Watermark Justice

• Photo of Goma team preparing gifts to give to children during upcoming Congo trip. We leave on Friday!
  Russ
  http://yfrog.com/37v4cij #

Some might ask, why not serve the Justice needs of Preston Hollow or the Park Cities or even West Dallas and Pleasant Grove? Well, it’s not a binary question. This past month, we have served specific needs of one in our midst with very real probate issues here in Dallas, but we are also called to go to the farthest reaches of the World (Matt 28 and JP’s sermon from last week)

But as I read this article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8530000/8530686.stm), I was reminded of the WHY go to Goma? The answer is simple: there are a host of lies being told there and we know the truth in Christ. John 8:32.

Through our relationships with pastors and believing lawyers and judges in Goma, we can challenge HIS CHURCH (read, HIS Pastors, HIS lawyers, HIS judges) to stand against the falsity and untruth that persists there and can train and equip the next generation of fearless Christian leaders to rise up against the lies that persist in believing that children (God’s creation) somehow are involved in sorcery and deserve death or scars as a result.

See this article to know about the false accusations leveled against kids in Goma.    http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_8530000/8530686.stm Here’s just a sampling of what you fill find in the article:    “[this child's] is just one of a fast growing number of children accused of sorcery to come to the attention of Unicef’s head of child protection in Congo, Alessandra Dentice.”

May HIS church, HIS lawyers, HIS judges be equipped and then go and rise up against this lies that persist and may these children know that Christ followers will stand against injustice and will protect HIS children.

[Posted on behalf of Van Beckwith]

So Watermark Lawyers and others interested in justice issues, we are moving to a blog format to let you keep up to date and to dive in on the many exciting plans and projects God puts in our path.

Follow the Watermark Justice blog, or even better, sign up for an RSS feed. An easy way to set up an RSS feed is to have updates delivered to your email or igoogle page (www.igoogle.com to build your own)(or similar homepage) and we will get busy adding blog posts, photos, news and events, and opportunities. I’m new to these RSS feeds, but it is THE way to keep up with these blogs. We also will be tweeting from the road (yes, we have our own Watermark Justice twitter account). The tweets will post directly to the Watermark Justice blog, but you also can follow us on twitter by following “WatermarkLawyer.”

I’ve just returned from Friday’s conference at Pepperdine Law School on “The Role of The Church in Seeking Justice.” Here are just a few thoughts: (1) Jesus has followers committed to living personal lives of justice (after all, that is the first job of a leader — to look in the mirror) and to then take that to the streets of injustice in our homes, neighborhoods, farthest reaches of our city, our state, and around the World, (2) be encouraged by Pepperdine Law School — they have a justice center and they are committed to training up the next generation of fearless Christian lawyers — I was pumped, (3) our friends and partners at International Justice Mission are rocking along and shared the latest field news — including the breakup of an Indian brothel and the rescue of 27 girls (some as young as 11 and 12)!….wow God has faithful servants at IJM. Soon you will be able to dial up the Pepperdine site and listen to Kay Warren, Rich Stearns, Sam Casey of Advocates International, Sean Litton of IJM and little old me talk about justice ministry. I think you will be encouraged by what you hear.

You know the Word warns us about the abundant harvest and the lack of workers (Matt 9:37). Well, that’s how I feel returning from Pepperdine. We have direct opportunities today to: (1) keep loving our friends and lawyers in Goma, Congo, (2) to roll out our relationships in Burundi, (3) to expand in Northern Uganda with Advocates International and IJM and ALARM, (4) to sponsor two Uganda/Advocates International Christ-believing young lawyers as they complete their legal training ($3,000 buys 9 months of room, board and schooling for one of these lawyers)*******just think about the returns on that investment!, (5) to develop one-on-one mentor relationships with African Advocates International Lawyers, and the list goes on and on. Are you ready for some adventure?

For those new to our group, here’s a quick history to set your bearings: we started in March 2007 as an unorganized Spirit led effort to simply love some lawyers in one of the darkest places on Earth — Goma, Congo. Today, we hopefully remain viral (we are a bit more organized but hopefully even more Spirit led), but purposeful as we continue to try to build into our friends in Goma, to love and serve the people of West Dallas through our partner Advocates for Community Transformation, to write and speak on the issue of Widow and Orphan Property Rights and Land Grabbing in Africa (an enormous problem in central Africa that leads to generational poverty), to launch partnerships in Burundi, to partner with IJM throughout Africa, and to grow and expand only as Christ sees fit and leads us. Are you ready to dive in?

