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.

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) 

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!

The Process of Moving Stories

I’m back! Sitting in my very white apartment with ceilings that touch the sky, at the moment I'm amazed that they never end.

I got back and have been so enjoying every minute with my husband. I don’t think I realized just how hard it was being away from him until we’re now back together again. Amazing how crazy you can be about someone —he’s a pretty incredible human.

I knew I wanted to blog right when I returned so it would be fresh. The stories and moments I heard, I didn’t want them to be forgotten. So many of the things happening in Congo go unshared to the world at large, my jaw is still skimming the floor as I think about the horror.

One of my biggest wrestles right now as I sit with the stories from our dear friends who have suffered so greatly from the massacres in Congo is— 

“Where is everybody?”

Why is nothing being done to end this?

Sometimes the stories of war can go to your head. You feel like you’re the only one carrying them and you carry them constantly. Everything you say and do reminds you of one of their faces.

This morning as I pour cold water on my 3 minute soft boiled eggs, I paused at how absolutely blessed I am. Food and water at my finger tips and I thought back to a common story we would ask during our sessions—

“How often do you get to eat?”

The malnourished toddlers playing around our feet as we discussed, still a fresh memory in my mind.

“Maybe 3 or 4 days a week I’ll find food,” 

The most frequent answer we heard.

The other day I sat at the feet of Jesus and brought him the stories of war. A very very regular thing for us and one that I’ve shared about in blogs in the past.

The process of moving the stories from your head to his feet. “Letting go” and not trying to play the role of God by carrying pain alone.

Some of the hardest stories for me has still been the women who lost their husbands. Worse yet, how they heard or saw them being slaughtered. Many had to identify their soulmates bodies who, after being chopped into pieces, were put back together by the mortician in order to be recognized. 

The distant look in the women’s eyes as they shared a little of what that felt like. My heart still aches as I remember them recalling the flashbacks of the images of the bodies that haunt them in their sleep.

In a sea of tears and tissues I lay them before my God one at a time. The anger is not mine to carry. The pain not mine to hold on to. It’s there I see a picture my God holding them. First he comforts the mamas. The widows. From children lost and husbands lost. The hearts that so desperately need mending.

From there I see what I can only imagine as the victims of the massacres. The men that were described to me over and over again. The father’s that won’t see their children anymore, the sons that can no longer take care of their mothers. And I saw them with my papa God. Smiling and celebrating in a place where pain and sorrow are no more. 

The beauty of heaven overtakes them. And my heart finds relief.

Our God who takes care of the orphan and the widow. It’s as if I knew in that moment, not only could those men rejoice because they saw the full goodness of our papa, but also because they knew that that good God was so faithful to watch over their families. 

The more war I see, I feel like my heart gets pulled in to God. Though I do often stay with questions, I feel like rather the more I fall in love with my good good father. 

I believe that often we can learn more about the goodness of God in the midst of sorrow than in the midst of joy. You get to feel first hand how his love can carry you when you can’t get up on your own. You see that when pain feels so great, his hope is even greater. The fact that there’s any hope sometimes is a miracle as I think back to the long pauses between some stories, as if the vivid memory of the machete stays at the forefront of their minds.

My biggest pondering of late is “how can I do more?”  

For the direct victims of the most recent war, we funded those individuals to start small businesses and feed their families. As we shared the news with them on a patch of grass that we called our “office”, they instantly broke out in cheering and one woman threw herself to the grass and kicked her legs in the air, laughing like a giddy school girl.

Hugs were given all around as we took names and went over protocols and procedures. Thank you so much to everyone who gave and made their jobs possible. Their squeals and meals are because of your generosity. 

If you’re interested in being a part of their story, you still can! I know I often read blogs of the raw realities and I get frustrated if there’s no outlet for me to help. 

Please know that by giving on the website you’ll be receipted and become a part of the beautiful process of rebuilding war affected nations.

(http://www.justicerising.org/donate/)

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.

The Whisper of Silence

I sat with a woman yesterday who due to the trauma of rape, was nearly mute.

She’d reply quietly when I asked her basic things but mostly, her lips remained tightly sealed as we sat on the edge of a plastic covered bed at a hospital here in Congo.

I leaned forward to grab her hand and as the mattress crinkled below me, the woman next to her whispered that the girl was from Beni.

Unfortunately, that makes sense.

Beni is an area just north from where we are in Eastern Congo. A trader’s city parallel to Uganda.

There was very little I could understand from her. She was raped. How, where, when, I don’t really know. Her fistula was torn, a tear that only occurs during violent sexual assault or traumatic prolonged labor. I know she comes from Beni, whether her family is alive, I don’t know. How she got down to Goma, I don’t know. Whether she wants to go back home… I don’t know.

Beni right now is a target of repeated conflict and violent attacks. They estimate roughly 30 people every week are being slaughtered, hacked to death by machetes.

The more I heard the stories the more everything stirred inside of me that we had to do something.

Arriving back in Congo, our Pastor was returning from two funerals up in the area and flew in the same day we did. The stories were fresh on his mind and my heart was eager to hear.

He uncovered layers to the conflict that helped me slightly comprehend the silence from our dear one in the hospital.

“I met many who were raped in Beni. A whole group of them meeting together. Rebels came to their family’s fields as they worked the farm. They killed their whole family with the blows of a machete. To the neck, to the chest. Not even babies less than a year old were spared. They killed everyone, except these women. The women, after witnessing the atrocities, were then raped. Just when they thought the nightmare was almost over, the soldier would ask for a drink, and then dinner. Through the pain, through the horror, the women were forced to prepare a meal for the rebels to eat.”

My heart aches.

I sit in the dark with my computer on my lap, my housemates in bed and I breathe in the breath of my papa God.

A week back in Africa and we’ve had a mini roller coaster ride of emotions. We’ve heard so many war stories on so many levels. The group of women that our head Congolese director met are still meeting but are in need of something more. Counseling? Jobs?

I think of the eyes of the woman in the hospital. I think of the crackling plastic and how it was the loudest noise that she made.

I was born into such privilege. I am a woman, yet I have a voice. I have rights.

My brain has been on overdrive with so many thoughts about the rapes and the beheadings I could go in so many directions at this stage but instead, for this post I’ll turn back to my papa. It feels like the stories have landed in my heart but not bruised it like they do so often.

It feels like I’m safely tucked in the heart of God as I go from injustice to injustice, feeling the pain but then giving it back to Jesus to bear. I try to use it as fuel for the future and my return to the west (end of July) rather than let it shift to anger or a hardened spirit.

Processing injustice is always a journey of “passing through the valley” but never remaining there. May the women of Beni, those the direct target of such horrific violations, also pass through that valley and find Jesus and hope and laughter in the midst and on the other side.

Thank you for following my journey. We’re posting every Tuesday on our Justice Rising blog if you’re interested in different voices sharing with different topics from our work in war zones. It’s more project focused than emotions focused I’d say. ;)