Over The Mountain of Justice

Oren and David's new bunkbed that was built this week.

It’s definitely dry season now in Bujumbura – the Congo mountains have faded, the air is already thick with dust, the leaves of the shrubs in our garden are beginning to wilt and droop. But tonight we are enjoying a dramatic surprise thunder storm – always impressive as the thunder echoes against the mountains above us. And very welcome, since it’s been a hot day.

I’m writing this week’s blog for Paul because he’s just about out of steam and we want to post something. It has been a blessedly normal week for us, with some fun moments in between. We had the real pleasure of sharing an evening with the parents of our South African friend Jeanette, along with her husband and daughter, still in the middle of the crusade they helped to organize. It’s always very special to meet family of our friends, because it helps us to understand more about where they come from and their roots. Otherwise, we tend to feel or see ourselves and other expats as somehow independent beings, cut off from context.

On Thursday, our friend Naja invited us for lunch in between the school sessions. Our kids love playing with their kids and we had a very relaxing time together – somehow it was so much more pleasant than going home for lunch. There was some uncertainty about their ability to remain in Burundi, but by a miracle last week, they received permission, and plan to stay for another year or two. So we are thankful and enjoyed finally being about to talk about their concrete plans for the future. Later that evening, Oren insisted on starting to decorate for his 7^th birthday party – a week early. More on that next time…

On Friday, Oren had a further French victory: he brought another French book to class and read for his classmates for show and tell. We’re really proud of him for working hard on his reading. He’s even said that he’d like to read his French books every night, “just for fun!” Also, Oren is collecting marbles. Apparently, marbles duels are all the rage at Ecole Belge again. If you hit your opponents’ marble, you get to keep it. Oren thinks this is unfair and doesn’t want to play because he doesn’t want to lose marbles. But still, by the end of the week he had 17 marbles. He got some by sharing his snack, and others because various kids were very nice to him!

And we had an enjoyable evening with some members of our team on Friday: Yolanda came down from up-country and so Janelle and Jennifer also joined us for ice cream and dinner (in that order!). We had really interesting conversation, trying to understand together more of what is happening with the regional conflict in Eastern Congo. We also discussed the government ban on fishing right now. Apparently a few weeks ago, some mysterious person dumped a lot of chemicals in a river and this waste killed thousands of fish. It’s very sad to hear this. Obviously, this was illegal, but there is no one prosecuting or upholding the law in this matter, particularly if it may have been done by a profitable mining industry. Those of you living in countries with environmental regulation, give thanks! Meanwhile, here in Burundi, we’re cutting down on our fish consumption…

Oh, the other excitement of Friday was that the carpenter we hired came back with all the pieces of a bunk bed. He had really done a great job of following our sketch, and added a tidy little single bed above the top half of the kids’ queen sized bed. Oren was THRILLED. And then, when his Kenyan friend Graham came over, the two of them played like someone had built a jungle gym in his room. Later, Paul constructed a great frame for a new mosquito net over both beds, cutting down on some of the jumping. The carpenter also worked on a multitude of other house repairs and will come back this week with a repaired table and guest bed. It’s definitely been the season of getting things back in order.

In the evenings, Paul has been spending time thinking and writing and preparing for the sermon that he delivered on Sunday. It was a powerful message and I’m not just writing that because I’m his wife.

Our church has been working through a series of sermons on reconciliation, trying to develop a Christian worldview in advance of what will happen in the political realm with the imminent mounting of a National Truth and Reconciliation commission in Burundi. In fact, the government has asked the church to take on an important role of assisting with the process of reconciliation, but all are stumped by the problem of how to get there.

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God      ~2 Corinthians 5:17-21 (NIV)

Paul started by affirming that we as Christians are called to the ministry of reconciliation – it’s another, better way to talk about the ministry of making disciples in the world. But we need to be honest, and recognize that there is a risk when we step between enemies. We need to look hatred in the face and understand how deep and bitter it can be. And so Paul had us also read Psalm 137, all the way to the very end (a rare experience in any church) where it describes the exiled, enslaved poet from Jerusalem longing for revenge and justice for what he has suffered: Blessed is he who dashes the heads of infants against the stones!

It is horrifying rage – we don’t like to imagine that many of us “civilized” people feel this way. And yet that is what the Hutu genocidaires must have felt as they dashed the heads of infants against the wall of the Nyamata Church in Rwanda. It’s what many New Yorkers including Paul felt should happen in Afghanistan after the attacks of Sept 11. This kind of hatred and rage is real and needs to be faced. But more than that, there is one who sees all the crimes committed in this world, and who does not let them pass unpunished, and that is the Lord God. He sees injustice and he will one day right all wrongs.

Paul made the point that when we want to journey from the realm of Truth to the realm of Reconciliation, we must climb over a high mountain. The mountain is called Justice. And we as Christians name that mountain Calvary. There will be a real celestial Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and every one who has ever lived on earth – from Idi Amin to Mother Theresa, to every widow and orphan on the streets of Calcutta or Bujumbura – will stand before the Judge. The light of his perfect truth will reveal everything hidden, and each one of us will agree that we have no excuses and deserve full punishment. And there will be no free forgiveness for anyone, not even Christians. In God’s economy, sin is a very serious matter and no murder, rape, wife beating, child molestation, will be overlooked.  Every crime against humanity (great and small) must be punished and the only escape is atonement  (Someone innocent stands in to take the punishment of someone guilty). The grace we receive when we come with full confession and acceptance of guilt is that Christ agrees to be punished fully for what we have done. Justice is served. And only then can we be fully reconciled to God, adopted children in his family. Grace costs a tremendous amount. And it requires full confession and surrender before the judge. What we risk currently in Burundi according to Paul is a Truth and Rationalization Commission – everyone making excuses for his or her crimes, based on the wounds inflicted in the past. But rationalization will only lead us further to division. We cannot get around the mountain of Justice; we must go over it in order to get to the other side.

