A beautiful country...

The Democratic Republic of Congo
Congo - the DRC - is a very beautiful country. It's raw - in the sense that you don't see tarmac roads, or many houses with electricity, or heated water. But there is a beauty to the land. It is very green. The rain forest is evident and everywhere you look all you see is greenery - at least in the countryside. The above photo shows the view from the cockpit of the plane and the dirt airstrip in Beni in the distance. But there are some wonderful views of beautiful green grass, lots of trees and wild plants. The photo on the right is an evening shot just outside the university building. Here are a few more photos of the views around the university in Beni. These are some of the houses from the nearby village. As you can see it is just so very green. It is pretty amazing and the colors change at different times during the day.




Smiling Faces
Everyday I would see women walking in the fields on their way to work in the shambas - as the fields are called in Swahili. Whenever they saw that I was taking photos they would smile at me - like the two ladies in these two photos. When you see the women it is hard to imagine that such beautiful women with wonderful smiles on their faces face danger every day. Yet most of the stories we heard from the rape survivors all had a common theme. They were raped on the way to or from their fields or while they were working in the fields. These women have no choice. This is their work - they grow their food and this is how they make a living and support their families. It's hard to imagine what it must be like going to work every day wondering if you will make it safely through the day and get home safely at the end of the day. It is sometimes hard to even conceive of the danger when you are there because you look out into the distance, see the greenery, the women going to work or returning and it all seems so peaceful. Yet towards the end of our stay in Beni we heard of a woman who had been raped and murdered not too far from where we were staying. The locals even gave some of our team members photos of this poor murdered woman. I think it helped them - it gave them a voice and a hope we would tell the world their story and what was going on. So all is not as peaceful as it might seem.
One Voice, One People, One Stand
Our last conference was for rape survivors. At that conference we heard story after story and it was so hard to hear them all. The stories are horrific. The pain is etched into the faces of the women, their eyes are dead and numbed and their bodies tell the stories of their suffering. And many of the women had babies, or were pregnant or had young children - many were the result of their rapes. We wept as we heard the stories, we prayed with the women, we prayed for Christ to heal the pain and take away the shame, we prayed that God would help the women see how precious and beautiful they were and that they would understand their value and that their dignity was not destroyed but that God would reveal to them their original design and help them be the women He wants them to be. At this conference rape survivors became believers, many stepped forward to take the first steps in healing. At the end of the conference, we - I and Steve gave what I considered the most difficult teaching and talk of the whole trip - a talk on forgiveness and what it means to forgive our abusers. We explained the true meaning of forgiveness that Scripture talks about and the need to establish safe boundaries and not offer relational forgiveness unless their is true repentance and a demonstration of change and implementation of changes so that the survivor is not abused all over again. It was a tough talk but the Spirit spoke powerfully. At the end we decided it was late and the conference should end. But the interpreter turned to me and said we can't stop. the women want to come forward and take steps towards forgiving their abusers. I was amazed and speechless. Woman after woman came forward. We prayed for each and every one of them. In my western naivety I was so concerned that we didn't have enough interpretors to translate our prayers. I wanted the women to know what we were praying! The interpretor said to me - it doesn't matter - God knows what you are saying! Silly me...Does Scripture not say that the Spirit intercedes for us and in the same we we were interceding for the women - they did not need to know our words - they just needed us to pray for them, to help them take that first step towards being able to forgive their abusers. What a humbling experience.

At the end of the conference after all this happened the women mentioned about how we needed to be their voice and to tell the world. We told them that they need to stand together, be one voice and tell their country and the world that enough is enough. Sexual violence must stop. We told them we would join them. This was a bold move for these survivors. They don't feel like they have a voice. Well, look at these next photos. It's all the women and us (the women on the team) standing together raising our hand - one finger pointing making the statement - we are one voice and we stand against sexual violence. The photo above is a close up and the one below on the right is the whole group. I have to say this was a bold moment for these women, a happy occasion and one where we all felt we were standing together as sisters in Christ and ready to fight for the cause. I will tell their stories here and tell people of how boldly these women seek to heal, recover and move on. Many of these women have experienced not only sexual violence but abandonment and have lost a lot. Here at this conference not one woman left without having been connected with a woman in her community who was connected with a NGO or organization that could help them. Do you know that Beni and the surrounding cities have more organizations than the city of Phoenix - they just have very limited resources and training but they certainly have a heart to help the wounded and broken and change their country.

The people of Congo have much to teach us....