Prayer Letter No. 51
Dear Team, 26th October 2007
Crushed and Elated in Burundi…
Greetings from Africa! How are you? I hope you’re well. On my end, I feel crushed and I feel elated. There is so much bad stuff going on, but also some incredible stuff. Life is so raw out here, so black and white, such a rollercoaster of highs and lows. It would be so much easier to remain aloof and keep an emotional distance from my adoptive people, but I want to care and I choose to care, although it hurts to care…
I sit listening to friends pouring out their hearts. Burundian men don’t cry – as the local proverb puts it, ‘A Burundian man’s tears flow inside his belly’ – but John does shed some tears as he shares how his pregnant wife Sarah has recently mysteriously died, leaving young David confused at home and Daddy absolutely devastated. Peter and Ruth have had their fourth and very late miscarriage, and are clinging to God to get through the anguish. Alfred comes in and tells me two members of his family have died in my absence. Privat shows up to work after a sleepless night listening to renewed bombing, with the radio reporting eleven dead as factions of the last remaining rebel group kill each other. DD shares how the streetkids’ project simply doesn’t have money for them to eat, whilst his 3-year-old daughter is recovering from being raped. Unemployed Ildephonse looks at me imploringly in the eye and talks of his wife and four kids who have nothing and he can’t provide for them.
Meantime corruption scandals are being reported all over the place. Crime is absolutely rampant. The government is paralysed in inactivity. The schools and public universities have been on strike country wide because salaries aren’t being paid. Extremist Muslims are rapidly gaining ground and maximizing the discontent with fiery rhetoric and aggressive evangelism. “In ten years this country will be dominated by Islam,” they brazenly claim in their open air meetings, totally confident and unabashed, riding the wave of massive funding from Islamic regimes in the Middle East.
People are thin, really thin. I get called fat here, can you believe it?! It’s a compliment, by the way. I mean, I’m a skinny runt by any objective standard, but I’m considered fat and well fed. Most people struggle to afford to eat. The price of some essential foodstuffs has doubled in the last few months. What would I do if I couldn’t feed Zac and Lizzie? I think I’d steal too, or maybe change religion if the Muslims were offering me some money to help start a little business. Yes, that’s what’s happening all over the place.
Enough of the depressing stuff, although it needs saying. PLEASE PRAY INTO THE ABOVE.
Yes, there’s plenty to get angry, dejected, discouraged about or crushed, but that is only half the story.
Seeing kids at the Youth For Christ orphanage who would otherwise be dead is overwhelming. Little Tom who was found in a gutter is at last able to smile for the first time in his two-year-old traumatized life. Six-year-old Helene is almost unbelievably no bigger than our two-year-old Zac, but is steadily growing emotionally, physically and spiritually. The school has started and for me to see twenty little lives be frog-marched into their classrooms in their smart uniforms was a joy.
Our outreaches countrywide with Scripture Union and Harvest for Christ are amazing. Eleven witchdoctors are now in baptismal classes following the summer evangelistic campaign. Many youths around the country are on fire, leaving their homes to go and share with the lost. I was preaching last Saturday as part of a weeklong outreach. The responses are invariably huge. The night before a cripple had thrown away his crutches in front of everybody, blowing away the Muslims particularly, as they can’t really answer or explain away the power of the name of Jesus.
Onesphore of HfC reports:
In Gisoro, a madman terrorized a whole village, wandering around for years with a machete. A team came and prayed for him, he was healed, and for the rest of the two weeks’ outreach he went around with them testifying to the power of God at work in their lives.
Another team found a girl who hadn’t been able to walk for six months. The mother wouldn’t let them preach, saying she’d only listen if she saw the power of God healing her daughter. They prayed and told her to get up. She literally hadn’t been upright for six months, and she stood. They prayed further and her trembling legs became strong, and she walked to church the next day to praise God for her miracle, along with all those who were converted watching the miracle take place.
Another team went straight into a witchdoctor’s den and started dismantling all his fetishes. He came in and screamed in anger at them. What they were doing was unthinkable in that most people would expect to drop dead if they did such a thing. But these guys knew their power was stronger than the witchdoctor’s satanic power. There was one particular powder over the entrance that he would use to cause lightning bolts to strike people dead, and he screamed in fear when one lad was about to grab it. “Don’t do it, or we’ll all die!” The lad continued clearing it away, and when nothing happened, the witchdoctor agreed to burn all his fetishes and give his life to Christ. I hesitate to share this as you may struggle to believe such bizarre stories; but the fact that the witchdoctor was so scared himself having used the powder to kill so many people shows those of us who are more skeptical that at the very least he thought it was real. Hmm…
APRID, a group we support to reach out to Muslims, are soldiering on. One of them was murdered last year. Leaving Islam is very costly. They are working hard on very limited funding, and are hugely frustrated to see Muslim evangelistic teams bomb around the country with good sound systems spouting rubbish about Christianity but drawing many through Islam’s largely one-way door. I know their lives are so very hard, and would love to see some people get behind them with increased funding, as it is a crucial ministry.
I’ll call it a day there. Lizzie is due to give birth about 11th Nov. Thanks for all your support. Please pray on. Life is sooooo hard for so many of our brothers and sisters. They need us; and whether we feel crushed or elated in our walks with God, or somewhere in between, here’s to getting our hands dirty, fully signing up, playing our part, and sacrificing for the cause, wherever He’s placed us! God bless you,
Simon Guillebaud
Great Lakes Outreach
www.greatlakesoutreach.org
PS A reminder for Christmas:
For Christmas cows to provide milk for the orphanage, click for the UK + world, click for USA. By the way, a development is that this week I inspected a plot of land, just under 4 hectares (600m by 60m), and it looks like we will buy that for the dairy farm.
For Christmas cards to provide income for child-headed households, click www.CardsfromAfrica.com
For Christmas books to get the message of radical living out to as many people as possible, click BOOKS
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