The Road

It’s 8am and I climb into our Justice Rising truck and for the fifth time in a week we head out of the city to a nearby village where we’re building the next JR school.

The village is about 2 hours away on less than desirable roads. My body aches before the drive even begins, almost in anticipation for what’s coming and a final plea of “dear God, not again!” The road thrashes you on every turn, every bump. Though agonizing, I’ve become quite used to it and sometimes even pull out a book to make the journey feel quicker (a sight that makes some car sick just to see!). But without fail at the end of the journey, no matter how long or quick it feels, the pain in your neck and the queasiness in your stomach stay with you, sometimes for days.

Not only is the road rough by physical standards but by no means is it in the UN’s outlined  “safe zone” that they so kindly provide for the expats in the country. The route has been a target for bandits, abductions and minor outbreaks of war. Although I’m not sure if any outbreak of war is ever “minor.”

About an hour into our drive a barricade stops us. A few young boys, maybe in their early 20’s, hold up a string to stop cars from trying to pass. We roll down our window and they make their case, “Yesterday along the road violence erupted and our friend was shot and killed. The funeral is in two days, can you spare some money for his burial?”

Shot and killed? Yesterday? We were on the road yesterday.

At 6pm? We traveled at 5:30pm.

We are forever reminded that the war zone we live in makes exceptions for no one and our safety is a miracle, not to be taken for granted.

We carry on with our journey but not before whispering another prayer under our breath “Oh Jesus, keep us safe.”

Arriving in Kingi, the village cheers when they see us. This week we brought in a tractor to flatten our land and prepare to lay our school’s foundation. It’s on the top of a hill so we had to make the site even and pull out the random tree stumps. Due to the location, we also had to build a road to actually get to the site in the first place. This was VERY exciting for the village! The tractor gave them one of their first “major” roads and now every time we arrive they sing and dance saying “The wazungu has come! The wazungu has come! We’re so happy that the wazungu has come!”

(wazungu meaning --us)

They look at us and see development and hope; two things their war torn village has had very little of.

A population of 40,000 people lives here in mud or grass hut houses that cover three hills on the edge of Virunga National park. In this community about half the population are children and they have four schools to service the entire community. Four! That means that if every school could hold 5,000 then all the children would get the opportunity to go to school. However, most schools hold about 100-200 students and out of these four schools I know that at least one of them doesn’t have a full roof and holds only about 40 children and sends them home when it rains.

We’ve been to the village enough times to have friends that regularly greet us and we know on a first name basis.

Patrick is 20 years old and dropped out of school in the fourth grade. He told us when war came to his village he had to flee to Goma but lost everything in the process. When he and his family arrived in the city they didn’t have money for a new house and they took on the label “displaced”. The UNHCR gave them a tarp and they rounded up sticks from the nearby area to make a frame. In just a few hours their home was built, the size of their old bathroom and a little bit of change.  This became the residence for his entire family. They lived there for 10 years.

Last year he returned to his home village feeling like he was grown up and wanted to start building his life back where it started. But he has always regretted not getting a chance to go to school.

We hear story after story of how people missed out on their education.

“War came and I had to run,”

“I moved to an IDP (internally displaced persons) camp,”

“I was taken as a child soldier,”

“My family simply had no money,”

Whatever is the case, they now live with the dream of one day returning to be a student.

We finished surveying the land but unfortunately had issues with some soldiers nearby and weren’t able to move to the next phase of laying the foundations as we had hoped. So we push the work to Monday and tell everyone we’ll be back.

A long trip; very little success. One-step forward, two steps back.

Back in the car and my neck demands that I rub it a little before the journey starts again.

Down the mountain, two more hours, prayers go out for safety and the journey on the road begins again.

Untold Stories of Syria

The first night we arrived in Syria, I climbed into bed exhausted from travel and the emotions of the border crossing. No sooner had my head hit the pillow than I could hear the crashing of the bombs starting outside. Welcome to Syria. Sometimes it felt so close that my room would shake.

