Snapshot from the Road

I've been holed up in Panera's Bread every morning now-a-days with friend and mystery writer Tony Perona. He's working on his 4th novel or a screen play, I don't know. After exchanging morning greetings, we don't talk. Just write. He writes his mysteries and I continue to write a story about riding a bicycle through the war zone of the mountains of eastern Congo.

Blogging my daily pages got problematic. I decided that it's not a good idea to annoy all my readers before publication. However, here's a small snapshot from the road.

The team is up and on the road before daybreak. We get to the bridge over the back side of the falls just as the sun broke the dark. Beautiful morning.

Our riding team has grown by two. The district superintendent of the Mitwaba District and another pastor have joined us. The fresh morning air, good hard sand road, and good company. Perfect. The team is singing and telling stories.

About 5 kilometers out of Kyubo, we stop at a church. I’m impressed. This church has been built entirely by local labor with available resources. In other words, no cement and no tin roofing. But it is striking in its newness. Newly baked red brick walls and newly woven green grass roof.

There is an energy here. A breath of fresh air to match the morning. The congregation has a sense of self sufficiency that I haven’t seen in other places. All churches here worship with a enthusiastic gratitude directed toward God, acknowledging their dependence upon God’s gifts, but this congregation projected a sense of self-actualization in addition to their gratitude to God.

Instead of pitching a plea for help to the visiting missionary, they were showing off their work with a deserved pride. It was clear that the district superintendent was proud.

Frankly, when we had pulled into the church yard, I was annoyed that we had made this stop. We had just hit a good pace for the day. If traveling through the Mitwaba District was going to involve stopping every five kilometers to visit each and every church, it was going to be a long and painful day. But I was wrong. This stop was worth it.

In the coming rainy season-dry season cycle, the weather is going to take the church's new look away. The rain will wash and the sun will bake and the worms will eat the grass. The tragedy is that this is not a people with no ambition or work ethic. This is a people whose ambitions and hard work are not respected by the natural world they struggle against.

Peace,

Bob