Weekend in Bundi

On Saturdays, I try to be a real mom, the kind of person who has pancakes ready when her kids wake up, who sews on missing buttons and bakes cakes and cuts hair and cheers at soccer games. I am all too aware of the many times my kids do not get my full attention, and appreciate their understanding, but on Saturdays I look for some balance. The day goes by too quickly, even with the effort to be purely domestic and ward off medical consultations and other problems. A half dozen kids who have been friends with ours for many years (well, mostly with Julia, who is the friendliest) help us finish off the leftover pizza for lunch, and then I hear raucous giggling in games of chase. This week we ended the day to slowly realize as we watched that someone who writes movie reviews has rather different ideas of comedy (which involve a dark and bloody plot, drugs, suicide attempts, organized crime . . . this is funny??). At least we could laugh at ourselves for choosing it. Oh well.

Sundays we have a big long breakfast, making cinnamon rolls and pretty amazing coffee with fresh hot steamed milk. This week we drank in Pamela and Pat's fellowship as a welcome addition to our usual crowd. Church was uncharacteristically timely, where the sermon series through Acts continues, a convicting sermon challenging us to visit each other in our homes like Paul and Silas did. We moved our weekly "family soccer" game (which usually includes our extended family of team as well) up into the heat of the afternoon to be sure we could spend that hour, which means a LOT to our kids. Then up to Bundibugyo town to visit Dr. Jonah's grave with Pamela, and reminisce about the days of ebola, painful memories but so good to share them with a fellow-mourner, and to pray for his family. We timed the visit so we could then pick up the first of our two anticipated educational consultants for CSB. As his bus came limping in at a very severely tilted angle we could glimpse the relief on his face as he waved through the window. His first words getting in the car: how did you people ever find yourselves in this place?

Yes, Bundibugyo is the end of the road, even for a middle-aged well- educated well-traveled Ugandan who has been pretty much everywhere (including America). We made brief stops at the two other biggest secondary schools in the district to help him get a context for comparing Christ School. As we approached Nyahuka, he asked again about the selection of the location, and we told a bit of how the campus had once been out of town, but due to rebel insurgency in the late 90's the town expanded massively with IDP's who never went home, and we suddenly found ourselves entrenched in a very urban landscape. His response gave us something to ponder for the evening, something like this: "Well, you're missionaries, so you want to be where people are, right? Because the big mainline denominations in Uganda historically built their churches and schools out of towns, and thereby lost their greatest chances for impact, compared to the more recent emergence of Islam which has centered itself squarely in the middle of towns. Let's think of how to take advantage of this crowded urban environment for the sake of the Gospel." Hmmm. We passed the professor off to David and returned home at dusk for a quickly concocted dinner combining anything left in our fridge, and then a fun slideshow of Scott and Caleb's America adventures.

Monday is just around the corner, with all of its attendant demands for the new week. I'm thankful for the weekend.