We need all types of leaders that are living purposeful lives in community in Dallas to help us reflect the Glory of our King inside our homes, on our streets, throughout Dallas, Texas, the US, and abroad including our beloved Central Africa.

Our next stop? Goma, Congo on March 4 as we seek to serve the battered and bruised women of the Congo as they heal from the trauma of sexual assault. Pray in anticipation for Good News for our leaders on that trip, Rick Howard, Mary Birdlebough, Russ Brown, Lisa Lopez and other skilled women from Watermark who can walk the talk of this training.

Grateful for each of you,

Van Beckwith
May our lives reflect Galations 2:20

Yet no humanitarian crisis generates so little attention per million corpses, or such a pathetic international response.

That’s why I’m here in the lovely, lush and threatening hills west of Lake Kivu, where militias rape, mutilate and kill civilians with a savagery that is almost incomprehensible. I’m talking to a 9-year-old girl, Chance Tombola, an orphan whose eyes are luminous with fear.

For Chance, the war arrived one evening last May when armed soldiers from an extremist Hutu militia — remnants of those who committed the Rwandan genocide — burst into her home. They killed her parents in front of her. Chance ran away, but the soldiers seized her two sisters, ages 6 and 12, and carried them away into the forest, presumably to be turned into “wives” of soldiers. No one has seen Chance’s sisters since.

Chance moved in with her aunt and uncle and their two teenage daughters. Two months later, the same militia invaded the aunt’s house and held everyone at gunpoint. Chance says she recognized some of the soldiers as the same ones who had killed her parents.

This time, no one could escape. The soldiers first shot her uncle, and then, as the terrified family members sobbed, they pulled out a large knife.

“They sliced his belly so that the intestines fell out,” said his widow, Jeanne Birengenyi, 34, Chance’s aunt. “Then they cut his heart out and showed it to me.” The soldiers continued to mutilate the body, while others began to rape Jeanne.

“One takes a leg, one takes the other leg,” Jeanne said dully. “Others grab the arms while one just starts raping. They don’t care if children are watching.”

Chance added softly: “There were six who raped her. One raped me, too.”

The soldiers left Jeanne and Chance, tightly tied up, and marched off into the forest with Jeanne’s two daughters as prisoners. One daughter is 14, the other 16, and they have not been heard from since.

“They kill, they rape, burn houses and take people’s belongings,” Jeanne said. “When they come with their guns, it’s as if they have a project to eliminate the local population.”

A peer-reviewed study found that 5.4 million people had already died in this war as of April 2007, and hundreds of thousands more have died as the situation has deteriorated since then. A catastrophically planned military offensive last year, backed by the governments of Congo and Rwanda as well as the United Nations force here, made some headway against Hutu militias but also led to increased predation on civilians from all sides.

Human Rights Watch estimates that for every Hutu fighter sent back to Rwanda last year, at least seven women were raped and 900 people forced to flee for their lives. “From a human rights perspective, the operation has been catastrophic,” concluded Philip Alston, a senior United Nations investigator.

This is a pointless war — now a dozen years old — driven by warlords, greed for minerals, ethnic tensions and complete impunity. While there is plenty of fault to go around, Rwanda has long played a particularly troubling role in many ways, including support for one of the militias. Rwanda’s government is dazzlingly successful at home, but next door in Congo, it appears complicit in war crimes.

Jeanne and Chance contracted sexually transmitted diseases. Like other survivors in areas that are accessible, they receive help from the International Rescue Committee, but Chance still suffers pain when she urinates.

Counselors say that most raped women are rejected by their husbands, and raped girls like Chance have difficulty marrying. In an area west of Lake Kivu where attacks are continuing, I met Saleh Bulondo, a newly homeless young man who was educated and spoke a little English. I asked him if he would still marry his girlfriend if she were raped.

“Never,” he said. “I will abandon her.”

A girl here normally fetches a bride price (a reverse dowry, paid by the husband’s family) when she marries. A village chief told me that a typical price would be 20 goats — but if the girl has been raped, two goats. At most.

Thus it takes astonishing courage for Jeanne and Chance to tell their stories (including in a video posted with the on-line version of this column). I’ll be reporting more from eastern Congo in the coming days, hoping that the fortitude of survivors like them can inspire world leaders to step forward to stop this slaughter. It’s time to show the same compassion toward Congo that we have toward Haiti.

Welcome to the Watermark Justice Blog.