BrianJBecker.com

Dear Friends & Family,

Greetings from Kisangani in The Democratic Republic of the Congo, at the geographic center of Africa!  For at least the next two years, this will be my home.  It has been just over two months since I left my home in San Diego to pursue a new job and ministry opportunity with HOPE International (www.hopeinternational.org) leading their microfinance institution here in Kisangani.  Getting from there to here has been a major journey.  I sold most everything I own and packed four heavy suitcases to bring along.  Then I lugged those things to Chicago, Lancaster, Philadelphia, Kinshasa and finally a month ago to Kisangani.  I can’t complain, but I also cannot recommend that luggage-laden itinerary to anyone.  After all of that it felt wonderful to unpack and gather my thoughts about all of the great new colleagues that I have met and all of the technical microfinance knowledge that I have been taught.  I do miss life in San Diego, but I feel confirmation every day that this is where I am supposed to be and this is what I am supposed to be doing.Life has now settled into a regular workweek routine –at least as routine as life here can get.  Just about every day here presents challenge(s) and few things work out as planned.  I am learning the kind of patience and flexibility that should well endure life’s difficulties wherever I find myself in the future.  It’s a fringe benefit of working in the Congo.

Kisangani has a dinosaur hydroelectric plant leftover from the colonial era.  In those days the Belgian colonizers used African labor to tame the jungle and build a cosmopolitan city for themselves.  Anyone with black skin was relegated to the shanties in the outskirts by sundown.  The colonial period was followed by the rule of Mobutu Sese Seko.  Mobutu was heavily funded by France and the USA.  (He knew how to flatter US Presidents with flamboyant visits wearing hats made from jungle cats and promised to align with the West in the Cold War.)  He invested almost none of those millions anywhere but in his own pocketbook.  The roads deteriorated and all former colonial possessions were given to his cronies.  The building I now live in is owned and managed by the children of one such man.  Somehow through all of the mismanagement the hydroelectric plant still sends out 230 volts much of the time.

Life here, like life everywhere else, is colored by the place’s past.  Congo is struggling to become something more than the sum of its troubled past.  This is a land of hard working people and tremendous natural wealth.  My life here is shaped by the same colonial history and I am always working to let people know that I am here to do something different.  I am coaching local staff as together we work to provide small loans to women and men in the marketplace.  We are facilitating the bottom-up growth of the local economy by making the same basic baking services that you enjoy available to the poor.  The goal is to empower people to use their own gifts and energies to find a way out of poverty.  We provide the spark and then we encourage the honesty, integrity, and values of Christian community that promote holistic development.

I’m going to try to keep these updates short.  I’m writing regularly and posting photos on my website (www.brianjbecker.com).   Let me be clear that my goal in sending these updates is not to solicit your financial support.  Of course, I’ll be writing about what I am doing here and if you would like more information about HOPE Intl. I am happy to provide that to you directly.  That said, if you would like to contribute in a small but significant way to my work, you may consider buying a calculator that will be used in community bank meetings by our staff for years to come.  I think that might be a cool thing for some of you.  I’ll put more details about that on my website.

Please do not hesitate to contact me.  E-mails from friends and family are a tremendous blessing.  I’d be happy to hear from you anytime!  Thank you for your thoughts and prayers on my behalf!

Sincerely yours,