The best we can be: The Congolese and Pen-Del partnership
Susie Kiefer has given a lot to ministries in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. But in many ways, the Democratic Republic of the Congo has given more to her.
That includes a daughter.
Kiefer, who attends Bethel United Methodist Church in Lewis, Delaware, has been involved with the Peninsula-Delaware Conference’s Democratic Republic of the Congo partnership ministry for 14 years. A woman who was active in ministry at their old church was unable to travel to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and suggested Kiefer, a now-retired special education teacher, attended in her stead.
She said, “Africa had always been on her heart,” but that she never thought she’d get the opportunity to serve on the continent.
When she got off the plane, Kiefer initially felt daunted by individuals carrying automatic weapons. People, she also observed, did not seem to smile. Her observations made her wonder how intense the next 10 days would be for the group.
“Between that first step off the plane and when I went to leave, I left with a piece of my heart staying there because I'd fallen in love with so many of the people,” Kiefer said. “I just really knew I needed to get back there. I didn't know how or when, but I ended up going back the following summer and spending two weeks there with the children.”
The Peter D. Weaver Congo Partnership began in the late 1990’s, originally called Hope for the Children of Africa. African bishops in the United Methodist Church requested a task force be created to help children who were victims of war, famine and destruction.
Each conference partnered with a specific country or Episcopal Area on the continent. The Peninsula-Delaware Conference’s Bishop Peter Weaver chose Central Congo. By 2001, the Congo Partnership began with the construction of an orphanage outside of the capital city and the support of a nutrition and medical center for refugees from the country’s intense civil war in the 1990’s.
The Congolese partnership with the Peninsula-Delaware Conference now boasts a number of important programs for people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In Kiefer’s trip report from January 2024, she described a robust number of programs yielding successful results in helping people in the Congo. Nearly 1,000 children are registered with a children’s ministry program in the capital city of Kinshasa, 30 students attend sewing classes twice a week, more than 150 children attend Mpasa nutrition classes along with others in an elderly nutrition program.
That’s just to name a few ministries.
In 2006, the Congo Partnership established its first covenant agreement. Many new iterations of the agreement have been signed throughout the decades. The agreement highlights that all partners are on equal footing and decisions in ministry are collectively decided.
“The partners will set aside their own agendas and create a collective vision for the ministry together,” according to a description of the covenant agreement. “As with any relationship, each participant brings God-given gifts, whether spiritual, physical or mental, tangible or intangible, which will be honored and appreciated equally by all partners in the covenant agreement.”
Issues remain, though. The Democratic Republic of the Congo remains a politically volatile region, with violence spiking following a contested election in December 2023, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. A United Nations report found that the population of displaced persons in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to be 7.2 million, one of the highest populations of displaced people in the world.
That instability can make it difficult for some ministries. Kiefer reported, for example, that attendance for the sewing program can sometimes be sparse due to violence following the elections.
Kiefer eventually made a second trip that next year to the DRC. She spent 14 days in the Democratic Republic of the Congo with children in a nutrition program, playing games and teaching them lessons. In fact, Kiefer ended up meeting a person who would impact her life greatly: her daughter, Miriam, whom she and her husband would end up adopting.
“I met this adorable little girl, but I was busy with lots of children,” Kiefer said. “But every day when I would come, she would want me to pick her up and carry her around and she never let me put her down. Her legs were so tight around my waist.”
Miriam had a father and older brother, who would bring her to the programs for children. Kiefer described having “a wonderful time…but really falling in love” with Miriam.
Eventually, Kiefer went back that same year during her Christmas break from school.
“I went back and it was like I had never been gone,” she said. “[Miriam] was right back up in my arms just like I had never left. Her father then passed away that next spring in 2012. And I found out that he really wanted me to bring her home, so we did.”
But not everything went to plan. When Kiefer and her husband went to adopt their daughter, the Congolese government halted all adoptions for over a month. During that time, however, Kiefer became inspired to create and fund another nutrition ministry called Miriam’s Table, named after their daughter.
Miriam’s Table is in its tenth year, feeding more than 300 children. It works under the structure of the Congo partnership from the Peninsula-Delaware Conference.
Going forward, the partnership remains busy, particularly helping ministries cultivate different types of business so they can generate their own income to support their regular programming and sustain their own incomes. That way, Kiefer said, the partnership can focus more on specific projects that may be a larger lift.
For example, she said that a vehicle at a farm supported by the partnership is on its last leg. That’s an expense the ministry can’t afford to replace, she said. So the partnership is focused on raising funds to replace that vehicle.
Despite needed maintenance and replacements, one thing remains constant: individuals on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean are working to empower and connect with each other.
“We really want them to feel good about who they are, and it's fun to watch them become empowered, when they realize that they're doing something more than they've ever done before,” Kiefer said.