A week's worth of prayer requests...

Monday—Nutrition: Since WFP pulled out of Bundibugyo just before Christmas, we’ve been trying to continue to provide milk and some extra calories for motherless and the most severely malnourished babies. Praise God for providing the funds needed for this more limited program in the last three months. However we need new funds and new ideas to continue through 2007. On Monday Karen, Stephanie, Pamela, Scott and I are meeting. We know that God cares for the orphan and the poor. Stephanie recently completed a survey which shows that 45% of children under age 5 here are severely stunted, a sign of chronic malnutrition and a predictor of poor development. Please ask Him to guide us wisely in being the hands He uses to touch these desperate people. Also praise God that 202 chicks (project to increase protein through hens that lay eggs) have survived!

Tuesday—Health Care: There are now only three Ugandan doctors in Bundibugyo (for 200,000 plus people), and one is the Director of District Health Services who is not clinically active. Even if you count Scott and me, that’s still 1 per 50,000 people (US is 1 per 330 people). We have arranged for all five of us to meet for the morning and lunch on Tuesday, to talk about planning for health, particularly AIDS and nutrition. There is tension in some of these relationships, and everyone is overworked. So pray that it would be a time of encouragement for them, and of drawing together in a common purpose. We have never done this before. Also the solar electricity was installed in the new ward, and beds are being produced by the local workshop. Pray we could open around Easter. And pray for more doctors!!!

Wednesday—Rwenzori Mission School: JD has scheduled two curriculum planning meetings on Wednesday, for grades K-4 and 5-9. RMS has been a great strength for our team but also an area of attack, since it is a place where all of us must intersect and cooperate, and over the things we consider most precious, our children. Praise God that we have one teacher for next school year, Sarah Reber. Another candidate has shown interest in applying—an answer to prayer!! Please pray for at least one more new full-time teacher, though if God wants to send us two we’ll be happy.

Thursday—Team: We have team meetings on Thursdays, and this term we are studying Ken Sande’s The Peacemaker. Pray that our team would be characterized by joy and love for one another, the kind of community that strengthens and supports all our individual ministries.

Friday—CSB: As classes end for the week pray for a cooperative and respectful relationship between students and staff. There have been some discipline cases that have raised tensions on both sides. Pray for the academic village, the Jeffersonian dream of a communal pursuit of knowledge, combined with the Biblical ideal of a pursuit of holiness! The sports teams are one way that healthy community develops: pray for Scotticus, Pamela, Annelise and Larissa (our new nurse!) as they work with cross country, JD and I as we work with girls’ soccer, Kim with girls’ basketball, Amy trying to launch aerobics, and Kevin and Alex (Ugandan teacher) coaching boys’ soccer. At least a third of the student body is included in these sports, so the potential for impact is great.

Saturday—Travel: Six women fly out to South Africa Saturday morning to attend the Women of the Harvest retreat, a ministry to women missionaries. Pray for them to meet Jesus there in all His glory and goodness! And you can pray for some dads (especially David Pierce and Bob Chedester) who will be single parents for a few days. Please also pray for Michael as he coordinates some team trips into Sudan for the end of April/early May, leading our team in exploring new fields along with our Field Director Robert Carr. Some of the details still need to fall into place. One web site described Sudan as the size of Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and a few other small countries combined, with not one inch of decent paved road in the southern half. Travel is complicated, to say the least. Ask God to give our team vision for raising up missionaries for new fields in Africa.

Sunday—Worship. Piper says mission exists because worship does not. As you attend your churches on Sunday, take a moment to ask God to gift men and women here as worship leaders for the many churches, people who can sing and dance and drum, who can read Scripture in Lubwisi and Lukonjo, who can draw others into their prayers.
Thanks for walking through the week with us.

Mukiddi Back Home

Our elderly neighbor John Mukiddi has treated us with fatherly concern since our arrival more than 13 years ago. When we were in America in January he fell and broke his right hip. The xray showed quite a bit of loss of bone density there, which may be related to recurrence of a previous cancer. Since he also suffers from hypertension and heart failure, we were very concerned that he would never recover from the fracture. The day after we got back in February we were at the hospital trying to sort out his treatment and assist where we could. Over the last month he has held his own and even improved. Today Scott brought him home! His relatives helped get a spiffy red wheel chair, which Scott dubbed the Land Rover in it’s similarity to our red truck. As soon as he arrived I joined other neighbors in greeting him, a thinner version of his old self, but still able to command a presence and lead the gathered family in prayer. His long-term prognosis is not good, but it is still sweet to have him back home, a stone’s throw from our window, the world back in balance.

