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Did I tell anyone how AWESOME God is today????  | | | Thu, Sep 04 2008 |
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Published: September 04, 2008 12:17 pm Breaking Bread, Rebuilding Lives True Vineyard Ministries continues its work in Rwanda as widows now employed as bakers By Jeff Walker Features Editor As the Rwandan mission continues for locally-based True Vineyard Ministries, 10 widows in the city of Ruhengeri-Musanze now have something they could have never imagined a year ago: A full-time job.
Diana Wiley and other True Vineyard members recently returned from the Rwandan city where they dropped off a large-capacity solar powered oven, shipped overseas by air. After getting a crash course in the basics of baking basics, he widows are currently using the oven inside a bakery in Ruhengeri opened up by True Vineyard.
“I think they were surprised by it (the oven) at first,” Wiley said. “Even over here in the States, it looks like a satellite, some UFO thing. So many of them have never baked in any type of oven. They just don’t have that kind of concept. Even down to trying to slice the bread, they didn’t know how to use a bread knife. This is something that is completely unknown to them.”
But they are learning. And they’ve remained busy. While they wait for the construction of their full-time location — right now True Vineyard has rented a house in the city for the women to work in — the women have baked part time and spent their remaining working hours preparing the land for construction.
During their recent trip, True Vineyard members hired a chief baker and a project manager, who will also oversee other projects there. Wiley expects to return in November to start construction on the permanent bakery. But already she’s seen change.
“When we first met one of the women, Adera, to put it simply she was a woman who was dying,” Wiley said. “Now every time you see the women they are singing and dancing, they’re completely different people. To see the transformation of the widows is amazing.”
Wiley and Mike Olsen started the Rwandan mission last summer as an effort to extend the work they were doing with a local church into non-denominational ministry. Wiley became interested in working in Rwanda through a contact with the World Relief Organization.
In 1994, more than 900,000 minority Tutsis were slaughtered by Hutu extremists during the Rwandan Genocide — approximately 10 percent of the population. Amid the aftermath, Hutu militia who were known to be HIV positive, raped Tutsi women in a strategic plan to use AIDS as a long-term killing device. An average of four women were raped every minute of every hour of each day for 100 consecutive days.
Wiley and Olsen wanted to help the widows left behind, many of whom suffer from AIDS. The 10 women were selected from a series of interviews Wiley did last June. They are considered “the poorest of the poor” in Rwanda.
The oven uses pure reflectivity from the sun, gets up to 500 degrees and can bake up to 50 one-pound loaves of bread per hour.
“The goal is to make it to where they can become self sufficient,” Olsen said.
Wiley projects five years before the bakery project will become completely self-sustainable. In the meantime, residents can donate money to help pay the widows’ salary and keep the bakery going by visiting bakethecycle.org.
“Just one year since we started and the women were selected, it’s already been a transformation (for the women),” Wiley said. “They have hope. And to know that their children will live vastly different lives than their mothers. It’s going to be huge.” 
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