East Africa As A Spiritual Bullseye -Part 2

Part II

Where there is Light

In my last Post, I discussed the presence of evil in East Africa

Yet, as all this evil, tragedy, and pain is going on in East Africa, the hope and good is equally as great. The church has been exploding more in Africa than anywhere in the world, outside of China. People are coming to know a God who loves them in a whole new way. Christian organizations like World Vision and the International Justice Mission have given millions in aid, but more importantly, human effort to help, to give justice, and to rebuild. 

Aids has dramatically decreased in Uganda in the last decade, thanks to education and awareness programs made by the government, as well as American, English, and German doctors coming in to do testing and education.  HIV infections in Uganda have fallen from 21 percent to 6 percent between 1991 and 2000.

Rwanda is focusing more on women’s rights, largely in part to their female president. Orphanages are springing up everywhere for children of genocides and diseases. Then there’s Sam Childers, a biker and preacher from Pennsylvania who goes into the bush with a small militia and rescues children from Joseph Kony’s LRA, then rehabilitates them. Childers is called “The White Ghost” in the bush, because he too can not be killed, despite the multiple hits that have been put out on his life by the LRA. Perhaps most importantly, hope has returned to East Africa.

Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, and the Congo. They border each other in an area no bigger than the U.S. East Coast. I feel there is some connection between these places and something unique about this region. Irish Monks believed there are certain places in the world where the wall between our world and the spirit world is very thin. They called these “Thin Places”. It was believed some of these places were so thin that spirits, good and evil, would pass into our world easier than others, creating hotbeds of spiritual activity. 

I believe East Africa is a Thin Place. A spiritual bull’s-eye of sorts. Possibly the greatest one in the world. So much spiritual activity, good and evil seems to happen in this one concentrated area. The more I talk to people who go there, the more I find this to be true. Even in my own experiences, there’s no place like it. 

As time goes on, the good seems to be getting better, and the bad is getting worse. I bring all this up because this is an important area. Something is going on over there. Something big. I feel it is important for Americans, and Christians to get involved and serve in East Africa. 

I’m looking to take another medical team to East Africa to give aid to villagers in need of treatment, education, and prayer, much like we did last year (please see video). I strongly feel called to this post. If you do too, please contact me about coming along. 

After all, what greater place to be a light, than in the Heart of Darkness.

Join us.

Last Year’s Trip: Video

Recommended Films To Watch:

An Unconventional War (docu)

Invisible Children (docu)

Last King of Scotland

Tears of the Sun

Blood Diamond

Hotel Rwanda

The Ghost and the Darkness

Recommended Books To Read:

Another Man’s War- Sam Childers

The Hole in our Gospel – Richard Stearns

Good News About Injustice- Gary Hogan

Heart Of Darkness- Joseph Conrad

Maneaters of Tsavo- Lt. Col. John Patterson

East Africa As A Spiritual Bullseye

 Part I:
Heart of Darkness

Recently, I've been considering going back to East Africa. The idea of returning to the land of red dirt has turned in my head, but more specifically my heart. Something about East Africa calls to me. It did before I went, and after I went last year. For many people in my field, East Africa gets under your skin. Why is this? 

In putting the pieces together I realize there is something special about this place. Something good and something, shall we call it, evil. Author Joseph Conrad described it as The Heart Of Darkness. But if it actually was? What if this region was a central core of good and evil?

In part 1 of this entry, I'd like to examine the case for centralized evil:

Africa as a whole has been a hotbed of tragic activity, from slavery to genocide, to the blood diamond trade, but I feel, specifically, East Africa is the most concentrated area of terror. Rwanda, Uganda, Sudan, Kenya, Ethiopia, and The Congo, all connected, have become a bull’s-eye of the greatest sorrow this world has to offer.

East Africa has been described as, and often called, “The Heart Of The World” because many believe it is where civilization first sprang up from. It was the center of the formed earth when the continents were combined. Also, one of the tribes of Israel settled in Ethiopia, and this is considered to possibly be the final resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, whatever state it is in.

But specifically in the last 100 years, like the rest of the world, violence has increased exponentially. Take the Man-eaters of Tsavo, two male lions that killed over a hundred people in Kenya, coming back night after night for human flesh, until they were killed by the hunter Lt. Col. John Patterson. Their stuffed bodies can still be seen at the Chicago Natural History Museum. 

In the 70s, Idi Amin was a horrendous Dictator who killed 500,000 of his own Ugandans. In Rwanda in 1994, one of the bloodiest genocides in history took place as Tutsi Rwandans killed 800,000 Hutus (20% of the population), largely by hacking them to death with machetes. The country is still recovering from this travesty. 

HIV infects 33 million people, 70 percent of which live in Africa. Tyrants, mutilation, murder, and cannibalism is part of Uganda’s history. Ethiopia has dealt with devastating droughts and famine. Somolia is the worst port of piracy in the world. In the Sudan, tribal war has killed and displaced millions in the Darfur region. 

Women’s issues in the Congo are possibly the worst in the world. The numbers of rape, torture, genital mutilation, clitorodectomies, among tribes, villages, cities, and displacement camps are unfathomable.

Uganda hosts the most Witch Doctors in Africa. Black Magic and the occult are common through much of Africa and South America, but here, Ugandan Witch Doctors practice human sacrifice. Currently, it would seem The Democratic Republic of the Congo, is the worst country in Africa. Due to recent tribal warfare, millions have murdered and displaced. It has become the wild west of Africa.

In my opinion, the most troubling of all these events in East Africa is Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) of Uganda, a rebel army deeply active in the occult. Besides continuous village massacres, for the last 20 years, Kony has kidnapped and brainwashed 50,000 children into fighting the Ugandan military for him as rebels. He does this by making them kill or eat their families so they feel shamed and can never return to their village. 

Kony gives the children a mix of cocaine and gunpowder, which not only makes them dependent, but he tells them it will make them bulletproof. They kill and are killed for this mad man, who actually invokes the power of Satan. The taken girls of only 7 or 8 are given to the commanding officers as wives, and raped continually.

Kony, who claims to be the son of God, comes from a family of cult leaders and demonic witch doctors. He is one of the greatest villains this world has ever seen, and almost nobody seems to know about him. And nobody can kill him. Without explanation, he has evaded the Ugandan Military for 20 years. Stories have come out of the military from Colonels of Kony being surrounded by opposing soldiers, and then disappearing in the blink of an eye. 

The multiple stories of his demonic powers could be cultural superstition, but with the amount of evil he’s done, and with the amount of success, and his ability to predict government raids, I am inclined to believe it. He is currently thought to be hiding in the jungles of the Congo.

But where there is darkness, there is greater light. More to come…