Banner - Mt Trio, Stirling Range National Park, Western Australia - (c) 2007
Day 4 Community Aid & Development Inc. have just launched an appeal to raise funds for the purchase of food, blankets and clothing for Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Goma, north eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
They are working in with a local church organisation recommended by Claude Nikondeha of Amahoro Africa.
The appeal is only running for a short time - the aid is required urgently so we are trying to raise as much as we can by the 15th of December.
No matter where you are in the world, you can donate online via Day 4's secure credit card gateway - http://www.day4.org.au/donate.htm.
If you are in Australia, please contact me (Andrew) via the Day 4 website and I can give you bank account details for direct deposits into our account.
If you do use the credit card gateway, please make sure you put "Congo" in the "Order or Item Number" field.
We also have flyers which I can email to you if you are willing to advocate for this appeal within your faith community, workplace or among family and friends.
Thanks in anticipation of your prayers and support.
The situation in the Congo is desperate for thousands of people now flooding the Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps in and around the city of Goma in the north east of the country (the North Kivu region).
I have managed to make contact, through Claude Nikondeha of Amahoro Africa, with a church in Goma that is dealing directly with the thousands of people (including many children separated from their families and at the mercy of unscrupulous predators). I am currently working with my colleagues in Rwanda to find a way of getting humanitarian aid (blankets, clothing and food) accross the border into Goma and will post more details of this, and ways you can help support this effort, in the very near future.
In the meantime, and as you read the excerpts from my communication with a Congolese pastor, please continue to pray for the situation and those affected.
Dear Andrew,
Shalom from Goma. How encouraging and how good to be in the family of God's people! ... Your email is a relief in itself. It gives me joy to serve our IDPs who come desperately from the fighting areas. Praised be the name of our living and comforting God. We are fine in the Lord, my family and I. We are in the town of Goma even though the threat is big, the Lord has assured us of His presence and protection.
We are safe and serving our people in the town of Goma and around Goma. We are doing the little He enables us to do. Some times we feel discouraged, sometimes you find low spiritually when you see Innocent people, created at God's image suffer such a kind of injustice. But yours prayers have lifted us.
... since the first day, our church have been active in active ministry to the IDPs. We are collecting clothes, food for them and then our church building and schools hosted them. In the day they are outside... But with time we have been overwhelmed as the war continues to take other dimensions. For hospitality sake many are hosted in families
As a church, we are using our church medical centers to care for them when they are sick. As a church we are also involved in trauma healing and peace building especially at this time when hatred can arouse from the hurting innocent people. My church has appointed a Crisis committee at this time and I am heading the committee. We meet every day to see what is happening and what is needed to be done and where. Pray for us.
The problem we are facing is that all the supplies are becoming expensive that almost all the families are suffering the consequences because rebels have cut Goma from most of the centers we get most of the items from.The needs are as follows: Food, medecines, blankets, clothes.
As for us as a family, it is only food that we need.
But above all, pray for us, for the country, for the international community that seems for close the eye on what is happening in East Congo. The just judge will bring justice and light to this suffering. Send messages of courage and comfort. We need them
I love you even though we have never met. I also bless you. Shalom. Because He lives, we can face tomorrow
Yours in His love
More soon.
I am finding myself troubled by the current situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Around 18 months ago I visited the border town of Gisyeni/Goma in north western Rwanda/north eastern Congo. We met with a delegation of around 20 Congolese pastors and church leaders who travelled from their villages and from Goma, across the border into Rwanda, simply to greet us and to pray with us. It was quite a moving experience.
We didn't share their language and interpreting was difficult. I was asked to pray for them, which I did - I don't know if they understood the words. Some of them then prayed for us. They didn't ask us for anything, except to remember them.
We spent a few more minutes together, shaking hands and exchanging hugs before they gathered their things and disappeared back over the border into the DRC.
I do remember them. I find myself wondering what their lives are like right now. How the fighting is impacting them and the people they serve. I wonder if any of them have been killed.
I feel, right now, that I would like very much for us (through Day 4) to be able to do something but I know that, in reality, there is little good that we can achieve. We're too small and fundraising has been incredibly slow this year. But we can pray. I also promised those Congolese pastors I would remember them, and I would ask you to look closely at their faces (you can enlarge the picture by clicking on it) and remember them before God too.
