Cross Style Conference Final Day

Trip Start Aug 26, 2007

Trip End Sep 13, 2007

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Flag of Congo - The Dem. Repub. Goma, Congo - The Dem. Repub.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007

The final day of the conference had arrived and I was out of cash. I had not planned on my lodging costing as much as it did and transport has increased in the past 18 months, mostly due in my opinion to the ubiquitious UN. It seems to the casual observer, that one out of three cars on the road is a white SUV and has UN written on it. Nobody is quite sure what they do, but they seem to go alot of places...
Because of my lack of funds, I had to cross over to Gisenyi, Rwanda to do a debit card transaction to get some more cash. Credit cards are not used anywhere in eastern Congo. So about 7:00am my faithful companion Muze, headed across the border in search of a bank that could do a transaction on Visa or MasterCard. We had to wait about 30 minutes for the border agents to showup and then had a smooth crossing into Gisenyi. It only took going to 3 banks to find one that could do an advance, I was really glad it was only 3, because that is all the banks there are in Gisenyi. We crossed back over to discover that the customs agents wanted another $30 for another visa, which they had said I could use multiple times and even though it was written on my receipt, they did not honor it. In Congo, sometimes it is all about money.

I made it back for the conference only about 30 minutes late and just as the festivities were getting started, I was very grateful. We had a great time and I got to preach again for two times and the response was stronger than it had been all weekend, what more can be said.

There had been a plan for Monday afternoon for me to go visit one of the Cross Style churches that had been planted about 8-10 miles north out of town, but we discovered that the no travel was being allowed to that area by the UN due to strong rebel activity. I was really disappointed because visiting that church and some others that were now restricted also, was one of the reasons I had extended my time with Didi.

Due to the cancelled trip, we had time go down to lake Kivu and purchase the boat tickets for our journey to Bukavu on Wednesday. This also gave me opportunity to see the incredible shortage of water that is suffered by many of the people in the southern areas of Goma. There is really only one place to get water on this side of town and there are hundreds of people waiting in line with 5 gallon cans to get water for their homes. Didi shared that many of them have to walk 6 or 7 Kilometers (~3 miles) to get their water.