Category: General

Maybe you’ll think less of me by the end of this stream of consciousness, but I wanted to get down on paper how I feel right now, not when I have calmed down. I love Burundi. In the past I thought I’d die here, taking crazy risks in the last war as a single man. I still think I’m willing to die for Burundi, although it’s a bit more complicated with a wife and three precious little children. Hmm… I’m all about Burundi, I love Burundi… but I hate Burundi too.  I hate what happened literally a minute before starting […]

Genesis 4:10  And He said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood cries out to Me from the ground.” Yesterday saw five grenades go off in town. Lizzie and a friend were due to buy fabric at the market where a child was blown up. I gave a talk a few hundred yards away shortly after the explosions, and things were back to normal by the time I arrived, but of course the new normal is an absurdity.   Why oh why all this senseless killing…? It’s hard to know what to write. It is simply soul-destroying to watch […]

Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!  I have been deluged, accosted, and inundated with folks in the last few weeks expressing gratitude for giving them a Christmas gift so that they could have a fun day of celebration in the midst of what is a very dark time in Burundi.  I hope you can catch some of the joy in this brief video of Ephraim and his family, including little 3-year-old Milcah who has been traumatised by the regular shooting such that she wets herself at each round of gunfire. The family’s hanging in there in a tough neighbourhood and they […]

That’s a cryptic title! What do I mean? I’ve just had an inspiring ‘Christian Initiatives for Peace’ meeting where we’ve analysed the impact of our media campaign over the last seven months. We can see that it has made a huge – but hard to quantify – impact on many people’s lives. Some people are definitely still alive today who without seeing or listening to our TV or radio programs would have made destructive choices and ended up dead. One simple example straight off: Charles had decided to kill his family members. Before doing it, he listened to the radio, […]

On Monday, we fly back to Burundi. All of us. Simon, Lizzie, Zac (10), Grace (8) and Josiah (6). Burundi is in a terrible state. It’s hard to see, humanly-speaking, how things are going to improve. But we believe in the God of the impossible, and Burundi is our home. We want to be with our friends and colleagues and go through these dark times together. Some, maybe many, think we’re irresponsible and foolish, however this comes on the back of a lot of heart-wrenching prayer and seeking God for His guidance, and both Lizzie and the kids also want […]

Our traumatised children don’t understand what is going on. The shootings continue. Christmas has always been the one time of year they hope for a piece of chocolate and some meat, maybe even a new pair of shoes. Times are harder than ever right now. As a father, I long to give them some joy, but we simply can’t afford to even eat enough each day. As you’ve helped in the past, could you help us again? We’re so grateful to you and GLO for being such a blessing. Can we hope for the same this year as in previous […]

  We’ve started packing today, as we prepare to head back to Burundi. We took our decision last Friday, having set aside the previous week to pray and seek guidance. I asked for a sign that last day, and had an amazing random (coincidence/God-incidence) meeting on Southampton common as I walked, which provided the confirmation I’d asked for. Yet little did we know that at that very moment at least 87 people (other sources claim into the hundreds) were being killed in what was Burundi’s darkest day for a long time. News trickled in slowly. Three separate attacks had been […]

A few weeks ago I came across this great quote by C.S.Lewis: “For the Christian there are strictly speaking no chances. A secret master-of-ceremonies has always already been at work. The same Lord who said to the disciples, “You did not choose me, but I chose you” – that same Lord says to every group of Christian friends: ‘You did not choose each other, but I have chosen you for each other.’ And the friendship is not a reward for our taste and discrimination in seeking each other out. The friendship is the instrument by which God reveals to each […]

I address this as a naturalized Burundian (ego, nararonse karangamuntu na passeport haheze imyaka ibiri ndabifise) to my fellow Burundians. The situation in Burundi is alarming. There’s no doubt about that. When the President of the Senate made his infamous pronouncement a few weeks ago, alarm bells began ringing at fever pitch, and social media exploded with suggestions that genocide was imminent. You remember he said: “On this issue, you have to pulverize, you have to exterminate – these people are only good for dying. I give you this order, go!” He used the word ‘gukora’, ‘to work’, which was […]

“The only thing I know for sure is that I have no idea what is going to happen.” So said a friend of mine over lunch. It sums up the situation in Burundi right now. Nobody has any idea how things are going to turn out. Every event is seen through radically different lenses depending on which side one supports. The international community is pressing relentlessly for regime change and squeezing the government through withdrawal of aid, whilst the regime is trying its hardest to survive as the economy and security plummets and paranoia soars. The Twittersphere is buzzing with […]

