In the past few years, we have seen the tragic and escalating occurrences of kidnapping of children for ransom in town. Children are abducted off the street while walking to school, to market or to get water and held until their parents pay a designated sum to release them unharmed. Tragically if the money is not paid within days the children are killed.

This week three young children from the same family in first and third grades were kidnapped on their way to school … their bodies were found Wednesday in a trash heap, throats slit. I cannot imagine the deep grief their parents are suffering.

Thursday night, one of our Sunday school teachers, 16, was kidnapped as he walked home from Dance Team practice at HEAL Africa. He was able to throw himself out of the car door and run away to be found safe this morning with a bruised shoulder and fractured wrist; very shaken but alive. Many of us prayed for him through the night. He and his mother gave a moving testimony at chapel of God’s faithfulness.

There is a war going on in both the physical and spiritual realm. We continue to see more refugees in town (300,000+) fleeing from the rebel advance, now on three fronts outside of Goma. Poverty and desperation are taking its toll. The enemy is present and encroaching further from without … but we have the confidence that “He who is in (us) is greater than he who is in the world.”   I John 4:4

Photo by Sylvain Liechti MONUSCO