Our son Stephen organised a knowledge-acquiring, fund-raising event focused on the DR of Congo. He has been in and out of the homes of about seven Congolese families in Auckland over recent months and they were well-represented at the event. Then there were church friends, members of the extended family etc. About 130 people in total. We ate Congolese food. Six different stations with displays were set up and different Congolese people shared first-hand accounts of aspects of the ‘crisis’ in their homeland …
Twenty-six minutes were given to this remarkable video, ‘Crisis in the Congo’. Please take the time to watch it. It is disturbing. It records a holocaust that the global community continues to ignore. The people who speak on it are so articulate. [NB: it is on youtube and can be shared on facebook etc].
Stephen spent 16 months in Kampala working with ‘unaccompanied minors’, or orphaned refugee children, from eastern DRC. As a volunteer Child Protection Officer, he befriended them, lived with them – and recorded their stories as part of advocating for their welfare.
On Friday Stephen returns to Kampala to learn Swahili on the way to exploring ways to express this commitment to the peoples of eastern DRC. If you are a praying person, please do pray for him .. and nurture a commitment to this troubled country and its precious people.
nice chatting
Paul
PS: One response to make is to find ways for the global community (and the global church, in particular) to express itself more effectively as a single community, as this little video expresses so beautifully.
About Me
the art of unpacking
After a childhood in India, a theological training in the USA and a pastoral ministry in Southland (New Zealand), I spent twenty years in theological education in New Zealand — first at Laidlaw College and then at Carey Baptist College, where I served as principal. In 2009 I began working with Langham Partnership and since 2013 I have been the Programme Director (Langham Preaching). Through it all I've cherished the experience of the 'gracious hand of God upon me' and I've relished the opportunity to 'unpack', or exegete, all that I encounter in my walk through life with Jesus.
Recent Posts
Football helps me train preachers. See, when you speak to me about football—or, ‘footie’—I need to know where your feet are before I can understand what you mean. Are your feet in Ireland, or Brazil, or the USA, or NZ—or in crazy Australia? It must be the most fanatical sporting nation in the world. Within…
Having been born in 1959, I don’t remember much about the 1960s. But I have heard a lot. Hippies. Drugs. Rock ‘n Roll. Assassinations. Moon-walking. A quick trip across to ChatGPT informs me immediately that it was ‘a transformative decade across the world’—marked by the civil rights and feminist movements, Cold War tensions, consumerism and…
