Conscious Being
All those that are justified,
God vouchsafed, in and for the sake of his only Son Jesus Christ, to make
partakers of the grace of adoption, by which they are taken into the number,
and enjoy the liberties and privileges of the children of God, have his name
put upon them, receive the spirit of adoption, have access to the throne of
grace with boldness, are enabled to cry Abba, Father, are pitied, protected,
provided for, and chastened by him as by a Father, yet never cast off, but
sealed to the day of redemption, and inherit the promises as heirs of
everlasting salvation.
The Baptist Confession of
Faith, 1689
"The fact that people
are starving to death, or unable to provide for their children, due to a system
of international plunder, does not justify purchasing children from desperate
people and trafficking them abroad into the homes of white people. The
wars in DRC are part of the global business where the most expendable are lives
of poor Congolese."
Congolese
Professor in the USA (name withheld)
La Procure Saint Anne is a Catholic Monastery
built in 1920 in what is today the Democratic Republic of Congo. Abutting
Kinshasa's first cathedral church, La Centre d'aceuil Saint Anne (in the
local French) sits just off Kinshasa's main thoroughfare, the Boulevard 30
Juin, named for the date of the Congo's supposed independence from Belgium
on June 30,1960.
At La Procure Saint Anne
you can see black Congolese 'orphans' meeting prospective white American
'parents' before these children are packaged for export, with all the requisite
paperwork and necessary U.S. Government approvals, and trafficked into
international commerce for transshipment to the United States. Cloistered
behind 10-foot stone walls, with a lush tropical garden in front and a shady courtyard
in back, La Procure sits just a few hundred feet from the United States
Embassy.
No longer a mainstay of the
Belgian colonial enterprise, La Procure is now run like a tight
profitable business. The original, quaint, simple but truly charming
colonial era furnishings, which were evident throughout the austere halls of
the monastery even as recent as 2006, have been replaced by tacky furniture and
cheap post-modern décor with as little character and as much charm as the cold
business dealings of the head priest. Listed today as a lower- to
middle-range lodging option in the city, these days La Procure
accommodates foreign couples for weeks at a time, generating substantial
income, especially in Kinshasa.
