Dear friends of the Mission, Once again I greet you in the name of the Triune God. With love, please accept my humble thanks for your support for the missionary work entrusted to me by our beloved spiritual father Pope and Patriarch Theodore II. Our mission and vision is to spread the light of Orthodoxy in Burundi and Rwanda, which seem to have a bright future. The love, the hospitality, the education I received from you, the Greek people, while I was a student, these are what I try to offer. Our main activity is to spread the Orthodox faith, which is the only true one. The challenges are many, as we are needed, required and asked to respond to the thirsty souls in the various sectors of society. Education is a key to managing and addressing problems such as poverty and ignorance. In one of our districts, we have our only primary school with over 600 children, who walk more than 5 kilometres daily, while the majority are completely deprived of basic equipment such as pencils, pens, notebooks, even though the education we offer them is free, because their parents cannot afford them and because most of the children are orphans. Occasionally we try to provide some lunch, as most of them come very early in the morning without having eaten breakfast or even without having tasted dinner the night before. We have 100 students in each class. Occasionally we need to cut a pencil into thirds so that all the students have a pencil to write with.
The government has asked us to build a secondary school in this area, because for these students, when they finish primary school, it means the end of their studies, because there is no secondary school in their area. We laid the foundation stone for the secondary school, which will be dedicated to the neophyte Saint Paisios. Our prayer is that we will be able to complete the school, because the education of young children is the future for our Church and for the whole country. Although we have baptized many people, we still worship and celebrate our services under trees, in tents, in rented lodges and in the open air. Please keep us in your unceasing prayers so that we can keep the candle of Orthodoxy lit.
† Burundi and Rwanda Innocentius
