Play For Hope

I would like to introduce you Ndaribumbye –Andre, 20 years old, who has finished only primary school. His father died when he was very young and he grew up in a poor family. Andre stopped school because of his family was not able to pay school fees for him, he asked for help from other family members but no one came for help. Up to fourteen years Andre continued to be patient and live with his family in a rural area called Gikongoro, everyday he worked digging for his family. It was hard work for him because he could spent like the half of the day in the garden. Always when he thought of his future, he thought nothing good will happen in his life.

Andre decided to leave his family and come to Kigali city with the purpose of changing his life. He expectation someone would help him go back to school or get a good job to help him to save the money for his school because Andre liked so much to study. When Andre arrived in the city life was very different than he had expected. He found himself sleeping on the street sleeping, and started bad behaviors like cheating, taking drugs like marijuana, alcohol and many different things. He has spent three years living on street.

One day, his friend asked him if he would like to play soccer and directly he responded yes because it was his favorite sport when he was at school. His friend said be ready I will come to pick you up to go and play: Here are his own words:

At 2:00pm we took the bus and go to play and I find myself at a Christian soccer team for street boys and Serieux was our leader, it was a new place for me after a while where I started to hear good things and talk about the love of God, encouraging words I never experienced in my life, find people who demonstrate love for us even when we are sick they use to take care for us, pray over us, give us some gift of clothes, buy food and snacks for us all of that was new for me and directly my life also started to be new and change the day of day; many times I heard testimonies for peoples who have lived the life like us and how God has changed their lives spiritual and physical ,that always helped me to become close to God and start to stopped the behaviors after knowing that God has big purpose in my life and His wish is to get me off the street.

I have asked God what can I do in my life and one day I feel in my heart a big desire to learn mechanic, and I made a step by faith to go in the garage that was close to my site and ask one engineer who was my friend if I can come every day to help him in my free time, directly he said that is a good idea you have, I helped him like six months and learned from him many things very important to me to have a basic knowledge of mechanics; in my team my prayer request was to ask God to open for me the door to attend vocation school learn more about mechanic because that desire become big in my heart when I started to help and learn basic skills in that garage.

In September 2006, Serieux who was my soccer team leader and coach helped me and supported me to attend the vocation school at Kavumu Nyanza, it’s the first vocation training school in the country and God helped me to succeed it with good grade, after my school the garage I was working in as engineer helper, immediately recruited me to be a full time engineer in their garage, I find myself doing things many of them can’t do because of the skills I have learned to that school, and most of them never have a chance to attend mechanic school, but they have learned only by experience of working many years in the garage.

I find myself teaching them the names of some part of the vehicles they don’t know, I find myself becoming a star in that garage when many people comes to give me the jobs when they said we need that guy who has finished the mechanic school.

Now, I thank God who changed my life spiritual and physically, I’m not living again on the street, I’m able to cover my rent expenses and I brought my sister who was suffering in the village and she is living with me and I’m responsible to take care for her, I used to help my mom in the village too.

When I work very well and hard during the day and have a blessing of getting many clients I can be able to afford 80.000Frw ($150) per day.

I thank God to change my history; my prayer request is to have a driving permit this year.