The only church meetings in Rwanda are held in the capital, Kigali. On a good day, travel time to church is about two hours, fifteen minutes. If/when buses break down, etc... it can take much longer. Sometimes I am simply unable to go anyways due to work-related travel that prevents me from feasibly making it to the capital at all. Even still, I seem to have managed to make it to church the majority of Sundays that I've been here, which is good because I've been informally assigned to teach the youth second hour...
Sunday school is always an adventure because we have a few American kids whose parents work here who speak no French or Kinyarwanda, we also have a Burundian kid who speaks French but not Kinyarwanda or English, and then a smattering of Rwandan kids who really only understand Kinyarwanda. The solution to this point has been lessons in English, with Kinyarwanda translations by a capable local member. Even still the kids are really great, participate more than you'd think, and believe it or not, the three most consistent attendees are all investigators, Louise, Ange and David (all Rwandan).
Rwanda was technically open to the church starting in 2003... Since then there has only ever been senior missionary couples allowed to operate in the country (humanitarian, not proselyting).
The Kigali first branch has technically been around since around 2008, meeting informally. The church decided to halt any form of meeting programs last year (November 2011) to abide by the laws of the country, and in August (two weeks after I arrived) the process for legal registration of the church in Rwanda was halfway done. In Rwanda, when the first half is finished official meetings can begin... So since August the Kigali 1st branch was officially organized, the first ever in the country, and only a few weeks later, the branch was split into the 1st and 2nd branches, both in Kigali.
This by itself is pretty cool, what's even cooler is: now baptisms can officially take place as well. Many members who came from neighboring countries for various reasons have not had access to regular sacrament meetings and missionary work was pretty much non existent. The same day the branch was split Rwanda also received it's first set of young full time missionaries, and this past Sunday a second senior missionary couple arrived to take over all humanitarian efforts ...
This past Sunday we also had the first baptism in a long time in Rwanda, and the first official one ever. Five people were baptized, and nine more will be baptized in the next two weeks.
Since we don't have youth manuals here, I've been using the Principles of the Gospel manual for Sunday School, which has been just as well since most, including a pair of American siblings, have never really had Sunday School before anyways. Last week we got to the chapter about the Holy Ghost, had I known that the three youth in the class that weren't yet members were getting baptized I'd have made more of a fuss about how great that would be, but even still we had a great lesson about the holy ghost and what the blessings of the accompaniment of the spirit can be, particularly the difference after baptism. Three of this weeks five baptisms were those three youths.
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