(We now continue 1 of 8 delayed Mission Report - Maha Mission)

   Week 6:  Worst road in Congo;   Kindu - Kasongo

                “Congo Inland Mission Trip” (Nov.14-19, 2010)

After 9 days on Congo River, we were happy just to be on land;

SMS contacted Adventist pastors so many days ago were waiting

and welcomed us.

Maniema Province is poorest in all of Congo by virtue of land-locked, inaccessible road conditions.

There is a thin lifeline road from Bukavu (South Kivu) – Kalole –Shabunda - Kindu, however, this road is now controlled by rebels. "Kindu" is a very poor city of no income and the cost of living is outrageously high due to transportation cost; merchandise today has to come via Kisangani by boat or by airplane.

Therefore, SDA church is very difficult; low income, low tithe, low offerings. Pastors are paid little and naturally Maniema Mission is the poorest Mission/Field in Congo. (Another one is Mbandaka Field in Equateur Province) Kindu city is 1,700km away from Union in Lubumbashi.

There is one train service in a month to Lubumbashi which will take about 3-4 weeks to reach if you are extremely lucky. There is roads on map which does not match real road in existence. If there is some kind of road, it is either very rough, or inaccessible in common sense. Old roads were covered by trees and no one ever managed, thus it is not road any more.

Through subsequent meetings with leaders of SDA church in their small rented office, Maha Mission has learned that it should help/support this Mission without any reason or condition; it needs schools, clinics and office spaces among others.

All 4 of missionaries pitched tents in the living room of a senior pastor to whom we burdened food and showers. However, Maha was impressed with leaders’ morale in spite of these difficulties; Maniema Mission is willing to dispatch 5 lay evangelists with Maha Mission support to un-entered areas

which Maha has identified.

As we have left Kindu, 50km was fairly good road, and then we managed to travel only another 120km in 12 hours of driving before pitching tent in Gbandana for the night by midnight because road condition was horrible. We lost all metal works attached, welded parts such as roof rack, metal holders of spare tires, and spare fuel and potable water can.

All day long as we travelled, no cars passed except bicycles and motor-bikes with loads of merchandise.

However, the rough road and night was compensated by joy of following morning evangelism in the town of “Gbandana” where we preached Gospel and distributed “Adventist World” magazines.

People were hesitant at AW magazines in the beginning but later on everyone wanted a copy. We pray that many of them will accept Adventism by reading this magazine.

As we continued our mission journey for the day, we had to stop to throw away huge and heavy roof rack, put last remaining spare tire into inside of car; heavy luggage to inside of car and voluminous but light weight goods onto roof top which will sit, without rack, on bare roof of the car.

A lucky passor-by had the day’s work when we gave him our broken metal roof; in return he helped our luggage re-arrangement. He was a professional truck driver and no wonders he was quite helpful.

We were forced to use the “winch” (a metal rope that can be tied to bottom of a tree trunk so that it can pull the car out of dirt ditch) 13 times for the day, and it was enough. By the time we were struggling to pass the town of “Kisanji”, a worst mud wrapped even our special mud tires so hard, because it had rained several hours before we passed this point.

We were forced to pitch our tents on muddy road beside car and had to spend the night.

As we prepared to sleep inside pitched tents, we wondered why we are doing this?

Before we had answers, angels took us to sleep.

Maybe we wished to witness and identify un-entered areas of Gospel!

Maha Mission