... you can still read!
Those who are not accustomed yet to listening to us on soundcloud, ("MEMS Leoni") can find out here about the latest sad developments of our mission, especially's Mattia, but in Elena's words, so you can't blame him, for a change.
Nearly two weeks ago, we had a meeting with Bishop and some representatives of the the church, whom we are serving in Rwanda, and it felt more like an ambush than a meeting. They had already decided in their hearts to stop what Mattia was doing for the poor children and their mums and they did it by using the authority card.
It didn’t really matter what Mattia had to say to defend his work, as he had always kept them updated through several reports (and meetings) about his ministry and Bishop all along said that he was doing a good job; Mattia also tried to involve the church more and more, but in the past few months, even if verbally they kept saying that what Mattia was doing was good, they kept closing one door after another (literally, they locked the school where Mattia's activity used to take place), until they got the point of ordering him to stop.
It didn’t matter how many people we helped, how many people we brought closer to the church, nothing makes sense…
They complained the children clothes are not good enough... laughing at this. They brought up safety issue and more and more excuses reaching the absurdity of even telling us that our house is in the Church compound so that they have a say in whoever can come or not into our house...
It was a really hard week, with many tears, frustration, sadness and questioning why we have to go through this. The faces of the children not understanding why they couldn’t come for their sports and lessons any more and desperately asking when they could come back, what they did wrong, as tears filled theirs eyes…. The desperation of the mums that cannot meet in the church grounds just to learn to save so as to be able to send their children to school next year… The teenagers now forced back in the street in the evening instead of coming for singing, praying, dancing, lessons and Bible study….
We know we touched many people since we have been here, but Mattia felt called to serve the least of the least, especially the poor children and their mums, most of them single mothers, but now all this has been taken away from him…
Now we are in limbo, we accepted with humility what we were commanded to do and now we have to wait till the end of the month for the visit of our coordinator from the UK and only God knows how things will be then. They keep saying that they have no problem with Elena's job, but she's had many issues along the way too.
The whole relationship with this "Church" is now crumbling, as we don't want to worship, with our children, in a Church who refuses, excludes and discriminates the needy, as this is not what we can call Church. So, we've started looking for other places and recently we've been going to an Anglican Church.
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