I debated for a second—do I get up? Or do I turn on music so I can go back to sleep? I left it at first and then decided with the latter—just something to drown out the explosions. This wasn’t my first rodeo. Many times in Congo, we’d often gone to bed to the sound of gunfire or with the knowledge that bandits had tried multiple times to enter our home just that night. It comes with the territory of working in war zones, I guess.

When I woke up in the morning, however, I assumed the bombs would have ended. I was wrong by a long shot. Our whole hotel shook with each crash as fighter jets now zoomed overhead dropping the bombs a little louder. A little closer.

“Don’t worry, Cassandra, don’t worry.” Our new friends told me with a little laugh over breakfast, “Don’t be afraid.” This was their normal. War raged just a few kilometers away and it has been this way for six years. “Ok, I’m not afraid, but when should I become worried?” I thought it was a fair question.

“We don’t know. We don’t know when they will strike. When a bomb comes and you feel it hit the house, that’s when it’s a concern. But we don’t know when that will be. So we keep living. All we know is that God is good. Even still. He is our protector.”

With this in mind, we packed up our things and we did indeed head out to carry on with life. It was my first time in Syria and everything was new. I felt like I had a million questions to ask and things to learn about. Before coming, I had assumed that so much of the country had been destroyed and that life had slowed almost to a halt. But now here we were with our new friends (who were hilarious and fun). Everywhere we looked, people continued to go out for dinner and picnics and, in the midst of ongoing conflict, had stories of so much hope and resilience.

After leaving the hotel we started making house visits. I wanted to see it for myself, I wanted to hear the stories and meet the families that, until now, I’d only heard about secondhand.

We started with coffee and cookies (that, as it turns out, are Syrian staples), and met with family after family who had lived through the war.

One of the most impactful days was when we got to sit with a headmaster from Aleppo who drove down to meet with us. He’d heard that we build schools in war zones, and he wanted to discuss education projects. He had started a school through his church years before the war began, but when the conflict escalated, his school was destroyed. He reached out with his stories as if we were his last lifeline. His students were traumatized, his best teachers had fled as refugees, money was hard to come by, and each day, they weren’t sure if it would be their last. But in the face of an uphill battle, he knew he couldn’t quit. So he rebuilt.

“It wasn’t easy,” he told us. “After the war everything was damaged in a critical way. All the furniture was stolen. We had nothing. But we knew the power of education. That is the greatest tool to end terrorism is to build schools. So we restarted and opened up our classes. We are growing a generation that knows what the word ‘love’ means.”

It felt like he spoke the exact words on my heart. This man had given everything to stand for peace.

“A bomb crashed into my neighbor’s home one night,” he told us. “It was so close we couldn’t tell at first if we were also hit. My son ran and came into our room and I just held him. ‘Can we please leave? Can we please live like refugees somewhere else, anywhere else?’ he asked me. I told him we were called here to help those who have no other choice than to stay. Every night, he still comes into my room and I hold him until he falls asleep.”

Every house we visited we seemed to find individuals who were rising up in the midst of conflict, having a stare down with war and coming out with an attitude that said, “I’m not a victim to this situation, but an architect of it.” *

We stayed in Damascus, and there we met a group of women being a bright light in the midst of a dark storm. At a time when many fled the country, these women remained. Some of them had tried to get refugee status and were denied. Others just weren’t ready to leave. “We would rather die in our home country, than live somewhere else.”

And so in the face of difficult circumstances, these women banned together and would find some of the poorest, most desperate families and do whatever they could to support them.

“We all need each other. Every day, we take what we can and try and help someone who needs it more than we do. Whether that be food, clothes or assistance to get work. Many times we don’t have enough, but God provides. We have received aid from other NGO’s and people that care, they have helped us expand what we do.”

Every day, I was so humbled by the families we met. It’s like we were given a tour of heroes of our time, believing for the restoration of their country. Living the kind of love that lays its life down for others.

“I stay and teach because my country needs me,” said Sarah, a primary school teacher, who told us how she’d stayed this long. “Why leave now? I meet students every day who are traumatized. They are fine one day and the next there is bombing on their street and they need someone to help them through the difficulties.”

