Thirty years ago today, we touched down in Entebbe with 8-month old Luke and our trunks. Those were the days before cell phones or internet, so when no one met us at the airport, we sat on those trunks on the curb for a couple of hours plotting what to do next. Swarms of lake flies surrounded us and I envisioned them being malarious mosquitoes that might end my baby's life before we even found our place. We knew the only way to make a phone call out of the country was a phone booth in the Sheraton Hotel about an hour away, but by the time we were ready to hire a taxi to find it, John Wilson Atwooki pulled up in a truck. The family who had planned to meet us was all sick at the Church of Uganda guest house in the capital, and he had been deputised to take us there.
And so the themes were set for the last thirty years. Atwooki has continued his occassional timely rescues (just a few months ago he saved us with a broken down car), we have continued to be blessed by the Church of Uganda (which just this year established a diocese IN BUNDIBUGYO and the new Bishop is speaking at CSB tomorrow!!), sicknesses both tropical and typical continue to throw up many of the day to day barriers to our plans (already consulted on one sick kid this morning, and exchanging emails with a family that has to travel for extra work up and care), and we continue to stumble through new travel experiences where we're a bit lost and dependent upon the kindness of others and the grace of God.
This past week, Congo (DRC).
Actually, more than 35 years ago, we had formed a team of college friends in America to go to eastern Congo to an area that had been identified by other missions as needing Bible translation, and had almost no church presence or health care. . . .but in the process of trying to get there we learned that the Babwisi of Bundibugyo were related to the Congo tribe over the border, spoke that same unwritten language, and that Serge had started to work in church and health on this side and needed us to join in. So we did. Our Uganda team has continued to care for patients and refugees who cross the border, and enfold church leaders from Congo in training, and about 5 years ago we added a team in Nyankunde to Serge. Between insecurity there, COVID border closures, my accident, and the strain of life, we hadn't visited that team in too long. Last month when we were in Kampala we stopped in the Congo embassy and paid for visas so we could make a visit in October.
Can you see our boat waiting? Note the photos below of the process ..
Bunia is only 70 miles as the crow flies from our home in Nyahuka. But that's 70 miles of no real passable roads and of villages frequented by rebel groups, so it's not easy for us to get there. We've gone by a circuitous road route in the past (150 miles), crossed the Semiliki in a little canoe to meet a MAF plane once, flown from Entebbe into Bunia too. But recently a couple of small companies started running a "high speed ferry" (a 20 ish foot long boat with bench seating in a glassed-in central area and a motor that crosses in about 1.5 hours) across Lake Albert. Our team leaders, the LaRochelles, tried it out, and it sounded so much easier than driving 8 hours to Entebbe to fly back across Uganda . . . so this trip we took the boat too. Long day into a short story, we haven't learned a LOT in 30 years. . . .once again the timing was ambiguous, finding the right people and procedures tedious, the departure point in Uganda is about 2 hours from us and the arrival point in Congo nearly 2 hours from our team, so it's still an all-day effort. But all went well. We moved with only small daypacks and our visas, and were well cared for by our team.
The main highlight of 5+ days in Congo is the Congolese. For a people who have known some of the worst colonial injustice, some of the most intractable and devastating war, and some of the most lethal diseases (King Leopold, Mobutu, and Ebola are all pretty rough but accurate words for Congo), the atmosphere in person is incredibly welcoming. We had six formal meetings with partners, and without fail they thanked our team for expressing the solidarity of presence and the practicality of love, and asked us to stay. We shared meals and toured camps and hospitals and listened and prayed.
The second highlight was the team. The LaRochelles (in about 2015) and the Staffords (in about 2020) came as Samaritan's Purse post-residents to Nyankunde and in spite of multiple evacuations and sorrows remain committed to blessing the people of Congo. They live in a hard place, difficult to access, with little capacity to share the work loads or find respite. But they both carry a strong vision for the world's good and God's glory, for restoring all things in partnership with Jesus who is making all things new. Inspiring words that obscure the hourly reality of a jolting unpaved road, unpredictable access to water or power, the lurking threat of skirmishes between armed groups, hungry kids and patients in advanced stages of problems that should have been addressed months or years before.
One of our meetings opened with a Congolese security advisor saying "you know, Congo is a conflict zone." One of the driving urgencies of our visit was to assess the complex interplay of a hundred tribally based militias, a couple of larger international rebel groups, a national army, the UN's long and less-effective-than-hoped-for peacekeeping mission which the DRC government has asked to draw to a close, thousands of people displaced from home, upcoming national elections in December . . . all as a background to our faith-based NGO and a few others as well as western government-funded aid trying to forge some safety nets.
In this world you will have trouble, Jesus said. The DRC would not dispute that summary of life. But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world, Jesus concluded. Over and over God leads people into wilderness to lovingly teach them to lean on grace. You can pray for our team's stamina to keep pouring out for the needs of Congo, to keep living the hard story of the Gospel. And pray for us and other leaders to wisely embrace a holistic, long-term view of bringing hope into that place.
This week the DRC might not even seem like an important story in light of rumbling horrible aggression in the Middle East, Europe, elsewhere. God holds all these tears in a bottle, cares for every sparrow that falls. Deaths in the last year or last week, compared to USA losses in 2001:
DRCongo civilians in Ituri/North Kivu killed by rebel militias this year 1,800 (6 million in 20 yrs)
Ukrainian civilians killed in Russian invasion 9,614 (military combatant numbers too obscured)
Israeli and Palestinian civilians killed in this week's attacks 2,300 and climbing
USA civilians killed in 9-11 attacks 2,977 people
USA civilians killed annually by guns (both suicide and personal aggression) 48,000
We all need the good news, that love is stronger than death.
Come Lord Jesus.
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