“Do not seek Me in luxury and comfort, do not seek Me in the worlds that have forgotten Me, you will find Me there among the unhappy and afflicted people who seek Me, who need Me, who need Me, who want Me by their side, among people who need My presence.”
As much as we search as much as we seek to find Christ in our modern luxurious technocratic society, which has been seduced by consumerism and lack of faith and trust in God, the more we become difficult and confused. When you find yourself in missionary countries, in African countries, where suffering and suffering become daily life and a way of life, then you realize where God is and how hard he is trying to save that creature to whom he gave freedom, that creature for whom he did not come down from the Cross by forcing him to believe, the only intelligent creature, man. Somewhere there in the heart of the African continent, in the long-suffering and troubled region of the Great Lakes, where the richness of the bowels of the black earth does not let it rest, in the countries of Burundi and Rwanda, where death does not stop visiting, somewhere there the presence of God is intense. Somewhere there you feel the grandeur of creation but also the pain and suffering of the post-baptismal man.
God is not responsible for the situation that free and rational man has caused there. The West lives in luxury and “advanced” technology. I wonder how many of us are aware of the pain, hunger and misery that our technocratic society is causing on the Black Continent. Mobile phones, televisions, computers, light bulbs, mechanical components, energy, jewellery: all of this requires coltan, uranium, various ores, gold and diamonds. Life seems to have no value when hundreds of lives are lost every day to obtain the ores, when you see mutilated children, skeletonized people from hunger. Mothers, who do not know what joy is and who will not see their children grow up, are doomed both themselves and the innocent creatures they bring into the world.
These are the people who are suffering, the hungry, the sick, the sick, the orphans, who live, sleep and eat in the garbage heaps, God has sent us to serve.
Poverty, misery, pain. Post-war Burundi, orphans who have lost their families in the war grow up in the mud next to the dumps, waiting for someone to throw away leftover food to feed them. Children who, even if they still manage to grow up a little, will soon fall ill and leave the futile and painful world they live in, simple diseases that could be easily cured, but who will care for these innocent creatures, where will money for doctors and medicines be found? Rwanda, a country that has come face to face with death, a country that death has chosen as its dwelling place. Memories that will not be forgotten, a bloody land. Lost innocent souls, children, mothers, pregnant women, elders rest today in their eternal dwellings. As a tribute and obligation to these people who sacrificed and are sacrificed daily, the Orthodox Mission takes care of their spiritual and material needs by alleviating their pain with your support. Burundi. Four Churches, three Primary Schools, a Polyclinic, sixty scholarships, daily and weekly soup kitchens, care for the needy, a dispensary relieve our suffering African Brothers. They are human beings too. Rwanda, memories of death. God has now willed to start the Missionary, Social, Humanitarian Work there too. We need your help, your support. Do not forget us, do not forget the suffering and tormented people of the black earth.
We thank the “Brotherhood of the Orthodox Foreign Mission” for their moral and material support, as well as all of you who love our mission and stand by our suffering and unhappy brothers and sisters. God will repay them a hundredfold.
May the grace of Our Lady, the Mother of all be with us. The Burundi and Rwandan Savvas
