A note from my faithful travel partner, Christine

From Christine...

After traveling for about 25 hours, Lynne and I landed at OHare right on time yesterday afternoon.

Among the many small-but-huge things for which we are thankful . . . All of our flights (across two continents) were on time, our baggage always showed up, nothing was lost or stolen, we never needed to use our "traveler's diarrhea" medication or any of our insurance policies and we made it through multiple border crossings and checkpoints without incident. And all the people said, "Amen!"

We are also incredibly grateful for the huge-really-huge things . . . Safety in the Congo, where there are still active hostilities among militias and travel in the interior is challenging; the privilege of getting to know so many people whose work and faith requires significant and ongoing sacrifice—for them and their families; the impact of and receptivity to Lynne’s speaking, especially through translators and across cultures. For all these things and more, we say another heartfelt "Thank you!"

And I am also very grateful for your thoughts, emails and prayers while we were traveling. When far from home for a long time, reading news and notes from friends and family feels like opening presents; and I am certain it was your prayers that graced and smoothed our travels, relationships and experiences throughout.

This journey included so many things—adventure, privilege, grief, discernment, challenge, hilarity, inspiration—but if I could choose just one word to describe it, that word would be "gift." A mind-bogglingly huge and humbling gift.

It was so good to see the smiling face of my friend, Kris, who came to pick me up at the airport. Lynne was greeted at the airport by Henry (with a couple of adults in tow). It may say something about the intensity of our trip that Lynne’s first priority upon arriving home was a two-hour play date with Henry—and then twelve hours of sleep! We look forward to ongoing debriefing with each other this week, and Lynne will post additional stories and photos on her blog in the days to come.

Peace and blessings,
Christine

Bethlehem

When it comes to Israel/Palestine, the human story often gets lost in the confusion of ideology and politics. Let me just highlight the story of one woman, a wife and mother named Isme. Prior to October 12, 2009, Isme lived in a small but tidy one-story house in the outskirts of Jerusalem. But on that morning, while she drove her three young children to school, policemen broke into her home and demanded that her husband get out of bed and come outside. Isme returned home just in time to watch bulldozers destroy the house she had lived in for five years and everything in it. Israeli demolition of their home had been a constant possibility, because they did not have a permit to build the home--a common plight, since it is nearly impossible for Palestinians to acquire building permits. But the threat had not materialized until an unseasonably hot October morning two weeks ago.

This morning we met with Isme and her family in their new home, a white tent given to them by the Red Cross. Isme's 29-year-old husband is recovering from serious heart surgery, which is why he was home sleeping on the morning of the demolition. Her two little daughters have adjusted fairly well to living in the tent; they talk freely about the demolition, describing it in detail to their friends at school. But their 8-year-old brother holds his fear and frustration inside. Because of the stress he is unable to control his bowels, which humiliates him. He is becoming increasingly hostile and angry. And like many children in similar situations, he is feeling more and more vulnerable as he sees the inability of his parents to provide a safe and stable life for him.

Isme remained stoic until Christine embraced her, expressed her sorrow and promised to pray for her. Then she began to wipe the tears away from her eyes. We heard last night from a Palestinian friend that the family has now been threatened with eviction from their Red Cross tent; I don't think they knew that when we visited them in the morning. As with many things here, no one seems to know quite why they would be forced from the tent; the family owns the property on which it sits. The attached photos are prints the family showed us of before and after the demolition.

On a previous trip to Israel/Palestine I met Nora Kort, a feisty Palestinian Christian woman who has been serving poor Palestinians for decades. Nora recognized that many of her countrywomen were experts in traditional Palestinian needlework, but they had no outlet for their products. So Nora started a shop called Melia in the Old City of Jerusalem where she sells the needlework of over 500 women from poor villages throughout the West Bank—women who for the first time receive a fair, living wage for their hard work. The attached photos cannot fully capture the brilliant colors and excellent quality of the pillow covers, table runners, bags, and scarves that now have Christine’s and my suitcases bulging at the seams. I am now fully prepared to set up a little Palestinian gift shop in my home to further the empowerment of the beautiful, strong, hardworking women we’ve met.

Christine and I are heading downstairs for breakfast, our last meal in Jordan before heading across the Allenby Bridge into the West Bank. On Tuesday we met with Jordanian Christian friends who minister to Iraqi refugees, hundreds of thousands of undocumented men, women and children who cannot integrate fully into Jordanian life, yet cannot return home because of threats against their lives. It is a tragic microcosm of the plight of so many refugees throughout the world.

