My mom made this heroic choice, she thought, if we stay here, we’re going to die. If we decide to leave, we’re most likely going to die, and so I rather try to escape and die, versus just let the war come and consume us. We decided to pack our stuff again and go back into the city where the war was really intense and the bombing was intense, and try to find a way to escape the country.

We went back to our city, which is called Gemena. From there, there were a lot of trucks carrying goods outside of the country during that time. So we paid this man who was driving the truck to pretend that we were his family, and we could get in the truck and try to escape.

Horror of War

The journey from where we are in Gemena to the Central African Republic takes about eight hours or so of driving, but this journey to escape the country took us about a week. I would say that experience is probably one of the worst experiences of my life. We were exposed to things that you cannot imagine that people can do to each other.

I don’t think anyone should see the things that I saw as a 10-year-old, let alone even as a 35-year-old. Now, I don’t ever want to see what I saw on that journey, of people being beaten nearly to death, of seeing families burned on the ground as if there were nothing, and seeing villages completely burned down. That was the reality that we experienced.

For me, I was like, God, how can you allow these things to happen? We learned so much about you and how you are filled with grace and love and compassion and, you know, how can you, how can you do such a thing? You know, I understand if it was just soldiers, but these are kids my age, or even younger than me, like, what did they deserve to be burned to the ground without remorse, and their homes to be destroyed? And so, I would say, that really messed me up.

By the grace of God, we escaped that war and found refuge in the Central African Republic and went on to eventually come to the United States that that experience, that week, the journey, more than anything, the bombing, all those things that we escaped was nothing but that experience and seeing that reality really changed, changed, changed my life and my perspective of the world in a very negative way. But despite all that, you know, despite the darkest time of my life, I’m just so glad to know God, even though I questioned him at that age and questioned him for a long time.

Refuge in the United States

I see now, how he’s always been there for me. One example is after we came and found refuge here in the United States once my father finished his education in theology, my parents decided to go back to Congo. They felt God’s call to minister to the region, to provide peace and stability to a region that was destroyed by conflict and war for a long time.

During that time, I was 13, I told my parents you can go back, but I’m not going back. I’m never going to go back. I hated the country. I hated my experience. I wanted nothing to do with Congo. I told them, Listen, I’m going to live in the streets. I’m going to do whatever I need to do. I’m a survivor. I survived that war, I survived that experience, I’m not going back. I don’t want to go back. Please don’t force me to go back. I will run away.

One family who I had hardly met, I think we met for 30 minutes because their church was supporting us. The family decided to give us some Christmas gifts. They drove down from the Bay Area and gave us some gifts, and we spent time with them, and that was the only time I ever met the family.

This family not only invited me to live with them, but they treated me like their own. They loved me as their own. They pushed me to excel in school, and they treated me like their own. This family had three little kids, right. They made me a big brother to three little kids that I was able to take care of and be part of their lives.

They introduced me to a life that I could never have imagined, a life of, I would say luxury. Coming from Congo to our experience in Pasadena to then now living with them in the Bay Area. This family transformed my life forever, and I didn’t realize that until I was in college.

In college, I was trying to figure out who I was, as many people do you know. Asking Him, “Why God? Why? Why me? Why am I alive? You know, when the bomb came, why? Why did you spare my life in the jungle? Why was I still alive when we were trying to escape the country we had all those machine guns pointed at our faces, why didn’t they pull the trigger? Why am I still alive, Lord?”

God was Always There

The epiphany that I had was God has blessed us with so much, and the gift that God has blessed us even though we are ordinary. We can do extraordinary things with the gift that God has given us. You can do extraordinary things in a negative way, like my experience with the war, or you can do an extraordinary thing in a beautiful way, like the family that welcomed me into their home, took care of me, and treated me as their own.

That family’s love transformed my life and is impacting me and the person that I am today. Even the ministry that I do today is because of them. It’s because they found someone struggling, who was desperate, in need and they showed that person love, and compassion and they provided that person with an opportunity, and they gave them hope that they did not have before. Because of those offerings and the generosity that they gave me, it really transformed my life. In college, having that epiphany just made me change what I wanted to do.

The Power of Testimony

I made the choice after an internal dialogue, You can continue to be bitter. You can hate the world. You can feel pity, play the victim, you know, why did this happen to me? Or you can use that experience, the negative and the positive to try to make an impact in this world. And so what are you going to do? And from that moment on, I decided to just change how I saw the world. I dedicated my studies, and I dedicated my profession to having a positive impact on this world. As ordinary as I am, I want to have an extraordinary impact on this world.

I think one key aspect that really helped me was during my junior and senior years, I was involved in Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Fresno State University. That really helped me a lot, because that was the first time where it actually allowed me to share my testimony with other college students and high school students, to really mentor them.

