Alain's World

10/20/2013 06:15:00 PM sendtheroths 0 Comments

Alain is our field assistant at Global Outreach Foundation Congo. He’s a brilliant young man that is literally the same age and same personality type as Andrew.

Alain and his family witnessed some of the greatest atrocities known to mankind when he and his family saw his village raided and destroyed. He was just a boy at that time.

Alain is on staff with Global Outreach Foundation Congo. He speaks six languages and has a bachelors degree in international development.

Alain’s brother shared a story with us of when they saw a pregnant woman from their community dragged to the village center by her hair. The rebels cut her belly open with a machete, took the fetus and mashed in a giant mortar and pestle as the lady bled to death.

This was done by a predominantly Tutsi rebel group. Tutsis are the tribe from Congo’s neighbor, Rwanda who are most commonly known for the being the victims of genocide in 1994. It’s hard for Alain to see this group as a victim to anything after witnessing atrocities like the one stated above. They danced and sang their indigenous dances and sang their indigenous songs as they tore his village apart.

Today, Alain’s village is no more. It’s just a memory. The war has destroyed everything.

The tribe that committed the atrocities against Alain’s community sits in the seat of power in Rwanda, a country that is growing economically and developmentally. Alain’s traumatizing memories and displacement from his home territory has brought his family to the city of Goma—between two worlds.

The world that was once ‘home’ but is now the home to violence, corporate greed, ethnic hatred and political strife. And just across the border, ‘oppressors’ use the Genocide to attract worldwide sympathy and aid to the country while making alleged backdoor deals to fund proxy wars in eastern Congo that has lead to more than 6 million deaths in the past fifteen years.

Alain is sitting with Nick Stevens, a summer intern with Global Outreach Foundation.

Alain is walking through the process of forgiveness. He’s navigating the shallow waters of forgiveness, while also coping with past traumas from boyhood, present traumas of living in a city that’s constantly under threats of attack and also the even more complicated issue of… where is the line between forgiveness and not allowing people to just destroy you?

If anyone out there is reading this and thinks that they have a nice clean scriptural answer for him--- I’m going to call your B.S. card.

There is no easy answer to what Alain faces everyday as a Christian, a young person in Congo and a leader in Global Outreach Foundation Congo.

He is a hero. And by God’s grace, it’s our honor to love and encourage him through his journey to complete forgiveness and healing.

A weekend ago, we helped him walk through a new door in his journey. We partnered with our friends at HOPE+ Africa to have Alain stay with them in Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda for a few days. It was Alain’s first time to see a capital city. It was Alain’s first time to see a metropolitan area. It was Alain’s first time to be around so many people from the tribe, who destroyed his village.

Alain is currently leading the GOF-C committee to translate all level 1 leadership-training from French to Swahili.

He went to the Genocide Memorial, a controversial place for Congolese who feel that the memorial is biased and tells only part of the story to visitors who are ignorant the Genocide’s affects in eastern Congo. He stood in the houses of Tutsis who loved on him and broke bread with him.

Alain knew that you cannot generalize all people based on their ethnic background before his trip to Kigali with us. But I believe that this trip was a part of the deep inner healing that God is doing inside of him. This trip allowed him to make good memories with a people group that he otherwise had horrible memories with. This interaction is so key to inner healing and reconciliation.

On the way home Alain recognized the dangers in isolating himself from the ethnic groups that have wronged his family, his village and his country.

“We need to understand that we are all human.” He said. “God’s creation. Meeting the kind of people that I have met and having the opportunity to see things from another perspective reminds me that 1.) There are good people here who fear God and don’t deserve to be classified with their country’s shortcomings. 2.) We are all human and we all just want to protect ourselves.”

We love Alain so much and are honored to have him as a staff member and disciple of Global Outreach Foundation Congo.