Yesterday we met with women, in a large gathering in a church and a small gathering in a home. In both places, I discovered again what I have discovered wherever I have traveled: that beneath the surface of their lives women everywhere are so similar. When I speak about my deepest struggles and dreams, heads nod in affirmation and conversations quickly dip to the level of soulful connections. I love it!

OK, time for a QUICK breakfast. Seems that I have been rushing for two weeks--but it's been well worth it!

The Stratgey of Jesus

Sunset overlooking the Dead Sea.

A Palestinian Refugee camp in Beirut.

Visiting Haigazian University in Beirut where Dr. B taught from 1967-1971.
He was their second president.

Last Thursday evening we left Kigali, Rwanda and headed for Beirut, Lebanon (via Addis Ababa). We landed in Beirut at 2am, expecting an empty airport, but discovered that many flights depart and arrive in the Middle East in the middle of the night. The airport was bustling! Our flight and journey through customs were uneventful, but when we arrived at our hotel at 3am we discovered that it was the wrong hotel. The hotel where we were booked had over-booked itself, so hotel staff made an "executive decision" just to take us somewhere else. Later in the day we moved to the right hotel, so all ended up as planned, but it was rather disconcerting to be "surprised" at 3am in a foreign country.

Our time has been more packed than I had anticipated--with people, conversations, and growing relationships. It has been amazing and wonderful, but has left little time for reflecting and writing. We're now in Amman, Jordan. This morning I'll be speaking to a women's group, and I have just an hour to prepare my talk; once again, I have little time to write. So I'm just going to attach a passage written many years ago by Elton Trueblood, called "The Strategy of Jesus." It is the guiding vision behind a ministry to Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. It is a beautiful expression of our calling as followers of Jesus.

The Strategy of Jesus
"There is no person in history who has impacted all of mankind more than Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was deeply concerned for the continuation of his redemptive, reconciling work after the close of his earthly existence, and his chosen method was the formation of a small band of committed friends. He did not form an army, establish a headquarters, or even write a book. What he did was to collect a few very common men and women, inspire them with the sense of his spirit and vision, and build their lives into an intensive fellowship of affection, worship, and work. One of the truly shocking passages of the gospel is that in which Jesus indicates that there is absolutely no substitute for the tiny, loving, caring, reconciling society. If this fails, he suggests, all is failure; there is no other way. He told the little bedraggled fellowship that they were actually the salt of the earth and that if this salt should fail there would be no adequate preservative at all. He was staking all on one throw. What we need is not intellectual theorizing or even preaching, but a demonstration. One of the most powerful ways of turning people’s loyalty to Christ is by loving others with the great love of God. We cannot revive faith by argument, but we might catch the imagination of puzzled men and women by an exhibition of a fellowship so intensely alive that every thoughtful person would be forced to respect it. If there should emerge in our day such a fellowship, wholly without artificiality and free from the dead hand of the past, it would be an exciting event of momentous importance. A society of genuine loving souls, set free from the self-seeking struggle for personal prestige and from all unreality, would be something unutterably priceless and powerful. A wise person would travel any distance to join it."

Loans for Life

Christine's photos tell the Congolese micro-enterprise story so beautifully that I just want to add a few words of introduction. Hekima, the World Relief micro-enterprise project empowers 11,000 Congolese people (mostly women) to earn a living through small businesses: selling items like rice, potatoes, cornmeal, fabric, shoes, even spare auto parts! Forming community groups of approximately 40 members, the women guarantee each other's loans and hold each other accountable for saving a portion of their weekly earnings. The women receive loans from $50 to $1000, based on their past business success and level of savings. Loans are made in 16-week cycles; if a woman repays her loan within 16 weeks and saves consistently, she receives a larger loan for the next cycle.

We visited one micro-enterprise group—the women named the group "Miracle"—on the day the new loan cycle began. The forty women (and one man!) met together in a local church building. As each woman's name was called she came forward, signed her loan contract with two group members as witnesses, and received her designated cash loan. It was one of the most beautiful ceremonies of empowerment I have ever witnessed.

That same day we visited another community group named "Courage." While I interviewed one of the women in the group—a widow whose family was completely transformed through the Hekima program—Christine took photos of each of the remaining women in the group. The next morning on Christine’s computer we enjoyed an extraordinary slide show of beautiful, laughing, light-hearted Congolese women. You can see a few of those photos here, but we'll post more in the future.

