February 2025

"If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together."



1 Corinthians 12:26

This month's report will be a little bit different than our normal update.

While we have received reports of the safety of our staff and partners in Goma and the surrounding areas, many hundreds have been affected by the tragic loss and violence of the political upheaval.

Some updates will include our regular prayer points, while others will feature letters and reports from our staff and partners.

We weep together with those who are mourning, and we agree in prayer together with those yearning for freedom.

Because the situation on the ground is very fluid and media reports can be colored by local politics and agenda, one of our partners has set up a private Facebook group to continue the conversation and curate information as it happens.

If you would like to be added to the Facebook group, email HERE and the administrators of the Facebook group will respond with an invite.

Steve & Celestia Tracy

Founders of Mending the Soul

"Prayer does not fit us for greater work; prayer is the greater work." (Oswald Chambers)

Your prayers, support, and messages have meant much to us and our Congolese family. Thank you for loving them and for staying on your knees in intercession on their behalf. We have attached an informative article by one of our MTS partners, Annie DeVries. Annie is a historian who, along with her photographer husband Stephen, went with us to Goma about 10 years ago. The article was published in the Dispatch yesterday: (CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE)

We connected with our staff Sunday, who told us that M23 is now moving south toward Bukavu and north toward Beni and Butembo. As you know, we have field offices in each of those cities. Because of the high trust MTS enjoys in Congo and Uganda, we are cautious about our public statements apart from this prayer partner database and the private Facebook prayer group Ethie Gebeyehu, one of our international trainers and board members, is administrating. If you would like to request to be added to the Facebook group, you can email Ethie BY CLICKING HERE. 

What will happen next in North Kivu is very uncertain. Humanly, it would appear that widespread conflict is coming. God has deeply rooted MTS into the Congo's soil since 2007 for such a time as this. In that year, Steve and I trained 127 faith leaders, and Katavo and Daphrose were in the audience that week. Daphrose went on to catch God's vision to train chaplains using MTS resources and training and to build a Gratia Counseling Centre in the middle of secondary schools across eastern DRC. This vision grew and today 45+ Centres caring for the youth of her beloved country.

Daphrose sent a voicemail via WhatsApp Sunday morning. She's alive, and her hope is in God!

MTS is fielding requests from Congolese-based organizations that need help for their traumatized staff. Just this morning, we received a request from a Goma-based European missionary who had to flee to Kigali, Rwanda, with her family and staff. They have a clinical team who are highly traumatized and not in a position to help the others.

Oh, that the Shalom Sanctuary was up and running! Pray with us that God will provide complete funding for the Trauma Restoration Centre so that in three years, once it is completed, we will be able to provide respite care and spiritual restoration for traumatized leaders like these and our staff. 

• Pray for our Congolese Directors (David, Moses, Katavo/Daphrose) and master trainers this week as they face great uncertainty and impending dangers. Pray that God will give them supernatural peace, protection, capacity, and wisdom to minister to their families, congregations, and communities during this crisis.

• As God allows, we would like to go to Congo to support our staff and trainers later this spring. Either way, pray for wisdom that we will know how best to help our staff, trainers, and facilitators as they are impacted by their own trauma while tirelessly caring for the needs of those within their communities. 

• Pray that God will multiply MTS' resources like He did the loaves and fish to serve the thousands upon thousands of traumatized people He's called us to love.

Thanks for standing with us as we serve God’s choice servants.

Our God reigns! 

Esther Luemba

Mending the Soul

I appreciate your prayers for me, my family, and my country, the DRC. This period has been challenging for my family as we lost our Dad on January 20, 2025, and after two days, the rebels, identified as M-23, took control of the city of Goma, where my family lives. I could not get ahold of my family because the electricity and internet connection were cut off in Goma. I thank God that my brother, who lives in another city, called the family regularly and informed me of their situation until I finally talked to them when the electricity and internet were back. I thank God I spoke to my sister yesterday, and she informed me they are all doing well.

The Minister of Health and the Minister of Communication (government spokesperson) in DRC had a press conference in which they presented the situation in North Kivu, particularly in Goma, and the toll of injuries and deaths from January 26 to 30, 2025. The conference was live on national television RTNC Kinshasa. The injury toll rose to 2,880 people and 773 deaths. In addition, the cumulative number of injuries in North-Kivu since the start of the crisis (March 2024) is 5,949. There may have been more injuries and deaths, but this number is what the health structures recorded, considering the people whom they received.

