The Democratic Republic of the
Congo
Click here to
watch a video of students and leaders from UCBC in Beni, Congo
worshiping God with joy!
n July of 2008, Jeff Merry took a
trip to The Congo with Mending the Soul ministries. Here he saw many
lives touched by God, including those who have been torn apart by
war and devastated by physical, sexual, and mental abuse.
Here is one of Jeff's stories:
"One of our last days in the
Congo, I was able to travel with some of our members to visit CEPIMA,
a mental hospital and clinic in Beni. It has only been opened
for a short while, but it is already full to capacity with
traumatized victims of the violence in the DRC. Some of those
victims were the soldiers and police who were traumatized because of
what they were ordered to do.
Our team was able to go from room
to room praying for the patients, many of whom were severely
traumatized, some even catatonic. In one room, I met a young boy
named Prince. Prince had been traumatized by a very brutal father to
the point of catatonia. He could not communicate, and his head was
bent over in fear and shame. It would have been so easy to simply
stand at a distance and pray, but God called me to move into
Prince's pain. I was a little fearful that touching him might cause
him more trauma, but God was insistant. As I reached towards Prince
he allowed me to hold his hand; as I prayed for him, he squeezed my
hand. He could not express his feelings verbally, but that simple
squeeze told me he heard the voice of God speaking to his heart."
Bosnia and Croatia
In June 2007, Jeff and Karen Merry took a trip to Bosnia and Croatia.
"God gave us an opportunity to get to know
the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina and
Croatia, up-close-and-personal. To
look, not just at a “face” of two
million people, but into the eyes of
individuals desperately in need of a
Savior.
All around
Bosnia, in cities like Sarajevo and
Mostar, the beautiful and stately
facades of historic buildings are being
restored. Yet inside, those same
buildings remain gutted and vacant.
Riddled with bullet holes and the
detritus of conflict.
And so it
is with the people of
Bosnia-Herzegovina. The “outside’ lives
of individuals are being restored.
Goods and services are more readily
available. Homes are being rebuilt. But
for many, their internal lives remain
fractured. Devastated by the rages of
war—poverty, rape, torture, internment,
death. And death of hope. Catholic
Croats, Orthodox Serbs, and Muslim
Bosniaks live in a state of fragile
“peace.”
In June of
2007 we traveled to Split, Croatia, to
lead and teach on worship at an MRN
Missions Conference. Missionaries and
national leaders attended from
Siberia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Africa.
Our mission was to lead them into quiet
waters of worship, so that they could
return to the field with new hope and a
fresh sense of God’s power and grace in
their lives as they serve in strategic
places around the world.
Following
the weeklong conference in Croatia, we
spent an additional week visiting
Bosnian leaders and churches in six
cities. Most importantly, we got to see the faces—up
close and personal—of those who have
survived the brutality of war to find a
vibrant faith and new life in Jesus
Christ."
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