Months later . . . after a coup in Burkina Faso

Mim and her mother, Erica, admiring one her mother's quilts


The very final days of October, last year, I was stuck in a prison in Burkina Faso during a coup in that African country. I was visiting an MCC partner agency working in the prison, and I was finally left out when prison authorities determined it was safe for me to be on the streets.

There was the threat of violence in the community where I was staying with MCCers and all the border crossings out of the country were closed, but I was eventually able to leave the country a few days later. And I’m grateful to say that all the MCCers were also safe and 
that the country has established a degree of stability following the coup.

But for a few days there, I was not sure what would happen. And people back home weren’t either. The MCC office in North America was able to call my wife and assure her I was safe. On the Sunday morning following the coup, this is part of the corporate prayer offered at Eighth Street Mennonite Church, my home congregation in Goshen, Indiana:

O God –
We confess that Jesus sometimes makes us uncomfortable …
and that in our discomfort we discover that parts of us are afraid of you.
We give you our fear, God.
           These moments of dis-ease … of truth-telling … are hard for us –
YET – we believe that YOU LOVE US. Period. 
So then – these uncomfortable moments must not be for our destruction –
but for our growth.
Give us courage to stay in the uncomfortable spaces long enough
to see what you are offering through them. 
For your love is for us and our neighbor – no one is excluded by you.
We exclude ourselves and others from that JOY – but you never do.
          So today we pray for our world –
          For the people of Burkina Faso … for Ron … for Mim –
         who are waiting for justice with the same urgency as Christ.
         God – may your revolution of LOVE be set free there.

After I returned home and during the Advent season, Mim was asked to give one of our traditional hundred-word responses in church to the Advent theme, this year on casting out fear:

I was in Puerto Rico for a board meeting.
An email from Ron 
“A coup overtook the government in Burkina Faso. We are all okay.”

Alone
Far from home
Far from Ron
Waiting for more information.
Afraid

Then a text from Brenda (our pastor)
“I heard from Ron. Are you doing ok?”

Still waiting 
Still afraid
But not alone

A phone message
“I’m calling from MCC to let you know that Ron is ok.”
Colleagues asked – “have you heard from Ron?”

No, still waiting.
But a host of people, some near, some far, waited with me.
And that was more powerful than fear.

It is not always as obvious to me as it should be how what I am doing is affecting others. Looking back, I am grateful for a church community, and a family, who care for me, even when I am halfway around the world.

Thanks, God, for courage to stay in the uncomfortable places and for your love that extends to us and all of our neighbors, whether they are next door or far, far away.

Ron Byler is executive director of MCC U.S.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

They welcomed us

Image
One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see. (John 9:25) She was addicted to drugs for 20 years. She was in prison and her family broke apart. Her child was in an orphanage and her husband died. Because of her substance abuse, she eventually lost her one arm below her elbow. She saw no way out. She had hit the very bottom. When she came to know God, Natalia says everything changed. She found she had a deep desire to help people like herself and she discovered that her life experiences helped her understand others. “I remember what God did in my life and I have hope that God can touch other peoples’ lives and give them new life, too,” Natalia tells me. In Nikopol, Ukraine, she and Olga and Valodya, both of whom have similar stories to tell of their own, began New Life Charitable Fund a half dozen years ago to help people in prison, or who have drug or alcohol addictions, are HIV positive, homeless or for some other reason need a helping hand. Ukraine has ...
Read more

God multiplies our efforts

Image
Sister Zita at the La Posada shelter with baby Emmanuel and members of our border learning tour. Photo courtesy of Janae Rempel The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail. – I Kings 17:14 Ana Hinojosa remembers growing up on the Texas-Mexico border near Brownsville in the late 80s. Her family’s house was a mile from the border wall and she remembers the extended family gatherings in her back yard. Ana, an MCC immigration staff person, says border patrol agents would rest in the shade of the trees near the front of her house and, in the same day, it would be possible for a family from Mexico to knock on her front door to ask for food or directions. Her family turned no one away. Life on the border can look quite different today. When we enter the Catholic Charities respite center in McAllen, Texas, it is startling to see the contrast from the serenity of the neighborhood outside to the chaos inside. Cesar Matta tells us that, today, the cente...
Read more

A river of love

Image
For it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks. – Matthew 25:40 “We are happy you are here to see this with your own eyes,” the leader of the Islamic Charities organization in Deir Attieh, Syria tells us, a group of MCC people visiting partner organizations in Syria. “We can’t express enough our heartfelt thanks to you.” Islamic Charities works with 3,000 at risk families affected by the war in the region and relies heavily on the work of volunteers. MCC provides food boxes to Islamic Charities as part of our humanitarian assistance in Syria. When I visit five families who received these food boxes, I recall the heartfelt thanks but feel mostly heart broken.    We visit two families living in a partially constructed apartment complex that stalled when the war began. The first family lives in a small two-room apartment, the mother and her five children and the woman’s father. Her husband is serving in the army. The second family inclu...
Read more