Our Partners

The Good Shepherd Community Church of Kigali, Rwanda

One of the core values of One Hundred Days is to work with trusted partners on all of our projects.  Simon and Kedress Nziramakenga have a long history with the Sasser family through a relationship with Kelli’s father and mother, Jim and Linda Cox.  Kelli grew up in Kenya where her family served with Campus Crusade for Christ alongside the Nziramakengas.

Simon Nziramakenga fled Rwanda in 1962 when the initial violence broke out.  He lived in Uganda until the Rwandan refugees were expelled as war erupted in Uganda.   For the second time in his life he fled as a refugee, this time to Kenya.  In Kenya, he met a young Rwandan refugee named Kedress who had a similar story.  She too had fled Rwanda in the early 60s with her grandmother.  In the forest of Uganda, her grandmother died and she grew up in the refugee camp as an orphan.  She was also forced to flee Uganda for Kenya.  Soon Simon and Kedress were married and started a family.  They served on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ and also had a vibrant ministry to the Rwandan refugee community in Kenya.

Although Simon and Kedress had firsthand experience of the violence in their home country,  they were devastated when genocide broke out in April of 1994.   When the violence ended, they learned that they had lost 70 members of their family in those one hundred days.  Soon after the genocide, they returned to Rwanda to build a church with a vision that went far beyond weekly Sunday gatherings.  The nondenominational church and its leadership focus on a holistic approach to ministry, seeking to meet the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of the community and to bring healing to their broken country.  To date the church has planted twenty-two churches throughout Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo, founded a theological Bible College in Kigali, developed a film on AIDS prevention for the country, build a primary school for orphans, and has been given approximately 20 acres of land in Kigali to provide much needed health care for the pediatric community.

Simon Nziramakenga on CNN

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