I wrote in earlier blogs about the prevalence of rape in the Congo. When we asked the women in these community groups how many women in the groups had been raped, they replied, "None. We have our trading businesses so we don't have to go out in the woods to collect wood where the rapists hide. Our business income allows us to stay safe."

Beirut

Yesterday in Beirut Christine and I visited the university where our friend, Dr. Gilbert Bilezikian, was president in 1967-1971. We spent the day with some of "Dr. Bs" friends from those years. They all spoke very highly of him which, of course, didn't surprise me in the least!

Today we will visit some humanitarian ministries as well as a Palestinian refugee camp. We got home too late last night for me to write about the Congolese micro-enterprise project as I had promised, but I'll do that tonight, along with an update about what we see and learn today.

Charlene's Story

On our second day in the DRC we visited a camp for Internally Displaced People — men, women and children who had to flee for their lives because of encroaching militias and violent warfare. Through a translator we talked with a woman named Charlene. Two years ago her husband, a civilian, was killed in the crossfire of the warring militias. After his death, Charlene and her eight children had to flee for their lives, traveling on foot toward the city of Goma.

Like hundreds of thousands of displaced Congolese, she ended up in a makeshift camp in a temporary tarp-covered shelter on a lava rock hillside. In these tiny, one-room "dwellings" entire families sleep side by side on the rocky ground. Each family is given a month's supply of food that actually lasts for little more than a day. Her three oldest sons—teenagers—left the hopelessness of the camp and joined the crowds of angry, desperate, violent street children who roam the city. Now Charlene grieves the disappearance of her older sons and cares for her younger children and her disabled mother.

In order to supplement their inadequate food supply, many women of the camp walk each day to the forest where they gather wood to sell. For many of these women the search for wood has become a sort of death march. Soldiers haunt the forest, waiting for the vulnerable women. "If the women refuse to sleep with them, they rape them," Charlene told us. "They want to make them pregnant." Charlene did not speak quietly. She spoke on behalf of her sisters who have been violated with the strength and volume of righteous anger. She told us that victims of rape are often stigmatized with shame in the Congo, so many married women refuse to tell their husbands they've been raped, fearing rejection and abandonment. But unmarried women confide in one another and take each other to the hospital to get treatment and form a community of support.

We were all reeling from Charlene's story, but with darkness approaching we knew we had to take our leave so we could get back to our hotel under the safety of daylight. After praying with Charlene, we left her, but just as we reached our cars, she hurried to catch up with us. This time she had a tiny, two-week-old baby snuggled in her arms—a beautiful baby boy—her baby boy. She had been speaking not only of other women's pain, but her pain as well. She, too, had been raped and impregnated. In showing me her baby, she told me the part of her story she had not put in words. I was stunned with the overwhelming tragedy of her life, compounded now with the emotional and physical trauma of rape, and with a newborn to care for—in a setting where day follows day, and the only thing that changes is that each day gets harder.

I was also stunned, however, with the beauty and holiness of the moment when our eyes met above the head of her tiny baby boy, and our embrace wrapped him in a full circle of mother love. It is always a powerful moment when women meet soul to soul.

I cried myself to sleep that night, grieved by the realization that I could do nothing to change life for Charlene. I could cry, I could tell her story, I could advocate for her cause. But tomorrow her life would be just the same. Then I woke up in the middle of the night, remembering why I had come to the DRC: to see the role churches are playing in the DRC. I can’t personally help Charlene—and that continues to break my heart—but the heroic Congolese church leaders and volunteers we met are helping many women like her find healing and hope for a new future, and in the days and weeks and months to come they will help Charlene. Charlene isn’t the only woman we talked with who was raped. In some rural communities, leaders advise women what to do when they are raped—not "if" they are raped, but "when." Truly, in many ways the DRC is the worst place on earth to be a woman.

But thankfully, that is not the whole story. Tomorrow I'll write about some women who are living out transformation and hope in a beautiful, uplifting, delightful way. You will love hearing their story. In the meantime, please pray for Charlene.

Our time in the DRC and Rwanda

Obviously I did not fulfill my good intentions of sending home detailed and lengthy blogs about my experiences in the DRC and Rwanda. But honestly, the combination of pace and emotional intensity left little energy or opportunity to write. I did take copious notes along the way, however, and will write more when I get home.

