Supporting our Burundi Family 

Seventy-one dear Burundians, friends of ours with whom we’ve connected through a Christian Science informal group via WhatsApp, are in need of your prayers. They are constituted of one, sometimes two, generations of refugees who have lived in UN Nyarugusu Refugee camp in Tanzania. Over the past several weeks, through threats and violence (including the total demolishing of four of the families' homes), the Tanzanian government is forcing them to leave the camp to return to a still unstable Burundi, where they have no immediately evident prospects. Forced repatriation is illegal, but United Nations Refugee Agency is stretched thin and not able to enforce. USAid has been dismantled, and International Rescue Committee (IRC) has ceased providing aid.  A most recent development is that our friends have now had their refugee status revoked, and their food source has been removed. They must travel to the other side of the camp, to the Congolese refugee side, to buy food until they are able to repatriate. They actually do wish to go to Burundi, but there are a total of 44,000 Burundian refugees at this camp, who have all been commanded to leave. UNICEF runs the buses to take them the nine hours to Burundi; there are 17 buses that come twice a week. Because of the routes the buses take, and stops they make, it can take several days to get to Burundi.​

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"... where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."
--Christ Jesus, Matthew 18:20