It was a memorable day in more ways than one… We’d only just flown in from Africa the day before, and for logistical reasons were coming in by car from Southampton (Lizzie, her Dad, and the boys) and by train (Grace, my parents and I) from Henley. When the British Ambassador rang me asking if we’d be willing to accept the award of an MBE – apart from thinking he was joking – I asked him if there were reasons not to accept that I might not have thought of. A small number of you have questioned the honours system, […]
Category: General
The Marriage of the Year – Move Over Harry and Meghan!
In January, I shared with you ‘a fairy tale come true for the ugliest duckling in Burundi’. Well, on Saturday, he got married to his babe, Floride! Nobody, NOBODY, could ever have believed this was possible, from being the ugliest disfigured reject in Burundi twenty one years ago. God is amazing! In 1997, he had seven operations on his body, some lasting 8-10 hours, and was in a coma for four days. His body couldn’t take any more, and the surgeon said maybe a decade later more work could be done. In 2011 and 2012, we flew him to Kenya, […]
The Beginning of the End…
In two weeks’ time, we’ll be back in the UK, and our time as a whole family living together in Burundi will be over. I find that hard to take in. In fact, none of us actually wants to leave. We love this country, and we love living here. So it’s good to be leaving wanting more, rather than counting down the days wanting to scarper as soon as possible! On Friday night, we had a leaving celebration with our favourite Burundian folks. Over 19 years there are a lot of deep relationships. We invited 70 key people together to […]
Am Grateful Martha can Die in Peace…
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU! A number of you have written in asking for an update on our appeal for a new vehicle. So this is reporting back to you that all the money came in – hurray – and we’ve ordered a spanking new Toyota Hilux, so can now put Martha out to pasture in the next few weeks. She served us well, but there’s little room for sentiment here, we need to move on! What will we call the new one? Suggested names included Betsy, Audrey, Ole’ Marge, Daisy, Gertrude, Fred, Hank, and more, but the winning […]
My Country Wept…
Theo did as he was told and laid his head down on the floor, waiting for a machete to end his life… Here’s a massive recommendation to buy yourself (and for others too) this newly-published book about my friend Theodore Mbazumutima’s truly extraordinary story. He should be dead, but somehow, on multiple occasions, his life was spared. So please order your copies here for the UK and here for the USA. Enjoy! (although I’m not sure that’s the right word) This is a story of soaring hope in the most hideous of circumstances. Yes, there are good news stories to […]
Martha’s Imminent Death in Burundi…
She’s been used to see thousands come to Christ, but she’s dying… Most weekends, you’ll find us (Scripture Union) with teams around the country, going into schools, getting churches together, and showing the Jesus film to thousands. I love it that in any one weekend we can share the gospel with up to 5,000 people, and the whole outreach costs a mere $100 (just fuel, food and lodging). $100 (£72) to see anything from a dozen to several hundred people come to Jesus. Wow! But as I said, our trusty Landcruiser Martha is dying. After many years and a couple […]
Choose Life!
“I loved it so much, I got it for all my grandchildren!” “I’ve given it away to fifty people so far!” “I conduct an orchestra and have given one to every member!” This is just a quick plug for Christmas gifts for loved-ones. I love hearing how people have been impacted by the daily devotional-of-the-year ‘Choose Life!’ If you’re struggling to think of what to get someone, how about this? To order in the UK, you can buy it from St Andrews Bookshop. Or in the USA and beyond, click here And as I searched for the Amazon link, I […]
The Burundi Adventure Coming to an End…
All good things come to an end. It’s been an emotional few weeks as we’ve dealt with a child who is deeply unhappy at school, and realizing that our time as a family needs to come to a close in Burundi for educational reasons. We’d planned to leave in 2019, twenty years after I initially came out, but have brought it forward by a year. The plan is, with my GLO Board’s full endorsement, to take the family on a crazy year traveling around the world. What an amazing opportunity! Why do it? Well why not?! We’ve had a stressful, […]
Being a Duck for Christ to the Nations…
The Dead Sea is dead because water runs into it, but doesn’t run out of it. That’s not to say, in any way, that the Burundian Church is dead – far far from it – but in terms of cross-cultural mission to the nations, it has received for a long time within Burundi without taking the gospel out beyond its borders, and that has been unhealthy and wrong. Our historic national congress was nearly a year in the planning, and it went superbly well. We wanted 250 attendees, hand-picked for their influence or their active engagement already, but in the […]
A Day in the Life… Being a Disciplined Discipling Disciple
I often get asked: “What does a day in Burundi look like for you?” And it’s difficult to answer because my days include a huge range of activities; but at this stage of life, this is the framework I’m trying to implement. What my work actually entails is beyond the scope of this blog. I’m sharing this with you in the hope that something might strike you, encourage you, challenge you, or help you. Our lives are all different – we have different balls we’re juggling in the air – and we might be at different life stages in different […]
Action Stations Please!
