Kimboti’s six-year-old son doesn’t like to leave her side. Sometimes he talks to her about what happened, but other times he just begins to cry as he is overwhelmed with fear. Like Kimboti, he is haunted by memories of the day Islamists forced his family from their home.
“He witnessed the butchering,” said Kimboti, who lives with her family in a camp for internally displaced people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). “Fear is constantly there.”
One summer afternoon in 2022, militants from the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamic terrorist group, attacked their village. Kimboti was at home with her eight children while her husband was away working in the fields. When the attack began, she and her children ran for their lives, but they and a pregnant neighbour were caught before they could reach cover. The militants then bound their hands and marched them into the jungle.
“I started praying right away,” Kimboti said. “In my prayers, I felt the peace of God.”
Hoping to convey that same peace to her children, she prayed aloud with them even as the terrorists listened. Although she believed they would all be killed, she knew death meant they would be with Jesus Christ.
After arriving at a grass hut deep in the jungle, the captives were stripped of their clothes and confined to the hut, which was guarded by men with guns, clubs and machetes. They were deprived of food and water for the duration of their captivity, and Kimboti had no way of knowing if her husband had survived the attack.
She soon became aware of an argument between the militants about the fate of the captives. When one man expressed misgivings about killing young children and a pregnant woman, the other militants sneered at him and suggested killing him instead.
Kimboti prayed for her captors, and late on the second day of captivity, she saw her prayers answered. That evening, while most of the militants were at one of the five daily prayer times required in Islam, a guard came to release them. He showed them a path that would lead to the refugee camp and told them to run.
Kimboti believes that as she prayed, God changed her captor’s heart. She knows that the man’s act of mercy might have resulted in dire consequences for him. “I just prayed blessings over him and that God would watch over his life wherever he is,” she said.
The freed captives ran for hours, with older children carrying younger siblings, past the bodies of those the ADF had killed. They heard the militants shouting and hunting them on foot through the jungle. Naked, exhausted from lack of food and water, and bearing cuts and scrapes from their travel through the bush, they finally stumbled into the refugee camp.
“As soon as we reached [the refugee camp], the ladies welcomed us with blankets and gave us some clothes,” Kimboti said. Soon afterwards, she was reunited with her husband, who had fled to the refugee camp during the attack hoping to find the rest of his family. “I felt just incredible joy,” Kimboti recalled.
The local church community, with support from the global body of Christ, has helped displaced Christians in the camp in practical and profound ways.
Soon after arriving at the camp, Kimboti was invited by the local church to meet with eight Christians who had survived similar attacks. The group met for several days to pray together, hear biblical teaching, share their experiences and learn spiritually and emotionally healthy ways to cope with their fear and loss. The first day they met, participants were encouraged to share their stories.
“I actually didn’t speak that day,” Kimboti said. “I just listened. Listening to other people share their stories helped me.” After hearing the stories of others, she said, she could see how God had protected and cared for them during their captivity.
Grateful for the opportunity to meet with others who understood her suffering and helped her fix her eyes on God, Kimboti now encourages other survivors to seek the kind of care she found in the church. “Over those days, my heart calmed down, my anxiety came down,” she said. “Even after the first day, God started helping me through.” She said she would like the church to be able to provide similar help for children who struggle with fear from their traumatic experiences.
“The church has been very welcoming and supportive,” Kimboti said. She also expressed gratitude for all the others who have provided aid for the DRC’s displaced Christians. “Thank you very much,” she said. “I am praising the Lord.”
The children currently have no access to education, and medical help is limited, but Kimboti dreams of a day when her family can acquire some land and build a home again. In the meantime, she has taken steps towards building a more normal life for her family, breeding rabbits that she can use to feed her own family and sell to other families for income.
“I am very grateful because God has watched over us,” she said. “His love has been demonstrated to us.”
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