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Reaching Hutu Rebels with Help

from Swedish UN Commander

Greetings from Bukavu!

Kathy and I are so thankful to be able to keep on keeping on, here in the D R Congo. Thank YOU to each one for continuing to help make this ministry possible.

We ask you to join us in prayer for an urgent need to purchase a building and property for the future stability of Radio Kahuzi.

Our Board of Directors agreed in our last board meeting to come before the Lord to ask Him for a sum "above and beyond all that we could ever ask or think.": $250,000. That sum could be raised with 250 partners sharing $1,000.

The board feels that it is imperative that we seek another property where we can grow into the future. Pray with us, please.

Otherwise, life here in Bukavu and the radio ministry continues to hum along "normally," for Africa.

However, outside of our gates life continues to be much harder for some villages in the mountains and the bush that are still having attacks by armed bandits and the Hutu rebels from Rwanda. When they need supplies, they go into the Congolese villages and loot and burn houses, and harm the women.

A few days ago I went by the MONUSCO HQ, just up the street from our broadcast studio. An old friend from Finland who had trained the Congolese police ten years ago had returned after five years absence. he now heads up a group of Peace Keepers north of Bukavu. He introduced me to the Swedish Commander of a five-man Peace Keeper team in the mountains of Kilembwe. He asked me to follow up with him on installing our FM repeaters at Kilembwe and other sites. he is frustrated with the fact that their efforts to communicate with the Hutu leave them still unreached with the message to help them find, choose and receive their peaceful return to their homeland.

A few weeks ago, he had just found a group of young Hutu military who would have been four years old when they came across the border in 1994; and when asked why they were not opting for their return, they said they were uninformed of any options or program that would allow, let alone, guarantee their safe return to Rwanda. They have now been repatriated peacefully!

So, he sees our SW and FM broadcasts would be a wonderful help, since the Hutu and other warring groups do listen to Radio Kahuzi. Praise the LORD! Pray for our follow through with both messages of reconciliation!

Pray that this pillaging and violence to women and children will somehow end and that they will receive Reconciliation, will go back to Rwanda where they can start over living "normally" once again. Now, they live in the mountain jungle and forests--not much hope for them except with the Lord's intervention into their lives--and possibly by the LORD's Wisdom and Grace, through Radio Kahuzi.

Many have gone back to Rwanda and have gotten their lives back together again. These are the same folks that left Rwanda in 1994 during the genocide. They fled over here to Congo Refugee camps where they were ministered to through Radio Kahuzi until the War of 1996, when they were chased into the jungle by the invading forces from Rwanda--so it's been a while!

Thank you for all your love and prayers for us!! These aren't easy days in the Congo, but seems like the whole world is going down fast. Praise the Lord we can still give out the Word through Radio Kahuzi!