ELKHART, Indiana (Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission/Mennonite Mission Network) – "The church has sustained major wounds both to its people and its infrastructure," said Adolphe Komuesa Kalunga, national president of Communauté Mennonite au Congo (Mennonite Church of Congo), a Mennonite Mission Network partner. Komuesa was reporting on the annual administrative council meeting held May 19-21 in Kikwit.
Located in Bandundu Province, Kitwit is calmer than the Kasaï provinces where most of the Mennonite congregations are established. Komuesa indicated that most of the current violence was in the regions around Kananga (Central Kasaï), Mbuji Mayi (East Kasaï), and Tshikapa (Kasaï).
Fighting around Kalonda Bible Institute, where most of the Mennonite church leaders are trained, forced the suspension of classes when some of the students were just six weeks from graduating. Efforts are being made to reunite students at the Tshikapa Welcome Center on the church national headquarters, to help them complete their year of study, particularly third-year students who are set to graduate in July.
The husband of the regional president of the Mennonite women’s association was decapitated on May 19. He was chief of a village situated about eight miles from Kalonda.
A Mennonite pastor in Lubami was arrested along with a pastor from a Neo-Apostolic congregation. The Neo-Apostolic pastor was executed immediately. The Mennonite pastor was beaten and whipped, but those who tortured him fled the scene without killing him.
Komuesa named 10 congregations that are unable to gather for worship, before saying that he was unable to list all the places that people had fled. Fields are left untended, so hunger is pervasive.
"It will get much worse in the coming weeks," Komuesa said. "Most of our members are hiding in the bush and forests."
In the Tshikapa region with approximately 50 Mennonite congregations, only a dozen have not reported damage to their church and school buildings.
To respond to these needs, Mennonite Church of Congo is organizing a relief effort to collect gifts of clothing, food and funds for their members who have lost everything.
