Watermark Justice

• Goma team heading out from DFW. Isaiah 1:17!
  http://yfrog.com/jwajimj
  RB#

[Posted on behalf of Lisa Lopez]

I recently came across the above title in a song by Jason Gray (I believe the quote is actually from Lord of the Rings). This is my prayer for the women of Congo — that the sadness of rape and its effects will slowly but surely become “untrue” and be replaced by hope and freedom.  I know this is actually possible because my God delights in “making all things new” (Rev. 21:5) and we can be “transformed by the renewing of our minds” (Rom. 12:2).

Along this same theme of transformation, I want these women of Congo to have joy! Robert Hotchkins (as quoted in The Ragamuffin Gospel) says :

“Christians ought to be celebrating constantly. We ought to be preoccupied with parties, banquets, feasts, and merriment… because we have been liberated from the fear of life and the fear of death. We ought to attract people to the church quite literally by the fun there is being a Christian.”

I fervently pray and hope that God will use us to shine JOY and ABUNDANT LIFE in Christ to those who are struggling to hope.  I want these women to truly see how God has so faithfully brought people who were once emotionally and spiritually dead ALIVE through Christ. I want them to grasp how the blood of Jesus covers the ugliest and most inhumane of sins and I want us to celebrate the fact that through Christ, sin and its effects can be overcome!

I know we will “rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15) — I am ready and willing to do both – but I still pray our entire group will plant seeds of joy throughout this trip. How can those of who have experienced healing from sexual abuse not be the most joyful and grateful women on the planet?! May we bring contagious joy to Congo!

In a sense, the fact that we have a sexual abuse recovery ministry (Shelter from the Storm) at Watermark is a victory in itself. I think a trip like this must be Satan’s worst nightmare – God transforming the evil of sexual abuse into an opportunity to “overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). It reminds me of Joseph talking to his brothers in Genesis 50:20 – “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.”

When you pray for us — please pray for CONTAGIOUS JOY that will spread through Congo to the glory of God!

I recently skimmed through Gary Haugen’s ‘Good News About Injustice’ to supplement my prayer and preparation for Friday’s Watermark Justice trip to Goma, DR Congo.  A few years ago, the book played a role in pushing me to take my first justice trip to India and ultimately helped bring me back to Christ.  The great news Haugen reports in ‘Good News’ is that we worship a God of justice, compassion, moral clarity, and rescue.  It really hit home when Haugen and later other Christian lawyers showed me verse after verse regarding the importance of justice to God.

One particular paragraph in ‘Good News’ challenged me to get in the game.  In Chapter One, titled Rage in Rwanda: A Suburban Christian Confronts Genocide, Haugen wrote of his journey to Kibuye, Rwanda, where he was to lead the United Nation’s investigation of the Rwandan genocide.  His orders were to exhume mass graves of, in Haugen’s words, “nameless, faceless, decaying” bodies of men, women and children.  According to Haugen, it was easier simply to think of them as nothing more than a “tragic mass.”  However, despite his best efforts to depersonalize the investigation to get the job done, “a painful glimpse of the truth always came through.” He added this sobering conclusion regarding the bodies found in Kibuye:

“This was not an undifferentiated mass of lifeless clods on the inevitable dust heap of a fallen world.  In truth each body, now dull and limp in the mud, was a unique bearer of the very image of God, a unique creation of the divine Maker, individually knit within a mother’s womb by the Lord of the universe.  For as difficult as it is to imagine, each crumpled mortal frame had indeed come from a mother, one single mother who somewhere in time wept tears of joy and aspiration over her precious child–a child endowed with the mysterious spark of Adam and an immortal soul.  We would never number all of the mother’s children in these mass graves, but their Father in heaven had numbered even the very hairs on their heads.”

The first time I read that paragraph my newborn son was sleeping across the hall.  I was in the midst of learning just how much a father can love a son.  Understanding that God loves each of us so much more than we can comprehend, and that He loves each individual amongst the suffering masses – those purportedly without hope – as much as he loves my little boy began to change my mindset.  These suffering people separately and individually matter to God as much as my child matters to Him.  Cf. Psalm 139; Genesis 1:26-27.

This revelation, however, is only part of the equation.  God often challenges us to imagine ourselves in the shoes of another.  Jesus tells us in Matthew 22: 37-40:

. . .“’[l]ove the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all of your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”  (emphasis added)

In Hebrews 13:3, we are instructed to “[r]emember . . . those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.” We then must proactively love and help the afflicted.  We are to “[s]eek justice, encourage the oppressed . . . [d]efend the cause of the fatherless [and] plead the case of the widow.”  Isaiah 1:17.

Haugen’s reflections regarding the Kibuye massacre have universal application.  Go back and review the quoted paragraph from ‘Good News,’ but interchange the innocent folks of Kibuye with rape victims in the DR Congo or children raised in the relentless cycle of poverty and despair in West Dallas.  The Biblical conclusion remains the same: we are to recognize that God overflows with love for all of us, we are to love our neighbors, and we are to seek God’s justice for His children.

These are some of the many reasons why the Shelter Goma women leave their families, jobs, and the security of North Dallas to travel across the globe to share their stories and love on those suffering pain I cannot imagine.  These are some of the reasons why a busy lawyer like Rick Howard leaves his wife and three boys (and coaching duties for three baseball teams) to talk openly and honestly with Congolese colleagues about accountability, self-leadership, and Christ’s love.

