May 26, 2004

Hello Prayer Partners,

I want to first of all give "Thanks" to God for his provision and protection for me while I've been serving here in Rwanda. My health is good and I've been able to get some good sleep at night for the last week. It's been a great and busy couple weeks for me here working with the Youth Advocacy Program. I've had many opportunities to share at our youth leader meetings and at youth meetings throughout the last 2 weeks. Many things have been developed and are being planned for the continued growth and ministry of the Youth Advocacy Program and I would appreciate your prayers on how we can continue to build the program in order to serve and minister to the needs of both the youth leaders and the youth.

I hope everyone received my last prayer update on May 13th as I'm somewhat unsure that it made it to everyone. If you'd like to see it, it should be on the www.spokenfor.org web-site in my personal page.

The last two weeks Esron and I have had the opportunity to have several more youth leader meetings in different regions of the country. We've traveled many kilometers and had the opportunity to meet and share with more than 50 youth leaders during the last 2 weeks. A couple of the areas that we visited for the last few meetings were very rural and far away villages from the city of Kigali. It's a great opportunity to be able to meet and share with these youth leaders in rural area's as they are often forgotten and neglected as they are in the rural area's. Today we had a youth leaders meeting to share ALARM's Youth Advocacy Program to 21 youth leaders from rural villages in the area of Rwamagana, located east of Kigali. It was a pretty humbling experience when you have the opportunity to see the joy and excitement of half of these youth leaders receiving a Bible from us as they did not even have a Bible! It really shows me how blessed I am as I don't even think twice about having a Bible and here is a group of youth pastors/leaders in churches that don't even have God's Word to study and communicate to their youth. It's been great to be able to see the desire and leading God is placing in the hearts and minds of these youth leaders to minister to the needs of the youth in their villages and churches. It was a blessing to be able to just equip a group of youth leaders with God's Word.

Last week I also went to visit the 3 street youth in the village of Kabuga who are currently training at a metal/welding shop that I've shared about in previous emails. Thanks to the support of people from 121 Community Church I was able to purchase a bunch of supplies and things that they needed for daily living. One of the items was a bed frame, mattress and pillow as up to that day they only had ONE bed for all three of the guys to share. Many other items such as pots, dishes, towels and toiletries were purchased for them as they do not have the means to buy these things on their own. They would like to tell everyone in America that donated the $ for these items and is praying for them: "Thank You Very, Very Much". They were so excited and overwhelmed at the items they received and will use them and take care of them!

I'd also like to update everyone on my upcoming plans for ministry and eventually returning to the US. I had originally planned on being here for 3 months in working with the Youth Advocacy Program for ALARM. Next week will be the end of that 3 month time period and for the last week or so I've been busy making and changing my plane tickets/travel arrangements with the help of Scott and Lori with Spoken For. My plane ticket that was purchased at the beginning of the year was to bring me back on June 2nd. I've actually changed that and I will be coming back to US at the end of July. For the last 2 months I've been talking and inquiring with Scott and a man by the name of Dedan about a ministry opportunity that God has presented to me. The ministry is a sports outreach and discipleship ministry in one of the biggest slums in the city of Nairobi. The man that started it is named Dedan and he has been developing a ministry that reaches out to the children and youth located in the Kibera slums of the city of Nairobi, Kenya. I've been talking with him over the last few weeks and he has a great vision and heart to continue to grow the ministry that he has started. I'm planning to meet with him and see the ministry work that he is doing, and would like to do, in order to see if this would be an opportunity for myself and Spoken For to be more involved in. I will be in Nairobi for the month of June to be a part of the ministry work that Dedan and God are doing in the Kibera slums. I would appreciate your prayers as it was short notice and I'm currently trying to secure housing arrangements. I will probably be staying in a guest house
nearby in the city, but longer term arrangements may be needed because of cost and availability of guest rooms at a couple places. I may just be moving around to several different guest rooms while there. I will leave for Nairobi on June 2nd and then I will now plan on returning to the US, if plans don't change again!!, on June 30th.

Thanks for your prayers and support. I'd like to ask that you continue to pray for me as the next week here in Kigali will be very busy as there are many things to plan and discuss with Esron for the Youth Advocacy Program.

Serving Him,
Eric Sundene <{{{><
JOHN 5:24