Welcomed Guests

This month Prison Fellowship Rwanda (PFR) was fortunate enough to host over 20 visitors for two days at the PFR office! Mark Phillips, a member of our US Board that fundraises for PFR in the USA arrived in Kigali with his church group from West Virginia. They were greeted at the airport by Pastor Deo and taken to the Kigali Memorial Centre before visiting one of our reconciliation villages in the Eastern Province. They arrived at the PFR office on Monday afternoon and were welcomed with excited singing and some traditional Rwandan dancing from the children and women that we serve. There were over 150 people in the office grounds!

The team donate footballs to one of PFR's Reconciliation Villages before making their way to the office

The younger members of the group spent the afternoons entertaining the children, all of whom were overjoyed to have so many visitors, whilst the others worked with PFR staff members to begin making a permanent record of each child starting with the youngest first. We hope that this will not only allow the PFR office to learn more about the children, but also that it will enable us to raise more funds to support them. From September onwards, PFR will no longer have the finances available to continue to feed the children three times a week and we are desperately seeking resources to enable us to keep this up. The group offered us continuing support in this project and we are extremely grateful.

The kids wait patiently whilst PFR staff explain that the group would like to interview 20 of the youngest children in hope of getting donations to support them in the future

During their stay with PFR, the Falls Church Group also donated clothes to every child, a brilliant demonstration of the kind of physical support we are encouraging all visitors to provide. Every child was given at least two items of clothing and shoes were also given to those who needed them most. The children were so excited to be receiving clothes that were in such good condition and by the end of the day some of them looked very smart indeed. It was truly wonderful to see two groups of young people who have lived such different lives getting along so easily and even exchanging email addresses.

Our visitors help the kids to choose new clothes, each child received at least two items and shoes were given to those who needed them most.

Finally, progress was also made towards improving the marketable of the goods made by the HIV/AIDS women that PFR serves. Having already received a donation offer of 20 manual sewing machines from UK Charity ‘Tools for Self Reliance’, PFR hopes to work closely with the US Board to brainstorm ideas of sewn products that can be easily shipped to the USA to be sold. Whilst we have already come up with a few ideas, we would be grateful for any input you could give us so please do not hesitate to email us at info@pfrwanda.org with any thoughts and suggestions. Thank you once again to our visitors and we hope to see them again soon.