Bearing Fruit and the Birth of the Great Lakes Peace Institute

Oren playing with his food.


It is great to have a week where one of the highlights is a sermon you heard on Sunday.  The preacher was a young Burundian man named Florentin, educated at Fuller Seminary in California, who preaches from time to time at PTI (the church where we go).  It is hard, I have found, for a Burundian or a mzungu to preach a sermon that is cross-culturally relevant.  Often I find the message directed at the issues of one culture or another, but to say something to both simultaneously is a challenge, and not an expectation I have anymore.

But Florentin spoke about our call as Christians in what he has called 'the season of work' (as opposed to the season of blessing).  This already promised to be a bit controversial because my sense was that this was a corrective to the sermons often preached here at the beginning of the year about how we are indeed entering our season of bounty and blessing, when God will 'open the floodgates of Heaven' and bless us 'more than abundantly' with all we could hope, think or imagine.  But instead, Florentin said he did not believe this was such a season, rather, for Christians here, it is a time to work in the vineyard.

For him this meant to live fully as Christians, bearing the fruits of the Spirit:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.  Living in our homes and workplaces in a way that 'the world does not recognize us,' and would probably hate us.  He referred to things like not participating in, but rather standing against injustice and corruption here, even at great personal cost.

As far as the work itself, he exhorted us to find the work that God has prepared for us specifically, where we are indispensible--not where a hundred other people could do the same thing.  He asked why teachers, economists, psychoanalysts, and theologians in the congregation are not going out into the interior of the country (villages) to work, where they are really needed!  (He joked that it is because we love electricity too much--touché).


But the take home lesson for me was what he said about why we do this.  He made it clear that we do not do this to 'help' others, to alleviate poverty, or whatever other noble intention we imagine ourselves to have.  He said we do it to manifest the fruit that God has given us the capacity to produce.  Good fruit is simply what comes naturally from one who is connected to the true vine.  It is the end in itself.  And not only that, but the one who is actually most blessed by bearing this fruit, is the one who bears it, not the ones receiving it.  He gave a lighthearted example, saying what is a teacher if she has no students?  It is the teacher who receives the blessing of using her gift when she has the opportunity to teach.

This is a supreme corrective to me as a Christian missionary.  I confess I came here with the naive idea that I was going to do some good in the world.  With that attitude, disappointment can come fast and furious.  All of one's high aspirations and best laid plans are quickly dashed against the obdurate realities of poverty and despair.  It would not be possible to remain here in a way that is 'goal-oriented' at 'helping' others.  One must find a different understanding of what one is doing here.

When I see that what I am doing is bearing the fruit of the spirit put in me, and doing the work that God has put before me, for Him, I can truly experience the blessing of being here.  If what we do does some good, it is He who is working through us, not us who are doing it and we may not know even what seeds we are sowing for Him in the work we are doing.

I don't know how this sermon affected everyone else, but it has helped shift more fully a paradigm I have  felt a need to reconsider.  I tried to recount it to Rebecca as well as I could as she was in Sunday School at the time (with her now quite large class), and I am thankful that David slept most of the time so I could really have a chance to hear it, a rare gift.

The remainder of Sunday was spent around the house, cleaning, watching puppies, and painting the hallway.  In the evening we met with our small group where we are studying the book of I Samuel.  We marveled at how the story of the Kings of Israel begins with the faithfulness of a barren woman--not even the mother of a king herself--yet in her prayer following her pregnancy, able to understand the profound, paradoxical character of God.  (Not unlike Mary in the book of Luke.)

The earlier part of the week was full, but interesting.  Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were business as usual in terms of work and routine.  Kids were in school, Rebecca and I swam before work every morning, prayed, and worked everyday during normal hours.  Actually, Rebecca had an interesting opportunity on Tuesday and Wednesday. She was invited to share devotionals with the senior staff of the World Vision team in Burundi. She found it a good challenge for her herself to look closely again at some of the parables of the Kingdom in Mark. She was well-received, even though people were challenged by the interpretation of the parable of the weeds: we are called to suffer and forgive the presence of evil, since we are not qualified to be the harvesters. Oren played with different friends but Timmy remains his best friend and they are able to play for long periods of time without supervision, even with David.  Oh, and I taught ballet to 'mes petites filles' at the Ecole Belge on Tuesday.

