Some where in the ages to come accounts will be given of a past age, where a remnant of saints who were known as the "sons of God" poured themselves out in travailing intercessory prayer. It will be told that every night these chosen saints burned their bodies upon God's holy altar and during the day they walked upon the earth in the hidden glory of God. These holy ones had quietly laid their lives down, where upon they received mantles of God's supernatural power. This was for the most part hidden and known only to those few who were content to realize their life's work would go unrecognized on earth but rewarded richly with the increase of Christ's kingdom glory.I should so love to be counted amongst these that I have described above. Only He can accomplish such in my life as I can't add even an inch of stature to what I shall be. If the "groanings of suffering prayer" be any indication of His path to such a position and reward I would have to believe I am today being dragged the right way.
It seems for a few years I have lost all sense of time. I can hardly tell whether a month was a week ago or three day was one. So it is with my life and my friend Joian will testify to this. If there is one thing I don't care to manage anymore it is "time and money." It is hard to explain to most people, that although I appear poor and don't even know what day it is, I have this terrific Manager that oversees my affairs. I actually very rarely try to explain, even when they look at me like I am "coo coo for cocoa puffs." With that in mind it seems some time ago I saw a small photo in the free daily paper we have published here in Jackson Hole. As my eyes fell on this little three inch photo it seemed it captured all of my soul. My heart broke as I read the caption describing the photo. It descibed how these two little lonely and crying girls of the Congo had been separated from their mother and families in the midst of the horrors of war. The caption went on to say these little ones in the photo were but two of tens of hundreds of other misplaced children searching for their families. I must have looked at this photograph for twenty minutes with tearful utterings of prayer. My heart was so horrifically rent by the two little black girls, captured by a photographer's lens, while suffering such grief and terror.
That night as I prayed, I could not get the image of these little Congolese children out of my head. For a good deal of time before falling asleep I prayed in the spirit and groaned again with a broken heart for these tired and hungry babies, one barely old enough to care for the other. It seemed night after night I went through this same drill until finally in the wee hours one morning I was awakened out of a half sleep. I had one of those "I know that I know" experiences that God gives you when hope turns to evidence and faith takes on substance concerning a subject of prayer. Although I never in my wildest dreams expected to hear or read another word of these little darling's fate, I knew at that moment these suffering children had found their mother and would be alright. I knew this as true and as real as I know my own name. My groanings and my pain were replaced by a peace and joy in my heart. And from that time on, praise replaced prayer whenever I thought of these two little ones. In the midst of all the killing, raping and torture that has enveloped this war torn nation there was now a part of heaven and an ark of safety established and there were two little girls alright. I could praise His Holy Name that carries His Grace Abounding!
This evening upon arriving at my computer after a period of prayer and a nap I could hardly believe that which was before me as I scanned today's news on Yahoo. THERE THEY WERE! OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! THERE WERE MY TWO BLACK BABIES AGAIN, AND THEY WERE WITH THEIR MOTHER AND GRANDMOTHER. THEIR FACES WERE PEACEFULLY AGLEAM AND THEY WERE SHINING OUT IN HIS GLORY FROM ANOTHER PHOTOGRAPH!
It has been a couple hours since I first glanced at this remarkable second photo and the tears of gratitude toward my Lord have not yet ceased. What an overwhelming and wonderful gift I have received at His hand tonight! I just had to share it with you and I can only hope it encourages you to continue to groan and pray for those that He gives to your care. For a surety it is the right path in this present season.
Below are the photos of my little black babies, both the original photo that broke my heart and the latter one that filled it anew with joy unspeakable. Oh how I love Him tonight!
Before I reveal the last photo, this is part of the story I read tonight giving account of this tremendous miracle. I had no idea how many more, must have been praying beside myself. Unbeknownst to me, it seems the original photo had captured a multitude of hearts.
KIWANJA, Congo – Eleven-year-old Protegee carried her sobbing niece on her back as they searched for relatives in a sea of people in eastern Congo.
