pg. 21 — lightandlifemagazine.com
urfmYou are the church
“When I pray to
God, it’s like I’m
communicating to
Him. I’m speaking to
Him, and He is able to
listen to what I’m saying
through the Holy Spirit,”
Munyakuri said. “When
I pray, I feel like God is
standing next to me.”
Munyakuri also
understands the
importance of group
prayer re%ected in
passages such as
Matthew 18:19–20, Acts
4:31 and James 5:14–15.
“!ere are times also
when we need other
people to pray together,”
he said. “It’s like they
sharpen me. ... I hear
something that will li#
me up.”
Suffering
and Joy
Munyakuri o"ers
a personal testimony
of God’s faithfulness
through the hard times
of life, which he said God
uses to shape us — not
abandon us.
“I’m a living testimony that you can be in su"ering, but
sometimes God uses su"ering to bring joy in our hearts,”
he said. “I usually have a lot of joy, not because I have
everything, but because I went through some hardship, and
God came to my help.”
When asked what advice he would give for people going
through hard times, he said, “You may cry through the
night, and the joy will come in the morning. !ere was a
time in my life I used to cry in the night, but through my
prayers and my devotion to God, and in my journey of faith
and keeping hope in the Lord, the Lord never le# my side.
He declared through Moses, He said that He Himself will go
before us and will always prepare a way for us. He will never
leave us or even forsake us.”
Munyakuri added,
“Even if you are in your
darkest time in life, I
know that God is able
to take you out of there.”
El Shaddai
!e Munyakuri
family’s 2007 arrival led
to increased diversity
among Free Methodists
in the Rochester area.
“!ere were no other
people from Africa
there. We were the $rst
to arrive at New Hope.
!en other people kept
coming,” Munyakuri
said. “I invited them.
!ey all loved New
Hope. !en it came to
the point where people
wanted to worship in
their own language.”
Munyakuri eventually
became New Hope’s
assistant pastor, and
then-Lead Pastor
Michael Traylor (now
co-superintendent of
the River Conference)
asked him to lead an
a#ernoon service for
African immigrants.
“I’m a living
testimony that
you can be in
suffering, but
sometimes God uses
suffering to bring
joy in our hearts,”
— Pastor Heritage Murinda Munyakuri
“We started the service as a New Hope service, and it kept
growing and growing,” Munyakuri said.
Munyakuri said that a#er Scott Sittig arrived as New Hope’s
pastor, Sittig suggested that the a#ernoon congregation
could become a new congregation with Munyakuri as the
lead pastor. El Shaddai Free Methodist Church launched
in 2017. El Shaddai means “God Almighty” or “the
Overpowerer” in Hebrew.
Services are held in two languages, Kinyarwanda and
English. According to the National African Language
Resource Center, Kinyarwanda is spoken by 20 million
people who live primarily in Rwanda and portions of
the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda.
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