Description Dr. Sidney Gilchrist

The Last Congo Cameo

Dear Friends and Partners:

It is not easy to write this letter.

"To go away is to die a little."  Is it the French who have that aphorism?

Mind you I hope to be able to keep in touch with many of you.  Some I will see before very long.  Yet I can't escape just now a kind of feeling of finality.

You know, this is probably not far from being number 200, of messages long and short, all hurried but some more so, often in pretty shabby English and without the necessary corrections, that we have sent through the years to friends old and new.

I think back now to how and where they were written.   Sometimes on trek, often in villages and in the bush, at mission hospitals, leprosaria and dispensaries, in our first mud and wattle, grass-roofed home, in others of burned brick, then in the old adobe dwelling in Bailundo, and finally in this cottage in a Congo medical institute.

You have been faithful friends and good stewards of those resources which it is not only your (and our) privilege, and not only our privilege but our this area of lower Congo.  Not of all this great nation. 

The pioneers of the Faith in Central Angola, despite the suspicion, mistrust and open opposition of the Portuguese rulers, wrought much better than they new.  They early integrated mission into church, from the start they encouraged self support, and above all, they did not indoctrinate the people.  They educated as much and as many as they could, in the finest sense of the word education and with a maximum emphasis on religious matters, not excluding the inseparability of religion from problems of human rights.  And there, of course, you have the chief reason for the persecution of the young churches in Angola by the Portuguese overlords. 

As a former Presbyterian (and still with many a kirkish vein in me) I must pay tribute to the Congregational pioneers of the Central-West (and South) Angolan field.

The Portuguese colonial overlords have long realized the "disturbing" political forces unleashed by the words of the prophets and our Beloved Master.  Now they seek to destroy the young church by intimidation and corruption.  They tempt, manipulate, threaten and deceive the young African pastors and leaders.  Various mission stations are now largely directed or controlled by Africans who are, for some reasons of fear or greed, in the hands of the diabolical Portuguese political police.  This enormous organization, Gestapo-like in its methods and organization, is as much hated and feared in continental Portugal as it is in Angola and the other colonies (now cynically called "overseas provinces").  Some observers think that it is now stronger than the Portuguese government itself.

As to the few missionaries who are left, they are now a "screened" group of men and women from Canada and the States who are considered to be "safe".  This means that they will directly or indirectly encourage the Africans to avoid all political action, and will leak no information to the Canadian churches or public of the evils and abuses which they know to exist.  Those who have been recently in Canada have not said a word about the pastors, nurses, and outstanding church leaders who languish in Portuguese prisons in Angola.  That is, no word that has appeared in print or has been communicated to the Canadian people.

-2-

(Yes, this is a long letter; but it is the last.)

Yesterday, in the home of an Angolan refugee pastor, five men spent much of the afternoon in earnest conversation.  Three of them, politically as innocent as newborn babes, had fled from Angola eight years ago because they were ordained ministers in areas where all the African elite were being slaughtered by the Portuguese.  One of the group was a professional guerilla officer.  I was the fifth and the only one whose life had not been in danger times without number.

We talked about ourselves; our families; our friends who the Portuguese had killed; others still rotting in Portuguese prison camps; independence--how and when?  Above all, we spoke of the Church of Christ of Angola, its present agony, its quislings, its future.

The guerilla officer had been forced as a young man to serve in the Portuguese army.  He had seen service in India while Goa was still in the colonialists hands.  He had soldiered in one of the tiny opium-trading possessions of Portugal in the far East.  Back in Angola in 1961, he was forced to fight with the Portuguese against his own flesh and blood.  This was too much for him. He stowed away on a ship to Europe, then on another which carried him to Congo.  For some years now he has been fighting inside Angola against the oppressors of his people.

The pastor in whose home we were meeting was one of the many refugees whom his patrols have rescued in the Northern Angolan forests and brought to safety in the Congo.  (An hour ago, in our Sunday afternoon prayer group the pastor and the guerilla were both present.  In his prayer the pastor spoke of Jesus, the one who leads us along safe paths, teaching us the ways of wisdom, standing between us and our enemies.  "Even," he said, "as a man who cared for us and knew the right paths led us through many dangers to safety in this land of freedom.")

The third member of yesterday afternoon's group is our pastor her at this medical centre.  He is a man powerful in mind, body and spirit.  As a student, when the fight for freedom began in the north of Angola, he had to find his way with thousands of others, through the hills and forests to Congo.  Later he ran the gauntlet again back to his home in Angola to bring out his precious books.  Today he can preach with power to any congregation anywhere in any one of four languages-- English, Portuguese, French or Kikongo.

The fourth participant in our dialogue was another pastor, a refugee from the capital city of Angola.  He now directs a vital evangelistic and social service centre in the heart of Kinshasa, the capital of Congo.  He was a key man in the Stanley Jones ashram in Kinshasa some months ago. Deep waters of suffering, the long months of hide and seek, zig-zag flight and pilgrimage with his loved ones, the perils of Portuguese patrols, planes, land mines and machine-gun nests, hunger such as none of us will ever know--all these have been his portion.

Yesterday, when the time came to part, and as we stood up to take leave of each other, this man of God said, "Friends, it has been good to open our hearts to one another this day.  Let us thank God."  This we did as we bowed our heads.  Then he prayed for each one of us.  For the guerilla officer, that he might never forget the power of love and the need for a reconciliation of all men in and under God. For his tow fellow ministers, that they might comfort and encourage their disinherited and embittered flocks, exiles from home, possessions, kinfolks.  For me, that I might be given strength to continue my mission of consolation and education while here, and even later when we will be separated from our Angolan partners, friends and fellow-churchmen.

And "here endeth the lesson."  As you have blessed my you be blessed.

We are in the exciting position of having "not a clue" as to our future, although the fact that B.C. has the most benign climate in Canada is of more than a little interest to us.

Airmail (and airmail only) despatched before Nov. 10th should reach us here.  After that, and until the middle of December, Box 799, Kitwe, Zambia, Africa, will be the address where we may be reached.  However, from mid-December on, the safest address will be c/o K.S. Gilchrist, 11456 - 44A Ave., Edmonton 73, Alta., Canada.

Affectionately, and more than a little nostalgically, Sid

Received Oct. 27th/69, SG/bdg