Our Safari to the Congo

We have just returned from a weekend in the Congo: what an adventure! Our “tour guides” were Randy and Alice Matthewson, long-time friends. Randy and Alice served for ten years (1986-1996) as full-time missionaries at the oldest Free Methodist mission in the Congo. In 1996, when civil war broke out, they had to escape for their lives. Now retired, they are back for 2-4 months at a time. Presently, they are helping the local people rebuild from the damages inflicted during the war.

The mission has a major hospital, and a school of Nursing at a village called Nundu. Alice, who is a nurse, was eager for us to visit the school and tour the hospital. We were impressed at the fine job they are doing at Nundu, with such meager resources.

The hospital at Nundu has no electricity, and for two years has been without water. While we were there, we expected to put in place the last valve to supply water to the hospital. But the valve Randy had purchased in Bujumbura broke…and so he is has to get another for the trip back this week.

Randy (who is an engineer) and his crew also have been at work restoring the church and finishing a building begun 15 years ago. It is a beautiful building which will seat 3,000. I preached there on Sunday morning: it was an unusual service orchestrated by God.

The General Conference of Congo is the largest in the FM Church, with 140,000 members. The people are very poor. The country is in worse shape than Burundi.

The road to Nundu, along beautiful Lake Tanganika, is incredibly bad. It took us four hours to go 25 miles. We had to cross five rivers without bridges. Fortunately, Randy has a four-wheel drive Land Rover.

Getting into the Congo also was quite an experience: it took us more than three hours…and that was with the advocacy of Congolese Free Methodists who went to the government offices on our behalf.

Along the road to Nundu, we encountered numerous “checkpoints,” most of them illegitimate. We had to bribe our way from point to point. The “soldiers” and “guards” wanted money. But we got through by giving them cookies, avocados, writing pens and reading glasses!

All in all, it was a great experience, not one we will soon forget. We are grateful to the Matthewsons for this opportunity to visit in the Congo: it gave us yet another perspective on missionary work. We are also grateful for the opportunity to meet some of our brothers and sisters in Christ: we met some of the finest people we ever expect to meet here on planet Earth.

As we conclude this visit to Africa, we are grateful to God for his many blessings.