In late 2000 a member of St Luke’s joined a group from Mid-Africa Ministry, an Anglican charity, on a fact finding tour of Rwanda. That was six years after a genocide had killed about a million people. One of the places visited was Shyira, a remote village in the hills of the North West. Shyira had been one of the mission stations of the East African Revival but had been devastated by genocide. The headquarters of Shyira diocese had moved to the more accessible town of Ruhengeri (now called Musanze) and its once very successful hospital had only one trained staff member, a newly qualified nurse. The impoverished community couldn’t even manage to pay to replace a broken pane of glass in the window of the maternity hospital delivery room. See the picture, below.

The story of the fact finding tour was told at St. Luke’s and quickly a group of ten people wanting to visit Shyira and see what help could be given was formed. The group included people with medical, educational and faith experience, all that was necessary for a visit with a positive outcome.

God had His people in place before they were needed.

The visit took place a year after the original fact finding tour. Permission had been given by St Luke’s church council for the group to do two things: To suggest the formation of a friendship link between the people of St Mark’s church in Shyira and the people of St Luke’s and to invite three people from Shyira to visit St Luke’s with St Luke’s paying all costs.

The suggestion of a friendship link was accepted amid great excitement, and three people, Emmanuel the parish priest, Eva the secondary school headteacher and Ambrose the hospital nurse would visit St. Luke’s the following year. The visitors were later given a handmade card depicting the friendship between the two parishes as shown in the picture below.

Before returning home it was agreed that the visitors would try to find sponsors for a few secondary school children and that they would restore the hospital’s maternity building. The hospital building was eventually found to be unsafe and St Luke’s fundraised for it to be rebuilt. The picture below shows the maternity building on the morning of its opening in April 2004.