Bright proud mountains sank into cobalt waters. Jagged volcanic rock was scattered like confetti across soot-colored streets. An aching beauty stood still.

 

Goma.

 

In the heart of Africa lies the Democratic Republic of Congo; an enormous cavity spreading its landscape across the center of Africa. Saturated with opportunity, most of it exploited, repeatedly by foreigners, the DRC has witnessed nearly a century of constant oppression. Today a war centered in North Kivu province continues to strip the Congolese of land, food, education, and its own children.

 

Children are at the fore-front of the current armed conflict between at least five armed groups. They are at the forefront because they are on the frontlines.

 

Children are soldiers.

 

 

Abducted from schools, roads, coerced by poverty or circumstance, even persuaded by patriotism or from the wounded heart of the memory of a murdered family member, these children become fighters.

 

I will never forget the first time I met a child soldier. I struggled fiercely with the dichotomy in front of me; their small frame, darting, sad eyes and meek manner. Their utter childlikeness. But what I knew was their past—marked with death and fear. My heart was both nauseated at the evil they had done and the evil done to them. Nothing has been left untouched.

 

Jonathan, Wade, Brett and I had held their hands that day. We had played with them. And the stark reality of pain within them, welling up into nearly audible screams, is a combination that haunts and horrifies.

 

Do you believe in love?

 

Could we believe in anything else?

 

I went back to Titu today – a prison run by the FARDC (Forcees Armees de la Republique Democratique du Congo, i.e. the Congolese national army). Last time I was here in January I saw children as young as eight who had escaped from Nkunda’s rebel group being held by force until some higher authority decided what to do with them.

 

These children had had torture wounds on their bodies. Bite marks, raw wounds, slash marks from being bound and tied. One child’s arms were marked with zig-zagging lines – open, raw wounds. He sat hunched over. His arms spoke for themselves.

 

 

I had treated four children’s wounds with basic first-aid when the guards brought out two more men for me to help.

 

 

When I think about Titu, I see a million tears falling on insufficient faces. My own. I breathe in and see wounds. Gaping, infected flesh—wounds saturating exhausted bodies.

 

 

 

The two men in front of me slipping silently into unconsciousness. Burns dotting the landscape of their skin – a vast expanse of pain. These men had been robbed, set ablaze and then brutally beaten. At least 90% of their skin was ripped open, aching in the morning sun.

 

 

A group of men stood nearby shaking—their emaciated frames gaunt, bending in shame. Rwandans, Burundians—promised a job and income, they had come to Congo. Upon arrival, in the night, men had come with guns. They were taken by force into the forest and awoke to a nightmare. Now deep within Nkunda’s rebel territory, they were forced to become soldiers in a war they never wanted to fight.

 

And as I stood in front of those men, I realized, as Joseph Conrad famously exclaimed in The Heart of Darkness, that, “We live in the flicker.” I know it. The pain and suffering, the desperate injustice, is the blackness, the hell. Then we, at least we are called and we try, are living in the flicker – the last bastion of light and love and goodness before it is all snuffed out. As believers, we must fight to live in the in-between. And we believe the light can last.

 

In one hand I had held antiseptic. In another a handful of gauze and medical tape. What could I really do for these men?

 

The inadequacy of it all was a portrait of reality. That is how I feel about the Congo. The West, the Church, has stood here, shaking, holding and offering an inadequate balm that can not really heal.

 

Today I was reminded of the balm that does.

 

Francois, our Congolese friend, excitedly, shared his vision with me for what could be done for child soldiers in the Congo. He said that, above anything; food, school, a job, these children desperately needed love, and they needed it from their own families. Many former child soldiers have been rejected from their families because they have turned into thieves or are disobedient, addicted to drugs or are engaged in prostitution. These children, already carrying the wounds of their life fighting as a child soldiers, now face the excruciating abandonment, rejection and loneliness from their own families.

 

But this can change.

 

A few weeks ago a group of Fathers of the child soldiers we met in August came to Goma to talk to Francois. They asked him what the Americans were going to DO for their children? (Americans meaning us, DTJ, Americans).

 

Francois insisted that instead of the parents abdicating responsibility by handing off their child to an institution that they instead will be at the center of the redemption of these children. If the parents and family members can learn to love their children again and welcome them back home, have compassion for what they went through as a soldier and walk with them, these children will change in a way no amount of education or vocational training could ever accomplish. For this love is God’s love. And God’s love heals. These children will no longer be rejected. They will be Sought After.