When we think of Syria, may we not just think of the war and violence but may these be the stories that remain on our minds. The resilience and courage of the people living everyday finding hope, peace, and standing with one another.

*Quote from Simon Sinek

The Journey of Processing War

Some days I try to slow down as much as possible.

I pause. I sit in silence. And I go over war stories trying to see how they’re influencing my perspective on life.

This is probably a strange thing for a day off but something I’ve become accustomed to while living the life that we do.

Every event in our lives has a way of tinting the filters through which we see the world. Sometimes it’s for the better, to see the best in humanity and development,  and sometimes… simply put, it’s not.

I remember driving through Iraq a few weeks ago and local friends pointed out the window, “Over there we used to have a factory; over there as well—because of the war though, they are destroyed. Over here are the remains of an ISIS base… same with here on the left.”

Empty buildings lay in ruins, telling the story of destruction. I closed my eyes for a second remembering a similar experience in Congo, driving through the jungle, grasses taller than our car, “…a village used to be here. Before the war we had many people living along this road.”

From one corner of the world to another, war leaves its mark. And why am I searching for it? For a moment it was like I was having an out of body experience watching this blonde girl, a long way from LA, driving towards an ISIS held city. What was I doing?

 The silence is rarely without noise. Sitting in Congo I hear drums in the distant, my dog freaking out at a stranger passing by... but it’s quiet enough to hear the hard thoughts.

Have I fully felt Syria? Have I fully gone through the stories? And now coming to Congo, the poverty and war, feeling just as bad if not almost worse at times.  Am I self-protecting so it doesn’t hurt as badly? At the end of the day, what are the thoughts I’m left thinking and why?

My greatest fear circles around again, “If I fully feel it, then what if I can’t fix it?”

Sounds silly when I say it. Of course I can’t fix it. I’m not expected to.

But in the midst of ongoing war, if I feel it enough for it to break my heart, and the sounds of the cracking and shattering from within me makes its way back to the west, back to the churches in America, what then if nobody answers?

Everyone is called to love. And we can’t judge what someone else’s expression of love looks like.

But sometimes I wonder. Would we love louder if we stopped long enough to feel it a little greater?

What if we had all met the child who tried to play soccer in the schoolyard in Syria only to find the ball wasn’t a ball after all but someone’s head, now missing it’s body,  that had been left in the playground.  

Would we be quicker to lower our walls and build a bigger table if every night we also went to sleep listening to the explosions of bombs and wondering if they would crash on OUR children and not just on theirs?

My heart struggles to pull out the files of fear stored in the cabinets of my mind and lay them at the feet of Jesus.

I’m not the savior. You are. You felt it first. It was the breaking of YOUR heart, the shattering and the cracking that YOU experienced that called me to war zones in the first place.

I’m simply responding to  the love that I saw in You first and then trying to reflect that love back to the world around me.

Sometimes poorly; sometimes really poorly.

But it’s not my job to fix it. It’s my job to feel it. Because You do. And then respond in love. Because that’s what You did.

Love is so messy; so uncomfortable and so costly.

But it calls to us. Deep calling unto deep. To fill up and be poured out.

Love sees all things and hopes all things, believes all things.

That means it sees murders, the mass murders, yet still believes in the goodness of humanity because we have a good God. A perfect God. Whose love trumps evil, every single time.

So what does the silence reveal? A bizarre excitement.  Even if our filters become soiled with the experiences of life, His goodness still washes it clean.

Even though we can give everything, laying out our lives until we have nothing left to give, His response will always be to give back and to give more than we even thought we had the capacity to hold.

So in the silence, I’ll feel it,  sometimes fearless and sometimes through my fear. Because I’m called to reflect the Son and that’s what He did first.

(If you're interested in joining the journey, check out www.justicerising.org and sign up for our newsletter, host an impact dinner or become a monthly donor. Annnnd, be watching for the next blog coming next week) 

Girl Boss. Period.

