By Florence Drent

I WAS BORN in Rwanda, along with my identical twin sister. Before our first birthday, war broke out in our country – and we became refugees.

We moved first to neighbouring Uganda, and then to Congo. Both countries also had wars, and we ended up in Uganda, seeking a peaceful place to settle.

I grew up in refugee camp run by the UN, in a valley in western Uganda – a place which became like our homeland. We were able to have a farm, where we raised cattle. I completed elementary school and earned a UN scholarship to attend one of the best high schools in the capital, Kampala.

In high school, away from home for the first time, I began to experience a lot of new emotions: hatred, lack of identity and a feeling of being dehumanized.

These experiences made me understand the pain my parents often expressed as I was growing up. All this inspired a burning passion within me, to see unity instead of division between people – and I wondered how it could be brought about.

Jesus the answer

At high school, I discovered a group which seemed to exemplify unity, called Scripture Union (SU). I attended a Christian drama they put on, entitled Jesus is the Answer. I realized that I ‘knew about’ Jesus – but I didn’t know how to make a commitment to him.

So a friend helped me to kneel down and receive him – and from that point, my life changed. I felt I had found the key to fulfill my dream of ending conflict and bringing unity.      I no longer felt dehumanized; now I had the certainty that I was a child of God.

Immediately, I started spreading the good news, beginning with my family. At my school, I was able to organize their first SU conference.

Safety in prayer

In my last year of high school, the war instigated by Idi Amin broke out in Uganda. I remember that at one point, my sister and I were running away from gunfire in Kampala – and as I stopped and prayed, God gave us directions so we could reach safety.

In spite of these turbulent times, I was somehow able to graduate from high school with high marks. After graduation, I prayed – and felt led to Nairobi, Kenya. I was quickly drawn to other immigrants who had fled war zones.

I joined a team of Christians. My heart was particularly burdened for young women who were looking for security in relationships with men.

Marriage and ministry

In Nairobi, I met and married a young Rwandan man named Joseph, who was studying at a Lutheran seminary in Germany. He also had a burden to reach out to youth. We were married in 1983, and a few months later moved for a year to Paris – where we were ministry coordinators for immigrants.

Just before returning to Uganda, I had a striking dream.        I saw a large group of women in a valley, with many children. These women were struggling to escape from the valley.

I was standing on a small hill stretching my hand to them, and telling them: “Jesus is the only one who will be the answer to your needs.” I felt myself helping them to get out of the valley. When I told Joseph about the dream, he said: “God is going to use you, to have such a ministry.”

Settling again in Uganda, it didn’t take long for me to see the mothers from my dream: they were the women in my neighbourhood – suffering in poverty, with HIV/AIDS and other illnesses.

But I found myself fighting an internal war, because  I was afraid of getting infected with HIV. And so, expecting our third child, I fled to Kenya – and settled again in Nairobi with my two children. My husband remained in Uganda.

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Widowed with children

One evening, during a Jesus film showing in Nairobi, my cousin brought me the news that Joseph had gone from Kampala to Rwanda – and had been killed in the fighting there. More pain – yet Jesus gave me strength to receive this news.

I was now a widow, with children. Now my dream of helping suffering women had a new reality: I was one of them.  

Joseph’s death had the effect of making me more passionate about telling others there is someone who can heal, who can fulfill the desires of our hearts, even for widows. God could draw them and their children from the valley of pain – and place them on a mountaintop, to worship him.

The result of this was a ‘harvest’ among the widows, the youth and the families who didn’t know Jesus,

As my children began to grow, I started to ask God to take me out of Africa, for their sake. I wanted to find a place where they could grow – and yet somewhere I could also continue the dream of unity he had given me.

In 1993, after much prayer, I was granted a visa to come to Canada. I settled in Hamilton, where God immediately began to use me to reach out to immigrants, mostly from Africa – with the message that Jesus would bring us unity and belonging, no matter what our circumstances.

Umoja

Along with these new believers, I evangelized house to house – often using my Four Spiritual Laws booklets written in Swahili, which I had brought from Africa.

The number of single parents and children which came to our church increased – until the pastor gave us a place in the building to meet. We named this fellowship Umoja, a Swahili word which means ‘unity.’

Through Umoja, I witnessed God bring revival among the African communities. Immigrant pastors were challenged to start churches in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. I was invited by many groups of Africans to teach them how to plant churches and disciple new believers.

The Lord also led me to focus on reaching and discipling youth. I took training in child and youth development, and in Christian counselling – and saw the tremendous potential of developing the future generation of leaders.

New marriage, new ministry

In 2003, I moved to B.C. and married Casey Drent, a Canadian man with an African son, and a huge heart for the African people.

When I arrived in the Vancouver airport, I told God:               “I want to reach my people here.” He connected me with  Power to Change, and their Intercultural Network; its purpose is to make disciples among immigrants to Canada.

Casey and I take great joy in opening our home to the African community – as well as coordinating annual community events, such as the recent Rwandan Memorial Service to commemorate the 1994 genocide.

To the many immigrants I meet, I say: “Jesus will bind up your broken hearts, and you will not be the same again.

“Women: with Jesus, you will experience the love of God – as he bestows on you the crown of beauty, instead of ashes.

“Children and youth: God will raise you up to be oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord to display his splendour. God will use you to rebuild the ruins, and to raise a new city out of the wreckage.”

Florence Drent is coordinator of African strategies for Power to Change, in Langley.  

June 2008