Congo recap from Steve Tracy

July 24, 2008

Dear family and friends,

We arrived back in the U.S. Monday night after a rather grueling 40 hour return trip. (I guess we're pretty spoiled given the fact that missionaries used to take a couple months by boat to get to Africa). Sorry I wasn't able to send out an email earlier but I have been sick for the past week and am finally on the mend. We simply can't put into words our gratitude to you our prayer supporters and to our loving Savior for what we saw God do in Africa. We will send out a trip photo summary with some of our best pictures in the next few weeks.

We can clearly see why our team had been under such bizarre Satanic attack for months before and during the trip. Before the trip: two team members had unusual bone breaks, one team member's spouse experienced a debilitating back injury a few weeks before we left, one team member had to drop out a couple days before the trip due to a family crisis, our team leader had routine foot surgery which didn't heal properly and required weeks of recuperation, and then two weeks before our trip our host cancelled the entire conference in Goma.

During the trip: most of our team got sick and one team member developed an infection from a burn, our host had to be hospitalized with typhoid, the beginning day of 2 conferences had to be abruptly cancelled due to the unexpected death of a local chief (we announced this while people were sitting waiting for the conference to begin), a woman was brutally murdered in a nearby village during our conferences, a short term worker helping with our conference developed potentially life threatening kidney complications, and thirty minutes before Christine and I were to give a presentation on abuse and forgiveness a pastor unexpectedly began showing us horrific color pictures of children and adults tortured and killed by rebels.

Yet in spite of Satan's many crafty attempts to wipe us out and sabotage the conferences, God moved powerfully to provide, protect, and heal. Satan hates to see captives set free but thankfully he doesn't have the last word! Through your prayers and the power of our awesome God, we witnessed literally dozens of breath taking miracles and experienced indescribable joy at being privileged to be the hands and feet of Jesus to some of the most marginalized, traumatized, and stigmatized. Here are just a few salient examples:

· Roughly 48 hours before we boarded the plane for Africa, we received a $45,000 check from Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold. This is an international mining company, headquartered in Phoenix, which has extensive mining operations in Congo. This grant helped cover thousands of dollars in unexpected team trip costs due to the last minute change of venue, allowed us to scholarship dozens of abuse care givers from the region, and most importantly, allowed us to provide professional quality color healing art handbooks and workbooks for rape survivors, prostitutes, and abuse care givers in English and French.

• With less than two weeks notice for our hosts to organize a half dozen major conferences, to invite soldiers, pastors, prostitutes, rape survivors, rape care givers, politicians and civic leaders, and to arrange housing, meals, and transportation for dozens of people, God supernaturally empowered our conferences beyond our wildest dreams. God brought extremely influential people to the conference and allowed us to we minister to hundreds of abuse survivors, abuse care givers from at least 30 different ministries, roughly 50 army officers (including many former rebel leaders, most likely some responsible for horrific atrocities), almost 80 prostitutes, and roughly 50 civic leaders, judges, and politicians.

• We heard numerous testimonies of new abuse ministries that have sprung up due to our abuse and sexuality conferences conducted in Congo last summer.

• We saw roughly 50 prostitutes and another 15 rape survivors come to faith in Christ.

• God brought the assistant to the Governor of the Province, a committed Christian, to attend three of our conferences. He has already contacted the mayor as well as federal officials in the capital of Kinshasa to report on our conferences and endorse our ministry to the Congolese govt. He has also begun organizing an abuse summit in October of mayors and political leaders.

• On the trip back to the U.S. God providentially seated Christine Stephenson, our team leader, next to an amazing Ugandan woman and former child soldier. She is the director of Invisible Children, a huge ministry in Goma, Uganda to child soldiers and others brutalized by the Lord's Resistance Army. She has formally invited us to come to northern Uganda next year to do an abuse ministry training for her staff of over 100 care givers.

· We held precious babies born of rape and prayed over them.

· We shared our own stories of Christ's healing and love with prostitutes and rape survivors who have been thrown out of their homes and communities and saw God use us to give hope, encouragement, and to help survivors begin to heal.

Please continue to pray with us that God will bring peace to Congo and healing to the abuse survivors we ministered to. Pray that God will guide, protect, and empower the many pastors and abuse care givers who attended our conferences. Finally, please pray with us that God will show us how we can continue to minister to abuse survivors and care givers in eastern Africa. We serve and awesome God!

Your fellow servants to the broken,

Steve and Celestia