In Congo, women and girls show all new meaning to the word “strength.” They work non-stop—cooking, cleaning, and child rearing—all without electricity or running water! They also have very limited access to basic amenities like soap, lack variety in their cooking or diet, and are without other basic household items.

They are my heroes.

So do you ever wonder, in the middle of the jungle, what girls do while they’re on their period? They can’t just run to the store and pick up a pack of tampons.

As a part of our WaSH program, we train girls and women how to stay clean and safe during their monthly cycle.

This month, I loved getting to sit in on the training. Here are some golden moments from our trainees during the lessons:

"When you look down and you see your period for the first time, you can be proud! You can say—‘I am a woman. I am courageous. I can carry children!’ Having your period is not a shameful thing. Talking about your period is not a shameful thing. You must be proud of who you are!”

It’s estimated that one in ten girls miss school because of their period. By some estimates, this equals as much as twenty percent of a given school year. (UNESCO / World Bank)

"See, you must be courageous as a woman. Courageous and clean. You are so special with all the things your body can do. You must make sure to take care of it. Make your pads and don't let it hold you back. Don't let it keep you out of school."

Instead of instructing our girls to buy pads, which are expensive and often hard to find in the villages, our trainers teach them how to make their own pads out of things they can find in the market.

It usually involves a small, inexpensive piece of mattress/sponge-like material, fabric, and string to sew with. They make their own reusable pad out of a pattern we give them. During the lesson we also give them everything they need to make their first pad, including needle and thread!

"Water is your best friend when you have your period. What's your best friend?”

 “Water."

This was stressed many times throughout the training. Many girls don’t know how to properly clean themselves during their cycles, either. It’s usually shameful to discuss, so women don’t talk to each other about it. They don’t talk about it with their daughters, and when their cycle arrive, they just stay home and wait until it passes.

“Now that you know how to make your pads, you can wear it knowing you are protected! You can go to school. You can go to the fields. There is no need to miss anything! If you ever need help, you can courageously talk to your female teachers, or other girls in this group—we are all in this together!”

It was actually really incredible watching our team work. They crossed into culturally uncharted territories, and every girl in the class loved it, and hung on every word they said.

In Congo, it’s also very difficult to go to school if you are girl, and there is a clear discrepancy when it comes to literacy education. The literacy rate for girls sits at just 50%, while the literacy rate for boys in the DRC is nearly 80%. Teaching girls about something as simple as how to take care of their bodies while on their periods can help keep girls in school throughout the year and lowers dropout rates as they grow older.

At the end of the women’s health and safety classes, we also gave each participant a new pair of underwear, and a package of Kotex with instructions for how to use them. In our group for child mothers, many had never been taught this before. Some girls already had one, two or even three children, and yet, they had never previously discussed their periods or basic care and hygiene during their cycle!

We are so proud of our team’s boldness and the work they continue to do with respects to women’s health and girls’ education. Period.

The small moments I forget to share

I was walking with one of our Freedom boys today, a boy we’ve been working with him for 4 years now.  Well, I guess he’s no longer a boy but an incredible young man in his early twenties now.  This year I get the privilege of seeing him graduate from high school. (A feat that only 35% of boys in Congo accomplish.)

As we were walking to get lunch, a classic plate of beans and potatoes, I started asking about his dreams. I knew he’s wanted to be a psychologist for years, but I was trying to get him to dig deeper. 

"What was the moment you started dreaming for this? How did the events of your life transform from a cycle of war and poverty? Can you remember the time when things began to change?" 

A boy after my own heart, he started talking about education. “I’ve seen boys my age with my kind of background who have not had the opportunities I did. Most of them steal, sometimes because of need, sometimes because of sport. They eat to survive; they work to survive; they wake up and sometimes just hope they survive. They don’t have dreams past that point.” 

“But educated youth are different. They don’t desire the same things as others. They don’t desire the army like the others do.  They have a vision for their life and want to accomplish that vision”

 At this point I was fully beaming with pride over the man he’s become, but he doesn’t stop there,

“I want to be a psychologist because I see that my country is hurting. They are traumatized but they don’t have to stay that way.”

