Music builds bridges to Africa
A chance connection on social media led Heidi Epp, a music teacher from B.C., to travel to Africa this summer to teach music and peace and conflict transformation. Kendri Mastaki Mushagalusa, founder and director of Peace Foundation DRC and the Peace Music Academy in Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), had invited Epp,…
This is your family
Have you ever been introduced to a distant relative for the first time—maybe you didn’t even know that person existed—and yet you immediately felt a connection with them? After all, they are family! As part of a global Anabaptist family, we have family members all around the world, most of whom we have never met,…
Militia lays down arms in Congo
As truckloads of militia drove into Tshikapa to lay down their arms, Joseph Nkongolo went to meet them. Nkongolo—Coordinator of the Service and Development Department of the Mennonite Church of Congo—spoke of militia members saying they want to re-enter civil life. “Pray for us,” they said to him, “we have done horrible things; forgive us…
Congolese army officer arrested in U.N. murders case
Michael J. Sharp and fellow U.N. sanctions monitor Zaida Catalán of Sweden were abducted and killed in 2017 in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo while monitoring sanctions violations and possible war crimes by the Congolese national army and various militias. The prosecutor overseeing the case told Reuters news agency that Jean de…
‘I need to go to school’
Ten-year-old Kanku Ngalamulume fled from his home in the village of Senge after armed groups beheaded his mother and father and his siblings too. He was among 1.4 million people in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo who have been forced from their homes as violence among local militias and the…
Supplying food to people displaced by violence
Agnès Ntumba remembers the day her husband and seven children fled the violence that took over their village in the Kasai region of the Democratic Republic of Congo. “I saw people being killed. They were coming to kill us, and we had to escape,” Ntumba said. About a year ago, her village of Tshilundu Ndibunu…
Generous love amid war in DRC
Loving the generous people of the Democratic Republic of Congo is not difficult, but evil happening in the rural Kasai region of that lush country is hard to comprehend. In December 2017, survivors of civil war there told a delegation from the Mennonite World Conference (MWC) Deacons Commission of surprise attacks on their villages from…
Congolese Mennonites suffer atrocities amid displacement of 1.4 million
WARNING: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence. Dozens of Congolese Mennonites have been killed, hundreds of their homes have been burned, and thousands of them have fled, as violence consumes the Kasai region, birthplace of the Mennonite church in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) reports 36 confirmed deaths of Mennonites,…
