By Randal Dick
Superintendent of missions
It seems that the Congo is meant to be on our minds right now.
Much is happening in other places, and I set out to write about one of them this month. However, I received a communique from the Congo (formerly Zaire) through Olivier Carion.
I need to recap the horrors of Rwanda to set the stage for the remainder of this column. It was only four years ago that the holocaust of Rwanda crashed into our consciousness.
This week a television special revisited Rwanda. According to the report, in about 85,000 households ("families" if you will), in Rwanda the head of the household is a child.
Remember the mass flight from Kigali as the Tutsi rebel forces unleashed the fury of their reprisals for the Hutu massacre of Tutsi men, women and children.
The peace these past few years has been anything but peaceful. Last month I reminded you of Dr. Ngoyi Kadima, who described the massacres in the forests around his area.
Quite a few of those hunted down and massacred were fleeing from Tutsi reprisals for nearly three years. They hoped they would find safety when they fled Rwanda into Zaire.
You may remember that about 30 of our brethren were among those who disappeared from their homes in Rwanda and reappeared in refugee camps around Goma, in the Bukavu region of eastern Zaire (now the People's Republic of the Congo).
They all arrived safely in Goma, except for the son of our leader at the time, who drowned.
Finally, as the world community responded to the refugee crisis, international relief agencies set up shop in Goma, and a tenuous peace settled over the area.
For about a year, we were able to make intermittent contact with the brethren, and verified that while their life was anything but normal, they did have shelter.
At one point, we used donations from brethren in Australia to provide better tents. Even that was not easy. By that time, elements of the Hutu military, now refugees themselves, had organized into paramilitary gangs, and were beginning to run the camps.
The last time one of our people got into Goma, he reported that it was dangerous and that armed soldier-bandits would take whatever they wanted at gunpoint.
Our brethren with new tents were a magnet to violence. We sent them some sturdy and portable water purifying units (the kind the Special Forces use in the field). They were able to make enough extra clean water to sell to have a little extra food.
As bad as this may sound, it was at least somewhat stable. But it soon got worse.
To the west, the people were reaching the breaking point. The oppression of the Mobutu government had reduced the economy and administration of the country to the point of collapse.
Mobutu Sese Seko had everything, while more and more of the people had nothing. Even the government was not meeting its payroll for months at a time. Soldiers and police, who were there to protect the population, began to turn on them to collect their wages.
Opposition began to coalesce. While we in the West were thinking things were getting better, we began to hear from our brethren that once again tensions were high and that war could erupt any time.
Some Rwandan brethren made a plan, which they shared with us. If revolution broke out, they were going to try to flank the area they thought would be the main battle zone.
They knew the revolutionary forces, initially Tutsi "volunteers" from Uganda and Rwanda, were going to make the Hutu refugee areas of Goma and Bukava their first stopping point. They wanted to hunt down and punish anyone perceived to have participated in the massacre of their people.
The revolt broke out as they predicted, and the largest group of our brethren skirted the battle lines and make their way north through the forests. They eventually resurfaced and communicated that all were back in Rwanda.
Some returned to their own homes, but some found that their homes and possessions had been appropriated by those in power.
Two young men, however, simply disappeared. They surfaced once and got a message through pleading for help. We rejoiced that they were still alive, but we could not get communication back to them, nor get material assistance to them. They were in the hands of God.
That is the crux of what follows. It is pretty obvious that these men have experienced a holocaust. They were totally adrift for an extended period of time in a hostile environment where life means nothing. They were dependent on God in every way.
We were praying for them and asking God to do for them what we could not. Here is the essence of their first message, re-establishing contact with the rest of their brethren. The author of the message is pastor Olivier Carion. He received the fax from Cassien and Wenceslas April 6.
Hello dear friends,
Bukavu is a town in the Congo 120 kilometers south of Goma, across Lake Kivu. This is where we had made contact with two students who were studying at the Catholic university, Cassien Sindaye Rwanka and Wenceslas Bandyatuyaga.
Oct. 26, 1996, they wrote to us about the imminence of war in Bukavu, which broke out three days later as Bukavu fell to the "rebels." A large part of the population fled on foot, including Cassien and Wenceslas.
Jan. 6, 1997, they sent us a letter through the Red Cross, in which they explained that they had walked 500 kilometers to Tingi-Tingi, south of Kisangani. They were starving and calling out to us: "Help us out of our distress!"
We were concerned for them, even though it was virtually impossible to get in touch with them. The Red Cross turned down our request to send money.
Since that time, we had heard nothing from Cassien and Wenceslas, until now. I've just received a letter from them. They are in Brazzaville, across the Congo River from Kinshasa.
Here are a few excerpts from Cassien's letter:
"The essence of this trial I've just come out of, its best and finest part, is that I kept my most precious gift: my life. In fact, I gained everything, thinking I was losing everything.
"War left me with what I need to gain one hundred times what I lost. This is my conviction and the basis of my optimism.
"With my friend Wenceslas Bandyatuyaga, I drained the cup of bitter suffering to the dregs and did what the high-achieving explorers were not able to do. We walked 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles).
"Please help us return to a normal life and forget or sublimate the nightmares of war.
"One well-advised sociologist told Wenceslas and me that the Worldwide Church of God is for us a reference point, a group to which we aspire. I would like it to be a group of belonging."
We are grateful that God protected Cassien and Wenceslas during their most difficult trial. We can now put them in contact with our people in Kinshasa, across the river.
Sometimes we think we have problems, but a letter such as this one gives a different perspective.
Hope you are all well!
Warm regards,
Olivier
By the time you read this, we will have celebrated the Spring Festivals. We will have reminded ourselves of and recommitted ourselves to the power of the risen Christ.
If he can walk with individuals over a multi-year odyssey of more than 3,100 miles, how much more will he walk with his body, in all of its parts, with all of its flaws? What is a year or three?
Tonight I will have the privilege of partaking of the Lord's Supper with our brethren in Mexico City.
I will have a deeper appreciation of the sacrifice, the depth of the love behind the sacrifice, and the power of the Servant King tonight. This is in part thanks to Cassien and Wenceslas.
I hope and pray they were able to keep the Lord's Supper with their brethren. Wouldn't it be awesome to be there with them?
Well, that's the plan for all of us at the end of the Incredible Journey.
May WN pages 12 and 13
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