I am summoned to Rwanda for the June ordination of my friend, Lydia Masasu. We are in Kigali in the Remera Stadium, thousands of us, and I remember again how well the Africans do celebration. I wish I could dance or play drums or even be a tanner white.

I am sitting with bishops and pastors from Burundi, the Congo, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa; all of us there to be a part of Lydia's ordination. She is the first senior woman pastor of a church of 3,000 members in Kigali. It is a historical moment for Rwanda, for Remera Restoration Church and for Lydia.

 We start our procession at 10: a.m. and sing and dance and speak and listen until 7: p.m. I feel spiritual because I have not eaten, drank water or taken a bathroom break for nine hours. I wish more people knew this about me. But my African friends laugh at my silly boasting, amazed that I'm impressed with myself.

 Lydia is tall and regal when she walks down the aisle with her husband Her head is high, an African Queen.  I am weeping, proud— like a Mamma at a wedding.  I remember nine years ago when I first met her. “Hold your head up, Lydia”, I would tell her often. “Straighten your shoulders. You’re a leader.”

  She would smile shyly when I talked like this and reply, “Really?” 

   “Really.”

She was slumped over then, broken from the genocide, heavy with the burdens of a country still picking up the remnants of their lives.

When Lydia started a church under her husband,Joshua, (an Apostle who oversees 65 churches)  we gathered in an unpretentious, rented building and helped her get started in her vision.  Could this be? Lydia a pastor? 

  “You must come and see,” Apostle Joshua tells me when he invites me to this moment  

  So I come and I see.   I see Lydia, humble and strong, gracious and beautiful, leading, directing, nurturing. I see her husband: proud, loving her. See her  five children, beautiful, on the front row.  See her speaking to her city in a stadium, nourishing her nation. 

We are celebrating change at a national level, the call of a woman, and the possibilies of a continent.