Thursday was a travel day for me.  I went to Gitega to do some strategic planning with our partner MiPAREC.  This is an organization that runs an annual, one month program, called the Great Lakes Peacebuilding Seminar.  It is an excellent training ground for peace trainers in our region.  I left the car with Rebecca and was able to catch a ride upcountry with Zachee and Bridget. (Bridget was part of the strategic planning group as well.)

We arrived mid morning to meet our hosts from Miparec as well as partners from Rwanda and Congo who are stakeholders in this program.  We were called together because the organization is experiencing some growing pains.  MCC and other donors have diminished funding for this seminar, now in its 7th year, and they were not sure how to keep funding it in the future.

I have to say, I often find strategic planning dry, but perhaps as a prelude to the sermon I was to hear on Sunday, I felt very intrigued and well-interested in finding a solution to the problem, (and gifted to do so), particularly because it allowed some capacity-building opportunities for the organization.

The meeting began typically with the our hosts handing us a budget for the seminar (about $26,000 for 20 people for one month which includes training and room and board.)  In the past, all students were invited to come for free and in fact their transportation was covered as part of the grant.  For MIPAREC the question seemed to be, 'who is going to step up and pay for all of this as donor funding has diminished?'

For me it did not take any complex accounting to see how they could still cover the cost of 10 participants with the grant money received and offer the other 10 places to other NGOs who wanted to send participants at about $1800 each.  (a great value for a month of training and transportation, room and board.)  One donor who was at the meeting immediately offered to buy 4 places of the 10 left.  That only left 6 to fill.

What was satisfying for me was to help them see how to conceive of the program as something that had market value and not simply a charity, and how to work in the direction of self-sufficiency and sustainability.  I think the solution was received with enthusiasm, as perceiving the program in this way was novel to them.

We did far more planning as well, and actually created a structure to institutionalize the seminar with an Advisory Committee with authority to make decisions, under which there is now a curriculum committee, logistics committee (that runs the seminar and invites and selects participants) as well as an Alumni association. When we were done we re-christened it The Great Lakes Peacebuilding INSTITUTE,  since we felt it had grown beyond seminar status after 7 years.

The meeting took the better part of two days, which is long.  And I admit, as a mzungu, meetings here seem slow to me.  Things that would be done in a matter of minutes can take hours here, often because of arcane French formalities that are preserved here (everyone making a speech at the beginning and end being one of them--the leader usually makes at least one response speech as well at each end.)

I also wish I could capture the old-school way of brainstorming, not with powerpoint, IPADS, magic boards, computer projectors, etc. but rather with large flipcharts and magic markers.  We went through about 75 pages of flip charts which were all dutifully masking taped to the walls all around the conference room.  I have to say, it is quite effective, maybe some of you out there in the corporate or academic world might want to try to 'kick it old school' for a change and do a meeting without electricity.

Actually electricity was a problem as we had very little at the conference facility and none all night in the room I slept in.  I was really unprepared for Gitega, having brought neither flashlight nor warm clothes (Gitega is cold at night.)  I had to use my computer to find the toilet at one point and pretty much froze in the dark all night.

When it was time to go home I left for Buja by taxi with Laurent, one of the Congolese from the meeting, as well as Yolanda, who was heading down from Gitega to catch a bus in Buja for Uganda (she was heading to a conference there).  This was the first time I had come down the mountain by cab and I was a bit nervous, but interested.  Six of us were packed into two seats and the trunk was loaded with supplies, including several hundred kilos of rice and beans.

