Ignorance Keeps Us Innocent

Daniel’s thoughts on the 1993 Burundi geneocide:

One epic event forever set in stone. There is no escaping the reality. No one can forget. No one will forget. Now haunting never ending horror. Cruel, miserable, torment encased in time living on in the wildest fears. Living in darkness only waiting till the day history repeats. The Cycle of Life continues without hope. They cry out to us. They beg us. They plead with us. Wailing mothers. Dead fathers. Children’s bodies fill the streets. This is just the beginning. Crushed spirits, destroyed minds only the body lives on in agony. Hear the crying orphans, the screams of women raped, the suffering husband helpless. All dignity has abandoned them. All trust is dead like lost loved ones. All love is lost in ash.

Will we every truly understand...

The African Journey - A Photo Journal

The team from Houston, Louisiana, and England

"It's the song of the redeemed, Rising from the African plain..."

Hanging out with Wallace and Joseph

Camp was at the Pan African Christian University in Kenya

Dennis was in Daniel's small group

Good news bringers: beginning with tennis shoe - Gabe, Mary, Samantha, Josh, Daniel, Josiah, Melanie, Blake

Street kids receive their first Bible

Night on Lake Tanganyika

Diana was a mentor for the campers

Providing shade for the children

Samantha has served God for the last three summers in Africa...

...and she served the girls by painting their toes

There was worship and teaching time with the women of Burundi

The Project Center gives young widows training

Crafts made from the heartwood of the D. Crassiflora tree

Josiah and Wallace

Angel lives up to her name and believes that everyday she fights for the children in the slums

A final stop in Amsterdam on the way home

Never Safe To Assume

I don't know his name, but there are dozens like him around the city. Night falls and he starts work at the traffic light with gasoline in a 1 liter coke bottle. Match in hand he pours some gasoline into his mouth, lights the match and blows, sending out a flame like a fire breathing dragon. This is repeated three or four times before he weaves between cars collecting change. I wonder if he uses the money for drugs, if cancer is forming in his mouth and if someday there will be a horrible accident. As he approaches my van I smell the fumes, see the red cheeks and his distant gaze. I have a few short seconds to do something....if I'm going to do anything at all. I hand him $3 pesos (25 cents), a coin inscribed with John 3:16, and a gospel tract. "Do you have hope? This is hope!” I say. The light turns and I drive off into the night……..assuming the worst.

Of course all my assumptions could be wrong about this guy. As I recall when I first met Carlos washing windows at the traffic light, I assumed that he was trying to make some extra pesos to have a few beers with his friends. To my embarrassment I learned later he was working to support his wife and one year old daughter whom we met a few months later.

Then too I am reminded of this assumption danger from Phil Yancey in his book, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference. In it he writes of an encounter he and his wife had in Nepal:

“I have seen evidence of God’s presence in the most unexpected places. During our trip to Nepal, a physical therapist gave my wife and me a tour of the Green Pastures Hospital, which specializes in leprosy rehabilitation. As we walked along an outdoor corridor, I noticed in a courtyard one of the ugliest human beings I have ever seen. Her hands were bandaged in gauze, she had deformed stumps where most people have feet, and her face showed the worst ravages of that cruel disease. Her nose had shrunken away so that, looking at her, I could see into her sinus cavity. Her eyes, mottled and cover with callus, let in no light; she was totally blind. Scars covered patches of skin on her arms.

“We toured a unit of the hospital and returned along the same corridor. In the meantime this creature had crawled across the courtyard to the very edge of the walkway, pulling herself along the ground by planting her elbows and dragging her body like a wounded animal. I’m ashamed to say my first thought was, She’s a beggar and she wants money. My wife, who has worked among the down-and-out, had a much more holy reaction. Without hesitation she bent down to the woman and put her arm around her. The old woman rested her head against Janet’s shoulder and began singing a song in Nepali, a tune that we all instantly recognized: ‘Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.’

