We watched the 1957 movie “Bridge on the River Kwai” this week, a fascinating WWII conflict of Japanese, British, and American culture as prisoners of war struggle to survive in the jungle. Many parallels to the spiritual war, to our determination to build something helpful and lasting, to the physical challenges of life on the edge of death. Many times during the movie, one of the soldiers will make a plan and then concede: “But then, there is always the unexpected.”
Sometimes the unexpected is a gift. Yesterday in the midst of many things one of the kids told me there was a woman waiting in the kitubbi, our grass thatched circular porch. A number of other patients and people with problems had been by that day, and I was working on something else for a team member, so I relayed a message back out that she’d have to wait, assuming it was yet one more patient. Then our cow got out of her pasture and was kicking feistily in the yard, an Irish aid worker and his girlfriend arrived for a meeting I was late to, I was trying to settle Julia who had an unexpected fever . . . And nearly forgot her until I was walking out to the meeting and saw her still sitting patiently waiting. I recognized her as the mother of Dixon, one of our little AIDS patients who had died earlier this year. His picture was in one of our prayer letters, a frail all-eyes baby whom we pulled back from the brink of death for a while. He spent long weeks in the hospital and we got to know his mother. When Dixon died, we visited her home in a crowded muddy camp left over from the ADF days, and saw his grave. He was her fourth child, and the fourth to die, and she had been chased from her husband’s family to live with her relatives. A month or two after his death she asked me for a small loan to start a business of buying rice in Congo and selling it in Uganda, to support herself, a major problem for an HIV positive woman with no husband or children. So I leant her about $25, enough to buy rice in bulk and start growing a little business. I told her that when she was making enough profit to keep the business going, she should bring half of the loan back to help someone else. The other half I’d consider a gift.
Now I’ve tried that scheme with many people who have more education, strength, resource, math skill, than this woman. And I was content to just let that little bit of money go for her survival. Months passed, I really forgot all about it, I greeted her at the hospital when she came for her regular care, but never mentioned the business. Even when I saw her in the kitubbi I assumed she would be asking for some help for a sickness. But yesterday she said quietly that she’d brought me “a little food from her business” and then pulled out of her bag a crumpled wad of notes and coins that added up to the loan. The unexpected, a gift to build my faith in redemption.
The unexpected usually feels like the unwanted I’m afraid. Jonah is due back in the district on Tuesday, the 31rst, for the promised hand-over of Nyahuka Health Center into his charge on Wednesday the 1rst. Yesterday we heard confirmation of a rumor that one of the only two doctors left in the district (another two have left this year) had taken a job in Kampala with an NGO. So will Jonah really be posted to Nyahuka if only one doctor is left at the district hospital? The patient volume is nearly identical so one could see it as a fair division of labor, but I’m afraid that the general perception is that no doctor would be posted out peripherally without at least three doctors centrally. Another unexpected wrinkle.
Our season of welcoming new team members (two families and four singles in the last few months) has also been unexpectedly disrupted by the impending early departure of one of our single young women, a teacher at Christ School. She has bravely endured unexpected, unexplained back pain since June and together we made the difficult decision that it was time for better medical care. Since last January she has grown attached to the community of the team and the school; she leaves without knowing if or when she will be well enough for return. A heaviness for all our hearts.
Time to be reminded, the unexpected is an illusion based on our position trapped in time, the basis for living by faith. If we could see then we would know that nothing surprises God, that He answers our prayers the way we would choose if we could see all that He knows. For Him, there is no unexpected.
Sunday, October 29, 2006
But then, there is always the unexpected
We watched the 1957 movie “Bridge on the River Kwai” this week, a fascinating WWII conflict of Japanese, British, and American culture as prisoners of war struggle to survive in the jungle. Many parallels to the spiritual war, to our determination to build something helpful and lasting, to the physical challenges of life on the edge of death. Many times during the movie, one of the soldiers will make a plan and then concede: “But then, there is always the unexpected.”
Sometimes the unexpected is a gift. Yesterday in the midst of many things one of the kids told me there was a woman waiting in the kitubbi, our grass thatched circular porch. A number of other patients and people with problems had been by that day, and I was working on something else for a team member, so I relayed a message back out that she’d have to wait, assuming it was yet one more patient. Then our cow got out of her pasture and was kicking feistily in the yard, an Irish aid worker and his girlfriend arrived for a meeting I was late to, I was trying to settle Julia who had an unexpected fever . . . And nearly forgot her until I was walking out to the meeting and saw her still sitting patiently waiting. I recognized her as the mother of Dixon, one of our little AIDS patients who had died earlier this year. His picture was in one of our prayer letters, a frail all-eyes baby whom we pulled back from the brink of death for a while. He spent long weeks in the hospital and we got to know his mother. When Dixon died, we visited her home in a crowded muddy camp left over from the ADF days, and saw his grave. He was her fourth child, and the fourth to die, and she had been chased from her husband’s family to live with her relatives. A month or two after his death she asked me for a small loan to start a business of buying rice in Congo and selling it in Uganda, to support herself, a major problem for an HIV positive woman with no husband or children. So I leant her about $25, enough to buy rice in bulk and start growing a little business. I told her that when she was making enough profit to keep the business going, she should bring half of the loan back to help someone else. The other half I’d consider a gift.
Now I’ve tried that scheme with many people who have more education, strength, resource, math skill, than this woman. And I was content to just let that little bit of money go for her survival. Months passed, I really forgot all about it, I greeted her at the hospital when she came for her regular care, but never mentioned the business. Even when I saw her in the kitubbi I assumed she would be asking for some help for a sickness. But yesterday she said quietly that she’d brought me “a little food from her business” and then pulled out of her bag a crumpled wad of notes and coins that added up to the loan. The unexpected, a gift to build my faith in redemption.
The unexpected usually feels like the unwanted I’m afraid. Jonah is due back in the district on Tuesday, the 31rst, for the promised hand-over of Nyahuka Health Center into his charge on Wednesday the 1rst. Yesterday we heard confirmation of a rumor that one of the only two doctors left in the district (another two have left this year) had taken a job in Kampala with an NGO. So will Jonah really be posted to Nyahuka if only one doctor is left at the district hospital? The patient volume is nearly identical so one could see it as a fair division of labor, but I’m afraid that the general perception is that no doctor would be posted out peripherally without at least three doctors centrally. Another unexpected wrinkle.
Our season of welcoming new team members (two families and four singles in the last few months) has also been unexpectedly disrupted by the impending early departure of one of our single young women, a teacher at Christ School. She has bravely endured unexpected, unexplained back pain since June and together we made the difficult decision that it was time for better medical care. Since last January she has grown attached to the community of the team and the school; she leaves without knowing if or when she will be well enough for return. A heaviness for all our hearts.
Time to be reminded, the unexpected is an illusion based on our position trapped in time, the basis for living by faith. If we could see then we would know that nothing surprises God, that He answers our prayers the way we would choose if we could see all that He knows. For Him, there is no unexpected.
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You'll be happy to know that I tried the 'loan' thing when Agnes (remember from B'kyora?) asked for a congo rice front --who also to my surprise, paid me back a few weeks later.... amazing!! Those women are the real survivors.
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