A Christmas miracle deep in the heart of Africa

If we stop for a moment from the hustle, shopping, empty glitter and endless activities that define the holiday season, we may remember what Christmas all is about. It is about hope, peace, joy and love, symbolized by the four Advent wreath candles we light one by one every Sunday leading up to the celebration of Christ’s birth on Christmas Eve. Hope and peace are much needed commodities today, and joy and especially actions of love even more so — not only in this country but in the world at large.

A Christmas miracle is happening in a country in the heart of Africa, a continent still struggling with poverty, hunger, and health crises, exacerbated by conflict, poor governance, and climate change. This miracle is in the small progressive country of Rwanda, just south of the equator in the fertile highlands of East Africa romantically called “The Land of Eternal Spring.” And it is happening in outreach to incarcerated people who are often forgotten and hardly survive in condition of both outer and inner darkness.

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Here we find the Rev. Pius Nyakayiro, executive director of Good News Rwanda, a nonprofit organization with a staff of prison chaplains and volunteers and many years of experience in prison outreach and reform in the 13 prisons in Rwanda.

This year Nyakayiro and his organization are on a special Christmas mission to the two main female prisons in his country, Ngoma Women’s Correctional Facility, holding 1,142 women and 91 children, and Musanze Correctional Facility, with 974 women and 105 children. Why are children in prison with  their mothers? In Rwanda, children born in prison can stay with their mothers for the first three years of their lives.  After that, they will hopefully be taken care of by family members

Nyakayiro says: “This year our prison ministry is organizing a special Christmas outreach to bring hope, dignity and the love of Christ to some of the most vulnerable individuals incarcerated in Rwanda. Among these are elderly inmates, individuals who receive no family visits, and mothers raising young children inside prison walls.  Many of these children have never experienced a Christmas gift, and many of the grown-up women have not felt remembered for years.”

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 He continues: “Our desire is to bless them with simple but life-changing Christmas gifts, along with a message of hope from the Gospel. Through this gesture, we want them to know that God sees them, loves them, and, through our community outreach, has not forgotten them. We will distribute 2,300 Hope Packs containing sugar, soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes, skin lotion, menstrual pads for the women, and biscuits, soft drinks, balls, toys, footwear, and milk for the children.”

The Christmas outreach to incarcerated women and children is organized in close cooperation with the Rwandan Correctional Services, which in turn operates in partnership with the National Commission for Children (NCC), whose director of Adoption Protection and Promotion of Child Rights, Francois Bisengimana, expressed his perspective on the Christmas outreach: “It is not just about wishing ‘Merry Christmas’ to these kids and giving them gifts. Rather, it is a way of reminding ourselves of our fundamental responsibility for protecting and promoting children’s rights. All children have rights and they should receive such services whether in prison with their mothers, on the street, in orphanages or in rehabilitation centers.”

In case we are not familiar with children’s rights, here in the United States, children’s rights are under a legal code and based on a set of core principles, including the right to education, protection from abuse and neglect, access to health care, and the right to have their best interests considered in legal proceedings. These principles are intended to ensure those rights.

In today’s interconnected world, we are all in principle co-responsible for injustices next door or halfway around the world, a sentiment clearly supported by the Jesus’s commandment in Mark 12:30-31 to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Let’s be inspired by the Rev. Nyakayiro and his team that has led this Christmas outreach project and how he has managed to engage local churches for community outreach to the prisons. The country of Rwanda does well by African standards but still is not a rich country by western yardsticks. This project with a budget of about $25,000 offers a unique opportunity for American faith organizations who are invited to become partners in this venture. Such direct outreach is especially important with foreign aid program cancelled under the current government.

On a spiritual level, the picture of imprisoned women with their children receiving Christmas gift packages is a miracle unfolding before our eyes, for it is an extension of love from the giver to the receiver. An even bigger and often overlooked part of the miracle is the inevitable sharing of love-based gratitude from the receiver back to the giver. It is a demonstration of the spiritual law in action that whatever you give will return to you, when the action is based upon love, as Jesus suggested.

The universal truth of this spiritual law of love is that when a community, like in the Rwanda project, gets engaged with its local prison or in other social justice outreach efforts, this miracle of reciprocal love exchange will inevitably manifest itself as demonstrated in New York state’s Adopt-a-Prison (AAP) program initiated six years ago by the Interfaith Prison Partnership organization (IPP) at both Taconic and Bedford Hills women’s correctional facilities in Bedford, New York.

In a recent article for the Corrections Today magazine, the commissioner of the New York Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, Daniel Martuscello, said this about the AAP program: “As commissioner of DOCCS, I’ve had the privilege of witnessing the profound impact of the Adopt-a-Prison Program. … Programs like this demonstrate how working together toward a common goal can create meaningful outreach and safer communities. … I am extremely proud of the work this program has accomplished, and I look forward to the continued positive impact it will have on the lives of our staff and of those we serve.”

We should not be surprised that it works. It is simply the great universal love command in action. May we all learn to do likewise.

The Rev. Dr. Hans Hallundbaek, a minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), is a co-founder of both Rehabilitation through the Arts and the Interfaith Prison Partnership, an outreach of Hudson River Presbytery. He is an adjunct instructor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Marist College. He lives in Katonah, New York.