It’s 5am and still dark as I lie listening to Lizzie’s peaceful breathing next to me. I went to bed last night knowing that a gun battle was taking place in a suburb of Bujumbura where maybe fifty of my colleagues and friends live (with their precious children), and as usual I’m impatient to find out by logging onto Twitter what the results of that carnage were. It’s become a macabre daily ritual for me, and one shared by hundreds of thousands of Burundians in the diaspora who are aching at a distance as they follow what is going on […]

I wanted to share the below with you (with permission). It’s from one of my best buddies on the planet. He’s a key Burundian leader, very gifted, and willing to lay down his life for the cause. He gave up a very secure international job which guaranteed paying his children’s education to follow God’s call back to working in Burundi. He’s the real deal. May what he writes move you to further prayer for our nation, and beyond that to helping him if you can. It also gives a picture of how things currently are. Notwithstanding the grim situation, it remains […]

Choices are pretty stark these days in Burundi. Stay or flee? About 250,000 fled over the last few months, and you have to be pretty desperate to flee. Once fled, stay fled or return? About 180,000 have stayed away, whether in miserable refugee camps or eating away at fast-diminishing life-savings in rented accommodation in Rwanda or Uganda. About 70,000 have returned, many having run out of money and been forced to return, others hopeful that things are improving. Food or education? September is the start of the academic year, so there are school books and uniforms to buy. Education trumps […]

Greetings from Burundi! I wanted you to be one of the first to know about my new app, the Choose Life 21 Challenge, now ready in the app stores. Wanted or Unwanted, Bitter or Better, Inclusive or Exclusive… there are, unsurprisingly, 21 challenges which you can now receive weekly over the coming few months.   People were asking me if Choose Life (the book) was available as an app and this is the result. It takes 21 of the 365 reflections in the book and adds a new twist, a practical challenge to stir you to put your faith into action each […]

A story from last week: “A young married woman had left her husband to move in with her mother-in-law. She was demon-possessed and all the regional witchdoctors they consulted couldn’t set her free. Our team showed up, prayed for her, and delivered her. She returned to her own home, and came back the next day with all her charms to burn them. Four people decided to follow Jesus on the back of this miracle.”  A cheerful working group with boots donated by the previously-suspicious local police This year’s outreach could not have been more challenging. It was a victory in […]

My heart is thumping in my chest as I write this, and I’m asking you to pray urgently over what is going on in Burundi right now. I don’t want to be alarmist or sensationalistic – it’s hard to predict what is going to happen – but General Adolphe is dead, and the Twittersphere is rammed with very scary rumours and plans of retribution/retaliation by his side, who saw him as a hero.   I’ll just paste this Agence France Presse article to fill you in:  “The general killed, Adolphe Nshimirimana, was widely seen as the crisis-hit central African nation’s […]

It’s 1141pm, and I’ve just finished a Skype interview with the BBC discussing Burundi’s political situation. Twitter is telling me every few minutes of the shooting going on in different parts of Bujumbura. Tomorrow is election day, the climactic day that we have been building up to for many months. How will it go…?  I don’t want to write too much, but let me share the following, written to me by one of my closest brothers in Burundi, Charles:  “Last night was terrifying because of all the gunshots and exploding grenades. My wife is the most traumatised in our household. […]

I’ve been preaching on the Isle of Lewis for the last few days, and having read in the past about the Hebridean revival of 1949-1952, I’ve been looking forward to coming for a long time. I also wanted to compare the dynamics of this revival, having heard from my Grandparents their stories about the East African revival – how, for example, they heard loud wails and weeping one night at the boarding school they were working at, and they rushed to the girls’ dormitory to find all of them prostrate on the floor confessing their sins as the Holy Spirit […]

People are asking for an update on Burundi, so I’ll weave one into this reflection on what it’s like to be a rich refugee.  Sometimes I can’t understand why I am so blessed/fortunate/lucky (choose your terminology). I review how the family got out of Burundi and it has actually brought tears of gratitude on occasion, particularly when I compare our experience with that of many of my precious friends and colleagues within Burundi’s borders or scattered elsewhere around the world because of the current crisis.  To recap: as the situation deteriorated three months ago in Bujumbura, I wanted the family […]

Burundians are waiting. We don’t know exactly what we’re waiting for – or maybe we do but dread to mention it because it’s too bleak to contemplate. I don’t even want to allow my mind to wander and consider the various potential scenarios because the consequences will be so grim for so many people if as many suspect the country descends back into civil conflict. I’ve been re-reading some of my diary from 2000-2001. It’s depressing how similar the waiting game was back then. Here are a few entries: 29th February 2000 – It was an eventful night. Just after […]