Take Words With You: walking through Bundibugyo

As a generally wordy person, that injunction from Hosea 14:2 in my lectionary reading yesterday jumped out. Take words, to God and to the world, because words build bridges. Words paint pictures and require thought and processing, that gives life meaning. Words draw others in, and generate prayer. So words were on my mind as I finally got to open my computer after a disrupted morning of knocks and needs. . .  only to note that somehow it's already two weeks since we last posted any words. 

Thanking staff for prayers at the morning CME

Two weeks of walking through Bundibugyo days. A midterm break for Christ School sent us out to Fort Portal for a staff retreat, leading sessions on vision and servant leadership, enjoying the great team building Patrick and Mike put together. Work with our team, with our Area, meetings too numerous to count as we monitor goals and progress and trouble shoot problems. Leading prayer times and Bible studies. A new baby born to our Fort Portal family the Opeduns, welcoming Louise. Health consults for team and neighbours. Two funerals, a shocking unexpected collapse for a young CSB graduate trying out for police after completing training as a clinical officer (PA level) and a man across the road with severe TB whose treatment was appropriate but too late to save his life. A morning to greet the Bundibugyo Hospital staff and thank them for praying for me; other days to catch up on the politics and reality of medical care in our district this year. The hard, hard news that our dear friend and colleague, the medical superintendent, whom we connected to a scholarship for becoming a doctor and who has been a tremendous blessing of integrity and compassion and skill for this District, came to the painful decision to take a job across the country where the politics did not prevent him from getting the job he had trained for. Meeting with a group of visiting medical students for a lecture on global health. Working on the budget for CSB, the ever-changing visa requirements to renew our work permits, planning for fundraising. Celebrating a team 4th of July, and another team birthday. And then yesterday, an entire day with the political and religious leadership of Bundibugyo hosting the first-ever visit of the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda. Two weeks ago I turned 60, and the year has already been full. Some deeply cross-cultural days and nights with staff and neighbours and leaders, some deeply familiar connections with team and region. 

Too much to catch up with words, so I will narrow down to two.

First, glimpses. Taking words requires taking note of what is happening, what is worth focusing on in days that are often overwhelming. At one of the funerals, after the burial as we were walking away from the freshly dug grave behind the cluster of earth-plastered homes, a woman caught up to me with expectant eyes and an incongruous smile. I didn't recognise her, but I could tell she wanted to talk. I stopped to listen, and then called Scott back to witness. She wanted to tell us about her son, whom we remembered from early days of the Kwejuna project when we introduced pre-natal HIV testing and single-dose Nevirapine treatment of moms in labor to prevent transmission of the deadly virus to their babies, before other ARV treatments were available out here. Her baby did NOT get infected, and is now a young man, and she just wanted to say thank you. A similar thing happened at the Archbishops's festival yesterday. We were seated behind the people of power in this district, all the elected leaders and even the cultural king; we were quiet nobodies on a day of many speeches and recognitions. But after one choir sang, one of the women filing out came over to slip us a note with a big smile. She had seen us and gotten someone to help her write a message of thanks, because Scott had payed school fees for her son to become a dental assistant. Those two moments came in the midst of huge crowds and had nothing to do with the bigger events we were attending. They were unnoticeable women that no one was seeking out on days where we were paying attention to preachers and chairmen and members of parliament. But both were glimpses of the importance of small inputs into small lives. Of the way that a test and a pill, a willingness to listen and pay some fees, can change the direction of a life. And of the way that can be a ripple that continues to tip the scale of good against evil, years and years later. Noticed only perhaps by moms who were at the end of their rope. But when the evil is easier to see, what a gift those glimpses were of connection and joy, of being a little part of the way God sees the marginalised and responds to them.

Second, presence. Our teams in this area have had some rough weeks this summer. Sicknesses for sure, perhaps a COVID variant or just the million other microbes in the tropical mix. A transformation-oriented business unable to keep up with the economic ripples of fuel, Ukraine, prices, isolation. Fighter jets on the border, responding to escalated rebel tensions. Partners moving their own committees and structures in ways that are hard to understand. Conflicts. Power outages, constantly. Parents agonising over the sorrows of kids who are always outsiders, always at risk. Then our own parents left behind who are aging, or weary of distance, or dying of cancer, or just lonely. The endless struggle to stay legal in systems where requirements are set at aspirational levels that are nearly impossible to actually meet given reality (actually my high point of the week was getting an email asking us to send in yet another document, more certified expensive copies of the same things we've been filing for 29 years to work here, from our taciturn agent in Kampala entitled "more drama".. . .it felt like a small victory that even he could see the absurdity).  People we love and trust making the hard decisions to move elsewhere. It just seems to have been the month that our CEO warned us of post-conference, a month where we are bumping up against the evidence that God's love for us does not work out exactly the way we'd like to design it. Hard things still happen. Today is the M'lim holiday that remembers the trial of Abraham when he though he'd have to sacrifice his own son, a story that certainly runs counter to the victorious comfortable winners-only outworking of faith we'd prefer. We're still living in a broken world and not immune to its sharp edges. But rather than make us invulnerable to suffering, God enters our suffering. He doesn't fix everything with a shazaam magical flourish, but He does promise presence with us. A presence that ultimately absorbs all the harm and transforms it to a good so glorious we can't imagine the end of the story. We're living in a penultimate chapter, and holding onto presence, hoping for a good plot twist soon.

So glimpses and presence are the words we're taking into the next week.  Eyes open to the sparkles of light in the darkness, to the ways that love persists in real connections and beauties and joys. Hearts open to the presence of that Love with a capital L, the nearness of God even in our hardest times.

Louise, our newest glimpse of love, pc her photographer dad Boas

Scott facilitating a discussion of vision with CSB staff on retreat

The Americans in Bundibugyo, on the 4th of July

team meeting in the COVID era (outdoor and spaced)

The Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, preaching to probably a few thousand people in Bundibugyo

Our tent, sitting behind elected parliamentarians and governor