Watermark Justice

• Please pray for our new lawyers taking the bar exam this week, as well as lawyer teams currently in Uganda and soon to leave to India. #

As you head into the weekend, please take a moment to watch the attached video regarding God’s work in West Dallas through the inner-city justice ministry, Advocates for Community Transformation (ACT).  You’ll learn of another success story for the residents of West Dallas; however, you’ll also hear of how God’s grace transformed an initially adversarial situation into an opportunity for community collaboration between the derelict property owner and the surrounding neighbors.

ACT’s vision is for Dallas citizens to experience the transforming presence of Jesus Christ through collaborative efforts to establish stable, safe environments, free from injustice and oppression.  If you would like get involved, assist with much needed funding, or simply learn more, please contact Watermark Justice or ACT (www.actdallas.org).

I encourage you to read and consider the latest work from IJM’s Gary Haugen.

“And Justice For All: Enforcing Human Rights for the World’s Poor”

You can link to the article here

http://www.ijm.org/foreignaffairs-article-01

I hope everyone is having a great summer

Van

Tags: IJM

As a reminder, we will host our next Watermark Justice/Dallas justice group lunch meeting on Thursday, May 27.

We will be joined by two special guests — our close partner and friend, Dr Celestin Musekura from ALARM — the African Leadership and Reconciliation Mission — and Dr. David Kasali from The Congo Initiative in Beni, Congo.  You have heard before from Celestin about our partnership with the lawyers and judges in the Congo and Burundi. 

This Thursday, you will hear from Dr Kasali about the university he chairs in Beni, Congo and the partnerships that university has established with lawyers in the US.  He will be joined by Arizona Court of Appeals Judge John Gemmill (I’m told we are only allowed to call him John) and Dallas lawyer Ben Chappell.  Ben and John are headed to Beni in July to teach at the University there.

Here are the details you need to know:

START TIME — 11:40am Sharp

Lunch from Potbelly’s.  You need to bring $6.00 each.  Cold hard cash only please. 

END TIME — 1:15pm at the latest

MEETING ROOM — the Assembly Room on the 3rd Floor of the Watermark 8 story tower.  Just walk into the tower and take the elevator to the 3rd floor.

PARKING: THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT — park ONLY in the West Lot facing LBJ Freeway.  That’s the one close to the soccer fields

Directions: Watermark is at 7540 LBJ Freeway.  Exit Hillcrest and you can’t miss Watermark on your right heading eastbound. 

Look forward to seeing everyone Thursday!

Please save the date and do all within your power to make the next meeting of the Dallas justice group. This has all of the makings of an important meeting. I’d encourage you to move other commitments to be with us.

Anyone and everyone can join us.  Feel free to bring a friend.

We will be joined by David Kasali of Beni, Congo and two of his US friends, one of whom is a justice on the Arizona Court of Appeals. Kasali leads the Congo Initiative.   http://www.congoinitiative.org/view.cfm?page_id=48

I’m hopeful that our great friend, Celestin Musekura, will also be in attendance. You know of Celestin’s faithfulness at ALARM but here is a link to his latest website.    http://alarm-inc.org/   We have some exciting trips and training opportunities planned with Celestin and ALARM.

Together, they will share news from Beni, Congo and Dr. Kasali’s Christian University there. We will hear about opportunities to partner with all of them towards justice in the Congo.

May 27, 2010
1140am–1:15pm
Watermark’s offices — specific room assignment to follow

Lunch with be provided for a nominal cost

Please RSVP to me (no rsvp, no lunch)

Finally, if you have a desire to travel with us to Africa in the coming 24 months, plan on staying afterwards for a short meeting to discuss our next travel plans and the steps you can be taking in the next 1 to 24 months to prepare yourself to go and serve there.

Tags: Africa, Congo, Connect

During last month’s trip to Goma, Congo, our Watermark team partnered with the African Leadership and Reconciliation Ministries (ALARM) to conduct conferences with counselors and victims of sexual abuse (led by brave women from Watermark’s Shelter from the Storm ministry) and Congolese lawyers (led by lawyers from Watermark Justice).  Learn more about the trip.

