Hi family, co-workers and friends,
The trip has been amazing and deeply challenging so far. Two days before the trip, emergency surgery—removing two teeth and rebuilding my sinus was not a fun condition to begin with. My trip started off with travel through Chicago, then to London where I had about 12 hours.
 
I took the entire morning with TearFund leaders who have started a new organization called Inspired Individuals. The group targets high capacity leaders, provides resources and mentorship to help them go on to the next levels of leadership and influence. We are exploring potential partnership in east Africa. This is our third meeting together. I got some sleep, dinner, then to the airport for my flight at 9 p.m. to Nairobi. The was my second overnight flight in two days. I arrived in Nairobi to then catch a connecting flight, arriving Saturday, 12:00 in Kigali, Rwanda 45 hours after leaving Dallas. My suitcase didn’t arrive and would arrive until the following Thursday.
 
I met a Philadelphia businessman there, after I rested we had dinner at a nice Indian restaurant and over the next two days we had a tough travel schedule. We went to three genocide memorials—hard to image the level of inhumanity. At one site, 55,000 were killed in under two days. We also visited the hopeful places of Kabuga, a vocational training school for young adults and IWE (Institute of Women’s Excellence)-ALARM’s amazing school for street girls and orphans. My business friend was blown away by the level of training. It is one of the few places in Central Africa training girls in Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science. The Physics teacher was selected by the Rwanda government to represent the nation at Europe’s conference on Nuclear Physics in July. 190 girls now sleep 4 to a bunk in the dormitory.  Several of us talked about possible strategies for IWE’s first graduating class in the fall of this year—after living in streets, with other families and leaving the nurturing environment of IWE the transition is hugely important. Our good friends led my Michelle Dudley at Forest Hill Church in Charlotte have been talking and praying about this.
 
Monday night, Tom Basile, elder at Calvary Baptist in New York City and director of one of the country’s oldest homeless shelter, the Bowery Mission joined us. Tuesday morning started a 5  day marathon of travel and meetings. We flew to Kimembe, Rwanda, then crossed the border in DRC (Congo) and Bukavu—one of the most troubled regions on earth. We met rape survivors, some raped hundreds of times by rebel forces; we heard of one village last Sunday, June 26 in which 500 women were raped. Information had not been released on surrounding villages. We visited a hospital that cares for these women 45,000 in the past three years in one region. There was a visit with women’s leaders ALARM has trained and a transitional home for recovering women. It is great to hear of the multiplication of ALARM’s efforts that were funded by our good friends at the Stewardship Foundation and the Bridgeway Foundation. One woman who is a regional ministry leader, went to her home area and trained 180 women in trauma healing and forgiveness.
 
We also met with judges/lawyers that ALARM/Watermark trained in May in anticorruption principles. Poverty, violence, politics, absence of law and stability and massive aid efforts have all contributed to pervasive corruption in the country. One of the judges serves in the high court, the others were impressive people. Already they have formed a Christian lawyers/judges group and have hosted a training for pastors on  how to teach on and recognize corruption. It was inspiring to see how training high capacity leaders yields the fruit of multiplication.
 
After a short night, we left early Wednesday morning for two hour boat trip to Goma, DRC. Goma continues to look like a war zone—years of conflict, a volcanic eruption and massive refugee populations. ALARM has an amazing staff in the DRC, we visited pastors in the mountains that have been resettled and trained by ALARM; women’s microfinance projects, legal advocacy. There are two regions that we want to offer the trauma, peacebuilding and forgiveness training for women and other regions for pastoral training and training of lawers/judges.
 
Another very short night and 5 a.m. start to drive into the mountains of the Missisi region—a region again deeply troubled by violence. Many troops and UN operations seen in our travel 2 ½ hours on just brutal roads. 62 pastors met us, some walking more than 20 kilometers—I shared with them that I had heard of their suffering and their faith and wanted to meet these remarkable leaders and followers of Jesus. I taught through Psalm 73 and then they shared with us of their experiences and their gratitude for the help ALARM has provided. Receiving NGO aid involved a choice to physically fight for 1-2 kg of food or to let their families suffer. ALARM provided training as well as seed, hoes and tarps so that they could build temporary shelters and also support their families.  Some have not been able to return to their homes because of instability.  It was incredibly humbly to share with these faithful people. More than 50 of these pastors did not have Bibles. After visiting several other projects we crossed the border at Goma into Rwanda. 3 ½ hours later we arrived in Kigali for our 6:30 p.m. flight The flight ended up leaving about 1 ½ hours later with a fiasco with Todd’s luggage and mine that defies even trying to describe. We arrived in Nairobi and then to our hotel about 11:30 p.m. only to discover that we were missing a bag. Tom graciously returned to the airport and found it.
 
We did not much rest. I actually did not sleep at all and by 5:30 a.m. we were on our way to the airport to head to Juba, Sudan. Juba airport was small, hot, loud with wall to wall people and absolute chaos with bags getting tossed all over. We survived it and headed to our hotel—I guess you could call it that. It was a small metal shed with a bed and an air conditioner. Visits to ALARM projects and a tour of the city preparing for its first independence day on July 9 were great. I was there in November and absolutely stunned by the change. The city is exploding with growth, much deep poverty, but fresh paint on walls, trash cleaned up, a number of streets now paved and great joy/pride. Juba has become ALARM’s Sudan headquarters. We met with several generals in charge of the military police and heard of the great needs for servant leadership training and capacity building. Saturday, my business friend left for the U.S. Tom and I continued to Yei, Sudan to teach this next week at ALARM’s intensive leadership training program.
 
I believe that Sudan and DRC are two of the most strategic places to be in the world. These are historic times, times of opportunity, massive human suffering and great hope. A little goes  a long ways and these countries particularly represent ALARM’s core strengths of equipping the church and leaders to minister to suffering people—suffering because of the effects of long violence, human rights violations, poor leadership.