Lindsay Branham was recently on CNN advocating for the situation in the Congo. Lindsay works full time for Food for the Hungry and is currently based in Kigali, Rwanda. Please check out FH Global online to learn of Food For the Hungry’s work in Africa. Lindsay is also a freelance writer and photographer for DTJ the side. We recently had the opportunity to connect Lindsay with CNN and she used this massive platform to speak passionately about the crisis in the Congo and how it is adversely affecting the people. Lindsay is a true example of one who speaks up for those who cannot speak for themselves in order to ensure justice for those who are suffering. 

After watching the video, you can click on the DR Congo Category of the DTJ blog, or simply scroll down, to read and see more stories and photos from Lindsay. Please urgently pray for the people of the Congo. Right now pause, take 60 seconds, and pray for the people of the Congo and that peace would come.

 
Tell us what you think! We want to know what your heart beats for regarding the crisis in the Congo, so write us your comments or take a moment to post prayer on their behalf.

We gathered in an oversized room to discuss an under prioritized crisis. Crisis because the abduction of children into armed groups and if they escape the life of destitution awaiting them, is a crisis nearly unparalleled anywhere in the world. Under prioritized because, frankly, no one cares and very little is being done about it.

We were all there. Provincial administrators, village chiefs, pastors, presidents of associations. And we had come to at least begin the dialogue. To open up the gates. I really wanted to hear their perspectives, to listen to their frustrations and joys, to learn their hearts.

Over the next four hours much was said. I could see the utter exhaustion in their faces and words. Exhausted of war, exhausted of death and destitution. Exhausted from witnessing the future generations become trapped in war, prostitution and violence because of the generations before them. Exhausted of watching their community and life destroyed. Constantly.

But they spoke with courage. They have not given up. We focused the discussion on vulnerable children in their community, primarily child soldiers, and what can be done to bring them life. They have ideas and dreams for their community and for their children. They just have no way for those hopes to birth reality. And that has been devastating.

The chief of Sake is an elegant man with graceful airs and a gentle, kind presence. He also commands respect and is quick to listen. He is the core of the new committee we formed today for the healing of child soldiers in Sake. Made up of five community leaders, including pastors, the president of a woman’s association and the chief, they will dedicate themselves to spearhead sensitization, intervention and re-integration efforts for child soldiers in Sake. They agreed that these children are not beyond redemption and that it will take them mobilizing to begin the process.

The first child we discussed was Leonard. Former Mai-Mai child soldier, 15 years old, and addicted to alcohol and given to anger, Leonard is at great risk. The chief says he knows Leonard well and that if there is not an intervention, Leonard could easily die.

Yesterday I had gone to see Leonard. The winding path to his home is starkly beautiful. The raging river and tranquil lake flank his home, surrounded by bright green hills. As I walked up the dirt path a few men were making local beer. A long dug out canoe was filled with leaves and liquid. Apparently this is how it’s done.

Leonard came around the corner swaggering. He was completely drunk. His continually further thinning body wobbled toward me. His eyes were half way shut. He smiled hugely and grabbed my hand. He said he was happy to see me. He told me I am like his parent.

We walked down the dirt path to find somewhere more private to talk. My heart sank that he was so drunk. His father had told me that the war had made it too dangerous to go out to their fields to farm, so he started brewing local beer (the dug out canoe), and sold it to make money. Leonard was responsible for selling the beer. Apparently, he just drinks it. His father had been so downcast that day, his head in his hands, saying he just has nothing to offer Leonard.

Today it only continues. Leonard began saying he was angry because last time we had paid another former child soldier’s school fees. Leonard raged. He shook his thin arm in the air and started crying. Watching him, filled with rage and nearly exploding, while at the same time expressing his wounds through fitful tears, I knew I had no answers.

Through the Father’s eyes, what would He see? What does He see? A value, a preciousness, which far exceeds anything I can even imagine. When God looks at Leonard, even in the midst of tears, He sees worth.

As the first action for the committee for the healing of child soldiers in Sake, the chief will go to speak directly with Leonard’s parents and Leonard himself about coming to Goma for three months to stay at a center for children at-risk, sponsored by Discover The Journey, where he will be in a stable, safe environment, learn a trade, and most importantly, receive the love and warmth of a Christ-loving staff. If everyone accepts, Leonard will be in Goma tomorrow.

I am silenced by joy. The joy of seeing a community initiate the healing process for the brokenness in their own community. The joy of the peace and hope of Christ that has broken through today. And the joy over one child, Leonard. I pray he comes back to the flock.

Love awaits him.

By Lindsay Branham

To learn more about Discover The Journey’s work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, click HERE

To fuel Discover The Journey’s quest to bring light to the story of child soldiers in the Congo, please donate now. 

Whispers of hope have settled into words. The rain fallen has not yet dried.

