The main reason for my trip to Africa was to meet up with the leaders of the Kenya House Church Movement that is serving the rural areas of Kenya and now North Tanzania.

However, as I am also involved with the International Christian Chamber of Commerce (www.iccc.net) and the former President of ICCC Australia is now in Rwanda (a short flight from Kenya) I decided to visit him in Kigali and meet some of the ICCC members there. This is a short report on my visit there.

Kigali is a beautiful city, lush green and clean, I did not see litter on the ground anywhere. What a transformation from the time of the Hutus and Tutsis genocide in 1994. At the time of the genocide, the Tutsi victims were specifically targeted by Hutu perpetrators because of their “race.”  The most widely accepted scholarly estimates are around 500,000 to 662,000 Tutsi deaths. These two groups of people truly believed they were completely different from each other and physically they are. The Tutsi are tall and the Hutu are short and stocky. What a transformation today, in modern-day Rwanda, referring to Hutu or Tutsi anywhere but in a historical context is not approved of, and done in a political context, it is actually illegal.

The current President Paul Kagame does care about reconciliation, and the fact that leading Hutu figures have been recruited to the party and the military (in effect an extension of the party) shows that they are not Tutsi supremacists. Poverty alleviation schemes target all Rwandans, and ordinary (former) Hutus benefit a lot when the country became more stable and prosperous.

Christianity is the largest religion in Rwanda. The most recent national census from 2012 indicates that: 43.7% of Rwanda’s population are Roman Catholic, 37.7% are Protestant, 11.8% are Seventh-day Adventist, 2.0% are Muslim (mainly Sunni), and 2.5% claim no religious affiliation, and 0.7% are Jehovah’s Witness.

I could live in Rwanda, the people are friendly and the English language is an important language spoken in Rwanda. It comes second after the Kinyarwanda language in its strategic importance. It is the official language in Kigali and the language of instruction in Rwandan schools.

I had an ICCC (International Christian Chamber of Commerce) meeting with several of the leaders in Rwanda and South Africa. It is obvious from these men’s stories that where Christianity is dominant there has been tremendous growth and therefore opportunities for businessmen that want to help these countries to prosper.

My schedule was tough with much travel but my body now in its 86th year on this planet held up amazingly well: thank you, Lord. I am living proof that God will equip you and sustain you if you are obedient and do what He has called you to do. For me, it is to alert the church to Jesus’ second coming and to rule and reign with Him in His Millennial Kingdom.

I also spent two days in Arusha, Tanzania to visit David Owens the pastor of a Vineyard Church there. I attended the Vineyard Church, David pastored in Ramsgate, and then Hurstville in Sydney, Australia many years ago now. David had me give my testimony and preach on the Holy Spirit at the Sunday morning service. We differ in our theology of end times so I did not speak on Jesus’ soon coming return and the need to be prepared for the prophesied tribulation, even great tribulation that Christians will experience in the years ahead. I hope I planted a seed for him to reconsider his preterist view.

The Preterist view of the end times is based on a symbolic view of the Book of Revelation that holds most of its prophecies have already been fulfilled. Preterism denies the future, literal fulfillment of most of its predictions, focusing instead on allegory and symbolism.