A letter from Ruth Brown serving in Congo
Fall 2014 - Praising God at All Hours
Muoyo webe! (Life to you!)
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Nurse Mme. Kapinga leads a discussion about family planning for Christian Health Evangelism (CHE) volunteers
Every morning now, beginning around 7 a.m., the street in front of my apartment is filled with children dressed in white shirts and navy skirts or pants. Their laughter, chatter, and song are welcome sounds! At the outskirts of Kananga, on the grounds of a center originally built to re-socialize child soldiers, these sounds of excitement can also be heard because the 22 former street children, ages 6 to 16 years, in the Ditekemena (“Hope”) Program in Kananga, were able to begin school classes, and due to an incredibly generous gift from Shepherd-Lapsley Presbytery in Alabama these children will be able to continue their classes all this school year! About half of the children had missed at least two years of school, many had missed four years, and several had never attended school. Two boys were able to attend regular, public school. The other 20 children have been divided into three levels of classes for which teachers are using the Congolese government’s special “make-up curricula,” accelerated courses designed to advance the children to their age-appropriate levels of education. Ditekemena’s 23rd child, Noella, who will be 2 years old on Christmas Day, 2014, is the sister of Abiba, a 12-year-old in the program. Noella is finally learning to walk after Ditekemena staff encouraged the older children to stop carrying her and to allow her to spend more time trying to walk by herself.
We are hopeful that the children will have advanced to their age-appropriate school grades by the time they re-settle back into their family homes. Their family members had abandoned the children to the streets for reasons including extreme poverty and beliefs that the child was/is a sorceress. We are hopeful that, in time, the family members will see that the children are thriving (e.g., not cursed) and that these families will accept support and encouragement from Ditekemena’s staff and local church members and receive the children back into their homes.
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Every Christian Health Evangelism meeting begins with Bible study
September heralded other learning experiences in Kananga, too, when two U. S. Presbyterian pastors (friends of mission co-workers Bob and Kristi Rice) visited Congo for the first time. They found Kananga city noisier than they had expected, with at least four different choirs singing loudly, with microphones, at all times during the night (11 p.m., midnight, 1 a.m., 2 a.m. and onward to nearly dawn)!
My fellow PC(USA) mission workers and I were very grateful to these two visiting pastors, Dale Williams and Ken Slodiak [of PC(USA) churches in Gettysburg, Pa., and Tucson, Ariz., respectively] for leading one of our Bible studies. Ken accompanied us on guitar, and it was refreshing for all of us to sing familiar hymns and to worship together in our native English language. We talked about the importance of surrendering to God.
This surrender to God is a characteristic of the faith of the people of Congo. I marvel at the ceaseless praising of God by people who are so very impoverished and who currently have so few prospects for improving their economic situation. They have been through war after war. Yet they praise God in a never-ending refrain…at 11 p.m., midnight, 1 a.m., 2 a.m. and beyond.
I also saw the attitude and act of surrender in the repeated attendance of Congolese volunteers at many trainings these past months to learn how to better care for their neighbors. Church members, including many youth leaders from 11 area churches, came to daylong trainings about raising guinea pigs. These youth will be assisting Ditekemena children’s family members to raise the small animals for food and for marketing.
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In West Kasai, one in three children under 6 years old is underweight [WHO, 2010]
Also, Congolese volunteers in the Bana Basanka (Children of Joy) program attended four days of training this past month about the many components of malnutrition, including how to assess family needs for clean drinking water, sanitation, family planning, and sufficient protein in the diet. For the next eight months these volunteers will be working at least 15 hours a month with the families of malnourished children under 6 years of age. This is quite a commitment for people who work 12-hour days at least six days a week to meet the needs of their own families. They are working and participating in trainings without pay. At the training they even stayed nearly an hour after the trainers ended their sessions to ask more questions about family planning and about how to find enough protein for family meals. These volunteers have returned to family homes three and four times, trying to find parents at home in order to talk about their child’s need for more food and more protein. I am amazed at what these volunteers will do for their neighbors, week after week, month after month! The strength of their faith and their dedication to their neighbors has been noted by the parents of the children they are trying to assist. One malnourished child’s father commented to them, “Thank you for coming. No one from a church has ever visited me before.” Another parent was so moved by their visits that he asked if he could join with their work. This father has attended all four days of outreach education training about the Christian faith, health, nutrition and the creation of household gardens.
Thank you for your prayers and donations for these programs and for your support of my position here as technical assistant to the leaders of these Community Development programs. Your prayers and gifts are making an impact. Person by person, more people in Congo are hearing about the love of Christ and more are taking another step up out of extreme poverty. In this partnership between World Mission, PC(USA) churches, and the Presbyterian Church of Congo, we are addressing two critical global issues: (1) evangelism, sharing the good news of Christ, and (2) alleviating the root causes of poverty, particularly as those causes affect women and children. Please continue to pray for the children of Ditekemena and for the community volunteers working in the Bana Basanka program and for the families of the malnourished children they are serving. Please also continue to give generously to support this work being done in Christ’s name.
With love and thanks to you—
Ruth
The 2014 Presbyterian Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 138
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