 Our boys amaze me, constantly. The stories they tell and the dreams they have.

 A small conversation but I just had to share. 

Sometimes life in Congo is so challenging but convos like this and the laughter over lunch and I would take every hard thing again if it meant I got to see more lives like his changed.

The Why and the Now

Annnnd we’re back. We crossed the border, had just a few hiccups (as in two confiscated passports, a wild goose chase to recover the passports, a canceled visa and in the end, two new visas… to say the least) Either way though, it’s so good to be back!

Over the last year it’s been such a journey that builds up to this moment. We took a step back from full time Congo life to focus on our foundations both as a newly married couple and still as a new organization. Creating something that lasts isn’t something that happens overnight. This I’m learning. It’s a deep work building foundations and structures. It’s a lot of boring work at times, often not the glamorous stories that we share from a stage, but it’s what moves you from lasting a few years to lasting several decades.

Over the last little while we’ve been developing strategy for how to use education in a way that literally changes culture and raises up agents of change that can implement structures of peace.

Rather than planting schools at whim, we strategize to maximize our impact.

We’ve been sitting with papa God and dreaming with heaven and we’ve been sitting at our computer, pouring over research.

UNESCO statistic says “Doubling secondary student enrollment from 30% to 60% has the potential to half the risk of conflict.”

(Ummm, right!?)

So in this next season we’re excited to be building! We see education as a profound tool to see transformation in communities.

Primary Education.

Secondary Education.

Mentoring.

Discipleship.

Health classes.

Family and parenting workshops.

Education is so much more than just learning to read and write. Education is teaching a new way of thinking. To come out of war and poverty, we need to see some shifts in mindsets and behavior patterns.

On our last quick trip to Congo, we ran into various security problems. “Cassandra, there have been more abductions in the recent month than ever before.” My Congolese team shared. They went on to explain the increased dangers and the risks, more than we’ve seen before, that we would have to overcome to complete our work.

We weighed the risks but like always, we tucked ourselves in the arms of our God and pressed forward into the unknown as we know risks are so worth it if we get to see even a handful more people experience peace and the presence of God.

On the road to the village we found ourselves “just missing” raids time and time again. The last time we were almost to safety when we were stopped on the road. A group of people were gathered, they said a raid was happening as we spoke and they had just managed to escape. After talking for a while, we climbed in the car and sped off. No more than 2 minutes and we were stopped again. This time by a man waving an AK-47 in the air. “STOP! A raid is happening right now! You cannot go forward. So many soldiers. They outnumber you too much!”

With only a second of hesitation, our driver threw the car into reverse and sped off in the opposite direction. We had nowhere to go though. The only way out was forward. Through the army of soldiers.

We stopped and started to pray. Switching from a mindset of defense to offense. “If we meet these soldiers, then they will meet Jesus!” Standing firmly on the scripture “Greater is he that is in me than he than is in the world.” He is our rock.

After waiting maybe 10 minutes we pressed forward full of faith and thankfully, didn’t encounter any more malicious activity on the road.

We have a handful of “close call” stories, but for those who live there, this is their norm. Rape is a common occurrence among women, raids that pillage entire communities have become the usual.

With saying that, I’m more motivated now than ever that the time to act is now.

As we press on in implementing some of our developing strategy, we’ve begun construction on our newest secondary school and are already dreaming for the next! As we do, we would love to give you the opportunity to join our ROOTS Community. It’s one of the incredible things we’ve developed this year, a growing network of individuals who want to stand for peace and transformation now able to follow the journey a little closer.

ROOTS partners give monthly and in return get an exclusive inside look on what we’re up to, get free Justice Rising swag and an opportunity to travel to see the students you’re impacting!  Sign up here!

Thanks everyone for following our journey! This blog has gone from solely my blog to now Edison’s and my blog. Excited to post a thing or two from the husband in the coming months as well!

