Gisenyi, Rwanda -- Dan Nelson and wife Jan watch the ribbon cutting ceremony at the Ndengera Foundation orphan care center

By Nathan Scharn

After seven hours of driving through tropical hill country from Kigali to Gisenyi, 14 Americans climbed out of the Indiana Jones-style land cruisers to an excited, smiling, Rwandan crowd.

The joy on Dan Nelson’s face wasn’t marred by his advancing Parkinson’s disease, nor did the atrocities of genocide that gripped the nation in 1994 dampen the joy on the faces of the hundreds of Rwandan children, barefoot or in ratty flip-flops, traditional dancers, heads shaved and donning black and white skirts, or pastor Simon Pierre, greeting his good friend, an American professor of music.

The tears and smiles marked deliverance, not as an end to suffering, but as a process of working through it.

THE FIRST TRIP

A professor at PLNU since 1991, Dan Nelson entered 2007 in the darkest period of his life. A divorce and a diagnosis with a crippling disease left him in a seemingly inescapable period of emotional and physical pain.

Three years after Nelson became a PLNU professor, the small African nation of Rwanda erupted into a bloody torrent of murder, as members of the Hutu ethnic group wielded machetes and guns to commit acts of genocide against the Tutsi minority. The U.S. embassy estimated that the acts of the genocide claimed more than 800,000 lives.

After seeing how a LoveWorks trip had impacted the life of his daughter, Nelson talked to Jeff Bolster, who is currently the dean of students but was in charge of LoveWorks at the time.

“I went to Jeff and just said, ‘I want to go on a LoveWorks trip — see what all the fuss was about,’” Nelson said.

He was originally supposed to lead a trip to Sri Lanka.

“One night when I was praying I said, ‘God take this pain and suffering I’ve gone through and make it worth something,’” he said.

Soon after, Bolster approached Nelson and asked if he would go to Rwanda, saying that he needed someone who understood pain and suffering. “He used the same words I used,” Nelson said.

The trip must have been a success, since he talked about Rwanda more than he talked about music in some MUH 100 classes. He began raising money for the Ndengera Foundation by selling Christmas cards handmade in Rwanda.

He was selected to lead a trip again in 2009. This time he co-led with his new wife, Jan; the associate director of international ministries, Melissa Tucker; and the San Diego First Church of the Nazarene youth pastor, Jared Callahan. They took 10 PLNU students.

WEEK ONE

On their first few nights, the team encountered accommodations that were “different” — the word LoveWorks participants are instructed to use in lieu of the word “bad,” to enhance cultural sensitivity.

The rooms of the Butare motel surrounded a courtyard. “It was the least ideal place we stayed,” said junior Lindsay Burrows. Of the group discussions that night she said, “It got super heavy super quick.”

Jan pointed out to the group that it would be Dan’s final trip. Dan said that he had to come to terms with his mortality.

While in Butare, the team witnessed mortality firsthand. They visited a genocide memorial where the bodies had been preserved as they had fallen in their last moments of life, clinging to rosaries, mothers shielding their children’s bodies from the hack of machetes, hands still adorned with wedding rings.

“It wasn’t like an American memorial,” junior Avery Lee said. “It was real.”

She marveled at the life and the laughter in the Rwandan people, despite what they had suffered through.

CUTTING THE RIBBON

The LoveWorks team took their seats amid the dancers and children at the Ndengera Foundation dedication in Gisenyi. The foundation, which currently cares for 814 orphans, provides vocational training in fields such as sewing and painting. Though it is unable to provide shelter for each orphan, the foundation subsidizes housing with local families to help meet the needs of the children.

The foundation also provides medical care for the orphans and training on AIDS care and prevention for the orphans and the families caring for them. Gardens have been planted to provide food for the 45 families in which children are the heads of their own households.

According to team members, Nelson had raised approximately $25,000 for the foundation, but this was the first time he was able to touch the product of his effort.

“Knowing the difficulties of his last few years, hearing the story of transformation that happened in that 2007 trip, to be there … in this orphan care center that he cut the ribbon on, to hear the way that people talked about Dan’s faithfulness and goodness, and to these 814 orphans, it was so overwhelming,” Tucker said.

For the next two weeks, the team played with children, made bricks and laid the groundwork to build classrooms. They spent mealtimes at their host Simon Pierre’s house. Though Nelson was unable to assist in the physical labor, he gave trumpet and trombone lessons to children in the Gisenyi Nazarene community.

“Here are kids who can’t read words, let alone music, and we’re trying to teach them how to read music,” Nelson said. “There were about half a dozen kids who picked up on it very quickly. They played in church two weeks after we left.”

The new trumpeters and trombonists continued to play after he had left Rwanda — almost certainly his final flight out of the country.

The vocational training the children receive will start careers that will give them the opportunity to facilitate the healing of their wounded nation and recovering economy.

Every child who walks into the Ndengera Foundation, once he or she is taught to read, will see the name of the American music professor, Simon Pierre’s friend, on the plaque above the door.