5mins of your time could help this take-off and be a HUGE blessing to Burundi. Most of you know about our amazing cow project with BBAC (Burundi Bio-Agricultural Communities), lifting c400 families out of poverty with lots of other benefits in the mix. Well, it could be about to go up a gear or two… Friends of mine, Brad and Emily, have launched their product TODAY. They explain the plan as follows: Does Your Cup Count? Partnering with folks at Great Lakes Outreach in Burundi, who fund an amazing cow-purchasing partnership, paired with the power of 58 million coffee cups […]
A New Hospital, an MBE, Leadership Handover, and More…!
The last three days have been truly memorable: on Friday we had the official ceremony for the launching of the building of a hospital. On Saturday it was a huge televised first graduation of GIA students, and Lizzie and I were awarded MBEs. On Sunday, we celebrated the extraordinary 17 years of YFC’s growth, a book launch, and handover of leadership. More below… Wow! Giving a succinct summary is a challenge. I have such a sense of joy, satisfaction, elation and anticipation for the future, amidst the ongoing extraordinary challenges we face in this beautiful but broken nation. Friday’s ceremony […]
Identity and Immediacy
This blog is by a mate of mine, Samuel Johns. On our tough cycle ride recently around Rwanda, we talked about the effect of Facebook and such like, and I asked him to share some thoughts, which I found challenging/disturbing/fascinating and more. I’m interested in what you make of them too. Over to Sam: A soft alarm wakes me – perfectly in sync with my circadian rhythms – and I trundle downstairs, set to face a new week. Alex notifies me of the weather, so the blinds remain closed. Ambient lighting matches my mood. Morose, yet determined. Another Monday morning. […]
Reversing the Death Sentence in Burundi…
If you get cancer in Burundi, you die (unless you can find and and then pay for one of the few surgeons in the country to surgically remove it in its entirety before it spreads). There is no other treatment. There has never been any other treatment. Chemotherapy and radiation are alien concepts, unless you are rich enough to fly elsewhere to get it. In Burundi, 100% of those who get unresectable cancer die – usually a horrible, protracted, painful death. Until now. Yesterday I was at Kibuye Hope Hospital. They are the first to introduce chemotherapy in Burundi. It’s historic, […]
Connecting Wins…
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 […]
Get Ready, Live Ready!
This article recently appeared here for the Evangelical Alliance. Once I was preaching near the Congolese border. My sermon text was Matthew 25 – the parable of the ten maidservants. Those ten all had a role to play at the wedding, but five of them didn’t have enough oil in their lamps. It’s a straightforward story, and it doesn’t need much explaining. My three points were simply, i) Jesus is coming, ii) nobody knows when, iii) but are you ready? Some responded to my appeal at the end, others didn’t. In any case, two days later I was driving […]
Burundi-Rwanda-Uganda Return…
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 […]
Bonding with my Ancestors…
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 […]
The Pain of Desire…
Below are some mind-blowing notes including a couple of edited entries from my Choose Life devotional. If you read them slowly and chew the cud, rehashing and mulling over the contents, maybe it’ll be literally life-transforming. If you simply flit through and then go back to Facebook or answering emails, you’ll have stumbled over and beyond the greatest treasure imaginable. Maybe it’d be worth printing it out and taking it off on a walk. Your choice. Here goes: Ephesians 5:18 says, “Be filled with the Spirit.” The Greek present tense is used in the above verse, meaning the infilling of […]
Lessons on De-Christianising Jesus…
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 […]