4th October Paradoxes
Today we celebrated 10 years since the amazing gift of Julia in our family, with an all-team plus some Ugandan friends (37 people!!) VeggieTale party. Yes, even in the remotest parts of Africa, one may find missionary children who love silly songs and hairbrush searches. It was a great evening of community for us, of games and costumes and a treasure hunt and gifts and food. Of belonging to a group of people who love us and our children. Our team finds creative gifts, either precious candles or pens from care packages or amazing finds of gap pants in the used clothes piles in the market. Perhaps the biggest gift came from a little boy we have befriended who sometimes has trouble getting his own dinner but brought Julia a box of . . . Vegetables, how appropriate, several nice pumpkins and beans plus oranges. Twice major dark clouds gathered for our daily rain . . . And then blew on over. I was thankful to God for the day.
But the day started with a story which may end in death. Four people, two children and two adults, were attacked by a possibly rabid dog in a nearby village. One little girl was just sitting in her house when the dog came in and bit her in the mouth, face, arms. The adults had significant wounds in their arms from warding off attack. Actually people I talked to were reluctant to say it was a dog . . . They reported that it had the structure of a dog but they couldn’t be sure, as if it may have been a spiritual entity. It took a huge effort to call multiple people, hospitals, health personnel, track down rabies vaccine, come up with money for fuel and a vehicle to get them to Fort Portal to get the vaccine. Immune globulin was not available. With wound cleansing and vaccine only I’m not sure what their prognosis is. The police were afraid to go look for the dog but some family members appealed to soldiers to go with guns to find it. All of this in the midst of many other desperately ill people . .
And then back to VeggieTales and cake. What an odd life we live sometimes, rabies and death in the morning, and silliness and icing in the afternoon. It helps to remember that Jesus was both mobbed by the needy AND accused of partying too much.
Today we celebrated 10 years since the amazing gift of Julia in our family, with an all-team plus some Ugandan friends (37 people!!) VeggieTale party. Yes, even in the remotest parts of Africa, one may find missionary children who love silly songs and hairbrush searches. It was a great evening of community for us, of games and costumes and a treasure hunt and gifts and food. Of belonging to a group of people who love us and our children. Our team finds creative gifts, either precious candles or pens from care packages or amazing finds of gap pants in the used clothes piles in the market. Perhaps the biggest gift came from a little boy we have befriended who sometimes has trouble getting his own dinner but brought Julia a box of . . . Vegetables, how appropriate, several nice pumpkins and beans plus oranges. Twice major dark clouds gathered for our daily rain . . . And then blew on over. I was thankful to God for the day.
But the day started with a story which may end in death. Four people, two children and two adults, were attacked by a possibly rabid dog in a nearby village. One little girl was just sitting in her house when the dog came in and bit her in the mouth, face, arms. The adults had significant wounds in their arms from warding off attack. Actually people I talked to were reluctant to say it was a dog . . . They reported that it had the structure of a dog but they couldn’t be sure, as if it may have been a spiritual entity. It took a huge effort to call multiple people, hospitals, health personnel, track down rabies vaccine, come up with money for fuel and a vehicle to get them to Fort Portal to get the vaccine. Immune globulin was not available. With wound cleansing and vaccine only I’m not sure what their prognosis is. The police were afraid to go look for the dog but some family members appealed to soldiers to go with guns to find it. All of this in the midst of many other desperately ill people . .
And then back to VeggieTales and cake. What an odd life we live sometimes, rabies and death in the morning, and silliness and icing in the afternoon. It helps to remember that Jesus was both mobbed by the needy AND accused of partying too much.
No comments:
Post a Comment