Remembering Kalumba: A Life Cut Short by Cancer but Never Forgotten

(Funeral procession from the chapel to Kalumba's grave)

Update: Kalumba, who was in his early 20's had just begun university in 2021 when he was diagnosed with a kind of sarcoma cancer in his knee. He passed away in his hospital bed last week in Uvira, South Kivu, DRC.  

His last conversation was with a doctor but not just any doctor. Kalumba spent his last hours with his brother, Heritier, a fellow former orphan who grew up with him in God's family at the Congo for Christ Family Home.  

He gave Dr. Heritier a message for his church to encourage them. He told Heritier that he loved all of his siblings at Congo for Christ and was so thankful for all of the care and support he had through his sickness.  

He had also reported to the Congo for Christ leadership earlier this month that he felt loved despite his suffering. Think about that. 

His funeral was legendary. Attendees reported that many people from far outside the community, whom they had never met, came to share really beautiful stories of Kalumba's impact in their life. 

Please stop and think about this.  

Kalumba was not just any young African man nor a statistic. Yet, he likely would be considering the context he was born into. 

In one of the world's most unstable and impoverished regions and with no biological parents investing in him, this young man died surrounded by a large and loving community with medical resources to prolong his life and ease his suffering.  

And then there is the love.  

The funeral verified the existence of a qualitative and quantitative example of love that earns a distinction from the way the word is normally used. This observable and substantive type of love is strong, enduring, and resilient. 

Though his life was short, Kalumba experienced all of the safety, nurturing, and love that each human needs. Further, he proliferated that blessing exponentially. This kind of love is a power.  

Kalumba's life and death demonstrated the precise kind of love that is more powerful than death and other things that men fear. This is a form of evidence.  

Please grant me that in this account, I do not have the power to convey all that was reported to me about Kalumba's funeral.  

I was not there but I have had the privilege of sharing a lot of time, laughs, and soccer games with Kalumba over the years so this is not challenging for me to conceive. I wish you could have known him. 

Now please imagine what type of people created this space for Kalumba to live this wonderful and beautiful life. I hope you get a chance to meet them.  

They are the people who made sure that Heritier was no longer an orphan and then raised him to become the doctor that chose to come back and serve his community. They are the humble church leaders who are also our brothers and sisters though very far away. They are the ones wielding this power and using it to create a thriving community that defies all context.

How do they achieve what would seem impossible for our own community without the resources and safety we take for granted? I think that if you ask them, they will refer to their Bibles and the person it is written about.  

Under the scrutiny of the highest standard of historical evidence and through verifiable methodologies we have high confidence in the accurate transmission of the information recorded in these Bibles. The record claims that over two millennia ago, Jesus of Nazareth, invoked this same power in regards to love. He also said some things about its ability to conquer death.

In this ancient Middle Eastern record, this Jesus of Nazareth gave compelling evidence that he was a king of a kingdom that uniquely wielded its power with love and without coercion. So much so that people from diverse walks of life took great risk in many cases to testify to and record the evidence.

The community we are talking about in Democratic Republic of Congo chose to follow that same law of love, given and defined by this historical Jesus now in 2024. For those unfamiliar with the text, caring for widows and orphans is strongly emphasized in this ancient code. 

I don't mean to belabor this but what I am getting at is that you can see a clear cause and effect pattern between the law of love recorded in the Bible and a joy that is greater than suffering in this heavily burdened Congolese community in 2024. That chain reaction of events spans thousands of years and is still observable and verifiable to us now. 

That is miraculous. 

Now think about this. If you saw an ad about villagers from a far off land that were wielding ancient power that was technological in nature, would you take the click bait?

I probably would and probably have. But this isn't 'Ancient Aliens' on History Channel. It's real and it's happening now. Let's not be numb to this. 

What the humble servants of the Congo for Christ Community are doing by the power of some commands in an ancient book about repentance, forgiveness, and love is way cooler than most of the things we've got going on here on the East Coast. These are our brothers and sisters. These are the people we serve. We serve them because we see how they steward so little and still create a beautiful life for kids like Kalumba. 

This has been an incredibly painful loss. Kalumba wanted you to know that he hopes you can connect to a love as beautiful as this.