 

By working with village chiefs, church leaders and community leaders, to cast a vision for them and with them about God’s heart for child soldiers, the role of the family and the potential and hope for redemption, these leaders can then work directly with the parents to impart the same Christ-led heart. The ripple will penetrate the entire community.

 

Fathers will welcome their children back with love. God can transform hearts to reflect His. And we know His heart is with those who mourn. We know His heart longs to turn brokenness into wholeness, to call a child the world calls worthless, “My Beloved.” And God can do it through the community leaders and family members, Fathers and Mothers. No longer will the streets be deserted.

 

My heart leaps to think of God saying, “You are Mine. You are now called Sought After.”

 

This is now the vision for working to love, in and because and through Christ, the child soldiers of eastern DRC.

 

For God always finds what once was lost.

THE UPDATE:

 

So many emotions come over me even as I begin to write. It has been five days since we were together, and still I can see their eyes, feel their touch, wait in the balance of moments and unknowns and swirling reactions that overwhelmed us that day. And somehow, I honestly know none of us will be the same.

 

Jonathan, Wade and Brett had come to Eastern DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), nearly two weeks ago with the heart to tell the story of the raging conflict here through the eyes of a child. The DRC has seen an astronomical amount of death in the last 10 years, estimates stand at over 4 million deaths, most of them civilians, many women and children. A variety of rebel groups have wreaked havoc in the East through continuing to wage war, using methods of pillage, rape and plunder as their means of survival. In North Kivu, which borders northern Rwanda and southern Uganda, General Laurent Nkunda, a Tutsi still enraged from the Rwandan Genocide, claims his people, the Banyamulenge Tutsi, are being targeted. Nkunda and his troops bitterly fight against the Interhamwe, who are Hutu exiles responsible for the Rwandan genocide and fearful of retribution at home. So they continue to carry out murder and rape in Congo. Mai-Mai militias are created to protect the villages, then throw in the FARDC, the Congolese National Army, the FDLR, the Rwandan liberation forces, and you have a complete mess. No one is untouched. Everyone is at risk, and the ones who suffer the brunt of this unnecessary war in Congo are the women and children. There are thousands of child soldiers in Congo, each rebel faction recruits them and needs them. There are not enough adults left to fight. And so this tragic war is fought by children.

 

The four of us decided to go up to Goma, the main city in North Kivu, last weekend. We saw God’s voice and spirit leading us to North Kivu, and we went forward hoping and praying that God would bring us to a child to tell their story. And that He did. On the boat to Goma we met Francois, a sweet man working for an Oxfam off-shoot. We told him what we were doing. He told us he could help us. When we arrived in Goma we were moved by the way it felt. A volcano erupted in Goma five years ago, burying the city in lava. Goma looks strickingly post-apocalypse, with black lava rocks everywhere, buildings still half-buried, buses and cars sticking out from the lava at strange angles, and soot in the air.

 

 

The next morning Francois picked us up and said he had arranged for us to spend time with child soldiers. As we drove out to Sake, we stopped at an IDP camp, where 2,400 families live in horrid conditions after fleeing Nkunda’s troops. Many sleep on the lava rocks. We heard story after story of tragedy, and tiny tinges of hope. Many, however, were still thick in the grieving process over ones they had lost. One man’s three children were killed in front of his eyes as they fled. He stood before us with a mangled cast on his arm, bearing the shot wound he still carries. People were so eager to show us their wounds.

 

 

And then we met the ones who carry out that same fighting. We met children. We spent the rest of the day with 12 former child soldiers in an empty school-house on the edge of Sake. All were still angry, all visibly bore the marks of their time in the bush, all had stories that were simply beyond comprehension. All of the children had fought in the Mai-Mai militia, many beginning when they were 9 or 10 years-old, all had killed people, all knew how to fight, many were still enraged, and some had come out of the bush as recently as a few months ago. When we were in the car on the way to the school-house one kid shouted out that the government promised them things in the DDR process that they did not deliver (Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration, a government-sponsored attempt to bring the rebels out of the bush and into the FARDC). He said he is tired of false promise, and that he wants to join the FARDC and kill the man who told him that. Another kid said they used to eat people in the bush. Francois, our translator, laughed nervously.

 

The stories the children told us are hard to communicate. When the film is made you will be able to see their faces and hear from them yourself. The darkness surrounding their past deeds is thick, and hope for them, in all honesty, is hard to see. We were each pushed to believe in a God of love in a way we hadn’t been challenged to believe before.