At first, it was very surface-level. I just talked about in high school, I used to play soccer until I injured myself and how I had to rely on God. It was very surface-level. Later on, I started sharing, no, this is who I am. These are the experiences that I had as a child and as a teenager, and this is what God has done through me and through my life.

Sharing my testimony with college and high school students started to transform the way that I saw God. How He has been there every step of the way, even from the church bombing, I just had a completely different reflection, right? Whereas before I was like, God. Why, you know, where were you? Why would you do this thing? Now it’s, Wow, God, I saw you there two years ago.

God Has a Plan

I kind of had to come to the understanding and the acceptance of it as I see what you were doing. God, I see that, and I feel like you’ve been preparing me to do something, to do your work for a long time, you’ve given these experiences of disparity, of hardship, of pain, but you’ve also given me this experience of love and of joy and of generosity and of kindness and of your love. What do you want me to do with this Lord?

I started having a lot of that tension. And I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been really scared, right? Like having that type of tension, because, you know when you’re prepared that when you see God’s presence that way, it’s hard to live a different way. To me personally, it’s really hard. I cannot live a different way. And I really felt that, and that all came into realization about two years ago when I decided to quit my job, a well-paying, comfortable job, prestigious job, and say I’m going to pursue Lobiko full-time.

We don’t have the financial resources, but I trust you God, and I know that you are calling me. I know that this is the time for me to do this particular work, and so there’s just a lot of different moments when I’ve seen God in my life, and how he’s shaped me to do the work that I’m doing right now through him. Something that was always a blocker for me and a fear that I had in deciding to commit full-time was this concept that it’s not just me anymore.

Trusting God with Finances too

I have a wife, and I have three kids, and I lived a life of no wealth, right? Coming from Congo, and even when we were in Pasadena, I remember we used to go out pick up cans, smash them, and go to the 99-cent store and sell the cans so that we could have some money. That’s the life that I lived. I lived like that for a long time. A part of me also hated it.

I remember thinking, why can I just have a normal life like everyone else, you know, kids have Jordans on in Pasadena, like, why can I just have that life? So one of the fears that I had is, Oh, Walita, are you doing the same thing to your kids? Are you going to be exposing your kids to the same type of reality?

So I was wrestling with this sense of having what might be considered financial freedom, right? Like, this concept of financial freedom, you’re going to give all that away. And what are you going to do with your kids, right? Like, if they want to do something, how are you going to do it? Where is it going to come from?

We took that step anyway. And for the outside world, our decision is 100% stupid. It is, 100% stupid. It’s like, what you should definitely not do, but we did it anyway, and it’s so funny. Three weeks ago, I was just stressing out. I was like, Brittany, I don’t know how we’re going to do this financially. We’re just we’re really struggling. And I’m just like, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

And then I look at my email, and there’s one of our supporters who’s always supported the Children’s Center and everything else. She says, “Hey, it’s Lisa, I’ve been praying, and I feel like God has put it in my heart that I want to just give you this money.”

I just started to cry, and then I decided to call her, and I explained to her, “You would not believe this. I was stressing, I was crying. I didn’t know what we were going to do and how I was going to bring this up to my wife and talk about it.” Then I received your email and you’re going to send the amount that we actually need!

And do you know what she told me? She said, “It’s funny that you’re going through that, and I’m glad that that helps. I felt like God was putting that in my heart to give to you. I don’t know why, but I was praying, and that’s what God did when I was growing up as well, too. We had to depend on the Lord some days, literally, we would get the financial means that we needed just so that we could survive that day.”

I just cried like I didn’t know what else to say, I was a hot mess again. That experience just continued to remind me that, listen, God is there. That is one miracle that God did in a very superficial way, if you really look at it, because that’s so small, in the grand scheme of things. But that was a powerful reminder that no matter how small or how big, God has me. You’re gonna struggle, you’re gonna do all those different things, but just trust in me that I have you.

God Does Extraordinary Things with Ordinary People

When you look at many of the characters and the people in the Bible, that have had transformative change. They were all ordinary people. None of them were extraordinary. If you take Jesus out of the equation, right, none of them were extraordinary. They were all ordinary people. The reason why they did extraordinary things is because they said yes to God, right? They said yes, I’m going to follow you and I’m going to do what you tell me to do.

I personally believe that as ordinary as I am, if I say yes to God and I say yes to his calling, I know that I can do extraordinary things because that is him working through me, and that is the message that I try to share with people as well, too, and even with Lobiko, that’s the message that I try to share as ordinary as we can through God, we can do extraordinary things, and I’ve seen it for myself.