The excerpts below were taken from an email from the Congo country director for ALARM, which later was shared with Watermark’s Shelter leadership.

We are proud of the Watermark team. Their . . . conference for counselors of victims of rape and women living with HIV/AIDS was a success. The conference that started with sobbing, crying and many tears, but it ended with singing, dancing and ululations.

. . .The telling of teachers own past ordeals helped the participants to understand that they were not the only victims in the world. [The] teachers’ victory over the[ir] problems gave hope to them that they too could overcome theirs.  . . . Their openness talking about the past and victory helped some women to disclose for the first time that they too had been victims of sexual abuse but kept it [secret] for many years. The quick response to emotional breakdown by either hug or pat on the back was very comforting.

The participants at the conference suggested that the teachers should extend their reach to other areas beyond Goma. They should also consider preparing lessons on other types of trauma, such as those caused by loss of relatives during the wars, or . . . land grabbing.  . . .The sufferers are the persons who do not know their parents. They would want to know the father, for example, but nobody tells them. They were [born] from either rape or incest and nobody wanted to tell them the embarrassing stories. Some married women who are living with . . . ruthless spouses do not share their story and cannot get any help. . . .

These encouraging words also serve as a renewed call to action and remind us that we must maintain focus on the injustice and suffering of the least of these (Matthew 25: 31-46).  Let us, Christian lawyers, continue building Christ-focused leadership by  sharing the good news and challenging Congolese pastors, lawyers, and judges to speak out against injustice, immorality, and untruth.  Pray that the Lord gives our Congolese friends the strength to speak out in the face of danger.  (See also Why go to Goma?) Pray that the Lord will reveal more ways to use our lawyers, ministries like Shelter from the Storm, and ALARM to “bring good news to the poor” and “bind up the brokenhearted” in the Congo.

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion—to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.” Isaiah 61: 1-3 (ESV)

ALARM operates in eight countries in east and central Africa, with offices in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia.  Visit ALARM’s website to learn more: www.alarm-inc.org.

As many of you know, I had a great opportunity to speak at Pepperdine Law School’s conference on “The Role of the Church in Doing Justice” back on February 19, 2010.  Notable speakers included Kay Warren (a great talk on doing justice in Rwanda), Sean Litton of IJM, and Rich Stearns of World Vison — and many, many other great speakers.  Here’s a link to the schedule http://law.pepperdine.edu/nootbaar/news-events/events/doing-justice/schedule.htm

The best news is that Pepperdine has now posted all of the video from the conference on itunes.

As I said at our recent justice breakfast, I strongly recommend that if you are interested in justice, you carve off some of your study time to hear from these speakers by watching the videos.

Here’s the link and details on finding the videos:

We are happy to announce that video from the conference is now posted on itunes U, the itunes program for universities. The video is available to the public, so no authentication is required. The only thing required is the itunes player. More information about itunes, and itunesU can be found at http://itunesu.pepperdine.edu

If you already have itunes installed this link will take you directly to the conference videos:

http://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/pepperdine.edu.3569635999.03569636001

I hope everyone has a blessed Easter

Van

Tags: Pepperdine

Reminder

Dear Dallas Justice Group – This is just a quick reminder email about our next meeting, which will be this Wednesday morning March 23 starting at 630am and ending at 8am at Highlan Park Presbyterian Church, which is located on University near Preston. A map of our church campus is attached again. Please park in the lot along the west side of our building and enter the wood doors. You will see signs directing you to the stairs right by the doors. We are meeting in Room H017 in the basement. The agenda is set forth below. We look forward to seeing you Wednesday morning.

At this meeting, we will hear a report on Advocates for Community Transformation, the Christian legal ministry in West Dallas that presents opportunities for all of you to put your legal skills to work for justice right here at home. Several lawyers in our group are handling cases for ACT, and we want you to hear about the progress being made in West Dallas neighborhoods that really need our help. We will also hear a report on the recent work of the Watermark Justice team in Africa.

