HOPE Congo had its annual spiritual retreat June 27-29 at Vuela, a Catholic retreat center just outside of Brazzaville. It was a great place to get away from the city noise and see trees, flowers, and grass. All 37 of us piled into a bus and the HOPE truck and arrived at Vuela Friday morning. The office was split into three teams: the green, red, and yellow teams. Each morning we had a time of praise and worship led by one of the teams, and three office staff spoke throughout the weekend. This weekend was a great time for me and Nate to spend quality time with the staff.
Archives For Staff / Travels
HOPE Intl
Aug 30 2012
HOPE Intl
Staff / Travels Working with the poorHOPE Intl
Aug 10 2012
By HOPE Intl
Staff / Travels Working with the poorSome languages have honorifics reserved for elders. Others have local slang dialects tossed around and worn with pride in certain neighborhoods. While they may be spoken by people of totally different ages, locales, and cultures, each string of words shares solidarity in what it represents. The individual phrases may have very different meanings, but underlying each of these thoughts is a unique history and heritage. The words may project values of reciprocity & respect dating back to Confucius. Others can evoke eras and events long forgotten, only preserved in speech not stone.
HOPE Intl
Aug 9 2012
HOPE Intl
Staff / Travels Working with the poor
I stand outside the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre looking out over the beautiful city of Kigali, Rwanda, where a progressing, strikingly beautiful city is growing. People are warm and friendly. There is a strong ethic to move forward together for positive growth. Compared to many places, things seem put together, peaceful, hopeful, happy.
Standing there outside the memorial, I am reminded that people carry stories within them that are not expressly apparent on the outside. Every person’s story is different. Some have found forgiveness, some still cannot move past the pain, some have found incredible healing.
Muraho! It’s a lovely sunny day in Rwanda. I invite you to journey with me to a savings group meeting in the hills of Byumba, Rwanda.
First, we hop in a truck with Verene, the field coordinator for the Byumba diocese (each region has a Savings and Credit Association field coordinator chosen by the Anglican Church); Musoni, the driver; Garrett, the HOPE microenterprise technical advisor who is experiencing the second week of his two-year stay in Rwanda; and Matthew Rohrs, the HOPE director of spiritual integration. As we make the two-hour drive from Kigali to Byumba, you may be as awed as I am at the beauty of this country known as the land of a thousand hills. The pictures that we bring home just don’t do the scenery justice!
I used to look out at grassy hillsides where controlled fires had left the land black and smoldering and think, “Can beauty really come from these ashes?” “Can life really emerge from the scorched earth and be even richer and stronger than ever?” I find myself asking the Lord some of these same questions as I look at the world around us. Do I truly, deeply trust Him to transform lives—to bring beauty out of brokenness? Transformation is easy to talk about. But when it is up close and personal, when the lives of those around me depend on it, do I really believe it? When faced with real brokenness in my life, in the lives of those around me, and in the lives of those we serve around the world, I find myself asking, “Do I truly believe that God is in the business of deep transformation here and now?”
As we walk through the bustling marketplace, the spiritual integration officer at HOPE Congo, Precy Ndongui, calls out “Hello!” in English to anyone who has been part of the HOPE Congo family, and without fail the clients respond with the expected “Hi.” As an excellent former loan officer, Precy knows this call and response well and energetically greets the clients as friends. As we navigated through the market from one busy client to another, clients’ words of friendship and community through times of joy and difficulty stood out. I invite you to meet a few beautiful women from the HOPE family:
“Now I have another family,” says Euridice, a member of a HOPE community bank in Brazzaville. As she smiles and confidently sells us a bag of peanuts, Euridice explains how she has not only benefitted from the business trainings on investing wisely, managing cash flow, and developing savings, but has also grown closer to other women who sell in the same market as they learn together and visit one another.