A sad maturity marked her face. Her provocative black, lacy clothing clung loosely to her constantly thinning frame. Her deep sultry voice and swanky gait, as she threw her hips around, reminded me of a little girl playing dress up.

But she wasn’t playing.

Aisha is a prostitute. A child prostitute. A former Mai-Mai child soldier, beginning when she was 13, Aisha today has nothing else to help her survive but the selling of her own body.

Aisha says she sleeps with at least two men per day and gets an average of $2 a session. Often, the men beat her.

I listened to her quiet words, drenched in pain, and told her that she is valuable. I told her that $2 has nothing to do with what she is really worth.

I began thinking about Jesus as I sat in the dimly lit room in Sake, the rain pounding outside, Aisha in front of me. I thought of him bending down to write in the sand as he stood in front of the adulteress, her accusers’ stones falling heavily to the ground as they turned and walked away, one by one. And then Jesus had looked up and simply told the adulteress to go, and leave her life of sin. What had His presence been like to evoke such obedience? The humility of Christ and the glory of the Father must have combined to utterly woo that woman towards repentance.

And in front of me was a prostitute. A child soldier turned prostitute. But still a child.

What should I say to her? How could I convince her to leave the life she led? All around her poverty rages. She is just trying to survive. She said she thought selling her body would at least provide her with a living. She said she was deceived. “This is not living.” Aisha whispered.

So I took a breath and told Aisha that she needed to stop selling her body, that it will destroy her. I told her that Love awaits her. She admitted her fear of contracting HIV/AIDS and “dying like a dog.” I told her that fear does not need to become reality.

Her parents are in an IDP camp along the lake. She said she knows her father really loves her.

“Aisha,” I said, trying to maintain eye contact with her, “would you be willing to leave Sake, to go back home to your family, to live a different life?”

With her family she would be safe from the sexual ravages of the men she served with their greedy appetites and forceful fists. With her family she can be loved. With her family she could be a child.

Aisha sat still for a few moments and thought. 

And then she said yes.

We went with her to pay the $6 she owed her landlady for rent in the back ways of Sake. Aisha gathered her things in a brightly colored pange, Congolese cloth, splashed with brightness, contrasted against the dark sky and the smoke circling in the air, coming from the low hanging bars with men and beer and promiscuity.

And we got on motos. And drove away.

With all her belongings in her lap, Aisha rode out of Sake toward her family. When we arrived at the camp we circled between rows and rows of UNHCR covered huts, over small rivers of rain and stopped when a beaming younger sister rushed to embrace Aisha. 

She was home.

Though facing the rigors of life in the camp, her father said he would provide for her and protect her, and would soon return to their village. Her father hopes she will stay.

I still don’t know what it was about Jesus that compelled the adulteress to leave her life of sin. But maybe it was being offered a way out. Maybe it was the way Jesus had stood in front of her accusers and defended her in love.

As Aisha and I had walked out of the alley and away from prostitution, I had heard people calling Aisha “solider,” and “harlot.” And as she reached gently down for my hand, I held hers tightly. We walked through the center of town, hand in hand. I prayed that somehow her shame might be broken, that she would know I was proud to know her. And as the mocking cries died away, her small fingers still holding onto mine, I realized that no words, much less guilt, could persuade this child. Just an open hand of love.

By Lindsay Branham

To learn more about Discover The Journey’s work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, click HERE

To fuel Discover The Journey’s quest to bring light to the story of child soldiers in the Congo, please donate now. 

Instead of shame and disgrace, “Your moon will wane no more. Your days of sorrow will end. They will be called the Holy People, the Redeemed of the Lord; and you will be called Sought After” (Isaiah 60:20, 62:12).

In Isaiah God grieves Israel’s sin and disobedience. He mourns their wayward hearts and illustrates what His wrath could do. And then He begins to cast a vision for them of what He has promised—He rolls out the scroll of His own heart and shows it to them.

He wants to wrap them inside this vision and story—to be part of it, to usher it into existence. His passion for Israel and Zion is revealed—His commitment to her redemption unveiled. “As a bridegroom rejoices over His bride, so will your God rejoice over you” (Is. 62:5). He has betrothed Himself to Israel and He will persevere to the wedding feast of the Lamb. The portrait of His redemptive pursuit is breathtaking.

To contrast His pursuit of His children He reminds them of who they are and would be without Him—deserted, broken walls, and empty streets. And He breaks the paradigm. Instead of allowing Israel to become a people long-deserted, and Jerusalem a city with broken walls, God declares the opposite.

Christ continues this redemptive vision. His Kingdom coming to earth is the reversal of what should be according to our sin, and the importation of what He actually intended all along.

For the child soldiers in North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo, God is declaring the same things. He refuses to give up His bride and will chase her until she turns. God is a healer. God is a restorer. God is a lover.