The theology of Paul’s sermon was very good, but what was even more powerful was his personal story about how he experienced grace first hand. It’s a good story, but much better told in person than on the Internet. One of the major threads was that the vulnerability of some Christian men in New York led Paul to recognize and confess deep sin – and he was reconciled to God by divine grace. Only then did he have the courage to face the consequences of his sin – and was again met with human grace and acceptance. This experience of undeserved, costly grace fueled Paul’s desire to share the incredible love of God with men in prison back in New York. In fact, the Tres Dias movement and the Kairos Prison Ministry really changed the way that Paul thinks about preaching: personal testimony is far more powerful than intellectual Biblical argument. So this wasn’t just sermon, it was a rollo! A shout out to the Kairos brothers for the gift of this experience.

Hearing Paul’s story tremendously moved the congregation. One woman wrote him today to say that “In 15 years in Burundi it is the first time I have heard someone be so honest and make themselves so vulnerable from the pulpit.  I love that God allows us to go through such difficult things to give others hope.”  Later in our cell group that evening, we concluded that the “ministry of reconciliation” really happens when we are willing to share our own stories of grace and reconciliation with God. And this starts by being vulnerable about our own weaknesses and failures – the things for which we have been forgiven. A story shared in a private moment (not just in a sermon) can have a powerful impact in preparing the hearts of others to receive grace and forgive their enemies or ask for forgiveness.

 

After church, we took a few hours to join a couple of German friends at a new hotel. It was a lovely little spot, with the ambiance of Zanzibar (minus the ocean!) and our kids enjoyed playing in the pool and hiding in the garden. Oren made quite a long photo essay of the place with many shots of foliage and flowers.  The photos on this blog are just a few of his portraits of our family. 

On Bedbugs and Refugees

Entrance to Nkamira refugee camp in Northern Rwanda.

Mai-Mai, M23, CNDP, FRDC, FDLR, -- I am getting my primer in Congolese Rebel groups and trying to grasp the subtleties of the latest refugee crisis following a new round of political instability in Eastern Congo.  I can say, that while the oft repeated meme “it’s complicated” still applies, I do feel like I have a better understanding of why there has been another spate of violent uprising there.  What surprised me though was how much it has the characteristics of the ethnic conflict (tutsi—hutu) that has plagued other countries in the Great Lakes region.  The fraudulent election of the current Congolese President and the weakening of his political power has contributed as well to the situation.  American and Rwandese interests remain ambiguous but highly suspect.

The reason for my recent interest in the region has been the spilling over this crisis across the border into Rwanda, where the transitional camp at Nkamira (near Goma) has filled up well beyond its capacity of about 3500 to over 12,000 with about 100-150 arriving per day.  Our partners sounded the alarm two weeks ago while we were in Kigali and I agreed to come back a week later to assess the situation and see if there was an appropriate MCC intervention.

My depature to Rwanda this past Monday is a partial excuse for my inability to post a blog last week, but there were other reasons for my failure, some lame, others understandable.  Among the lame ones was the fact that I had to take a very lousy computer with me that mistypes because of a jumping cursor to the point of complete frustration.  The other reason though, is that frankly, while we were greatly blessed to have a whole week of a regular routine, it was actually quite dull in terms of news except for a few bad things that I was not really in the mood to report.

Among the worst of them was the unpleasant discovery of a massive bedbug infestation in the kids' bed.  We had not noticed because they don’t seem to be allergic to the bites so it was not obvious until we turned on the lights in the middle of the night and found them scurrying under cover.  We took the whole bed apart and replaced it with a new one, including the mattress.  We also sprayed the room with a highly effective pesticide whose only drawback is that it is illegal in the US, so probably not good for humans.

After that we slept uneasily for several more nights and finally found to our horror that our worst fears were realized when Rebecca pulled off a pillow cover on our bed only to discover that they had gotten into our room as well.  We did another fumigation after taking apart this bed as well.  We hope we are rid of them.  Here it is a bit easier because of powerful pesticides and the fact we have no carpeting in rooms so there is not a lot of place for them to go outside the bed.

The other disappointment from the week before was watching Oren fail to advance a rank in Karate after taking a test.  In true Burundian fashion their scores were announced aloud and they were lined up according to grade.  He was actually the only one who did not succeed that day.  I felt very bad for him because it seemed that it was actually the language barrier that was keeping him from succeeding.  He did not seem too upset, probably because he did not completely grasp all that was going on.

So with two bits of bad news and no good computer, I just did not have the heart to write down the events of the past week.  The small consolation was that on Sunday night, before my departure, we celebrated Father’s Day.  That is a week early for the US, but that is when they celebrate it in Belgium.  The kids had both made impressive gifts for me at school.  I really enjoyed receiving them, especially right before I would be missing the kids for a week.

Fortunately this week was better and also a bit more interesting.  As I was saying above, I did go up to Rwanda in the car on Monday morning with Felix.  We left right after a morning swim and a short meeting with an interesting person looking to do some projects in Burundi named Niles Sharif.  He wanted to find out about work here and Rebecca and I did our best to give him a bit of primer about the rewards and challenges of working with local partners here.

Felix and I got to Kigali about 4pm, did some banking, then met Annie and Bethany (our SALTers) for dinner.  It was good to catch up with them and when I told them about my mission they asked to come along.  I was glad to have them go.

Asessement team with local pastors

On Tuesday morning, we picked up two of our local partners who work in the Friends Church (our implementing partner) and we headed up the 3 hour road to Nkamira.  We arrived at the camp about midday, but since I did not have authorization, we did not enter.  It was easy to look in though and I had some idea of the conditions the refugees were living in.

We had a meeting outside the camp in one of the libraries MCC supported that was only a few blocks from the camp.  There we met some local pastors who have been intervening with humanitarian aid and gave us some idea of what material aid was needed.

I had decided that MCC would not be intervening with food AID as the UNHCR is providing food in the camp and that would exceed our capacity.