An Associated Press photograph of the girl — using her filthy T-shirt to wipe the tears from her face as 3-year-old Reponse clung to her neck and wailed — prompted hundreds of e-mails from people around the world hoping to help them.
I returned to Kiwanja on Sunday to try to reunite the girls with family and even succeeded in finding them. But it turned out that not all problems in Congo can be solved by an outsider's sympathy.
When I first photographed Protegee on Nov. 6 in a crowd of thousands in the town of Kiwanja, she told me only her first name and that she was looking for her mother.
I learned later that she and Reponse had wandered alone for three days after being separated from Protegee's mother on Nov. 3 as the family fled on foot from their village of Kiseguru, about 12 miles away.
Protegee had spent one night sleeping in a church, huddled with Reponse under a flimsy scarf. "I had no food or water," she said, speaking in the Kiswahili language.
Hundreds of children have been separated from their families since fighting flared in eastern Congo in August and more than 1,600 children in the province were seeking their parents last week alone, according to UNICEF. The children's young ages and inability to give detailed information — plus the lack of official records in the Congolese countryside — make it even more difficult to track down their families.
When I set out to search for Protegee, I had little certainty of success but I was determined to try to help. As a journalist, I've photographed war and refugees all over the world since the early 1980s.
But I was particularly moved by readers' reactions to this photograph of two little girls, their faces wrenched in fear and desperation. I knew that the chances of finding them again were slim, as I see children walking alone on the roads every day. But I found myself imagining how it would feel if I were searching for my own daughters — and having two, that was not difficult.
Years of sporadic violence in eastern Congo intensified in August, and fighting between the army and fighters loyal to rebel leader Laurent Nkunda has displaced at least 250,000 people since then ..........
Reaching Kiwanja meant crossing an uneasy front line just a few miles north of Goma, with hundreds of heavily armed rebels and government troops deployed on either side. Then it was a bone-jarring two-hour drive on what was once a paved road, and is now one giant pothole.
Kiwanja is a typical African town, with one strip of dirt road as the main drag, a few small shops on each side, one roundabout, one crossroad, and huts sprawling to infinity on the hills to the east and the valley to the north.
Armed with the photograph of Protegee and Reponse, I started asking around. Women frowned — they did not know the girls. I traveled to the school yard, to the clinic. No luck.
As I was about to head back to Goma, I stopped near a U.N. base. Just a few days earlier its outskirts were refuge to thousands. But now it was a nearly empty lot with the skeletons of makeshift huts and a white UNHCR tent.
I ventured inside the tent. There, Maria Mukeshimani's eyes lit up at the sight of the photo — the woman, who had been displaced herself by the violence, knew these children. She had seen them in that very tent five days earlier. And she knew Protegee's mother: Her name is Esperance Nirakagori.
Esperance — the French word for hope.
Esperance had taken refuge at the local Catholic church in Kiwanja. When I arrived there, I was greeted by the sounds of a choir. It was evening Mass.
"Does anyone know if Esperance is around?" I asked.
An elderly man replied that she was in a small house nearby.
Wearing a yellow and red dress, Esperance greeted us. She had sweat dripping from her headscarf and spoke softly.
I showed her the picture and she smiled at the sight of the girls. Then, to my surprise, she said they had already found her, but she had sent them back to their village, alone and on foot. She feared for their safety in Kiwanja and believed they would be more secure in the care of her elder daughter; she was too weak to make the journey herself.
She kept staring at the photo. Only when I told her I would return the next morning and drive her to rejoin the girls in Kiseguru did her face light up in a wide, genuine smile.
We set off the next day after stopping for food at a restaurant in town. Esperance was quiet as we drove the 20 minutes to the village. She clutched the girls' photo as she walked through the streets, a trail of excited children in her wake.
The reunion with Protegee and Reponse, in a small mud hut, was brief. They smiled at each other. No one spoke. I prompted Protegee, a shy girl who was only 2 months old when her father was killed in Congo's last bloody war.
"Are you happy to see your mother?" I asked.
She answered, in a soft voice: "Yes."
