(Editor’s Note: Below is a note I received from Rick Howard, who is one of the leaders of our attorney group serving alongside ALARM in Africa.)
Bonjure,
After three trips to French speaking countries (somehow not one in Europe) I still have a vocabulary of one French word. How unfortunate that is, but I hope to expand to at least two words by next year. My apologies for being so late in getting out a post trip email. The busyness of life has conspired with a lack of clarity in what God would have me share from this trip to delay putting my thoughts into words.
It is, of course, great to be back in Dallas with Michele and the boys. After 14 days away the adjustment to time zones is taking a little longer than in the past, but it is so much fun to see my family after the long trip. Thanks to so many of you who served Michele while I was gone by providing meals, grabbing the boys to play, or even some fine folks who gave her gift cards for eating out. Mi Cocina and Chili’s are big in my house.
The trip itself was another incredible testimony to the power of God to stir the hearts of people when God’s love story for us is shared. In three different countries in Central Africa we were welcomed by a wide variety of folks from different walks of life. Some already believe God is a god of miracles who can transform their lives and their countries in way that will leave man asking how it happened. Others we met who have suffered indescribable horrors as victims of rape, violence, and genocide claim Christ as Lord, but struggle to understand why a good and loving God allows bad people to prosper while so many ”good” people suffer these atrocities.
Against that backdrop we made our first stop in Bujumbura, Burundi. Although Watermark has sent several teams to Burundi, this was our first lawyer trip there. We were blessed to meet a new group of Christian lawyers and judges. Much like our first lawyers trip lawyers to Congo two years ago, we found men and women who are already connecting with each other as lawyers and judges, but, in Burundi they came from all over the country. This group has already affiliated with Advocates International, an international Christian lawyers group and is beginning to actively serve the people of Burundi as a voice of justice for those without a voice.
“Advocates Burundi” as their group is formally called partnered with ALARM Burundi to invite lawyers and judges from all (16) provinces in Burundi for a two day conference. As we started we were excited to find at least one lawyer or judge from each province in attendance. Included among the participants were judges from the High Court (think U.S. Supreme Court) which speaks volumes about the reputation of the men leading the Burundian lawyers group and the ALARM leadership in Burundi.
In Burundi we spent the first day helping them teach each other. Our hope on this first trip was to really help them identify the spiritual and professional challenges that are common to all Christian lawyers in Central Africa. In doing that exercise we hoped to help them build a lawyer “community” to encourage each other as they struggle against corruption, bribery, etc. That exercise also helped them to realize that their situation is not “terminally unique” to them (meaning no one else has ever experienced problems that they face).
We did this by breaking them up into random groups of 6 people so that there were lawyers from all over Burundi in each group. We then allowed each group to present their findings to everyone to reinforce the idea that all of them (and us) have the same struggles. This information will also help our lawyers and ALARM plan teaching on future trips.
Day two of the conference was spent teaching basic bible study methods to them, servant leadership, and a biblical approach to confronting corruption and bribery. The bible and leadership training is part of the core curriculum Watermark is using in Africa and we truly believe it is foundational to transforming the hearts of anyone we teach. The bribery/corruption materials were developed and written by a gifted group of Dallas lawyers who spent many volunteer hours taking some basic outlines from me and Jeff Ward and turning them into an eight part teaching handout. (What a blessing to have lawyers on the ground in Dallas committed to supporting our efforts in Africa with their time and talents.)
As part of our trip we also taught an afternoon session on the Saturday we arrived and the following day at the law school and university in Bujumbura. On both days we taught a compressed version of the leadership, bible study methods, and confronting corruption materials to groups of (40) to (50) students. This was a new effort for us, but the consensus from our team and ALARM was that this was a valuable opportunity to teach young folks just preparing to enter the work force what God calls us to do (“be salt and light”) as believers in a very secular world.
We next traveled to Goma, Congo to reconnect with the lawyers group that helped start our whole ministry two and half years ago when Van Beckwith and Todd Wagner first met this small group of Christian lawyers in one of the most dangerous and violent places on earth. After a full day of travel by cab, plane, and car we made it across the border into Congo late on day seven of our trip ready to continue to plant seeds in Goma where we’ve now been four times and help expand ALARM’s kingdom impact there.
Although the city seemed much safer this year than the last two years, the violence against innocent men, women, and children in the jungles in northeastern Congo continues unabated. Incidents of murder, rape, kidnapping of children, torture and any other atrocity you can imagine are still reported each day in the media and the truth of those reports is born out in the orphanages, hospitals, and refugee camps in and around Goma. (Do a Google search for Goma, Congo if you’d like details.)