We also met one of the staff of CARE, and NGO that works in the camp as well.  From our conversations with these groups, we got a picture of some of the basic needs in the camp.  They include quite a range of things including, Mattresses, blankets, kids clothes, cooking pots, kotex,  and soap. 

Felix, Annie, Antoine listening to refugee stories.

What surprised me, though is that both of these groups said that one of the greatest needs was not material at all, but conflict mediation trainings and trauma healing (counseling) because people were very traumatized, but also because there is a great deal of interpersonal conflict in the overcrowded camp. 

Since this is a specialty of MCC and our partner the Friends Church, it was decided that this would be one of the best ways for the church to involve itself in the work in the camp.  They would offer services, through UNHCR of conflict mediation training and trauma healing, with a secondary intervention of material aid based on needs assessed by those involved in the training.

We stayed the night up at a guest house near the camp in Gisenyi, then met the next morning with a group of refugees, representing different churches in the camp.  This was one of the most intriguing interviews we did, as it was good to hear their needs first hand, but also get some idea of what their experiences were in Eastern Congo and what the lives were that they left. 

The group was diverse, about 10, some were farmers, small merchants, a teacher, some pastors.  Men and women were represented.  I asked how many of them had had to flee before from their home and most indicated yes.  For some they were actually fleeing from another temporary home to which they had moved in 2000, and had not been back to their real home since the mid 90s.  It was sad to hear their stories, but they seemed fairly resilient.  I also found that most were Congolese Tutsis and when I asked them who they were fleeing they said the Congolese Army.

I was a bit surprised about this because the rebel group that has been causing the disturbance in the region are the FDLR (perpetrators  of the Rwanda Genocide) and the CNDP, a militia that was part of the army but recently mutined.  The FDLR is a hutu group and the CNDP is a tutsi group.   I think that probably the army has been somewhat indiscriminate about what tutsis it is chasing in its pursuit of the CNDP.  I hope that isn’t too much detail. 

I was very grateful to have talked to the refugees and to get a better understanding of their needs from their own mouths.  They strongly agreed with the need for conflict mediation trainings and counseling. 

We left the north about midday and drove back to Kigali.  I spent the afternoon writing a report on the situation for MCC while Felix visited some friends.  By Thursday morning we were ready to head out and after a brief meeting with the Legal Representative of the church explaining our intentions, we headed to Burundi.

It as an exhausting 3 days and I wished I was heading back home, but that was not to be.  We were in fact going to the Hope School for the Batwa where and evaluation for the end of a 3 year planning cycle was coming to an end.  I wanted to meet the evaluator and get some feedback from him, as well as provide him with some information while he was proceeding.

We actually got there just as they were finishing the work in the field and we followed them back to the town of Gitega where the office of our partner is.  I did have a long exchange with the evaluator, who is also a state inspector for primary and secondary schools and was able to give me a lot of comparative information about the Hope School in comparison to other schools in the region.

Felix and I stayed the night in Gitega and finally headed back down to Bujumbura on Friday morning.  We did get back before noon so I was able to pick the kids up from school. 

It was great to see them and Rebecca.  What made it even better though was that as I went to get Oren his teacher came out beaming and told me how Oren had read a book out loud to the class and he had done it so well that she asked him to do it for two other grades in the primary and nursery schools.  Oren was very proud as well.  Apparently he and Rebecca had been working on it together during the week. 

I was thrilled to see such an improvement, especially after the language setback in karate.  I also took him to karate and had a talk with his teacher about Oren’s failure.  He assured me that this was not a serious setback and Oren does not seem in any mood to quit and has actually made more of an effort to learn the KATAs on his own (movement sequences).   I do think failure is often a better teacher than success.

So the ended very well.  On Saturday we went to the Musee Vivant (the little Burundian zoo) and enjoyed seeing the familiar animals.  It remains as interactive and dangerous as always.  (as far as animal interactions.)  We did manage to keep the kids from jumping into the cage with a gaboon viper.  The leopard did take a few swipes at David through the bars of its cage though. 

On Saturday evening we went to a great party at Naja and Thomas’ house.  There were a lot of expat friends there from school and other places.  We celebrated the fact that he had finally succeeded in getting his work visa renewed (after a 4 month delay) and great concern that it would not be approved at all.  It was truly an answer to prayer and means that Oren will have his friends Aviajah and Elias around for a couple more years with him.  There was a huge group of kids at the party and they had a ton of fun playing with our parachute.  I think Oren felt very much in his element because there were both French speakers and English speakers, but he was on of the very few that could communicate in both languages.

We had a nice Sunday with church and small group.  We ended our small group session with a fellowship meal several of us will be leaving for the summer in the next week. 

Despite the very exhausting schedule and the challenge for Rebecca and I of being apart, it was a week in which we really felt blessed and experienced many answered prayers.  We are trying not to count the weeks to our homeleave, but there are only 2 weeks of school left.  )We leave about 2 weeks after that.) We are not exactly sliding into it though.  We have a lot of work and traveling to do with a visit from both our regional director and then the head of MCC US coming to see us in the month ahead.   Keep us in prayer as we prepare to host them.

Holy 'Open-Eyed' Communion

David, the naturalist, showing off his latest lepidopteric treasure at our church community fete.


The more bilingual we have become from living in a Francophone country, the more I become aware of subtle language differences, especially certain expressions in one language that are not easily duplicatable in another.  A good example in English is the word 'to get'.  It is unbelievably handy meaning any number of things from receiving, to catching, to obtaining, to understanding, to grasping, to taking, to arriving.  When I am trying to translate a sentence with 'get' in it into French I have to choose from about 7 different words to get the correct meaning for the context.

But French has similar words that don't quite have an English equivalent and need several different words to catch the meaning.  One that I hear often in Burundi is 'se debrouiller'.  Probably the best single definition would be to 'untangle oneself'.  It's opposite would be 'se brouiller' which might be translated 'to jam oneself up'.  But the former is used far more frequently here.  Often I hear in conversation people talking about the need to 'se debrouiller' or how they 'debrouilled' themselves out of something.    When I was talking to Felix about it he said it was often used to describe how one got out of a difficult situation that someone else got them into.