[The following post-trip email is posted on behalf of Rick Howard]

Well,  I’ve made it back from another trip to Congo.  This makes three in a row without significant illness or weight loss.  I am thankful for the former, but probably could use some of the latter.  Thanks to all of you who prayed for and encouraged the team over the past couple of weeks.  I know those prayers sustained us all, but especially the ladies on the trip as they taught 99 Congolese women (out of 100 invited..wow!!) how God and His word can help them heal from the pain and suffering caused by rape both in the recent past and many years ago.

On this trip, the heavy lifting and teaching of the Shelter from the Storm materials was performed the 6 amazing ladies from Watermark Church who spent the past year readying the materials for an African audience, the past three months praying and planning it, and then three days executing the plan as well as can be done in Africa.  It was exciting to see Congolese women break down in tears and for the first time tell the stories of sexual violence against them (some more than 15 years ago) on Monday and Tuesday.  Even more moving was on Wednesday to see many of those same women express forgiveness for the men who raped them in response to teaching from God’s word about forgiveness and an understanding of forgiveness in the process of healing their own hearts.

This transformation of the hearts in Goma happened because 4 of the women on this trip were willing to tell their own stories of past abuse at the outset of the conference.  Immediately barriers were broken down among the women from Congo as they realized they were not “terminally unique” and that other women, even in America, suffered as victims of sexual violence just as they have without any reason.  But, they also saw how Christ suffered horribly through no fault of His own, just like them, and because of the pain He endured, greater good was done.  For many of them an understanding of how the acts against them might be something God could redeem for His greater use flew in the face a lifetime of shame, guilt, and internal bondage.

I was blessed to have Russ Brown join me to carry bags for the gals on the team and spend some time with a group of Christian lawyers in Goma diving deep into scripture for the first time in many of their lives.  We examined parables and passages and had some “lively” discussions on the meaning and application of scripture.  In the end they were left with a practical model for examining, interpreting, and applying scripture.  It was another step in the process of equipping them to use scripture as the basis for how they confront the temptations of life in central Africa.  We are hopeful that the next step before we return in the fall is a weekly bible study for the lawyers led by a pastor in Goma who helped establish our relationship with the lawyers there.

We were also blessed to spend an extended time at the girls orphanage in Goma we visited last fall that specializes in taking in child sexual violence victims.  We gave the girls gifts of blankets and teddy bears (and even a kangaroo from one of the Howard boys) as small tokens to encourage and comfort them a little.  The director of the orphanage told us they have now 143 girls of which 67 have been raped and rescued.  They are between the ages of 5 and 19, so you can imagine the emotional state many are in.  But we found that many are joyful because they are safer in the city than out in the bush (areas outside the city of Goma) where most were raped by soldiers or militiamen while retrieving water or firewood for their family.  This orphanage has a network of churches in the bush that alerts them to girls who have been shunned from their village and they go and rescue groups of girls each month.

Unfortunately there is little money for clothes, shoes, beds, and food for that many little girls.  Most have one outfit and no shoes and the food they receive comes from NGO’s or churches in the area.  We are hopeful that we can develop a plan to send shoes and clothes from Dallas to this orphanage in Goma.  As we put plan together I will email out information for anyone interested in helping.

Finally, we once again spent time at Heal Africa hospital.  A great facility that ministers to the needs of children who are sick or have been injured in the ongoing war as well as adult victims of rape rescued from the bush.  The website is www.healafrica.org if you are interested in what they do.  Part of our time there was spent with founder Jo Lusi talking about the serious need for western doctors to come and perform medical mission trips including doing medical procedures and training for African doctors.  The needs in Goma are every bit as serious as those in places like Haiti.  Unfortunately, long before there was an earthquake in Haiti or a tsunami in Indonesia there was war, disease, and poverty in central Africa.  Lots of help is needed, it is just a little more inconvenient to get there.

Thank you to all who prayed for us as we prepared the trip and carried out the mission.  If you are interested in hearing more about what we did or about Watermark’s overall efforts in Africa, please email me or check out the website www.watermark.org or the blogs at http://watermarkblogs.org/Africa or http://watermarkblogs.org/Justice.