Lausanne World Pulse – Stories of Lament and Hope: Burundi Gathering

By Stephanie Wheatley and Jen Stallings

Yet what has made a new hospital, nursing school, housing, and businesses possible has been a costly version of love. At a young age, Maggy began taking in orphans, irrespective of their ethnicity. When interethnic violence erupted in Burundi she refused to abandon her children, even though this meant that she was neither accepted by Hutus nor Tutsis. Like others in Burundi, she has witnessed unspeakable violence against those she loves. Yet the hardships and heartache she has endured have not deterred her. When people doubted that Hutus and Tutsis could ever live together peacefully, Maggy responded, “I will show them it is possible.”

At Maison Shalom, Hutus and Tutsis live together alongside children from other ethnic groups. When asked, “What ethnic group are you?” a child in Maison Shalom said, “I am Hutsitwacongozungu.” Maggy’s work and her firm belief that God wants to create a new ethnic group have led some Burundians to call her “the crazy woman of Burundi.” Maggy declared, “I know we are one family,” and invited the gathering participants to become crazy men and women with her.

Bishop Paride Taban, Holy Trinity Peace Village
In 2004, Bishop Taban received permission from the Vatican to retire from his post as Bishop of Torit, Sudan, in order to build the Holy Trinity Peace Village in Kuron, with hope that it could be a place where Christians, Muslims, and traditionalists from different tribes might learn to live peacefully together, providing an example for the rest of Sudan. “No one in this world can succeed alone,” he says, recognizing that a peaceful future in Sudan depends upon an end to tribal and religious conflict.

Today, Holy Trinity Peace Village is home to over eighty families, and it has become known as a neutral place where members of different tribes meet to resolve disputes. The village provides education and food to displaced children while also teaching all its inhabitants alternatives to revenge and violence. Bishop Taban’s vision is grounded in the story of Jesus. “Love is everything,” he explains. “When you have love in your heart, then you have service. The fruit of service is peace.” Yet in learning how Bishop Taban has been jailed by two different governments, it was clear that the cost of pursuing peace, of breaking old loyalties and allegiances to create a new community, is high.

Angelina Atyam, Concerned Parents Association
The work of the Concerned Parents Association was another story told at the gathering which revealed the gospel’s power to transform lives and communities. Atyam, of northern Uganda, related the story of how the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) abducted her daughter along with 138 other students from their school in 1996. While 109 of the girls were allowed to return, Angelina’s daughter remained missing for seven years and seven months. “I’m happy to say my daughter has come back,” she began, “but how can I be happy when every child is my child?” In northern Uganda the violence still has not ended. “We need your prayers. We are still bleeding in our hearts,” she said.

Angelina declared that it was the Lord’s Prayer that delivered her from the anger and bitterness she once felt toward members of the LRA: “We could not pray ‘forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors,’ because we held so much anger in our hearts.” Eventually, they began to forgive and seek restoration with their neighbors, finding common ground among their pain and in the Lord’s Prayer. “We wept and we forgave,” she remembers. “It set us free and strengthened us.” The Concerned Parents Association continues to bring people together in northern Uganda—evidence of God’s power to change hearts.

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Stephanie Wheatley (left), a graduate of Wheaton College, serves as the global outreach coordinator for the Duke Center for Reconciliation. Jen Stallings (right), a graduate of Duke Divinity School, is a candidate for ordination in the United Methodist Church.