I don't know why it is such a common expression here, in my culture I don't hear alot of people using the expression 'disentangling myself', very often.  Maybe having others 'jam you up' is a more common experience here in this culture.  Perhaps because it is a far less 'individualistic' culture here and 'jamming other up' socially may be a fairly common practice as part of enforcing social norms and expectations.   Anyway, it is interesting to notice how the vocabulary itself can give one a sense about culture when you start to notice.

This was one of the topics of conversation on our road-trip to Rwanda this week.  We left on Thursday right after the morning school session (noon).  Rebecca and I, the kids and Felix went together to do a ton of meetings and problem solving in 2 short days.  We arrived on Thursday evening and picked up our SALTers Bethany and Annie on the way into town and went out to eat with them.  We also stopped by a bank to check our balance only to find that, as we feared, there was some problem with the transfers coming from the US and we were broke.

Much of the following morning was figuring out how to 'se debrouiller' ourselves out of this crisis as it meant that partners could not receive their grants and we would have a cash flow problem ourselves.  By Friday afternoon we had a better idea of what the problem was and how long it would take before money arrived, and we had several meetings with partners to assure them the delay in funding was temporary.

In the late afternoon we had an advisors meeting with several new members on our advisory council.  We felt good about the discussion, and were blessed to have Bethany come and help with childcare while we met with the advisors together.  The only small drawback was that in typical African fashion, our 4:30 pm meeting began about 6 pm due to the late arrival of some members.  Nonetheless, it was far from a waste of time and we enjoyed a good supper afterwards prepared at our guesthouse with the committee.  By the time dinner was over we were pretty exhausted by the time we went to bed having spent about 12 straight hours at work.

Rebecca filling out exit forms prior to our departure
from Kigali

Saturday morning was the planned time of our departure but did a squeeze in a couple of social calls before we left.  We met some missionaries from the Friends church, Dave and Debbie Thomas, who have been working here for nearly 15 years and had a very interesting exchange with them about their work, and reorientation toward a more a holistic Gospel which touches every part of life, material, spiritual, ecological, economic, relational.  It is very much in line with the transformational development work we are trying to do at MCC.

We left them about 9 and went to the bagel shop on the Friends Church compound to meet a friend of Rebecca's from Seminary (Christine) who she randomly met while shopping on Thursday.  She has been working in Rwanda the past 2 years.  They had a nice visit and made plans to meet again.

We left by 10 am to try to get back in Bujumbura by 3:00 to make a church social that was happening that day as a kind of farewell to some of the ex. pats. that are leaving this year.  On the way back there was time to reflect on our time in Rwanda and the issues we are facing there.

One thing that is weighing heavily on us is the intensification of the conflict and combat in Eastern Congo.  In the past 2 years, we have been feeling some optimism that the region has become more stable, but with the desertion of some of the Congolese army to join other rebels, the situation has exploded again and 10s of thousands of refugees are pouring into Rwanda.

Our partners who work in the North near the border (near Goma) have reported that churches in that area are overwhelmed and are asking for emergency material aid.  They wanted to know if MCC could get involved.  This is a hard question for us as this kind of disaster management is in our mandate, but we are not necessarily well equiped to do it.

It is likely that I will go back up to Rwanda later this week or early next week to visit the refugee camps with partners and the some local churches near Gasenyi (northern Rwanda) to see if there is an appropriate intervention for us.  It will be a lot of extra work and will take some thoughtful planning to see what we can do that is appropriate for our capacity.

We did get back to Bujumbura about 3pm.  Just on time for the church event, and instead of going home, we went directly to it.  It was actually alot of fun for adults and kids, complete with requisite bouncy castle.  It was also a good opportunity to visit, share a great meal together, and build cohesion in our community.  There were also many games from soccer and kickball to frisbee.  We did say good bye to several friends including 'Melinda' Rebecca's English Sunday School counterpart.  We are counting on God to provide a replacement for her next year.

Before talking about Sunday, I should back up just a bit to the only other event of note this week on Wednesday.  I taught my last children's ballet class for the year in the afternoon and did a showing for the parents.  The little girls were really into it and all had their best tutus on.  They demonstrated some exercises at the barre as well as several dances that showed the vocabulary they are learning.   I think the parents enjoyed it and I am amazed to realize that this is the end of the third year that I have been teaching these kids.  Some of them have taken from me for all  3 years.

I have been and will continue to teach the adults in the evening.  I have been a bit unorthodox by ending the class with a modern combination that we have been building on weekly.  It is actually pretty cool and when it is done I will post a video.  One intersting surprise was a young Burundian hip-hop dancer named 'Elvis' who showed up to take the class and seemed to like it.  We will see if he continues to stick with it in the months ahead.


So back to Sunday.  There was nothing remarkable about the routine except that we did stop by and see our South African friends Tim and Jeanette in the morning before church to pick up their car and wish them well on a 3 week evangelical Crusade they will be leading.  It is a huge undertaking and they hope to be bringing a theme of Reconcilliation to many thousands of people this month.

We proceeded to church where Emmanuel Ndikumana, the leader of the Theological School where our church is located was preaching.  He is a very powerful speaker and his sermon in preparation for communion was one of the best I have heard here.  He was using the text of I Corinthians 1:10-23.  And his discussion was about unity.

He made several very good points beginning by taking Burundian Christians and pastors to task over the kind of teacher or denominational jealousy Paul describes in the passage.  In fact, there is a lot of division in the churches over loyalty to one denomination over another and this is something that has been encouraged by pastors in the past.

From this he said that in fact we are in agreement all about 2 major things: we are saved by Christ alone, by faith alone.  The first part, he said certainly may be hard for many to accept, but the second point, by faith alone, he brought forth as a major challenge to Christians living in this context.