If this were the New York City subway, I would say we were on the local, because I was surprised at how many stops and starts we made down the mountain to discharge and load on cargo.  The last hour we had unloaded the beans and started the descent with four 20-gallon plastic jerry cans of boiling hot milk.  (I guess they pasteurize it and send it down the mountain hot.)  The car actually got quite hot from the heat generated by these enormous jugs.  We discharged them at the bottom of the mountain just as we got to Bujumbura.

Yolanda and I were the last passengers let off, and we were not able to get all the way to our house by car as the roads in our neighborhood remain impassable. Still we were none the worse for wear.  The 2 hour 80 kilometer drive from Gitega to Bujumbura, cost us $5 each.

Yolanda stayed with us Friday and joined us for a group of 6 who did exercises on Saturday morning before heading off to Gitega.  Our family went to the beach with our friends Jeanette and Tim on Saturday afternoon where Oren could not resist skinny dipping in the Lake as soon as we got to the beach.  It was great to be back with the family, and I confess that of all the things I do here, my deep bliss comes from raising our children and watching them mature.

A few notes from Rebecca about the week:


On Saturday morning, after exercising I left the kids with Paul and I headed to the market to get fabric to cover our couches. I had found a really nice fabric before Christmas and wanted to get 12 more meters of it. The type of fabric is called a pagne. It comes in 6 meter pieces and it's what women wear here for skirts all the time. I had a swatch of fabric with me and prepared myself for "market battle" in advance: parked the car in a secure place, hid my wallet, stowed the money I needed in a highly private and inaccessible location, took my phone and keys and set out by foot (the battle is with potential pick-pockets). Once in the market, it didn't take long to find one of the 'finders,' a boy who helps one find things. He saw the swatch and made a beeline for the pagne section, steering past the fresh food and the fish section, bypassing the cookware and plumbing supplies. One by one, we started showing the fabric to all the vendors. One by one, they just shook their heads and said, "no, hakuna, hakuna, we don't have that, there's none of that around." We searched and searched and finally found one fairly belligerent woman who said, "yes, I've got it." Like a spider, she climbed up 15 feet of railings, on which multi-colored pagnes were hanging, and pulled this fabric off the top rail. It was the same! Apparently the problem is that it is "original," that is, it's pure cotton and well-made, not a synthetic or mixed fabric. And it comes from Congo and there aren't many of these types of fabric in circulation. So, she sold us one for a little more than I wanted to pay, after I negotiated that she should give the finder a "fanta." We kept looking for another pagne, but came up empty. As we were leaving, we passed the stall of the belligerent woman again. She said, wait, I've found another. So I left the market with 12 meters in hand -- we hope it will be enough to cover some of our living room furniture and guard against the ever-present dust.

Notes on dog food:

When consulting my Dogs for Dummies book on the question of how to feed our puppies, I found that 100% of the information refers to canned or prepared dog food. Whatever happened to "buy local" dog owners? I guess they don't buy "Dummies" books. One can buy imported canned dog food here -- but who wants to pay $4 for a tiny can? So we need to make it up as we go along. I've found a butchery here which sells ground beef for dogs. It's a paste made up of all the parts of the butchered animals which they can't sell any other way, i.e. it's offal and it smells AWFUL! But it is the perfect thing for cheap soft puppy food. I boil this up with some water, cook rice separately, mix the two, and Voila! home-made dog food. The puppies have been eating for the past three days and really enjoying it. It's good to know that I'm following historic precedent. Did you know that the first dog food was prepared by recycling expired work horses back in the 19th century? For Mama dog Bella, I can buy something called Chang Chang -- cheap bones of all kinds, which we can boil and she loves. 

Finally, we want to extend thanks to the many friends who are working to support the project of sending books to the Hope School in Burundi and the two libraries we support in Rwanda. We are very grateful to all of you! My mother has filled at least 20 boxes so far. But the container is big so there's still room for lots more. Thanks for sending them on to Ephrata, Pennsylvania before the end of January (address below two blogs ago). We really appreciate your efforts and your generosity and the resourcefulness of those of you who have tracked down French titles to send.