In Goma our audience included lawyers, judges, government officials, and pastors most of whom had not attended any of our prior conferences. So, our plan was to repeat much of what we did in Burundi, but with some additional time on the ground we also scheduled teaching on the Christians role in protecting and caring for widows and orphans (there are lots of both groups in Goma as you can imagine), visits to several orphanages and a Heal Africa hospital for children and women, and dinner meetings with the ALARM staff and the leaders of the Christian lawyers group to see how our efforts are impacting the community in order to help us plan for future trips.
The conference itself went much like the Burundi conference. We continued Watermark’s effort and partnership with ALARM to train and equip leaders to change their own hearts and as a result change the system in Congo. We also split up our team and spent a half day teaching in both a public and a private Christian university to law students in those schools. The response to the teaching was tremendous at both the conference and the law schools as the attendees began to understand they are not alone in this effort. That in Goma there are others who want to see justice (the kind the Bible describes) begin to permeate the system so that there is a hope for the future of the people of eastern Congo. However, in Goma it was two events outside of the conference that were the most important part of the Goma visit for me.
First, as the conference began there were a number of notable lawyers from the Christian lawyers group who were absent without any plausible explanation. It was only at the end of the conference that this group of (8) lawyers appeared and expressed a desire to meet about some conflicts that had come up in the lawyer group since we were in Goma in October 2008. I agreed to the meeting with the stipulation that any lawyers who were part of what had happened should attend along with ALARM’s leader.
So, at 5pm on Saturday we began the process of applying the principles of Matthew 7 and 18 to the lives of a bunch of young, proud, and conflict averse lawyers in Goma. After a couple of hours of talking about who had hurt whom, who was wronged, and how they got all messed up we began to talk about peace and reconciliation and forgiveness. They were encouraged to remember that they as leaders set the example for all those who follow them and they would be accountable on earth and eternally for how they shepherded others.
Initially I expressed great disappointment in how they had spent two years as lawyers teaching the principles of biblical conflict resolution to other lawyers, in refugee camps, and churches, but they did not apply them to their own lives and conflicts. But, in the end I recognized that they like most of us would rather avoid conflict rather than resolve it because it is very uncomfortable work. It was easier for them to form a new lawyers group than to work through the conflict in the existing group and see that effort as a means for God to grow them.
I am happy to report that ground was taken that night toward reconciliation and that they continue to meet and work toward resolving their differences and moving forward to do the work God has uniquely equipped them to do.
The second event outside of the conference that really impacted me was our orphanage visits in Goma. In the past I’ve done the refugee camp tours. Those are important for understanding the real human cost of the civil war in Congo over the past fifteen years, but the contact with folks on the ground is very limited. Contrast that with our visit to a girls orphanage where we met the director who was once a child rape victim in the jungle of northern Congo. She was rescued and grew up in the orphanage we visited. She has since left, married, and now returned with her husband to supervise and care for a new group of child rape victims.
We had the opportunity to visit with the director about the current crises. She told me how they had just returned the week before from a trip into the jungle to pick up 22 girls between the ages of 9 and 16 who had been raped over the past few weeks and months and were now ostracized by their families and villages. She told me that is only a fraction of the victims as many are left for dead by the warring militias or put out of the village after the rape occurs and are never “rescued.”
We also visited a boys orphanage where we met Justin who is now 15, but six years ago was a “child soldier” serving in one of the rebel militias that roam Congo. He was taken from his village as young boy, made to serve as a slave to the militia leaders and ultimately placed in the front lines with a metal pan and spoon or a whistle so that he could warn the militia he was a slave to when the “bad” guys were coming. His life was expendable and valueless to his captors. He was “rescued” at the age of nine and has lived in the orphanage in Goma since. Again we are told he is one of the lucky ones as countless boys remain captive or are killed each year.
We closed out our trip with part of the team teaching a group of pastors in the remote mountains of northwestern Rwanda Watermark’s core biblical curriculum of leadership and conflict resolution and the balance of the team spending a day doing training for the lawyers with the International Justice Mission (IJM) staff in Kigali, Rwanda.
In closing I want to thank so many of you who prayed for us regularly, for the calls and emails of encouragement that we received before and during the trip, and for the financial support many of you provided for this effort. Because of your faithfulness were able to expand our efforts on this trip to three central African countries, to teach our main core conferences and also teach at universities in Burundi and Congo, to provide food and clothing for orphans and prisoners in Congo, and most importantly provide Bibles to many people who had never owned a Bible before. Over the course of our fourteen day trip we handed out a Bible in the appropriate language to over 400 people we were privileged to teach and meet.
I look forward to seeing what God calls us to do next both in Dallas and in Africa. Please join me in praying for the people of Central Africa.