"How many here in the congregation are orphans as a result of the war?" He asked.  Many raised their hand in the congregation including Emanuel himself.  He pointed out that 'by faith alone' means that we are neither saved by our good works, nor condemned further by our bad works.  In effect the mass murderer and the Nobel peace prize winner stand equally condemned before the cross.  AND have equal access to grace.

I think many Christians in the west can accept this in principle but Emmanuel went on to challenge the congregation.  "Are you ready to accept the murderer of your family, into your Christian family when he is saved by faith alone?"  I realize how easy it is for me to accept this idea because I honestly don't live among my mortal enemies.

Emmanuel went on to admit.  "Sometimes when I go to the communion table I want to go with my eyes shut, or just squinting enough so I only see Christ.  Because when I look around and see who else is taking, I see, for example, this man C_______, who is very blessed, and wealthy, and I know who he is when I look at him, and I wonder how he got that wealth.  Then I think of many other things, and I don't want to go the table."  (Emmanuel was making an obvious reference to the fact that C______ was in the other ethnic group which had oppressed his ethnic group for many years and killed his father during the war.---I am deliberately not being more specific.)

But he went on to say:  "But in truth I do really want to be able go up with my eyes open and today I am doing that, can you go up with your eyes open as well?"  He invited those who did not feel they could to stand up so they could pray together.

For me, that day, I had a whole new understanding of communion.  I realize that I have generally seen it as a private moment with me and Jesus, being strengthened, renewed by the reminder that he is inside of me and that I belong to him.  To see communion as an event of unity and brotherhood with everyone else who is taking it is a different perspective and a more challenging one.  Even in churches in the US I know that there can be enmity and hostility between individual Christians in the same congregation.  To see this ritual as a reminder that we are one family and should be in unity and love with each other as one body of Christ is a very humbling experience.  And when one imagines that here where Christians of different ethnic groups killed each other, this becomes an almost impossible, but essential truth.

I was grateful for the challenge Emmanuel put before us and I have had a real sense of closeness with this congregation as we continue to grow in love for each other.

After church we took the kids to the pool for a swim and got home in plenty of time for our small group.  There we continued to reflect on the challenge Emmanuel put before us.  More opportunity for cross cultural reflection on this.

The kids pretty much fell asleep on their own Sunday night, tired from the days of travel before and the afternoon at the pool.  Looking forward to at least one full week in town.

Social Events and a Social Gospel

Oren enjoying a Highlights Magazine that we get in the mail monthly from the US.  

I am going to blame Benadryl for this late posting.  I had intended to put it up last night but had an allergy attack about 4 pm and took a Benadryl to stop sneezing.  Needless to say, I was very groggy by about 8 and fell asleep while I was putting David to bed.

So here it is Tuesday and I have much to recount from the past week.  As you might have guessed from the title, it was a fairly social week.  This is the second straight week we have been in town and we did a lot of catching up with friends.  Especially as the school year winds down this is a time of transition and many families are not planning to be here next year. 

The first part of the week started slowly enough with a fairly regular routine, but between Thursday and today (Tuesday) we have been guests or hosted a meal every single day.

On Thursday we invited the Millers, a new family who has just arrived to Burundi in the last month.  They had come to our folk dance evening and we really enjoyed getting to know them and have a sense that they will be here for quite a while.  Joel and Janette are both physicians teaching at Hope Africa University and their kids, Hannah, Sarah, Samuel, and Josiah will be at the Ecole Belge this fall.  Samuel in Oren’s class. 

It was good to get to know them a bit better and to talk about the logisitics of finding a house, staff, etc. with them and find out a bit more about their work and life.  They hail from Indiana and Michigan.  I think Oren will enjoy having Samuel as a friend and a fellow Anglophone in his class.

On Friday we were invited by our Danish friends Naja and Thomas, to come have dinner on their porch.  That is a real treat because they have a very nice house that has a good view of the lake and mountains from the porch.  The evening offered us an equisite sunset that was framed between 2 enormous cloud banks over the Congolese mountains.

Oren and David love to go over there as well and play well with Elias and Aviajah, even when all are using their second language (French) to play together.  They also enjoyed watching several episodes of a Tintin cartoon together while the parents chatted on the porch.  (I joined for a bit of Tintin at the end of the evening.)

On Saturday, we went to the home of our friend Ann Glick, another American Mennonite, who is married to one of the officials at the Dutch embassy.  She has children the ages of our own, and they are one of the families that will be leaving town after the school year.  It will be sad to see them go as they are delightful people.   It was another movie night as we all watched “Here Come the ABC’s” by They Might Be Giants.  (I know that will mean something to some readers.)

Sunday was a bit of a change of pace as I was preaching.  It was Pentecost and also part of a sermon series the church is doing on mission.  I chose a passage from Acts 14 rather than the text about the coming of the Holy Spirit and Pentecost because the passage focused on St. Paul’s first missionary journey with Barnabus.

In the sermon, one of the main points I made was that one reason Paul met so much opposition in his preaching was because  he was preaching a ‘full Gospel’.  For me that meant that he was not separating the Gospel of personal salvation (reconciliation with God) from the social consequences of entering into family relationship with other Christian brothers and sisters (reconciliation with fellow believers).  Because he was preaching to different ethnic groups, (Jews and Gentiles) this message was not readily accepted as Jews and Gentiles did not want to be reconciled to each other and certainly not members of one family.

For me the point was that to some extent, Evangelical missionaries in the past century may have tried to cleave the Gospel of Salvation from its social consequences in sharing the Gospel in this region.  Consequently there was the tragic consequence of seeing Christians massacre each other because they were in different ethnic groups.  (As one priest put it:  “The blood of tribalism ran thicker than the waters of Baptism”.)

The second point was about cultural misunderstanding.  But I will attach the sermon to this blog for those interested in reading it.  Although it is written down, I did not really read from the text, but it follows my preaching pretty well.