 

Kevin (name changed to protect his identity), 13 years old, joined the Mai-Mai at least five years ago, after both of his parents had been killed. He was the witch doctor for his brigade, responsible for making medicine that he believed would protect them against the enemy. The medicine was made out of human organs. Kevin said that one time he was so angry that he never had a mother or father that he killed someone, removed their heart, cooked it on a fire, and ate it. He said the spirits told him to do that. He said he had killed 17 people. And he is 13 years old. He said the spirits still tell him things, like that he should just go back to the bush and die. He says he has nothing here. He has never been to school, he has no job, no money, no future. Kevin said that one time he went to a Catholic church, and says he thinks Jesus forgave him then. Pray for Kevin that the spirits of the enemy would be silenced and that this little boy would become Christ’s.

 

Matthew (name changed to protect his identity), 13 years old, joined the Mai-Mai voluntarily several years ago, after being abused so much at home. She thought she would have a better life in the Mai-Mai. Matthew fought on the front lines four times and killed many people. Now she is a prostitute because there is nothing else for her, she says. Her parents have rejected her because of what she has done, and she says that though she is not happy, she does not know what else to do. With pink lipstick and a sultry walk, our hearts cried out for Jesus to redeem His bride.

 

I spent a lot of time with Benjamin (name changed to protect his identity), 14 years old, who also joined the Mai-Mai voluntarily and said he killed 14 people. I could see so much anger in him. We would be sitting quietly and then some village kids would approach us and he would jump up and start swatting the kids with sticks, yelling at them. His eyes would darken with anger. And as I sat by him, I realized that the only thing that will change Benjamin, or Matthew or Kevin, is love, Jesus’ love. So with the love Jesus put in me for Benjamin, I started to love him. As the day went on, Benjamin responded so much to my affection. Before long he would not leave my side, was always holding my hand and looking up into my face with these huge eyes. All I could think about was that this was a CHILD sitting before me, and yet he was also a fighter. I asked him if he believed in Jesus and he said of course, that he doesn’t know what he would do without Jesus’ grace, and that he knows it has to be huge if it is big enough for him and the things he has done. We painted rocks with the kids and Benjamin painted “Je t’aime” on a rock for me, which means I love you. On the way to lunch Benjamin and I sat next to each other, hand-in-hand, with my other arm around his shoulder, and tears welled up in my eyes. Love is more powerful than evil. The love I felt from him melted my heart. I am convinced that love can change these kids. Jesus’ love can redeem. Heal. Restore. Change. And make new, anything, even a child who has killed and whose own spirit, in many ways, has been killed.

 

Jonathan had a similar experience with Kevin. Jonathan poured love onto this little boy and also saw such a response to it. They are children. And they need love. By lunch, the kids were laughing instead of scowling, and hearts had opened instead of being chained shut. These kids are the rejected of the rejected in their community. No one wants anything to do with them. And there is nothing for them. No World Vision rehabilitation center, no ministries fighting for them. No one. Wade, Jonathan, Brett and I could only turn to the One who can do all things, and ask, beg and plead, for His mercy to rest and find a home in these children’s lives.

 

Our hearts are broken for these children. They have so much potential and are right on the edge, we believe. Many will re-join the Mai-Mai or another rebel group if nothing else is offered to them, statistics show. That is the only life they know.

 

Please, sweet Jesus, intervene in their lives so that the enemy will not win. Show them your love, your forgiveness, your grace. Transform them. Make all things new in them. Turn their sins to snow as you have done for us. Send your servants to protect them, fight for them, comfort them. These are your children, Jesus, and yet the darkness and hardness of death and sin has tried so hard to rob them of life. God, you and you alone can save them. Come quickly, Lord Jesus. Do not delay. Send forth your angels, legions of angels, to be by their side. At night when they are scared, comfort them and quell their fears. When they are rejected by others, open your arms to them in love. When they are tempted to go back and fight, prevent them, at all costs, dear Lord. Give them a heart of love instead of hate, forgiveness instead of anger, love instead of bitterness. Wash away their memories of deeds done in darkness, and shower them with your Spirit of LIGHT. God, come quickly. Our hearts feel the weight of your sorrow, but we cannot even begin to truly understand. Give us, your church, vision and wisdom, compassion and hearts of intercession for these beautiful children. They are yours. We believe it. And we love you. In Jesus Name, Amen.

 

Please join with us. In prayer. In love. In urgency.

 

Jonathan, Wade, Brett and Lindsay

 

FORTHCOMING TRAILER RELEASE FROM DTJ ON THE CONGO SLATED FOR SPRING 2008. Check back at DiscoverTheJourney.org to continue to track with the story.