These children, called “murderers,” “thieves,” “rejected,” “abandoned,” “soldier,” “orphan,” and “prostitute,” God is calling,

Sought After.

God is shattering the paradigm and establishing new identities marked with Himself and brimming with promise. The child soldiers of DRC are now called, “Sought After,” and God will seek them until He finds them. 

And like how God could not rest until He established Israel, He now, with Christ, can not rest until He establishes all of His children. These no longer deserted children included.

“No longer will they call you Deserted or name your land Desolate” (Isaiah 62:4).

But Sought After.

By Lindsay Branham

To learn more about Discover The Journey’s work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, click HERE

To fuel Discover The Journey’s quest to bring light to the story of child soldiers in the Congo, please donate now. 

I stood in the military head quarters for North Kivu, DRC today watching the army-green clad, beret wearing, AK-47 carrying, aviator sunglasses bearing soldiers look incredibly en forme. A Belgian built building, reminiscent more of a ski chalet than a military brigade headquarters, houses the most important and influential FARDC soldiers (Forcees Armees de la Republique Democratique du Congo). 

I walked in and went straight up the narrow staircase. I’ve found that boldness works best. This can avoid long drawn out arguments in French, attempted persuasions and other unpleasant difficulties with military personnel. 

As I sat on a slumping couch waiting for the Colonel to arrive, the man next to me very curiously inspected my camera. We started talking. He is the president of PARECO, one of five armed groups in North Kivu. PARECO reportedly recruits children. We talked candidly about peace and what it is and how the Congolese ache for it.

He said he believes in Jesus and proclaimed that Jesus most assuredly will come rescue the children who are suffering in Congo. I wondered if he realized his own part in their suffering as head of a rebel movement. Claiming to defend the country, they are still engaged in the things that force villages and communities to empty and IDP (internally displaced people) camps to fill. Trading war for more war is not the way to peace.

“For only love—which means humility can exercise the fear which is at the root of all war.” Thomas Merton, A Passion for Peace.

Then another man in the room volunteered himself to be the next in front of the camera; the president of the Mai-Mai, yet another rebel group, in an area north of Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, DRC. He said he has been involved with the Mai-Mai since the early 1990’s and that his father gave his life to the Mai-Mai. 

“70 years of Mai-Mai,” he said proudly. All this man has known is war. He spoke proudly of Congo’s natural resources and her potential. Again, war for war, claiming peace as the motivation.

What can peace mean any longer when this is the battle fought?

Is it really just a cessation of hostilities or something so much deeper, something only an outside Power could sustain? I most assuredly think and believe the later.

My friend, a major with the Mai-Mai in an area west of Goma, came to visit me. I told him he should leave the Mai-Mai. He said he would if he had a job, otherwise he would starve. He finally admitted to me that he fights in the battles and kills the enemy. 

His father was killed by Nkunda’s army in 2004. That was impetus enough for him to join the Mai-Mai. 

“Jean,” I said, “your father was killed by Nkunda’s men, right?” 

“Yes,” he answered.

“Are you still traumatized from his death?”

“Yes,” he answered.

“Was that a horrible thing to happen to a child?” I asked.

“Yes, it was.”

“But, Jean, you go to battle and organize battles that kill other children’s fathers.”

“But they are Nkunda’s men. They are enemies,” Jean retorted adamantly.

“They are also fathers. They are also Congolese. And the children are innocent. Stop making more children fatherless.”

Looking at brothers as enemies must be broken in order for peace to emerge. And children must be able to keep their fathers.

“If we can love the men we cannot trust (without trusting them foolishly) and if we can to some extent share the burden of their sin by identifying ourselves with them, then perhaps there is some hope of a kind of peace on earth, based not on the wisdom and the manipulations of man but on the inscrutable mercy of God.” Thomas Merton

Jean also tells me he believes in Christ. I don’t understand how his mind has reconciled Christ and love with a life of war and death. When I asked him this he didn’t really respond. God’s heart must weep at the deception. At the masquerade. Of all the lies.

And as I reflect on these three men I spoke with today, each engaged in war with groups that use children as soldiers, as tools, as trash, I am reminded that it will accomplish nothing to hate them for the evil they allow.

“So instead of loving what you think is peace, love other men and love God above all. And instead of hating the people you think are warmongers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war. If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed—but hate these things in yourself, not in another.” Thomas Merton

To learn more about Discover The Journey’s work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, click HERE

To fuel Discover The Journey’s quest to bring light to the story of child soldiers in the Congo, please donate now. 

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 front-lines.

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, Discover The Journey, 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.

To learn more about Discover The Journey’s work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, click HERE

To fuel Discover The Journey’s quest to bring light to the story of child soldiers in the Congo, please donate now. 

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

To learn more about Discover The Journey’s work in the Democratic Republic of Congo, click HERE

To fuel Discover The Journey’s quest to bring light to the story of child soldiers in the Congo, please donate now. 

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