Word: townes
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...after entering Congo, I headed north toward the fighting. By 7 a.m., Goma's streets were jammed with blue helmets and white armored vehicles. The traffic ended abruptly on the edge of town. In the next four days, I did not see a single peacekeeping operation or, aside from two supply convoys, even a U.N. vehicle more than 500 yards (450 m) from a MONUC base...
Three miles (5 km) from town, I passed the last Congolese-army checkpoint and crossed the front line into rebel territory. Two hours later, at Kiwanga, where first Mai Mai and then Nkunda's advancing forces executed 50 to 100 young men on Nov. 5, thousands of refugees converged on a MONUC base, spooked by rumors of a Mai Mai counterattack. On their heads and wooden bicycles they carried mattresses, sacks of potatoes, children. The Indian soldiers at the base drove two armored personnel carriers 300 ft. (90 m) outside. They kept 30 more carriers, tanks, jeeps and trucks...
...headed toward three towns where the Congolese army was fighting the Mai Mai. I arrived to find thousands of Congolese soldiers looting. Lines of men were carrying food, radios and clothes away. The army allows wives and children to accompany the men, and in the town of Karimba the soldiers slumped in the street, counting out their plunder with their families. In a courtyard off the main street lay the burned corpse of a young man. A second charred body lay outside, this one disemboweled, his yellow guts spilling across his navel. At the deserted town hospital, three soldiers...
...congregation that's historically been able to survive at 20 members and loses 12, they close." And for the first time in American history, the majority of seminarians don't come from rural areas. Shannon Jung, a rural-church expert in Kansas City, Mo., says of young pastors, "A town without a Starbucks scares them." Wolpert recalls a professor's warning to a promising seminarian to shun a rural call: "Don't go. You're too creative for that...
...response to the pastor shortage is "yoking" two congregations to share a circuit-riding minister--and one salary. Along the Minnesota--North Dakota line, the yokes stretch thin. Jeff Gustafson, in the town of Warren, Minn., adds a degree of difficulty: he's Methodist, but one of his two yoked churches is Presbyterian. Another pastor travels 200 miles (about 320 km) every weekend to serve five churches. A botched three-pastor attempt to connect three already yoked churches (including Grue) with four more resulted in, among other things, shut-ins being overlooked and not receiving Communion for years...