Thinking out loud

Today I am in prison in Ougadougou, Burkina Faso. I walked into the Maco prison, the oldest and biggest prison in the city, with an MCC partner who works with juvenile offenders, but now they won’t let us out. We can hear the disturbances in the street, just outside the prison walls, but we really don’t know what is happening. Parliament was to vote on changing the constitution to allow the president to serve an additional term after 27 years in office, but the people seem to think 27 years is long enough. Adam Sensamaust (MCC country representative) and I are in prison with Pegue Savadogo, the director of Lieux de Vie (Places of Life), an MCC partner organization working with juvenile justice and employment training opportunities that allow some young offenders to serve alternative sentences. A soldier leads us into a room where 85 young offenders are waiting for us. We are told the youngest is age 13. About half of these young me

The river of God is full of water, you provide the people with grain, for so you have prepared it. – Psalm 65:9 In Avad, in eastern Kenya, it took 23 days and several hundred people to build a sand dam a hundred meters long. Or put another way, it took over two years for the community to get to the place to be able to sustain this effort. Either way, the end result is the same – the sand dam provides water in the dry season for 6,000 people in three villages. It is a 23-day (or two year) miracle! Without the sand dam, there would be no water, no life, the villagers told us. With the sand dam, in the dry season, women no longer have to walk miles in search of water. And the drinking water the villagers now have is cleaner and causes less disease. There is enough water for crops and cattle.   The Utooni Development Organization in the Ukambani region of eastern Kenya has built over 1,500   sand dams here. The dams are part of an overall effort to transform the env

God . . . through Christ, has given us the ministry of reconciliation. (II Corinthians 5:20) “You can’t invite people into the family of God and refuse to be their brothers and sisters,” MCC country representative Paul Mosley tells the 90 Intervarsity student leaders gathered for a retreat at a Catholic seminary in central Burundi.   Paul tells us later that these students are all of Tutsi and Hutu ethnic origin and it is very likely that every single one of them has lost a family member to the civil wars and genocide in the region in the last 20 years. “We are ambassadors of Christ and God’s message of reconciliation,” Paul tells the students.   These students are here for three days of intensive Bible study and it is also likely that these few days could change these students’ lives. A decade ago, 15 other university students in Burundi attended a similar IVF gathering to study the Bible together. As a group, they decided that they wanted to respond together

  Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.   – Luke 6:27 Whether or not the Rwandan genocide 20 years ago has actually caused the instability in eastern Congo today, it certainly has been a strong contributing factor. In the mid-90s, Rwandan Hutu soldiers blamed for the genocide of thousands of Tutus and they fled into eastern Congo with their families. These soldiers have formed militias that control parts of the countryside  and the resources there. In response, Congolese have formed similar groups. Today, dozens of armed groups patrol various sections of eastern Congo and the government is not able to provide protection for the communities who are caught in the middle.     MCC is working with the Churches of Christ in Congo (ECC), an association of churches, through a Peace and Reconciliation Repatriation Project (PPR) that helps these Hutu soldiers lay down their weapons and return to their native Rwanda with their familie