I felt the sermon was well received and we had a good discussion about it afterward in our small group.  Our small group has also been in concentrated prayer about a Evangelical and Reconciliation Crusade being organized by our South African missionary friends.  They have had some challenges along the way the least of which was the main speaker pulling out at the 11^th hours.  Things seem to be coming together well though as they prepare to go upcountry this Sunday.

Rebecca's Sunday School Class

Monday was a Holiday!  I was not really ready for it, but apparently, like many Catholic countries, Pentecost Monday is a day off.  (I think it was Memorial day this weekend in the US).  So we planned another social event.  We had dinner with a group of our longterm missionary friends which did include the Hoffman’s (Tanja and Stephan) from Germany, Naja and Thomas, and we were joined by Joel and Janette as well.  There were a huge group of kids who played very well together.  We made a big meal the afternoon and sat and talked until about 4pm.

That was about the time I got hay fever and took a Benadryl.

This evening (Tuesday) we had another visitor, Brandon Thiessen who used to work with us at MCC when we first moved here.  He is now a coffee buyer and works in Switzerland.  He was here to sample some Burundian coffee.  It was good to catch up with him as well.

Our life felt very rich this week as far as friendships.  We are also aware as we near the end of the year how much things will change when we begin the school year next September.  Generally though it has been remarkable to see how many people are arriving here.  The ex-pat. Community seems to be growing very rapidly.  We were at Club du Lak briefly Sunday afternoon and it was packed with Muzungus.  I don’t even know where they are from or what they are doing here, but I think the confidence that Burundi is more or less stable is becoming more and more accepted.  I hope this will be a positive change.  It did seem a bit overwhelming on Sunday afternoon though.

The reports we here across the Lake in Eastern Congo have taken a turn for the worse.  Generally there had been improvement to the point that people were taking tourist trips to see gorillas around Bukavu and the top of the volcano in Goma.  Now all of those areas have been recaptured by rebels and new rebel groups made up of disgruntled deserters from the Congolese army are becoming very powerful and disruptive in the region.  The casualties are almost always civilians as rebels seem to prefer to massacre them rather than engage other armed groups in combat.

It is very sad for us to hear about this deterioration of the situation in Eastern Congo.

That is all I have to report this evening, so for anyone interested I am attaching the sermon. Enjoy:

Dinosaur Bone Archeological Dig by Oren and friends
at Club du Lac T. this Sunday.

Acts 14 sermon   (Read Acts 14:1-23)

It is a great pleasure to be able to share God’s word with you on this Pentecost Sunday.  It is also a relief to me to be on the preaching side rather than the interpreters side.  Having done that 2 weeks ago I must say that (s)he has the more difficult task up here.

As I said, this is Pentecost Sunday, the day we remember the decent of the Holy Spirit upon the heads of the 120 followers of Jesus praying together in Jerusalem. 

Historically, for the jewish people Pentecost was the festival to mark the first harvest after the growing season, when the Hebrews would bring their first fruits to the temple for a large festival.  We as Christians can see the poetic timing of the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, equipping the harvesters with Spirtual gifts to bring in the first harvest of those called by Christ into his body--the church.

We are also continuing today in our sermon series on mission and will look today how the Holy Spirit does equip us for mission even today.  For the sake of this topic, I will not actually be reading the Pentecost passage in Acts 2, but will be going further into the book Acts to look at the work of the spirit through one of the most powerfully transformed and transforming men in the Bible.  I am of course talking about the Apostle Paul. 

Remember, that Paul was certainly among the firstfrutis of those brought into the body of Christ---the miracle of his conversion is a powerful testimony to the way we are prepared as Christians for ministry.  He himself went overnight from being one of the Gospel’s worst enemies to one of its most adamant defenders.

During his lifetime he made 3 important missionary journeys to spread the Gospel to the Gentiles according to the book of Acts, and we are going to look today at his first journey as recounted in Acts Chapter 14.  Actually his anointing for this journey by the Holy Spirit when he and Barnabus were set apart and prayed for by his community is recounted in Acts 13.   In Acts 14 we pick him up enroute in what is now the country of Turkey.

I am very happy to offer a missionary’s perspective on this particular passage. and I feel like it has some important things to teach those of us who feel called to mission in Burundi, both ex pats and Burundians and the way the Spirit empowers us to do so. 

Read Passage Act 14.

I am going to divide the passage today into 3 parts and discuss them separately.  I have a topic heading for each section so if you are taking notes you can begin by writing down these 3 headings.  :  They are, if you want to write them down:

1) The Full Gospel

2) Cross Cultural Challenges

3) Perseverence

By way of background this the first of 3 missionary journeys that Paul embarks upon in the book of Acts beginning in Chapter 13.  He leaves from Antioch with Barnabus and travels west on the Mediterranian than turns north and goes overland to a town called Pisidian Antioch.  a region that is now in the country of Turkey.  I will have more to say about the geography at the end of the sermon.

In Acts 14 we are picking up on Paul and Barnabus’ journey in the town of Iconium.  They have just been run out of the town of Pisidian Antioch in Chapter 13 and are heading southeast.

We find that in Iconium as well the Apostles are not well received either.  According to the text unbelieving jews begin to stir up the Gentiles against them.  Despite their bold speaking and signs, they here of a conspiracy to stone them and they leave the town and continue South to Lystra.

Lets look a bit more closely at this conflict.  This is not the first time we find Paul in trouble with Jews and Gentiles in his ministry.  In fact he has a similar problem in the previous chapter in the town of Pisidian Antioch.

I think understanding this ‘jealousy of the jews’ and to conflict Paul frequently creates between Jews and Gentiles is worth investigating.  Just what about the Gospel of Salvation is so offensive or controversial? 

Certainly his call to preach the Gospel to the Gentiles at all was a point of contention, even among the Apostles.  But why?

My sense in reading these accounts along with his letters, is that Paul felt that the Gospel of Salvation had important social consequences that were very difficult to accept for both Jews and Gentiles.

You see,  Paul felt the gospel first and foremost was a message of  reconciliation which began with our relationship with God, but then had direct consequences on our relationship with other brothers and sisters in Christ—in this case, in the relationship between jewish and gentile believers.   

