Bus
Preacher
RWANDA | November 9
Samuel Ndagijimana, 59
Some people read books or play cell phone games while riding the bus to work.
Samuel Ndagijimana preaches.
Samuel talks about Jesus and His soon coming as he travels to work every morning in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.
He never knew whether his words had any impact on listeners.
Until one day.
Samuel was crossing a Kigali street when a woman called out to him.
“Pastor, please stop,” she said.
Samuel wasn’t a pastor, but he was used to people addressing him as one because of his practice of preaching on buses. He stopped and looked quizzically at the woman.
“I don’t know you,” he said. “Have
we met?”
“You are doing a very good job, but perhaps you don’t know it,” the woman said. “We met on the bus, and you preached about a problem that I had.”
The woman reminded Samuel that he had preached one morning about making God first.
“You said, ‘When you arrive at work, make God first in your plans. Make God first in whatever you speak. Make God first in all that you do,’” she said.
The message convinced her to make an important decision as soon as she arrived at her workplace.
“When I arrived at work, I had a very challenging problem,” she said. “I knelt in my office and prayed, ‘God, the man of God who preached this morning said we have to make You first. Help me to make You first.’”
After praying, she felt stronger. She knew what she would say to her boss.
A few hours passed, and her boss showed up at work. He came straight to her desk.
“When can we go?” he asked.
“My boss, I will not sin,” she replied. “I cannot go with you for three reasons. First, I’m a married woman, and I must be faithful to my husband. Second, I am a Christian, and I won’t sin against my Savior. Third, I am a leader in my church, so I must be an example to others.”
The boss was shocked.
“I have approached you many times, and you never said yes or no,” he said. “Why? You heard my proposal, but you didn’t make any decision.”
His eyes narrowed in anger.
“You will be fired for this,” he snarled and stormed out of the room.
The woman swallowed hard and prayed.She didn’t want to be fired.
“God, I glorified You at my work,” she said. “I made You first. If I get fired, please take care of my children.”
To be fired, she had to receive a dismissal letter from her boss. She thought the letter would be delivered the next day, but it wasn’t. A second day passed, and no letter. That evening, on the television news, she heard that her boss had been fired. She wept and praised God.
On the street, the woman told Samuel, “I was supposed to be fired, but I kept my job. I don’t thank God that my boss was fired. I thank God because He protects those who put Him first.”
Samuel is determined to keep preaching on buses. He also sometimes preaches on the street. But most of all, he said, he strives to preach without words. With God’s help, He allows his appearance and actions to reveal Christ to others.
Church members worldwide also preached a sermon without words when they contributed to a 2016 Thirteenth Sabbath Offering to open a medical school on the campus of Adventist University of Central Africa in Kigali. Samuel said he is grateful for the medical school, where teachers and students are helping spread the gospel around Rwanda.
Andrew McChesney
Story Tips
Read how an angel put out Samuel’s tobacco fire in Children’s Mission.
Download medium-resolution photos for this story from our Facebook page: bit.ly/fb-mq. Photos are uploaded on Sundays, six days before the mission story is to be presented.
Download high-resolution photos and more from the ADAMS databank: bit.ly/Bus-Preacher
Download high-resolution photos of Thirteenth Sabbath projects from ADAMS: bit.ly/ECD-projects-2019
Mission Post
Adventist work in what is now Rwanda was begun by D.E. Delhove, a young worker from Belgium, shortly after World War I. At the outbreak of the war in 1914, Delhove was drafted into the Belgian army and served during the war years doing clerical work with the Belgian forces in the part of East Africa that later became Rwanda. After the war, he and his family were appointed missionaries to this unentered territory. Delhove looked for a site on which to construct a station and he was given a 125-acre (50-hectare) plot 11 miles (18 kilometers) north of the town of Nyanza, on a low ridge known as the Hill of the Skulls. Superstitious locals avoided the area because they believed it once was cursed by a Rwandan king. Here the foundations were laid for Gitwe Mission.
Fast Facts
Rwanda has the world’s record for the highest representation of women in parliament, with women accounting for more than 60 percent of parliament members.