Not all who wander are lost

Over a month back in Congo! Officially. And what an incredible gift every day has been. Except for maybe last night when I violently threw up for almost 5 hours…

Thank God for rock star roommates who cleaned up my puke bucket every 20 minutes with the little bit of water we had left over. They make my life wonderful!

We just got back from an AMAZING trip to a village called Beni. If you see my previous post, I talk about the attacks and the slaughter happening in this region.

We’ve never worked there before, but Justice Rising is constantly seeking out the hardest places, with the worst war and greatest conflict.

So when we heard about the injustice last year, we started monitoring it and asking questions. Now as the raids still occur with no real let up to the killings (some even 3 nights before we arrived) we felt like it just made sense to respond.

During our time we sat with seven appointed leaders who will be our point people and mentors to our new projects. Our team has known them and trusts them with our lives. Those seven then went out and gathered some of the worst cases they knew and our team had the incredible privilege to sit with and do “Story telling” (see projects) with over a dozen individuals.

Our first story was a mama. Now, it’s been a while since I was fully in “counseling” mode and I think I was taken off guard. She had the most beautiful baby girl and as I looked into their eyes, immediately noticed severe signs of malnutrition.

As she started talking she spoke of her husband and how they use to live in a small house with a large piece of land that they would farm. They had one child and were pregnant with their second. As the rebels started to invade their village they fled, but as they were running realized that they had no food and if they were hiding in the jungle for a while, they would need provisions. She ducked down in the grass and her husband returned from some supplies. Unfortunately, it was then that he was captured and the nightmare unfolded.

She went on about his death and how they tied him up. She heard each time the machete chopped at his body and recounted his cry and how she’ll never forget the screams he made has he was hacked to death.

I was anything but professional as her story went on.

Eight months pregnant she and her toddler ran delirious for four hours to the main road.

Images of the blood that soaked her husbands body still imprinted in her mind.

The more I tried to talk, the more tears rolled down my cheeks.

I kept hearing the scripture “pure religion is this… take care of the orphan and the widow”

I imagined my husband and how I couldn’t begin to think what I would do if something happened to him.

She went on to say how she settled in the city but had no money to care for her kids.

Every week she waits outside of a shop that grinds palm oil seeds. As the machine grinds the seeds into oil, she collects the loose seeds from the ground and saves them. She says at the end of the week if she collects enough to mash into oil, she sells it herself for about $3 and buys whatever food she can.

I tried to encourage her. I tried to tell her that her husband would be so proud of how she delivered that baby by herself in a strange town and how beautiful he would think his new little girl was.

I wanted to say how amazing it was that she walked 4 hours to safety after such a horrific death.

To tell her what an amazing mother she was to work so hard to feed her girls.

The fact that she wakes up everyday and gets out of bed with sun and simply carrys on, is amazing enough.

But I couldn’t. I just gave a weak smile and told her how sorry I was she had to go through that. Tears rolling down my cheeks I bit my lip hard so I wouldn’t break out into a blubbering sob.

They say you shouldn’t cry (or in my case weep) during sessions or people won’t feel like you’re strong enough to handle their stories. You want to make them feel safe and like they can be free to open up without having to worry if they need to be comforting you.

I bit my lip harder and whispered out a prayer.

The next story I did a little better, as was the story after. After a while I was nervous I would bit right through that lower lip of mine but I felt like I was at least of better use to the women and girls that sat before us.

Yes, girls. I lost it again as we chatted with a young orphan that had to identify the chopped up bodies of both of her parents.

The entire time my heart felt like it was being ripped in pieces. I understand why God tried to emphasize “PURE RELIGION guys! This is it!!” He sees every mama who runs from the machete. Every wife who watched her husband be killed. Every child who walked mile after mile all alone.

What a stunning father to highlight them and say “These ones to me, are where it’s at. To care for these ones is what sums up the gospel”

I could go on forever but this is getting long.  I’ll share more later about the job opportunities that we’ve created and how that side of life is planning on growing.

Just know, the next post ends well. Really well.