On the Edge

This border town pastor (on the right),
was one who really understood the ideas of CHE,
but is also is the farthest away that we've trained.

Living and being a witness way up in the desert on a caravan route would be a pretty tough job in this country. Or being over in the extreme East where there’ve been terror attacks for several years now, helping to manage the aid and deal with all the refugees, both of those are among the toughest postings. But at this particular moment, the roughest area of the country is along the North West border, a few hours North of the capital. In the past two months there’ve been several military camps attacked by terror groups who fade back into the neighboring country, and so many people are fleeing the region because of the insecurity and disruption to trade and agriculture. So I was inspired at our latest CHE training session when I met one of the pastors who works in this area, in a last town before the border. He’s been learning the predominate local language there and starting to building relationships for the past two years.

What was particularly striking to me was how cheerful he is and upbeat, even though it can be very draining to live as someone who practices a different religion than one’s neighbors, with no Christian fellowship for hours around. It was also striking to hear him casually describe what it was like when the attacks were going on this past month. He said he was in his house with his children, when they heard loud gunfire. The children immediately got down on the floor and everyone was crouching, trying to get a look outside to see what was happening. The military camp was several kilometers away, so they couldn’t see anything, but they could certainly hear that something dangerous was going on nearby.

Another pastor's family in a different side of the same
region who was recently helped to build this
mud-brick house.

Then, the day after the attack that killed many soldiers, the pastor was called on by the local authorities. There were two Christian soldiers among the dead, and they needed someone to take care of the bodies in a proper way for their religion. So an evangelist already on a shoe-string budget now was responsible to get these bodies to the capital ASAP before they decomposed too much, for a proper burial in a Christian cemetery. The information about the names of the casualties hadn’t been released to the public yet, so there was no talk of support from others. All the pastor could do was hire space in a pick-up truck to ride several hours with these bodies and try to make proper arrangements for them in the capital. A big responsibility, which highlights how isolated he is but also the amazing gift to be a light where there is really no one else who could be called on to represent Christians.

-- El Padre