In a worship service, the Christian congregation in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, whose seventy members were abducted and murdered for their faith in February, thanked the Reformed Church in Hungary and the Hungary Helps Agency for their joint support. The massacre is believed to have been carried out by gunmen of the Islamist Allied Democratic Forces (ADF).
The community in Congo with the coat of arms of RCH
“Our brothers and sisters from Hungary have not forgotten us. They supported us when we were in great pain,” they said at the service.
The expression of thanks is based on the fact that the Reformed Church of Hungary and the Hungary Helps programme have supported the families of the seventy Christian martyrs with five million forints each.
Péter Gergő Juhász, elder of the reformed congregation in the city of Kisvárda, Eastern Hungary, has been involved in programmes supporting people in the region for decades as president of the Planetrise Association. The organisation helped to ensure that the money got into the right hands. The president of the association confirmed that the Hungarian donation, including also the offering of the Lions Club in Nyíregyháza, were passed on to a local partner organisation with which they have been implementing joint projects since 2008. This organisation helped to locate the relatives of the seventy martyrs and deliver the donations directly to them.
Péter Gergő Juhász also said that they not only handed over the financial aid, but also organised a training session on how to best use the money, for example to buy seeds or more resistant crops. This kind of use will also improve food security for families and the region. In addition, spiritual counselling and mental support for the families of the victims was also provided, as they have all been traumatised by the events.
Congolese Christian delegation thanks the RCH for its support
"For us in Hungary today, martyrdom, the witness that we can lay down our lives for the cause of Jesus Christ in a given situation, is unknown, and that is why we have great respect for those Christians who remain believers in Christ even in the most difficult circumstances," said Bishop József Steinbach, Ministerial President of the Synod, on Wednesday, 9 April, at the Ráday House in Budapest, where the Presidium of the Reformed Church in Hungary met with a delegation of Congolese Christians helped by the Church and the "Planetrise" (Földkelte) Association for Culture and Environmental Protection.