Start With the Little in Your Hand

Here is an article written my one of the people who is mentoring us in Discipling for Development. This is a description of some of the people we visited on our trip and how their lives are transforming.


by Greg Brown, Guest Mentor

It was late Sunday morning in the small village of Kirambo in southwestern Rwanda.
Church service had just ended and we were gathering back in the church with a group of
people who wanted to share their stories. Over the past 6 months they had been involved
with a group savings program that they had started themselves after returning from a
Discipling for Development Foundations training in March. In this group, each member
contributes $1 per week to the pot (and about $0.20 to a group savings account). Every
week, a different member gets to take the contributions of the week and invest them in
some way to improve their life. This gives them enough buying power to start something
they could not start alone.

Pastor Tertullian Nsabimuna – a key Discipling for Development team leader – had said
that only 2-3 people would share, but it was clear that the excitement and enthusiasm
these folks felt in their hearts could not be constrained to so few opportunities. Before
Tertullian ended the sharing, seven men and women had told us of how this simple
initiative had begun to transform their lives, both spiritually and physically.

This really seemed quite remarkable given the fact that the young team from this village
was barely half-way through their first year of training and team building, a time when
usually very little happens in terms of engaging with the surrounding community. But
the three team leaders who had gone through D for D training had committed to each
other that they and their teams needed to be personally and visibly transformed
themselves before they began to take this out to their communities. One such example of
which was the savings group we were now hearing about.

Somewhere near the end of the time a young man named Emmanuel stood up to tell his story. He was a member of the team of eight from this village that had taken part in the March training. He began by describing his simple beginnings. He was born to a very poor family. He married shortly after returning from the training and was living with his wife in a rented, single room. He described it as having so many holes that snakes frequently came in and people would just reach in and steal his things. He had no land and he believed raising any kind of animal was something clearly outside his grasp. He was poor and felt that he would always be poor. But at the training he was challenged with the simple principle, “Use the little you have in your hand.” With that he and his wife planted the tiny area outside their rented room with some of the techniques he had learned. As part of the savings group, they also invested $5 to purchase 2 rabbits and 3 guinea pigs. He made $14 from selling the first litters and with the small profit from his crop and his return from the savings plan they rented a larger plot of land. With successive harvests and cycles of the savings group, they were able to supply their home with vegetables, rent a nicer home with cement floors and even purchase their own plot of land. His dream for 2009 is to build his own home on his land. He also said that he has started tithing and is thinking about how to make his family, his home, his church, and his country become a better place. He closed by saying, “I see that if I use the little I have in my hand, I can improve. I can be a light to others, and in my home I can have both physical and spiritual food that I can give to visitors.”

Stories like Emmanuel’s caused Nellie to give the savings group a try. In her own words
she shared:

“I am a very poor person. I rent a
room since I don’t have a room of my
own. I hoe for money for other
people. I have faith that God can help
me, so I have begun saving money
with this savings group. Sometimes I
have to give a tax that means I don’t
have enough money to pay my rent.
Even though this is my situation, I
save every week, and I hope that when
it is my time to get the pot I can use it
well to help my life. There are times
when I am discouraged, but Pastor
Tertullian comes and encourages me
and tells me to keep hope and to keep
saving together with the others.”

What started as a group of 16 women has now expanded to a group of 32 including
several men like Emmanuel who begged to be included. They have completed three
cycles of group members getting the “pot” on their week.