He even describes this mission several times in his letters as the great mystery of the gospel hidden from view for the ages:  This is from Ephesians 3

2Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. 4In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. 6This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus.

In Galatians 3 he used the language of being one people, not greek, jew, male, female, slave nor free but all one people in Christ.

This is not Separate but equal folks, we are talking about sharing barbeque, sitting at the dining room table together, full family members! 

This Gospel of Unity, I believe is at the base of much of this conflict created by Paul’s ministry and particularly on this missionary journey.   If we look back one chapter (Acts 13) this is especially poignant, because we see that the jews  receive the Gospel message in Pisidian Antioch with interest one week, then go into a jealous rage and throw Paul and Barnabus out of the city as soon as the Evangelists begin sharing it with the Gentiles as well the following Sabbath. 

But Paul seemed adamant that the Gospel of reconciliation with God could not be cleaved away from its social consequences, that is the Gospel of reconciliation with one’s brothers and sisters in Christ.  He felt that one followed directly from the other.  I honestly think he would have had an easier time and less persecution if he would have stuck to the message of salvation and left reconciliation between those who accepts Jesus for another time.  But he never saw the Evangelical message and the social message as separate.  He was beaten, stoned, austracized by his own people for it, but he never ceased to preach it.

And to some extent I think that has been one of the great failure of the evangelical church in Africa in the last century.  In cleaving the salvation message away from the social message we end up with an incomplete transformation, reconciliation to God without any reconciliation to neighbor.

Evangelicals of the last century have not been the only ones who have tried to construct a theology which cleaves these two halves of the gospel apart.  Peter, as we see in Galatians, after his dream, tried to distance himself from Gentile Christians he had saved, even refusing to eat with them.

Other examples include the one I read recently about Catholic priests in DRC in the 18^th century who during the height of the slave trade, sold off their entire congregations to slavers, the only moral reservation they had was not to sell to protestant slavers because they did not want their converts to fall into the hands of heretics.

Apartheid in South Africa was entirely based on a theology of salvation without reconciliation and unity between brothers.  And of course the genocide and civil war that were witnessed here in Rwanda and Burundi involved Christians killing Christians, even singing praise songs as the swung the machete.

Certainly it has been the experience of many of us in Burundi and elsewhere that while the idea of salvation may be appealing, the cost of discipleship, that is--seeing your enemies as your brothers (and by enemies I mean people who murdered your parents and stole their land and still live on it.)  may be a price too high to pay. 

There is another partial Gospel that has appealed to some when the social gospel, reconciliation to one’s brothers is highlighted without seeing it as a consequence of reconciliation to God (Gospel of Salvation).  This social gospel can be appealing to some because it sounds tolerant.  But reconciliation to one’s brothers, not rooted in a saving faith will be superficial at best.  As soon as the road gets tough one is willing to abandon one’s love for one’s friends. Christ says ‘Greater love has no man than this that he lay down his life for his friends.’  But that is a hard call.

In Buta here in Burundi, I do not believe a social gospel of brotherly love would have led those students--when they were attacked by a rebel group and asked to separate by ethnicity so that one group could be slaughtered and the other spared--to refuse to so and were martyred together. 

With his dying breath, one of the young martyrs with a beautific face told the rector,  “Today we have won.  They told us to separate and we all refused and stayed together.”

Paul is bringing a full gospel message in his missionary journeys, complete with signs and wonders but it is not easily received, and he faces death many times for it, but he is uncompromising.  To many it is an offensive message and if it does not offend you here and now, even slightly, perhaps you are not considering the full consequences of this radical gospel of vertical and horizontal reconciliation.

Are you ready to embrace a gospel that takes puts your cultural identity behind your identity in Christ.  Am I ready to have my son marry a Burundian Christian as opposed to an American.  Are tutsis and Hutus ready to give their daughters in marriage to followers of Jesus among the Batwa?  Because those are just some of the implications of being one new family.  I think we should all squirm a little about what the Full transformative gospel message means for us who call ourselves followers of Jesus.

But that is not the only problem Paul faces as a missionary on this trip.  When they do flee from Iconium they go to Lystra,  where they begin their outreach with a powerful sign, a healing. (man could not walk from birth is healed)  But something does not go as planned.  The miracle is badly misunderstood, and Paul and Barnabus are perceived to be the Messiahs and not Jesus Christ. And it sounds like it is all Paul can do to convince the citizens there that they are ordinary men. 

It is interesting that, as a missionary we find one of the great pitfalls of cross-cultural work in this small episode, especially where one does not know the local language. Let me call your attention to a detail in verse 11.   Luke, the author, notes that the people shouted in their Lycaniom language that Barnabus is Zeus and Paul is Hermes, the prophet of Zeus and since they have a temple for these deities they want to go and make sacrifices there. 

(Look at scene)

I am presuming that probably Paul and Barnabus did not know exactly what all the cheering was about and did not understand until later how badly the miracle had been misunderstood.  So instead of moving forward with their message, they have to start from scratch again, putting out fires of confusion and misunderstanding.  NO we are not Gods, we are men like you.  It was not us who did the miracle it was done through the God we serve, the living God, etc. etc.

The paragraph ends by saying that even all of these efforts barely persuaded the Lycanians from offering sacrifices to them.  A tough, but not atypical day for a missionary in a cross-cultural situation.

 How often do I see this in our context in Burundi?  I need to explain a bit about traditional African family and community structures.  We often called them Patrimonial.  That basically means that people live in patron-client relationships of borrowing and owing.  At the top, the chief lender and richest person in the community is the big-man a position with considerable status and wealth.  It is he who bestows wealth on the community through ‘loans’ which secure loyalty, among other things.  In the post-colonial world, the big-man may get his wealth from the national treasury if he is a political leader, corruption if he is a civil servant, the offering and the international mission if he is a pastor.

