Bribes and Body parts in Burundi
November 20th 2008
Dear Team, 19th November 2008
Greetings from Burundi! I’ve just written to a friend to respond to his question, “What’s happening with you?” and thought I’d fill you in:
“Where shall I start?
We have so much to be thankful for. Zac and Grace are generally very healthy. Lizzie continues to have the constitution of an ox, with the beauty of a fat cow (a woman is referred to as a cow here in the marriage ceremony, and fat is good, so that’s a compliment!). I am recently over some dysentery and so am firing on all cylinders again. Health is not taken for granted, as German friends are evacuating today because of their sick baby, following on from some American buddies last month.
Sat at my desk at dusk in humid Central Africa, I’ve just done a live breakfast radio interview for a station in freezing Canada – very surreal! The interview was to talk about how God has amazingly opened the doors for us so that three containers that have just arrived from Edmonton have been released without any ‘charges’, something simply extraordinary as customs issues pretty much have to involve corruption. But no bribes with us, no weeks of bargaining and pleading, and five new donated vehicles as well as many other things are now ours to use for God’s glory. So many people around the world were praying. This saved us tens of thousands of dollars, and we’re all thrilled. Imagine the scene: as the containers were being unloaded, we had ten volunteers trying to ward off a hundred customs officials who were prowling around trying to steal anything when backs were turned!
As I wrote the above paragraph, a colleague came in and asked for help. The heavy rains have washed away his roof, and with five children he has nowhere to shelter them. I have already helped him, and this time I’ll just pray. The fact is, he is the fiftieth person I’ve met this week, and indeed every week, who has urgent needs and who wants me to bail them out. We can’t help everyone financially, so we pray and ask God and hope to be strategic and discerning in what we do get involved in. But it’s hard.
Today on the news, a 6-year-old girl was found decapitated and without arms and legs. The reason? She was an albino, and albinos in Burundi are terrified right now as they are being killed to satisfy the market for body parts that witchdoctors in neighbouring Tanzania use in their ritual magic.
At the moment we have visitors who are helping us get ready to launch what we hope will be the best conference centre in Burundi by March. We are feeling overwhelmed at how complex it is, and how much work has to be done in the coming months, but hopefully Goretti and Meg will recruit a fine team, get systems in place, and we will then not only be able to be self-sustaining but beyond that profits will be recycled into God’s work elsewhere around the country – I love that vision!
I have started a construction company with a gifted engineering friend called Emmanuel, and that is going great guns – again, profits are fed back into our other projects, and Emmanuel will in due course be able to build his own house with what he earns from it. Tomorrow Freddy (head of Youth for Christ) is moving into his very own house, that GLO paid for him to build. Onesphore (head of Harvest for Christ) will move into his own house next month. This was part of my strategic vision to free up key leaders from worrying about providing for their family so they can concentrate on what God’s given them to do.
Last Friday I wandered up the highest mountain in the centre of the country with a sharp knife, a goat and a lamb, to sacrifice them at the top. What happened on the peak? You’ll have to wait to find out, as the film we are making is not yet ready. I have teamed up with a film-maker friend called Seth to make 13 short films for a DVD to accompany each chapter of my book. The June deadline is tight, but the four films produced so far are superb, and I hope they will in due course be seen by millions of people and change many lives. Then the rest of the weekend our Scripture Union team split up and spoke to fourteen school groups, in order to equip them to shake the whole region. It was a great time.
Our building of the PTI Bible school is moving forward well, and we have been involved in three other school building projects – one is finished, one half-way, and one not started. Our plans to build the best school in the country to raise up a new generation of leaders excites me as much as anything else, and now we are just waiting for the right person to project manage it, and raise a mere $5million! God will do it in His timing, I have no doubt, and then in the coming decades many of the key people in positions of power will have been through our school with leadership development and Christian education at their core. Brilliant!
Lots of visitors come and go. We have someone coming to stay with us tomorrow to do a week’s intensive training in Evangelism Explosion, which is already living up to its name in terms of how many people are coming to Christ through this tool.
Before preaching this Sunday, I will run down to the beach at 6am to meet with a team of passionate young evangelists, and at 630am we will begin a new jogging club/outreach. There are several thousand joggers who meet there, and as they are jogging, they aren’t going to church. We’ll do a sketch to draw the crowds and then preach for just 5mins, then we’ll go off running, come back, do the same sketch and preach to a new crowd, talk to people one-on-one, and then come back next week and do the same. So we are right at the start of this, and I am both very nervous and excited, as I believe many will come to Christ in the coming months. I suspect Jesus would prefer to be jogging and hanging out with those guys than being sat in a pew, what do you think?!
Our Muslim evangelism team (APRID) is in as good a shape as it’s ever been, slogging their guts out in dire poverty, facing very real threats of assault and murder, but willing to lay their lives down for the Truth. I find their example humbling.
A high-ranking official from Iran is here this week developing trade links. Iran follows Sudan and Libya as the key countries seeking to ‘help’ Burundi. Can you spot what the conditions are? Beggars can’t be choosers and Burundi is sadly forced to take help from wherever it can get it. Islam’s growth is very concerning indeed.
Across the lake in the Congo, things are just terrible. Some refugees have arrived here, although mostly it’s further north from us. Systematic rape, murder and pillaging have taken place. It’s all happening on our watch, but the international community simply doesn’t have the will-power to intervene…
I can’t really talk about politics if I want to carry on working here, but the challenges are massive and I really hope the recent arrest of a high-profile journalist-turned-politician isn’t a sign of increasing repression and human-rights abuses as we approach the 2010 elections. Things are actually very unstable right now, with political stalemate and African Union troops about to pull out. They’ve helped keep the peace. When they go, what will happen? Serious praying needed…
Burundi lurches forward. The situation is superficially calm, but in reality it is grim for the vast majority and quite tense. From being here over the last ten years, I’ve now got a lot of potential influence, which is a mixture of humbling, terrifying, and thrilling. Many people are trying to do bad things, and I feel tired yet so alive in doing exactly what I think Jesus wants me to do; and so there’s nothing, nothing like it. But it hurts and it’s draining to care. As Jesus said, “To those who have been given much, much will be required.” I take that on the chin, and it’s a pleasure and privilege to play a small part in His big plan.
That’s a little of what’s happening – you didn’t expect such a long answer, did you?!
God bless you loads, thanks for your support. There’s plenty of ammunition in the above for prayer. Let’s do it!
Simon Guillebaud
Great Lakes Outreach
P.S. Ideas for Christmas:
Copies of my book, For What It’s Worth, click
Cows (and other gifts) for Christmas for our orphanage, click
Cards produced by child-headed households, click
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