Let me just say that every bit of tragic news I read about the DRC ahead of time is true. Women don't talk about "if" they get raped, but about "when" they will get raped; it truly is the worse place on earth to be a woman. Thousands of people are still living in tent-camps for "internally displaced people." They had to flee their homes because of military and rebel violence and they don't know when they will be able to go home--or what will be left for them to return to. The exploitation of the Congo's vast resources of minerals continues, and fuels the ongoing violence. Time and again we heard the same refrain: We just need peace. If we had peace we could take care ourselves. Please pray for peace.

But there is hope in the DRC, and it's coming from one source: the church. We met extraordinary pastors and church volunteers who are truly "being the church" in their communities. With their very meager means they are caring for widows, for women who have been raped, for displaced people, for orphans....for anyone in need. In order to do this, they are crossing denominations and ethnic divides. And they are initiating grassroots peace-building initiatives. I wish I could write more, but our ride to the airport will be here shortly. Let me sum it up this way: I have fallen in love with the Congo.
(Photo by Christine Anderson)

Rwanda

We arrived in Kigali, Rwanda night before last in the pouring rain - no problem, since all we wanted to do was find our hotel rooms and get to sleep. Yesterday morning we met with World Relief Rwanda staff members to learn about the healing that has taken place in Rwanda since the devastation of the 1994 genocide, when 800,000 people were slaughtered in 100 days. They explained that the current situation in the DR Congo is similar to what Rwanda was like fifteen years ago. The transformation in Rwanda offers hope, they suggest, for the future of the Congo.

This afternoon we drove for several hours through the mountainous and breathtakingly beautiful terrain of Rwanda. The soil and rocky cliffs are red and the lush foliage is brilliant spring green. On the hillsides, terraced fields are patchworks of tidy crops. I hadn’t realized that Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa, but that becomes obvious even in the "rural" areas, where stands of brick or stucco homes are scattered everywhere, and people walk in clusters along every road. I am captivated by the boldly colored skirts, blouses, and head dresses worn by women and the royal blue school uniforms on girls. I knew if I tried to write while riding along the twisting roads I’d trigger motion sickness, so I just jotted down single words: turquoise, purple, yellow, magenta, palm trees, evergreens, terraced fields, winding roads, lush, vibrant, soul-filling.

It was exhilarating to drive through the beauty of this land. It was magical, the way the mist hung over the mountains and the gray sky provided a subtle backdrop for the brilliance of the earth and the people. It seemed like an idyllic paradise, except that I knew this land had flowed with the blood of innocents not that long ago. I am always stunned by the way nature's beauty can hide the ugliness of man's inhumanity to man. But in beauty of any kind there is the seed of hope for beauty of every kind. Here in Rwanda the ugliness of violence is being transformed into the beauty of healing and reconciliation.

I got up early this morning so I could walk along the shore of Lake Kivu before heading across the border into Congo. We'll meet with World Relief Congo staff to get an overview of the Congo situation. Then we'll visit Heal Africa, a hospital that heals the bodies and souls of women who have been brutalized (http://www.healafrica.org). In the afternoon we'll visit a camp for internally displaced people. God help me to see with your eyes and feel with your heart and understand with your mind.

We Are All Immigrants

Though I am in Africa right now, my thoughts have recently been filled with our country's need for immigration reform. Before I left, Bill and I worked on a joint statement for the Senate Hearing on Immigration Reform. Below is a link to a blog post I did for the Sojourners web site where you can read more.
http://blog.sojo.net/2009/10/08/scripture-and-history-remind-us-that-we-are-all-immigrants/

On my way to Africa

In eight hours, my friend, Christine Anderson and I will be joining a team from World Relief in Kigali, Rwanda, then driving across the border into the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Since 1998, five million Congolese have died in the most deadly conflict since World War II. But there’s more bad news. One major weapon of mass destruction used in this civil war has been rape: brutal, mutilating rape, of everyone from children to grandmothers. The DRC is truly the open wound of the world, and the worst place on earth to be a woman. And yet most of
us never even hear about it.

The purpose of our trip is to help raise awareness about the Congo by producing short video clips highlighting the plight of women, the role of the church in rebuilding a broken country, and current peacemaking effects. Christine and I and the World Relief team will be meeting with pastors and other leaders who are bringing the Light of Jesus into an extremely dark and evil situation. We’ll be meeting with women who have suffered unimaginably. Please pray that we will be fully present to each person, so that the Holy Spirit can work through us to comfort and encourage.

For years I said I was the ultimate "home body," but in recent years I have fallen in love with the process of entering new cultures as a learner and sister. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to take this trip.