Prayer Letter No. 48 

 

 

Dear Team,                                                                  20^th April 2007

 

What are we waiting for? It can happen again…

 

Last week, a group from Cheltenham joined the Scripture Union gang upcountry for part of a youth camp. Numbers had been limited to 300, but in the end 450 came, saying that we couldn’t keep them away, they were prepared to sleep outside under the stars. There were eight youth sharing each double mattress. The conditions as always were very basic, but the students’ thirst was insatiable, and the Lord moved in powerful ways. Over the four days, many repented, and most who had arrived unconverted left with a vibrant new-found faith to take back to the dozens of schools represented. Investing in the youth is so very strategic.

 

From there we drove another hour towards the Tanzanian border to visit New Generation, the streetkids project we support. It was shattering to hear from one of my best buddies (DD) on our arrival that his 3-year-old daughter had been raped by one of the older streetkids, whom DD had rescued from the streets and looked after for the last ten years. I wept in anger and disgust and sadness. Little Tracey is undergoing treatment to minimize the risk of HIV infection. What amazed me though was how DD was clinging to the Lord and at peace – gutted obviously – but acknowledging that the enemy was trying anything to undermine and destroy the ministry, yet nothing would stop the work of God that they were doing. Please pray for them. DD’s extended family had two long meetings over the weekend, seeking to pressurize him into giving up the New Generation project completely and getting a regular job to provide for his family. He needs $250/month to cover family needs, so that the work with the streetkids can continue and grow and his antagonistic extended family can be appeased. He is a great man. Anyone want to help towards that sum?

 

Then today I saw my colleague Clara for the first time in a while. She’d been visiting her brother in Rwanda. ‘How did it go?’ ‘Terribly.’ ‘Why?’ ‘I had to have him arrested for raping a young girl.’ Why? How? There are a lot of sick people around. Rape has become a tool of war in the Great Lakes region, particularly in the Congo. I was sent a web link recently which I clicked on and the most gruesome pictures I’ve ever seen came up on the screen. I gagged and shut the computer and wanted to cry all morning, totally absent in conversations with people as those images replayed in my mind. I read the story of one rape victim who had had her eyes gouged out, and ears and lips cut off, so that she couldn’t testify against the perpetrators. Pure evil… Please pray for the many women in this region whose lives have been traumatized and all but destroyed by such acts. And pray too for lasting peace in both Burundi and Congo, what with so many militia still around with blood on their hands and not much hope of a regular future.

 

Things on a national level seem to be quiet, which tends to be good news. There are plenty of rumours, but that’s all they seem to have been. The President and his government continue to have massive challenges. The famine is very real still, with four hundred people having been buried in one province alone who died simply for lack of food. Today is Friday and the mosques are blaring, and our Muslim friends are very busy about their business, seeking to turn this nation to Islam. There’s much to be done.

 

Little Zac has been to the doc for the first time in Burundi, struggling with a nasty bug, fever, bloody poo, ear-ache etc. It’s not fun to see him in pain. Lizzie’s pregnancy seems to be going well, although she has the usual feelings of nausea and tiredness, and is run down from a lingering flu. It’s not been an easy time.

 

I often find visitors from the West manage to see things and express them very clearly when confronted with the rawness of life out here and how people live out a costly faith. So here is what a few of them have written to me recently once back home:

 

“It's so hard to get people to understand the big picture back here in the USA, but that doesn't slow me down.  I preached about 1Pet.1:22-2:3, the perishable vs the imperishable.  Everyone's typical response is that we have to find a balance.  I just don't find Jesus teaching or living that principle.  It kind of seemed all or nothing to me.  Everyone's just so afraid of what it would mean to live radically for Him.”

 

“It was funny arriving home - the reverse culture shock was really quite something. I felt like we saw the western culture for what it really is... fairly disgusting to be honest! The consumeristic, individualistic, short-termist, desire-for-pain-free-living culture that we live in as Brits is quite contrary to the gospel. I’m challenged about how we put ourselves at the centre of our world - we start asking God to be part of our story rather than keeping the focus on our being part of His story...”

 

“It’s amazing, but obvious, really, just how much God can do with fully surrendered lives. In Burundi we met a number of them – people doing incredible things, against incredible odds, because they held nothing back. Do I love Jesus enough to surrender to that level?”

 

Do I? Do you? I want to. What’s it worth? It can happen again… Let’s do it!

 

Against the tide,

 

Simon Guillebaud

 

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