Protegee told how she had arrived exhausted in Kiseguru on Nov. 12. But when she did, she found her family's hut empty — her sister and other relatives had already fled toward Uganda. For five days she waited for an adult to come for her. No one did. She was planning to set off for Kiwanja that very day to rejoin her mother, when I arrived instead.
Rather than remain in their village, Esperance asked me to take them all back to Kiwanja.
In the streets of Kiseguru, we had seen 20 men wearing civilian clothes and toting Kalashnikovs. When I asked her who they were, her answer was swift and certain: "Mai Mai."
Earlier this month, Kiwanja residents were terrorized by the pro-government Mai Mai militia, who the U.N. said killed people accused of supporting the rebels. Then the rebels won control and killed those they claimed had supported the militiamen.
And now the Mai Mai were in her family's village.
Protegee, Reponse and Esperance are back in Kiwanja now. They have set up a cot in the corner of a room on the Catholic church grounds. Outside, the U.N. World Food Program is distributing food, but the situation in the town remains volatile.
Before I left, I gave Esperance the photograph of her daughter and granddaughter. She handed it to Protegee, who, with Reponse in her lap, gazed at the image. I left them there on their cot, clutching the photo, one of their few possessions.
Asked when they would return to their village, Esperance replied: "When the war is over."
Below are the photos of my little black babies, both the original photo that broke my heart and the latter one that filled it anew with joy unspeakable. Oh how I love Him tonight!
Before I reveal the last photo, this is part of the story I read tonight giving account of this tremendous miracle. I had no idea how many more, must have been praying beside myself. Unbeknownst to me, it seems the original photo had captured a multitude of hearts.
KIWANJA, Congo – Eleven-year-old Protegee carried her sobbing niece on her back as they searched for relatives in a sea of people in eastern Congo.
An Associated Press photograph of the girl — using her filthy T-shirt to wipe the tears from her face as 3-year-old Reponse clung to her neck and wailed — prompted hundreds of e-mails from people around the world hoping to help them.
I returned to Kiwanja on Sunday to try to reunite the girls with family and even succeeded in finding them. But it turned out that not all problems in Congo can be solved by an outsider's sympathy.
When I first photographed Protegee on Nov. 6 in a crowd of thousands in the town of Kiwanja, she told me only her first name and that she was looking for her mother.
I learned later that she and Reponse had wandered alone for three days after being separated from Protegee's mother on Nov. 3 as the family fled on foot from their village of Kiseguru, about 12 miles away.
Protegee had spent one night sleeping in a church, huddled with Reponse under a flimsy scarf. "I had no food or water," she said, speaking in the Kiswahili language.
Hundreds of children have been separated from their families since fighting flared in eastern Congo in August and more than 1,600 children in the province were seeking their parents last week alone, according to UNICEF. The children's young ages and inability to give detailed information — plus the lack of official records in the Congolese countryside — make it even more difficult to track down their families.
When I set out to search for Protegee, I had little certainty of success but I was determined to try to help. As a journalist, I've photographed war and refugees all over the world since the early 1980s.
But I was particularly moved by readers' reactions to this photograph of two little girls, their faces wrenched in fear and desperation. I knew that the chances of finding them again were slim, as I see children walking alone on the roads every day. But I found myself imagining how it would feel if I were searching for my own daughters — and having two, that was not difficult.
Years of sporadic violence in eastern Congo intensified in August, and fighting between the army and fighters loyal to rebel leader Laurent Nkunda has displaced at least 250,000 people since then ..........
Reaching Kiwanja meant crossing an uneasy front line just a few miles north of Goma, with hundreds of heavily armed rebels and government troops deployed on either side. Then it was a bone-jarring two-hour drive on what was once a paved road, and is now one giant pothole.
Kiwanja is a typical African town, with one strip of dirt road as the main drag, a few small shops on each side, one roundabout, one crossroad, and huts sprawling to infinity on the hills to the east and the valley to the north.
