Simon Guillebaud

I love a win/win. I’m always on the lookout for them.   This week a young man came to me. He’s obviously a leader because he’s stumbled into heading up this movement of artists intent on using their creativity to reach the unchurched. He doesn’t want to start an organization, seeing it more as a movement, but he’s found himself with a lot of followers. He totally fits into my strategy of empowering key leaders of passion, integrity, gifting and vision to contribute to the transformation of the nation.   So having established that he was kosher, he needed an […]

Excuse the radio silence on this blog. We’ve had to transfer it across to WordPress and iron out a few glitches, which took a couple of months. A number of you have asked for some news, so I’ll do a ‘different’ kind of blog and just share with you a little summary of our family half-term. In a couple of years’ time, the plan is to hand over the leadership of GLO fully in Burundi, and for a year to take the Guillebaud family on the road, traveling anywhere and everywhere – home-schooling, experiencing the world, talking about and networking […]

Sometimes I amaze myself even at my own idiocy. Over the years, I’ve taken literally hundreds of visitors to Musée Vivant, Bujumbura’s interactive zoo – so often that I’m an honorary member of staff, and never have to pay. Most visitors love it, others hate it. We get to hold pythons that slowly start constricting around us; the more intrepid ones climb into the cage and enjoy the incredible adrenaline rush of stroking or pulling the tail of a 15ft crocodile; and then there are the entertaining (but volatile) chimpanzees. Today was my comeuppance. What heightens my stupidity is that […]

I’ve just read a fascinating article from Christianity Today. It’s hugely encouraging to hear what is taking place in India. I love having my preconceptions and orthodoxies challenged too. The article’s long, so I’ll just include two sections below. One because it’s such an intriguing contextualizing of the gospel, the other because it’s simply so heartening, and challenging to an often exhibited Western superiority complex. Why look to so many flawed models of growth in the USA, for example, when we can learn from stunning examples coming out of India? The whole article is definitely worth the read if you […]

A number of you are asking for feedback on the National Prayer Breakfast in Kinshasa, and in any case I wanted to take the chance to ask you to pray for the Congo, so here’s a quick update: The leadership of the NPB are a great bunch, and Congo is at a critical juncture. The President is delaying elections and looks like not being willing to go quietly, having already served his permitted two terms. I was drafted in relatively last minute because the first-choice speaker decided that the security situation was too dicey to come. For me it was […]

I’m writing this on a plane heading to Kenya with friends from the National Prayer Breakfast. One of them is Cris Rwakasisi, who spoke at our Burundian NPB yesterday. I thought I’d share some of his story, and some further thoughts: Cris was Ugandan President Milton Obote’s main man back in the early 1980s. Obote gave him the choice of any post he wanted, and he ended up as Minister of Defense. He was 42-years-old, so (relatively) young, powerful, rich, and arrogant. His caviar lifestyle and attitude alienated the opposition and many within his own party. He got things done, […]

Warning: some of the pictures below are pretty gruesome. Some would say I shouldn’t include them (I have omitted the most graphic one). But actually sometimes it takes the pictures to stir to action, and brave Anesie’s battle is still ongoing. I see part of my very broad role in Burundi as telling these stories to enlist others’ help, and also to show the breadth of work and of the folk involved out here in trying to bring hope, healing and restoration in the nation. Yesterday I got to see Anesie for the first time in over a year. Yesterday […]

I’ve just finished reading a book on the life of Adoniram Judson. What can I say? My logic in risking life and limb in Burundi over the last seventeen years or so has always been the same. Either Jesus truly did die and then rise from the dead, or He didn’t. Either He is the Saviour of the world, or He isn’t. Either He is the only way to God, or He isn’t. If He isn’t, I’m wasting my life, relatively-speaking (although we are helping lift lots of folks out of poverty and suffering). But if He is who He […]

I know some people really struggle to believe the stories I share from our annual summer outreach. Maybe you need to come out and meet these folks for yourself! In any case, in what was a massive and complex logistical operation, last month we sent out 701 volunteers for two weeks, who worked in every single province and in twenty-two different hospitals. This outreach was formally approved by both the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Health (which is amazing considering the current tensions and suspicions in the country because of rebel movements). The hospital authorities were mostly […]

We arrived back again yesterday in Burundi after a summer of speaking at multiple meetings around the UK and also many precious times with family and friends. It’s great to be home. Yes, Burundi truly is home. However, that doesn’t mean all is well here. Far from it. I was shocked to see how much visibly thinner a friend was who just came by to see me. Most people are very, very hungry. Many others are very, very frightened. The future remains very, very uncertain. I stopped in on a friend, and voiced my feelings of joy at being home, […]

We returned two weeks ago in time for Lizzie’s ailing Mum Rosemary’s 80th birthday, during which we went out for a very special celebratory ice-cream. Her condition quickly worsened and after spending most of last week in hospital, she graduated to glory in the early hours of Monday morning. She’d wanted to make it to her other daughter Sarah’s wedding on the 23rd of this month, but in the end it wasn’t to be and she has been released from her substantial pain. We are so grateful to have been in country and now to be able to be with […]