I’ve been home a couple of weeks now – including a week at Midwinter – from my amazing trip to see the truly wonderful work that Covenant people are doing through our partnership with Covenant Kids Congo powered by World Vision. Please know that your sacrifice to sponsor a child, make a direct contribution, run in a Team World Vision race and your prayer is making a huge difference for the children of Congo.
One example. We visited a group of women who are in a World Vision, Covenant Kids Congo sponsored Agricultural Group. The project was stunning. When we arrived they sang a song and acted out with garden tools the story of how they had come to support each other in this great venture to grow better gardens to feed and support their families. They acted out how they had learned to do better tilling, planting, and better care for the young plants. Then they sang, “we are going to feed our children, we are going to send our children to school, we are going to feed our husbands, we are going to heal our village with vegetables!” and then with a delightful sense of humor and pride they sang, “we are going to feed World Vision.” The transparent joy and sense of empowerment they radiated in their presentation was absolutely wonderful. They had also become a women’s savings group, learning to save their money in order to provide one another with loans to grow small businesses. It was truly a ministry of profound empowerment, and it was so clear that these woman had found new hope and meaning through this Covenant Kids Congo project. It was also clear that as followers of Jesus they were sharing their good fortune and blessing with others. Someone asked the very difficult questions of how many of these Mom’s had lost a child, and out of a group of about fifteen people, nine women had lost a child. One of the women had complications after childbirth that left her impoverished, and the women’s group rallied around her and helped her get a new start with the agricultural project. Truly this is God’s work in action through God’s people to transform lives with God’s love and grace.
I will write in upcoming blogs about some of the other great things I experienced of the work of CKC, but for now let me close with a very special meeting that I was privileged to enjoy right before I left Congo.
I met late in the evening with Former President of the CEUM (The Covenant Church of Congo) , Rev. Duale. We had a wonderful visit and talked about leaders of the Covenant and Congo and the great missionaries of a former generation. Rev. Duale had been a good friend of my Father and it was especially fun to hear his stories about my Dad. Then, near the end of our conversation I asked President Duale this question: Why should Covenant Churches who are already doing so very much all around the world and in their own neighborhoods add one more thing and invest in Congo with CKC? President Duale told me that when Jesus told the parable of the seeds and the sower and that some of the seeds landed on hard or rocky soil, but other seeds landed on good soil and produced a good crop of 100 fold, he looked at me with great intensity and said, “tell them that Congo is “good soil.”
Please know that your investment in the brave, capable and resilient people of Congo is making an enormous difference. Congo is good soil!