Yes, it is very easy, even as a Christian, especially an African Christian to get pulled into this traditional system.  Even me, when I go at a field visit to see one of our projects, am always treated with great honor and respect.  I go into a very poor village, see a goat raising project, than am invited in for a meal of goat meat, rice, beans, and coca-cola.  I am served first, often before the eyes of hundreds of onlooking hungry children who will not even be permitted to eat until I am done, and then will only get whatever leftovers the big men leave behind. 

I know it is important in terms of encouraging our partners to go out and see their work, and while they do not actually acclaim me as Zeus (these are Christian partners) the treatment I receive as a donor is uncomfortably close to deification. And while we may not be seen as God’s we are just as good from the perspective of most Burundians.  We have power, we do amazing things with our medicine, and computers, and money.  So we receive ‘divine’ treatment from our local hosts and receive innumerable petitions for help in healing diseases, providing education, food, jobs, and money.  We are seen as saviors.

And I can tell you, poor rural African Christians are in awe of seeing us and other missionaries roll up, in 4X4s with lots of money to spend (for good causes—provided by faithful givers in North America), driving around the country, jetting in and out of the region. And African pastors say, “Hey, I’d like a piece of that.  I’d like to drive around the country in 4X4 preaching the Gospel, I would like nice church building and a church band with electronic musical instruments and a soundsystem, and I would like a computer to write my sermons and do word searches on the internet.  And as a witness to the Gospel I need it and deserve it.

You see, our good actions, our charity, even as Christians is so easily misunderstood and can take the focus away from the gospel and bring the focus on the donor and the benefits.  Paul and Barnabus struggled to do damage control in this situation, and today we see many historic mission churches having to do the same damage control around the world today to break unhealthy dependency on foreign mission aid to support the local churches..

I have personal examples.  About a month before I came I was asked by an acquaintance from our church for help with tuition.  Because of the relationship I had with him I did give it to him (about $100) but honestly did not feel good about it.  I know that now he will see me as a benefactor and will ask me for many more things in the future including all his future tuition needs.  When I gave it to him he was effusively thankful and told me he had prayed the entire night that I would say yes to his request.  He even called me his father and his God sometimes.  I imagine he will eventually be disappointed when God ceases to answer his prayers that I will support him. I confess that it is hard for me not to become the big-man when it is so easy to do these small miracles in the lives of people we know.  But I don’t think what I did was serving God’s purposes in any way I understand.

My point is that cross-cultural ministry is difficult and even the good we do can become the biggest barrier to our success in making the gospel real and personal to those we are sharing it with.

So there are the first 2 points:  The Full Gospel, Cross Cultural Challenges,

I’ve probably brought you all down to this point, and I’m sorry.  But I want to try to get you to imagine the struggle that Paul and Barnabus were going through on this ‘Holy Spirit Annointed’ mission trip.  It was not all glory, they were struggling to succeed and risking their lives.  But its about to get much better here at the end.

What we are left with in Chapter 14 is cause for hope.  I call it the Victory of Perseverence.

We do see that after these problems in Pysia Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra, and this is pretty bad, not just are they misunderstood but they are run out of town, stoned, and even have their lives threatened because of the work they are doing.

But look at what happens once they get to Derbe:  It is amazing if you look at it on a map---

they backtrack, through the exact places where this happened, it says they

strengthen the disciples and encourage them to remain true to the faith.

“We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God,” they told the disciples in those places.. 23

Paul and Barnabas appointed eldersa for them in each church and, with prayer and fasting, committed them to the Lord, in whom they had put their trust.

A bit about Geography:  They are heading toward the mission station in Antioch, one would suppose completely exhausted.  Imagine you are leading this trip and this has been your experience to this point.  Where do you want to go next?

Well in my opinion, Paul does a stunning about face. Look at the map…

Traveling down the hypotenuse of triangle back toward Antioch,  Then in Derbe, they turn back around.

WHAT A TESTIMONY to the Gospel. ---men and women that are willing to go back, again and again, to see the work through to the end and leaving those who are commited to stay for the long term and training locals to continue to do the work of reconciliation to God and man. 

I can imagine what an encouragement it must have been to believers in these places to see Paul and Barnabus, after being so badly mistreated in these cities, returning to them again to encourage and inspire them, and assuring them that even the suffering and hardships are part of the road toward the Kingdom of Heaven.   And it says that they did appoint local elders, a good strategy to effectively work in a cross cultural setting—empowering locals to carry out the work.

As far as Burundi, Rebecca and I have mercifully been spared any beatings or being run out of town. But we have seen many of our friends who have suffered these things as well as imprisonment and other types of persecution because of their faith.  As an organization we work through local partnerships with just such individuals, their stories are a testimony to their willingness to suffer even to death, and yet persevere in the face of failure and defeat to bring the Gospel of Peace and Reconcilliation to their people. 

I think of people like Onesphore who stood up with fellow tutsi and hutu christians, in a time of ethnic crisis in his school, and stood between two fighting groups and proclaimed.  “We are a new ethnic group, not Tutsi nor Hutu, but Christian, if you are going to kill anyone, start with us.  The crisis was averted and no one was died that day.

I see the courage of people here like Emmanuel Ndikumana and his wife Asele, Asher, Oscar, Dieudonne, Innocent and countless others committed to a lifetime of bringing God’s message of salvation and reconciliation to people here in Burundi.

And expats, like, Libby, Helga and Christiane, the Johnson family, Aly Blaire, Mary, Rosemary, Simon, and others who have made this place and their home and have suffered greatly for many years to bring the Gospel of Salvation and Peace to this country.

Psalm 16:3 says Blessed are the Saints that are in this Land, they are the Holy Ones in whom is all my delight.

We are blessed to have in our company, people who give witness to the way that the Holy Spirit empowers us for mission.  But don’t be misled by looking only for quick miracles.  Look at those who have given their lives to bring the Full Gospel to fruition in Burundi, despite much suffering and misfortune.  They are the Holy Ones in Whom is all my delight!!