“ဘတ္(စ)ကားတရားေဟာဆရာ”
ႏိုဝင္ဘာလ(၉)ရက္၊ ေရးသားသူ-Samuel Ndagijimana(၅၉)ႏွစ္၊႐ြင္းဒါႏိုင္ငံ၊
အခ်ိဳ႕လူေတြဟာ၊အလုပ္သြားဖို႔ဘတ္(စ)ကားေပၚမွာထိုင္ရင္း စာအုပ္ေတြဖတ္ၾကပါတယ္။
ဒါမွမဟုတ္ဖုန္းနဲ႔ကစားၾကပါတယ္။ Samuel ကေတာ့တရားေဟာခဲ့ပါတယ္။
သူဟာ၊မနက္တိုင္းအလုပ္လုပ္ဖို႔အတြက္ ႐ြင္းဒါႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕ျမိဳ႕ေတာ္ကီဂါလီကို ခရီးသြားရင္း
နဲ႔၊သခင္ေယ႐ႈမၾကာခင္ျပန္ျပီးျြကဆင္းလာမယ့္အေၾကာင္းကို Samuel ကေဟာၾကားခဲ့ပါတယ္။
သူ႔အေနနဲ႔ေတာ့၊သူ႔တရားေဟာခ်က္ဟာ နားေထာင္သူေတြအတြက္အက်ိဳးသက္ေရာက္မႈ
ရွိ၊မရွိဆိုတာကို မသိရွာခဲ့ပါဘူး။
တစ္ေန႔မွာ၊Samuelဟာ ကီဂါလီျမိဳ႕ေတာ္ရဲ႕လမ္းမၾကီးကိုျဖတ္ကူးေနတဲ့အခ်ိန္မွာအမ်ိဳး
သမီးတစ္ဦးက”အိုတရားေဟာဆရာ၊ေက်းဇူးျပဳျပီးရပ္လိုက္ပါဦး”လို႔ ေခၚခဲ့ပါတယ္။
Samuel လည္းပဲရပ္လိုက္ျပီး၊”ခင္ဗ်ားကိုကြ်န္ေတာ္မသိဘူးေနာ္။ကြ်ႏု္ပ္တို႔ေတြ႔ဘူး
ၾကပါသလား”လို႔ ေျပာလိုက္ပါတယ္။
“ဆရာက၊တကယ္ေကာင္းတဲ့အရာကိုလုပ္ေနတာဘဲေနာ္။ဆရာ႕အေနနဲ႔သိခ်င္မွသိမယ္။
ကြ်န္မတို႔ဟာဘတ္(စ)ကားေပၚမွာေတြ႕ဆံုၾကျပီး၊ ကြ်န္မမွာရွိတဲ့ျပႆနာအတြက္ဆရာကတရား
ေဟာခဲ့ပါတယ္”လို႔ ျပံဳးျပံဳး႐ႊင္႐ႊင္နဲ႔ျပန္ေျဖခဲ့ပါတယ္။
“အလုပ္လုပ္တဲ့ေနရာကိုေရာက္ေရာက္ခ်င္း၊သင္တို႔ရဲ႕စီမံကိန္းေတြနဲ႔လုပ္သမွ်အရာ
တိုင္းမွာဘုရားသခင္ကိုပထမေနရာမွာထားပါ”လို႔ ဆရာေဟာခဲ့ပါတယ္လို႔သူမကျပန္ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။
Samuelရဲ႕သတင္းစကားကိုသူမဟာလက္ခံယံုၾကည္ျပီး၊အလုပ္လုပ္တဲ့ေနရာကိုေရာက္
ေရာက္ခ်င္းလက္ေတြ႕က်င့္သံုးဖို႔ ဆံုးျဖတ္ခဲ့ပါေတာ့တယ္။
“ကြ်န္မရဲ႕႐ံုးကိုေရာက္တဲ့အခါစိန္ေခၚမႈေတြရွိခဲ့ပါတယ္။အိုအဖဘုရား၊ ဒီနံနက္မွာတရား
ေဟာဆရာေဟာခဲ့တဲ့အတိုင္း၊ ကြ်န္မရဲ႕အသက္တာမွာ ကိုယ္ေတာ္ကိုပထမေနရာမွာထားႏိုင္ဖို႔
မစေတာ္မူပါလို႔ကြ်န္မဆုေတာင္းခဲ့ပါတယ္” လို႔ဝမ္းသာစြာျဖင့္ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ဆုေတာင္းျပီးတဲ့အခါ၊သူမမွာပိုျပီးေတာ့ အားရွိလာသလိုခံစားခဲ့ရပါတယ္။သူမရဲ႕လုပ္
ငန္းရွင္အေပၚေျပာရမယ့္စကားကို သူမသိရွိလာခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ႏွစ္နာရီေလာက္ၾကာတဲ့အခါ၊လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ဟာသူမရဲ႕႐ံုးခန္းထဲကိုတန္းျပီးဝင္လာခဲ့ပါ
တယ္။ “ဘယ္ေတာ့သြားမလဲ”လို႔ေမးခဲ့ပါတယ္။
“ကြ်န္မရဲ႕လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ၾကီး၊ ကြ်န္မမွာအျပစ္မလုပ္ရမဲ့ အေၾကာင္းအရင္းသံုးခ်က္ရွိပါ
တယ္။ ပထမအေနနဲ႔၊ကြ်န္မဟာအိမ္ေထာင္က်ျပီးအမ်ိဳးသားအေပၚမွာသစၥာရွိရမယ္။ ဒုတိယအ
ေနနဲ႔၊ ကြ်န္မဟာခရစ္ယာန္တစ္ဦးျဖစ္လို႔ကယ္တင္ရွင္သခင္ေယ႐ႈအေပၚမွာလည္း သစၥာရွိရမယ္။
