If you're not listening...

... 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.

Apologies...

...to all (?) those who signed up for receiving new posts directly to their email inbox:

those two very long posts on Amizero and Skids (special needs school and street children project) which you received some days ago were sent by mistake as we were tidying up the blog a bit and converted out-of-date pages into old posts, without realising that even though back-dated to March the posts would be sent by email anyway.

We hope you got that soon, before wasting time in reading old stuff...

If you forgive us and are still interested, we remind you of our latest way of staying in touch, that is 

www.soundcloud.com 

where you can listen to us by doing a "search" for "MEMS Leoni"

The Lions' Roar

If you haven't noticed on the newsletter, or you don't receive it at all (send us an email and we can amend that), or you haven't visited the blog recently (quite understandably...), you might not know that now you can not only read about us but even listen to us (aren't you lucky?) on

www.soundcloud.com

(search for MEMS Leoni)

On Rwanda (high time we wrote something, isn't it?)

We all think about the genocide, but that was 21 years ago and now instead Rwanda is praised worldwide for its amazing recovery, especially its successful reconciliation process and its fast growth. But how does all this look, from the inside, after nearly 10 months here?

The reconciliation process seems a success story, and indeed some forgiveness accounts are among the most powerful and positive tales we’ll ever hear, but without truth about history no real reconciliation can be ever achieved (check the BBC documentary "Rwanda, the untold story" issued in October last year for more on "truth"); political stability and daily security may be attractive for investors, but they are not the result of healing and no healthy society can grow out of false democracy, nationalism and prevention of any form of dissent achieved by inducing a state of fear through the discreet but unmistakable presence of armed personnel on every second street corner; the much praised unity and the absence of any ethnic discourse look just like a cover for a post-genocide development which was instead designed on clear ethnic lines, as can easily be grasped when considering that only one part of the population were the “victims” and therefore entitled to receiving aid, distributed by the same part, as they were also the victors, therefore in charge; the economic growth looks impressive and encouraging, and indeed there’s no hill without a school or a health centre, but inequality is as high as the new city towers, growing next to the suburbs’ slums and surrounded by the wealthy's latest SUVs which contrast badly with the wheelbarrows full of water cans pushed up the hills by those who cannot afford to pay their children’s school fees and are therefore considered by many, even religious authorities, as bad parents whom should be instructed to take better care of their children, maybe when they are not imprisoned for trying to scrape a living by selling fruit or vegetables from baskets carried on their heads…

Birthday...

...brother! 

Also known as 

"the best prof on the East Coast"

Mr.PhD

The Clever One

TheOneWhoCanReallyPlayChess

UncleJames,

he's just turned 31, so 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GIACOMO!

One of his best recent picture can be seen on the post below, so instead we can direct you to this link to admire another birthday boy in the family, who didn't get any post due to his parents' lack of time for posting on this blog but still celebrated his 8th a month ago (and who thanks all those who sent birthday cards!)