I’m speechless. Without words to voice I’ll let my fingers do the talking.
Just a week back in Congo and I feel a bizarre combination of emotions.
This “horse chomping at the bit” of possibilities. I’ve been away for so long that every mouth that comes to me hungry, I’m determine to feed. It’s that feeling where nothing seems hopeless, nothing seems too much. We. Can. Reach. Them. All!
And then there’s this other emotion, a holy “step back”. Everyone is hungry. It’s strange to be back living in a world where everyone is starving. And to step back and say, ok papa. What’s your plan? What’s the strategy for today? Teach a man to fish, or give him my lunch?
We hadn’t even reached the border and in anticipation I was on the bus texting my fiancé saying “I want to have 300 kids in a feeding program by September. Any ideas how we can fund it?” For the man I left attempting to plan our wedding on a dime…. haha... Oh I love him. ;)
I feel so hopeful. I’ve been furiously pouring through Martin Luther King Jr.’s biography and I’m constantly wrecked. (Thanks Lance Jacobs!)
I started fighting back tears when Rosa Parks hit the pages and I haven’t stopped.
Her refusal to comply with the standard of the day. Uh. Amazing. Tired of the abuse and injustice black people were suffering everyday, it seemed she just didn’t have the energy to give in to the system any longer.
As MLKJ put it [that we’d] “be saved from patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice”
My heart might explode. To my generation born in the west! With dreams for days … I pray that we would continually tire of giving into the routine of acceptance and rebel against the comforts that cause us to forget the poor.
Comforts. I’m not saying that the world should live without running water or the electricity that fuels are tea kettles and coffee pots. Oh no, no, no! Everyday when the freezing water of my bucket shower hits my body, I remember how thankful I am for technology. But rather, that we wouldn’t be bound by it. Slaves to four walls that keep us “safe” and the distractions that allow us to live forgetting that to love on Jesus, is to love on the poor. (Matt 25
Being back my heart fills with a joy that overtakes me. War has settled down here in Congo and for the first time in… a couple years, we’re able to look at construction and planting in a different light. “Our kids won’t sleep in the jungle tonight, we should set up a new play station for them while they’re at school!”
It’s exciting! In the midst of it, our Leadership League is going strong in the bush.
No longer child soldiers, we wooed some boys into our world with a soccer ball last fall. Six months later and their lives have been rocked and I’m blown away by the stories of their ongoing transformation. So, now what? What are our next steps for these young men?
Well, I’m destroyed by MLKJ and researching more of his “non-violent love movement”. What we’re dreaming for isn’t anything new. How do we raise up a generation that loves so well that it stops war for generations to come???
Uhhhhhh. Can you imagine!? Congo’s decades of ruthless war, now put to a stop by kids who love much?
So this fall, we’re taking our Leadership League to the next level and starting one of our Excellence Rising School, specifically catered to dozens of young men who’ve come out of the army.
This is actually just my teaser and more details will be coming! We’re needing more desks, paint, little bit of cement to finish classrooms and more books and then we’re ready to go!
If you want to get involved you can give online. We’re also going to hopefully be launching our summer Peace Movement Campaign coming soon!! All proceeds will go into the school for ex-child soldiers. :)