“‘Dahnmaya is one of our most devoted church members,’ the physical therapist later told us. ‘Most patients are Hindus, but we have a little Christian chapel here, and Dahnmaya comes every time the door opens. She’s a prayer warrior. She loves to greet and welcome every visitor who comes to Green Pastures, and no doubt she heard us talking as we walked along the corridor.’

“A few months later we heard that Dahnmaya had died. Close to my desk I keep a photo that I snapped just as she was singing to Janet. Whenever I feel polluted by the beauty-obsessed celebrity culture we live in – a culture in which people pay exorbitant sums…to achieve some impossible ideal of beauty while nine thousand people die each day from AIDS for lack of treatment and hospitals like Green Pastures scrape by on charity crumbs – I pull out that photo. I see two beautiful women: my wife, smiling sweetly, wearing a brightly colored Nepali outfit she had bought the day before, holding in her arms an old crone who would flunk any beauty test ever devised except the one that matters most. Out of that deformed, hollow shell of a body, the light of God’s presence shines out. The Holy Spirit found a home.”

The Discovery Of Beauty

Recently Diana and I went to the Italian Coffee Company for a lazy Sunday afternoon cappuccino and conversation. We talked about our shortcomings, about love without expectations and how to avoid living lives of criticalness, among other things. It was a very surface and shallow conversation.

On the the way out Diana made on off-handed remark about how pretty some flowers were that we were walking past. For some reason in that moment I felt struck with a burst of inspiration. Beauty, art, creation - our lives have been devoid of it for a long time. We have walked in a wilderness of gray and have been beauty starved to the detriment of our souls. I said to Diana, "We need to make it a point to be enjoying beautiful things together."

That led us into conversation on the drive home and to a new way to perceive our world. We realized that when we surround ourselves with beauty and soak it in we give our souls a chance to rise above the mundane, trivial and the gray. Seeing beautiful things lets us consciously and sub-consciously, remind ourselves of Wonder, of Perfection, of Good, of our Creator. And in those moments our souls are being renewed and refreshed as we brush up against the Fountain of Beauty (check out Psalm 27:4).

As we reached home and sat in the driveway we talked about forms that beauty take for us - nature, art, music, photography, poetry. We talked about how barren our lives have been and how we want to take walks to enjoy the autumn colors, a fresh snowfall, and the scenery on our travels.

Then we drove out to the end our our road, got out, and lingered over Mount Popo and the sunset sky. The next day we went to a local nursery to purchase some plants and flowers for our home. But the first few minutes was reserved for a stroll together just to enjoy, to appreciate the colors and to feel the tranquility of the garden. We didn't necessarily think about it, but the touch of the Creator was upon us as we discovered beauty.

Too Late To Say Goodbye

Posted by Daniel the day before leaving for Africa:

So maybe Hotel Rwanda wasn't the best movie to watch right before heading off to Africa. I think I came to realize this while we were in Wal-mart getting some last minute shopping done before our flight. Josiah asked me what my biggest fear was, so I answered that I'm most scared of dying.

I guess all of us have fears of the "unknown" but maybe just maybe God uses those fears to create a drive in us to seek Him. So that we may come to a fuller reliance on Him.

Can any of us say we are totally surrendered to Christ?? Couldn't our doubts and insecurity be used by God so that we might surrender greater depths of our lives to Him.

Sometimes I think we in America live somewhat sheltered lives. We have no fear of not coming back from work alive. But for me and a group of young people headed to Kenya and Burundi this will be different. Will we not ask ourselves will we be ok?? While we pack our clothes and cameras will our minds not drift back to the horrible genocide in Rwanda.

God let this be my prayer that in everything I would serve You. God take the fears from my heart and help me fully rely on You.

Young People In Africa is a blog of five young people traveling to Kenya and Burundi in order to spread Christ's love to those in need. It's a window into the minds of these young people. Take time to read it regularly, comment and most of all pray for their journey.