke with my usual deliberate and slow English, “I have no money, but could use a ride to town.”  Nothing more needed to be said.  I sat with my face pressed against the window, and when I looked back I saw a sea of grinning faces delighted that I had joined.