တတိယအေနနဲ႔ကေတာ့၊ကြ်န္မရဲ႕အသင္းေတာ္မွာေခါင္းေဆာင္တစ္ဦးျဖစ္လို႔စံျပျဖစ္ရမယ္” လို႔
ခပ္တည္တည္နဲ႔ျပန္ေျဖခဲ့ပါတယ္။ လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ဟာထိတ္လန္႔သြားခဲ့ပါတယ္။
“သင့္ကိုအၾကိမ္ေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ လာခ်ဥ္းကပ္ေပမယ့္၊သင္ကတစ္ခါမွကြ်န္ေတာ့ရဲ႕ကမ္းလွမ္း
ခ်က္အတြက္ အေျဖမေပးခဲ့ဘူး၊ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲ” လို႔ေျပာခဲ့ပါေတာ့တယ္။
“ဒီကိစၥအတြက္သင္ကမီး႐ိႈ႕ျခင္းကိုခံရမွာပဲ” လို႔စိတ္ဆိုးမန္ဆိုးနဲ႔ ထပ္ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။
အမ်ိဳးသမီးဟာလည္းပဲ၊မီး႐ိႈ႕ျခင္းကိုမခံခ်င္လို႔ ဆုေတာင္းခဲ့ပါေတာ့တယ္။
“အိုအဖဘုရား၊ကြ်န္မက ကိုယ္ေတာ္ကိုပထမေနရာမွာ ထားထားပါတယ္။တကယ္လို႔
မ်ားကြ်န္မမီး႐ိႈ႕ျခင္းခံရခဲ့လို႔ရွိရင္၊ကြ်န္မရဲ႕ကေလးေတြကိုၾကည့္႐ႈေစာင့္ေရွာက္ေပးေတာ္မူပါ”လို႕
သူမဆုေတာင္းခဲ့ပါတယ္။
သူမမီး႐ိႈ႕ခံရဖို႔အတြက္အလုပ္ရွင္ကေန ထြက္သြားခြင့္ျပဳတဲ့စာကိုလက္ခံရရွိမွာျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
အဲဒီစာကို ေနာက္တစ္ေန႔မွာ လက္ခံရရွိမယ္လို႔ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခဲ့ေပမယ့္၊ ဒုတိယေန႔မွာလည္းမရရွိခဲ့ပါ။
အဲဒီညတီဗြီသတင္းမွာ လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ဟာမီး႐ိႈ႕ခံခဲ့ရေၾကာင္းကို ၾကားသိရျပီးကြ်န္မငိုခဲ့မိပါတယ္။
ဘုရားသခင္ကိုလည္းခ်ီးမြမ္းခဲ့မိပါတယ္။
လမ္းမေပၚမွာအမ်ိဳးသမီးက၊”အမွန္မွာ၊ကြ်န္မဟာမီး႐ိႈ႕ျခင္းခံရဖို႔ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ဒါေပမဲ့
ကြ်န္မရဲ႕အလုပ္ကိုဆက္လုပ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ကြ်န္မရဲ႕လုပ္ငန္းရွင္ဟာမီး႐ိႈ႕ခံခဲ့ရလို႔ဘုရားသခင္ကိုေက်း
ဇူးမတင္ပါ။ ကြ်န္မကိုကယ္ခဲ့လို႔ဘုရားသခင္ကိုေက်းဇူးတင္ပါတယ္” လို႔ Samuelကိုေျပာျပ
ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ကီဂါေလျမိဳ႕မွာရွိတဲ့ ဗဟိုအာဖရိကေျမာ္လင့္ျခင္းအသင္းေတာ္ရဲ႕ တကၠသိုလ္ျခံဝင္းထဲ
မွာေဆးအတတ္ပညာနဲ႔သက္ဆိုင္တဲ့ေက်ာင္းကို ၂၀၁၆ ခုႏွစ္၊(၁၃)ပတ္ဥပုသ္စာေျဖေက်ာင္းအလွဴ
ေငြတစ္ခ်ိဳ႕နဲ႔အသံုးျပဳျပီးတည္ေထာင္ဖြင့္လွစ္ႏိုင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒါဟာ၊ကမၻာတစ္ဝွမ္းလံုးရွိအသင္း
သားေတြရဲ႕ေဟာၾကားခဲ့တဲ့စကားလံုးမပါတဲ့ တရားေဟာခ်က္တစ္ခ်က္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။
ေဆးအတတ္ပညာနဲ႔သက္ဆိုင္တဲ့ေက်ာင္းမွ ေက်ာင္းဆရာ၊ဆရာမေတြ၊ေက်ာင္းသူ
ေက်ာင္းသားေတြဟာ၊ ႐ြင္းဒါႏိုင္ငံတစ္ဝွမ္းလံုးမွာဧဝံေဂလိသတင္းစကားပ်ံ႕ႏွံ႕ဖို႔ကို ကူညီၾကတဲ့
အတြကွ္ောကနူ ဟာေက်းဇူးတင္ေနပါတယ္။
ဒီတပတ္ရဲ႕သက္ေသခံခ်က္ေလးကေတာ့ဒီေလာက္ပါဘဲ။
-ဝ-
