Heading to Burundi

In the happiness of a new computer as we returned to Africa, I am just remembering the sadness of the fact that my email lists for sending prayer updates did not transfer. One of these days I need to reconstruct. But not today. We are taking a deep inhale after the Banquet week and our small role in helping Caleb's class, on top of the ongoing energy-expenditure of adjusting to Kijabe. Last night was the big event, which meant that most of the afternoon I was helping with the final arrangements, then we were photographing the set, then the boys getting ready at the dorm, then the boys picking the girls up at their dorm and walking up. The theme, which can now be revealed (!) was a Venice Masquerade, with a clever skit, musical numbers, elegant table settings, a fountain, fancy food, masks and music. I found a place in the parent serving line, arranging plates and dishing up course after course, from about 8 to 11. The party went on 'til after midnight but once we served up dessert I headed home for a few hours of sleep before early Saturday rounds . . .and this morning Scott helped deconstruct, and Caleb is still up there cleaning. So we could all use a few hours to clean and cook and recover . .

. . Before tomorrow morning, when Scott and I head to Burundi. We're accompanying three young doctors-and-spouses on an exploratory trip to Africa Hope University, a decade-old Christian University with a new medical school and a vision for transforming the country of Burundi. This is a country in which several hundred thousand people were killed between 1993-2006 in an intractable civil war sparked by Hutu-Tutsi ethnic violence similar to Rwanda's. But in the last few years there has been a return to sanity and a beginning of healing. By grace, we were privileged to be approached by a group of young American missionary doctors currently working at Tenwek Hospital in Kenya through the excellent Samaritan's Purse Post-Residency Program, who were considering their long-term calling. We met up at the CMDA conference a year ago, and in the meantime they narrowed their calling down to Burundi, and we at WHM are in the process of enfolding them. They would form a team for teaching and discipling medical students, an ideal way to bring new physical and spiritual life to a suffering country. There are 0.3 physicians/10,000 population in Burundi (25-30 in USA, 2-3 in Africa generally).

Would you pray that we would experience together a sense of God's leading and calling? That we would bond as we travel? That God would watch over all our children as we're gone? (Classically, Julia has a temp of 101 as I write). That God's love would extend to many more people in Burundi as a result of this trip?

Thanks.

A link to HAU's recent newsletter: http://hopeafricauniversity.org/newsletters/november-2010

A link to the blog of the doctors we are traveling with: http://mccropders.blogspot.com/