By the fifth
rooster crow, I (Gavin) finally convinced myself to look at the clock. 5:13 AM only. It was still dark out, yet the city was already
alive and as noisy as ever. The constant
melodies of car horns, the rhythmic songs of street vendors, the repetitious
chants of taxi “door men,” the base-line grumble of large trucks, and, oh yes,
the Roosters were all reminders that I was waking up in a strange place. Each city has its own symphony, Kinshasa’s
runs for 18 hours a day, everyday. The
hotel that I stayed in didn’t provide mosquito nets, and despite my early
morning haze, I could already feel a dozen welts on my face and arm beginning
to itch and throb. At this point, there
was no going back to sleep.
The city of
Kinshasa is the capitol of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and home to
some seven or eight million people.
Nobody really knows the exact population because the last census was
taken more than 20 years ago. Two wars
and the following economic decline of the last two decades have sent people
streaming to the capitol by the hundreds of thousands. Today the city is busting at the seams,
despite the governments best efforts to keep up. This was no more apparent than in the area of
transportation. In the short time that I
had already spent in the capitol, it was clear that public transportation was a
major problem. While thousands of aging,
decrepit vehicles remained in near gridlock 16 hours a day, thousand of people
walked along the sides of the streets for miles on end. If this city’s symphony it its noise, then
its metronome is the multitude of pedestrians marching slowly and steadily
along the road.
I went to Kinshasa
for the purpose of obtaining our resident visas, which will allow us to live
here more easily and for a longer period of time. During my weeklong stay I was unable to
receive the visas, but I did have the opportunity to visit with the DS,
pastors, and believers in that area. It
was amazing to watch them slip in and out of the music and movement of life here. Although I did get the chance to venture out
and see the city some on my own, I know that I would have been lost without
their wisdom. After five months I am
beginning to feel truly at home in Lubumbashi, however Kinshasa was still
completely foreign to me. Being there
for this short time forced me to think about trust in a new way. So many times we say that trust must be
earned. But what about those times when
you are forced to trust a stranger; forced to put your well being into
someone’s hands that you don’t know? My
trip to Kinshasa was a reminder to me of all those who have helped us along the
way; all of those in whom we have been forced to place our trust without first
having the ability to earn it. It has
been a blessing, although it hasn’t been easy.
For example, I
left our four passports in the hands of a man in a government building who
seemed a bit shady. Further, I had to
leave our passports in Kinshasa and head back to Lubumbashi. I am trusting a Nazarene pastor, whom I’ve
known for less than a week to go back and pick them up for me. Then, he will mail them to us in this country
that has no official postal service and where shipping can be risky. And to top it all off, another week has gone
by and there is still no word. The
official countdown is nine days. We
have nine days left to legally live in the country. But, what turns this into a blessing is that
fact that when we are trusting these people (and systems), we are really
trusting in God. If our visas come, or
don’t come, we will trust God to take us down the right road. An added bonus is that when this is all over,
we will be closer to our brothers and sisters in Christ, who live in Kinshasa.
This is just one example, a very recent and
desperate example nonetheless, of how we have had to put our trust in God and
others throughout this journey. But we
have found that giving trust builds relationships, an important thing for
foreigners in a strange land such as ourselves.
Pray for us as we continue to wait for our visas and as we continue to
put our trust in those whom we have just met.
God will provide, God is faithful.
