Welcome to our site!
Welcome friends, and thank you for sharing in our journey. We hope this website will be an important means of keeping in touch with friends, family, and others, as we embark on a new phase of our lives as MCC workers in Rwanda. Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) is a voluntary service, Christian, relief and development agency that works throughout the world, and emphasizes peace and working with local partners. We believe that MCC embodies many of our most cherished values, and we are excited to be a part of such a wonderful organization!
Click for a larger view.
We have accepted a 3-year assignment in Kigali, Rwanda as Capacity Building Advisors with primarily the Friends Peace House, which has programs including: workshops on conflict transformation, reconciliation, and trauma healing; restorative justice & prisoner reintegration; a school for street children; women’s empowerment groups that bring together women from both sides of the genocide/conflict, and a peace library, among others. The organization fills a very important role, as Rwandan society is still struggling to recover after the genocide in 1994. We anticipate being involved with administration and strategic planning, as well as some direct programming, but mostly we know our roles will evolve in time as we await the invitations of the people we serve and the leading of the Spirit.
We are currently living with our two boys (David, 5, and Eli, 2) in a new home in a suburb of Kigali not far from the Friends Peace House. Please sign up for email updates and check back here often to see photos & share our journey. You are all so important to us, and your prayers and support mean so much. Shalom!
Celeste & Aaron
April/May News
Mourning and Hope
Everyone awoke to the chilling news that the President was dead, his plane shot out of the sky... Who did it? People ran to find their family members. “What would happen now?” they all wondered. In the streets of Kicukiro, it was immediately clear that Tutsis and moderate Hutus were in great danger. Groups of interahamwe (the local militias who executed the genocide) wove drunkenly around a handful of road blocks dotting the way between Sonatube, Kicukiro Centre, and the Kagarama neighborhood beyond (where we now live). Tutsi families made their way quietly through the small patches of forest toward the technical school across the road from the main market at Kicukiro center. There they knew they would be safe, because the spot was guarded by the “blue-helmets”, UN soldiers.