Watermark Justice

• Safe arrival in Brussels. Head to Kigali in an hour.
  RB#
• Team just landed in Kigali. Heading to Goma tomorrow and visiting orphanage. Pray for safe final leg.RB #

• 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 #

• 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.