Many people, including children, died from stray bullets and bombs falling on homes and hospitals. May God heal those wounded, and may the souls of our brothers and sisters who died rest in peace. May God comfort our hearts.

As my heart is heavy for my Congolese brothers and sisters who died, I thank God for protecting my family during this dark moment. I thank God for His mercy, grace, and protection over my family because they are alive by His grace.

Please continue to pray for God's durable peace in my country. There is much brokenness. Let us pray for the president, his administration, and the country's army. May God give them wisdom and intelligence to stand for the population and the country's unification. Let us also pray for health workers who work very hard caring for people who have been injured and suffering from different health conditions resulting from the crisis. They do extraordinary work. They need God's strength. The situation in the city is still critical. People continue to leave the city. My family is also considering leaving it. Please pray for them as they figure out the next step and for God's protection over all the people displaced internally and externally.

Thank you for always standing with us in prayer. Our GOD is always at work, even during this time. May God bless you and your families!

ALBERT IS GETTING MARRIED!

We will send you more details in the very near future. Zawadi Maha Godiane is a nurse in Albert's Hospital in the Gyneco-Obstetrics Department. Many of you have heard or even been a part of Albert's spiritual journey. This amazing story of deliverance and restoration is just getting started.

Lets celebrate together! Look what the Lord has done!

Dr. Kelsey Hawk

PRAISE

Preparations are finally underway to start collecting measurable data that show BHW and MTS curriculums DO in fact make a visible difference! With measurable results, we can show that difference to stakeholders and grant funders. This will allow MTS to apply for and receive additional funding to spread the message of healing further across the globe. Data collection has already begun in Uganda and the DRC. Join me in praising God in advance for what He is going to do with this data in obtaining further funding for these critical and life-changing interventions. 

PRAYER

Collecting data takes time and resources.

• Pray for our BHW directors in Africa who will be adding this additional work to their load.

• Pray for supernatural organization methods and that data comes in quickly and accurately.

• Pray for our support team (Fred in Uganda and Brent in the U.S.) who will be sorting, inputting, and interpreting the data for use in grants.

• Pray that the data provides concrete evidence of what the MTS family already knows; that it works and works well! Pray for wisdom for the U.S. team to efficiently implement an effective data collection process for domestic MTS groups and that the data collected is plentiful, accurate, and tells the MTS story through numbers. 

Debbie Taylor

RESPLENDA: An abuse ministry using MTS in Spanish-speaking communities

PRAYER & PRAISE

• Resplandece is training facilitators in both MTS and Explora.

• We will soon launch a new webpage

• Ongoing translating of the 2nd edition of Mending the Soul. .

Titus Folden

Regional Coordinator for Latin America & Europe

PRAISE

• The creation of a foster care program by churches in Ecuador and their plan to use MTS resources to train families.

• Visible growth and healing of a couple working through an addiction that nearly destroyed their marriage.

• Near completion of the Spanish translation of Caring for the Vulnerable Child. 

• Halfway through an Explore group with those struggling with sexual identity.

• A recently completed MTS group led by Ana Gloria in Valencia, Spain.

PRAYER

• Explore and MTS groups starting this month in Guayaquil.

• A young man who has fallen back into his former life. Pray for his return to the Lord and for God's strength to help him face the overwhelming pain and trauma he has experienced in his life.

• The Lord's wisdom and direction on how best to help the churches in Spain with child safeguarding and the implementation of MTS resources.

• The foster care program has the favor of the Ecuadorian government, and the leaders of the program are filled with wisdom, discernment, and unity as they continue to build this first-of-its-kind program in Ecuador. 

Brent Young

Senior Director of Domestic Programs, Communications & Marketing

PRAISE

I want to take a moment to thank God for His faithfulness in the success of my recent eye surgery and for the continued healing I am experiencing. I am deeply grateful for the outpouring of prayers and support from the Mending the Soul community. Your encouragement and care truly sustained me through the more challenging days of recovery. Knowing I was covered in prayer brought me great comfort and strength. Thank you for standing with me during this time.

Workers Together in this amazing calling that He has trusted to us,

Brent Young

THANK YOU FOR YOUR PRAYERS

THEY MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE!

"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work."



2Timothy 3:16-17

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