Armed with the photograph of Protegee and Reponse, I started asking around. Women frowned — they did not know the girls. I traveled to the school yard, to the clinic. No luck.
As I was about to head back to Goma, I stopped near a U.N. base. Just a few days earlier its outskirts were refuge to thousands. But now it was a nearly empty lot with the skeletons of makeshift huts and a white UNHCR tent.
I ventured inside the tent. There, Maria Mukeshimani's eyes lit up at the sight of the photo — the woman, who had been displaced herself by the violence, knew these children. She had seen them in that very tent five days earlier. And she knew Protegee's mother: Her name is Esperance Nirakagori.
Esperance — the French word for hope.
Esperance had taken refuge at the local Catholic church in Kiwanja. When I arrived there, I was greeted by the sounds of a choir. It was evening Mass.
"Does anyone know if Esperance is around?" I asked.
An elderly man replied that she was in a small house nearby.
Wearing a yellow and red dress, Esperance greeted us. She had sweat dripping from her headscarf and spoke softly.
I showed her the picture and she smiled at the sight of the girls. Then, to my surprise, she said they had already found her, but she had sent them back to their village, alone and on foot. She feared for their safety in Kiwanja and believed they would be more secure in the care of her elder daughter; she was too weak to make the journey herself.
She kept staring at the photo. Only when I told her I would return the next morning and drive her to rejoin the girls in Kiseguru did her face light up in a wide, genuine smile.
We set off the next day after stopping for food at a restaurant in town. Esperance was quiet as we drove the 20 minutes to the village. She clutched the girls' photo as she walked through the streets, a trail of excited children in her wake.
The reunion with Protegee and Reponse, in a small mud hut, was brief. They smiled at each other. No one spoke. I prompted Protegee, a shy girl who was only 2 months old when her father was killed in Congo's last bloody war.
"Are you happy to see your mother?" I asked.
She answered, in a soft voice: "Yes."
Protegee told how she had arrived exhausted in Kiseguru on Nov. 12. But when she did, she found her family's hut empty — her sister and other relatives had already fled toward Uganda. For five days she waited for an adult to come for her. No one did. She was planning to set off for Kiwanja that very day to rejoin her mother, when I arrived instead.
Rather than remain in their village, Esperance asked me to take them all back to Kiwanja.
In the streets of Kiseguru, we had seen 20 men wearing civilian clothes and toting Kalashnikovs. When I asked her who they were, her answer was swift and certain: "Mai Mai."
Earlier this month, Kiwanja residents were terrorized by the pro-government Mai Mai militia, who the U.N. said killed people accused of supporting the rebels. Then the rebels won control and killed those they claimed had supported the militiamen.
And now the Mai Mai were in her family's village.
Protegee, Reponse and Esperance are back in Kiwanja now. They have set up a cot in the corner of a room on the Catholic church grounds. Outside, the U.N. World Food Program is distributing food, but the situation in the town remains volatile.
Before I left, I gave Esperance the photograph of her daughter and granddaughter. She handed it to Protegee, who, with Reponse in her lap, gazed at the image. I left them there on their cot, clutching the photo, one of their few possessions.
Asked when they would return to their village, Esperance replied: "When the war is over."
And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us 1Jn 5:14
We must learn how to come into the very presence of God, naked in our words and abilities but clothed only in the priestly garment of Christ. There is a place we can come to ........ a sacred place where we know we have entered the very throne room of God and that our petitions are not ours but Christ's whom dwells within. This is a place where we know, without doubt, that the Father is touched by our petitions and His reply is "yea and amen."
John
* Credits for photos and news story: Jerome Delay is AP's chief photographer for Africa. Associated Press writer Anita Powell contributed to this report from Kiwanja, Congo.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081118/ap_on_re_af/congo_girls_in_the_photo
* "coo coo for cocoa puffs" (urban dictionary definition): a strictly medical term, used to describe a patient or person that has delved into a realm of irrational, illogical and/or crazy thought processes ........
"See that guy trying to put that square peg into that round hole? I think he's gone coo coo for cocoa puffs!"
(to be continued)