Please pray for the team’s safety, but also pray that God uses us to touch hearts and minds of those we meet so they may find faith in the God of justice, compassion, moral clarity, and rescue.

For more details regarding the March 2010 Goma, Congo trip, please read: http://watermarkblogs.org/justice/2010/03/03/march-2010-goma-congo-trip/

[The following pre-trip email was posted with the permission of Rick Howard]

Hello friends and family,

As many of you know I have been blessed over the past two plus years with the opportunity to travel to Central Africa with teams of lawyers from Watermark Community Church here in Dallas.  The three trips I’ve made have included time in Rwanda, Burundi, and eastern Congo.  Each one has involved me and other lawyers from WatermarkJustice (our Watermark lawyers group) leading conferences for lawyers, judges, prosecutors, pastors, and government officials.  We’ve covered topics ranging from servant leadership to confronting bribery and corruption as Christians lawyers and judges to biblical conflict resolution.  Each trip has been a unique experience and each one has increased my passion for the people of Central Africa more and more.

After returning from my last trip this past October I was asked to lead a very different trip to Goma, Congo in early 2010.  Different because for the first time for me the audience will not be men and women in positions of authority or influence in the government, church, or military and because I will not have the responsibility to teach and lead extensively at the main conference.  Instead, I and one other guy get the privilege of assisting as (6) incredibly gifted women from Watermark lead a conference for victims of sexual abuse (rape) and the counselors who help them through the healing process physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Eastern Congo is the epicenter of a civil war in Central Africa that has claimed over (5) million lives over the past (15) years.  The genesis of the current conflict began with the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. The perpetrators of the massacre of (800,000) Rwandans over a (6) week period in 1994 fled to the mountains of Eastern Congo once the international community responded to the crises.  There in the sanctuary of a jungle the size of Texas those same groups have killed countless innocent local Congolese men, women, and children and caused millions to die from starvation and disease while forcing hundreds of thousands to flee their homes for sanctuary in refugee (IDP) camps. However, in many respects the worst actions taken by these men is the brutal rape of women, young and old, as an act of war, and act of vengeance, or in some instances an act intended to procreate the next generation of “soldiers” for their militias.

It is against this historical backdrop that these women from my church, Watermark Community Church, whose lives have all been touched in some way directly or indirectly  by sexual abuse along with our partner on the ground, ALARM, will be leading a sexual abuse conference focused on healing, recovery, and forgiveness..  They will be using a curriculum developed at WCC and other churches called “Shelter from the Storm.”   These materials which are designed to help take a women through the process of healing from sexual abuse have been modified after much prayer and effort to be appropriate for an audience of victims and counselors in Goma,Congo.

They will spend (3) days leading and teaching a conference for counselors who have for years been serving and caring for rape victims to better show those victims the path to true and complete healing through Jesus Christ.  In attendance will also be victims of rape in Congo.  Women who have been sexually assaulted, typically in the jungles of eastern Congo, and then rescued from the homes or villages by the staff of Heal Africa or other organizations dedicated to this effort.  Approximately (100) women have been invited to this conference hosted by the ladies from Watermark.  My guess is (1000) could have easily been identified and invited, but space and resources are always at a premium in places like Goma.

It is our hope that this “Shelter” trip is another door God is opening for Watermark to minister to a truly forgotten people in Eastern Congo.  Just as we’ve done with the lawyer in Goma we will spend time seeking out other effective and trustworthy partners on the ground to aid in this effort.  We already have a great partner in ALARM and are building relationship with Heal Africa as well. The hope is that this is the first trip of many to help folks on the ground there  better recover from the devastation of rape and abuse in their lives.

As horrific and devastating as earthquakes in Haiti and Chile have been for the people of those countries there is a difference from Congo.  Most of those people can remember a day when there was peace in their land; when the government provided some reasonable security for them, when food was easy to find.  They can also look forward to a day when things will look “normal” again as plane loads of people and assistance arrive each day to help.  On the other side of the world, however, there are no such memories for the generation raised in and around Goma.  They have grown up knowing nothing but war and violence, hunger and disease.  It is our hope that by helping train the leaders of eastern Congo, the women who counsel victims, and the lawyers who will one day take on positions of authority in the principles we find in God’s word that cycle will one day end.

Attached is a prayer calendar for this trip.  I would ask you to print it out so that you might be prompted each day to remember this effort to be the “hands and feet of Christ” to the least of His people.  Please also pray for me and the other lawyer who is joining me on this trip, Russ Brown, as we spend part of the trip discipling a small group of lawyers we’ve developed relationships with since 2007.  Below I’ve also attached a link to a well timed Op/Ed piece done by Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times on Congo and the response to the crises in Africa from a number of different groups.  Specifically, he uses quotes from Richard Stearns’ book The Hole in Our Gospel.  Stearns is the president of World Vision. I recommend you read the article and the book.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28kristof.html

Thanks for all of your prayers and support for me and for Michele over the past two and half years as we have followed this path to Central Africa.  Your prayers for my team and our efforts will be appreciated once again.  One final note, I am being forced to embrace a higher level of technology than I am comfortable with at this time.  Unless I mess it up or the internet crashes in Congo (both are likely propositions btw), you should be able to read updates from our trip by going to http://watermarkblogs.org/justice.

God Bless,

Rick Howard

• Great video from Watermark partner ALARM re work in Africa: http://alarm-inc.org/media/responding_call
  -Russ #