A fun moment: when Mukiddi’s brother, our other elderly neighbor Tabaka, came over to join the greeting, I offered my seat to him out of respect, and moved down to a smaller stool. He politely refused and explained that since I was married to one of his sons (Scott) he could not sit on a chair where I had sat, one of those little cultural taboos that govern in-law relationships. It was one of those rare moments of feeling part of the community, sharing in the joy of a homecoming, and being counted as part of the family.

When it rains . . . .

It pours.  Both literally and figuratively.  The rainy season has begun with a few impressive storms this week, refreshing downpours swept along the mountainsides by grey winds.  But I’m speaking more of the way that time-consuming brokeness of the world problems seem to come in downpours.  Yesterday, for instance.  The clinical officer assigned to the HIV clinic did not show up, leaving Scott with 70-some patients to see alone, that’s after his regular ultrasound clinic.  When he got home from that he found our workers sitting by our broken lawnmower, and the grass still long.  While they were sitting they alertly noticed that there was something odd under the car:  one of the two main bolts that stabilizes the steering system had sheered off.  He spent the afternoon trying to address that issue, and in the midst of that work and a conference call with WHM in the US did not remember to flip switches for our internet system, which was a problem for the whole team, and rather discouraging to use limited power (our batteries are limping a bit now that it’s raining again) for naught.  By that time it was time to inject our sick cow with antibiotics.  Since the man who milks didn’t come it was up to Luke and Scott to wrangle the cow to the ground with a nifty rope system we learned from fellow missionary to Kenya/former vet George Mixon.  When that exhausting procedure was over (and note we can’t drink the milk for a week because of the injections, which significantly affects our normal food supply) he ended the day tinkering with our fridge, which is after lots of work now slightly cooler than room temperature.  I had to throw away molded food.  The last straw was when he opened the kerosene tank to top it off with fuel, a dead mouse was floating in there.  Unfortunately the removal of the mouse did not significantly improve fridge function. Fridges and cars are luxuries, and I feel a bit guilty even noticing their lack of function, but it does drag us down to be constantly assaulted with things that don’t work, especially things that really help our family survive here.  It was a long day.

We asked our team to pray, a day like that seems to be a sign of more spiritual battles in the heavenly realms . . . And I’m glad to report that we see some progress.  God can use these practical life details to encourage us just as powerfully as the enemy can use them to drag us down.  The patients were cared for, the cow is better, Scott fixed the lawnmower, and was able to ride his motorcycle up to Bundibugyo and find a functional replacement bolt.  He was getting Michael’s help to craft two new bushings (rubber pads) for that when Michael said, wait, let’s check in my car, I heard something rolling around on the back floor and it may be what you need.  Sure enough  there were two bushings of exactly the right size. I don’t know how they came to be there but that small gift was a real encouragement to us.

So pray for the pouring down of the Spirit.  And pray for faith, that we would accept the difficult days in this life and look through them to see the power and goodness of God.  

About a boy

Samson. An 8-year old boy with a contagious smile despite his thorny circumstances. Infected with HIV by his now dead mother. Abandoned by his father. Now cared for by his grandmother. Attending P2 (second grade) while taking a nauseating three-drug antiretroviral cocktail twice a day.

Though he became HIV+ long before our Kwejuna Project began, Pamela met him on a site visit to one of our farthest outlying sites where the Medical Assistant in charge highlighted his neediness to her. She invited him to our food distribution yesterday.

As a pre-adolescent boy, he stood out from the standard profile of pregnant women and infants who populated our Community Center yesterday. So, when I saw him I was curious and took him aside to hear his story.

He demonstrates the complexity of the situation of those infected with HIV. Much more than just a medical problem, it triggers a cascade of social fallout. Stigma, abandonment, poverty, hunger. All these factors exacerbate the fact that the HIV virus has spliced itself permanently into his own DNA. He’s holding his own against the virus (for the moment) evidenced by a high CD4 Count. The beans, corn-soya flour, and oil he received from us yesterday may strengthen him as he battles the infection, but it is a battle he cannot physically win.

His smile, though, for me was a brief triumph.

Larissa Arrives!

Larissa Funk, a nurse from Iowa by way of Chicago, arrived today. She spent some time living with a family who are friends of ours, part of a church and ministry to the Chicago inner city neighborhood of Lawndale where we used to worship and work. After seeing our prayer card on their fridge for months God led her to call and see if she could come work for a couple of months—just at the right time to provide a housemate for Pamela who is missing Pat, and to help us set up good nursing protocols in the new Pedatric/Maternity Ward. In record time she raised support and this morning she touched down in blazing sunshine onto the grass airstrip, stepping out into the chaos of a Monday in Bundibugyo. We whisked her right off to the community center where 115 HIV positive women were receiving family food supplements (beans, corn-soy flour, and cooking oil). She is the first experienced nurse we’ve had on the team in many years, so we look forward to seeing what impact her presence will have. Just this morning I found out one of my malnourished patients died over the weekend, probably largely because most care is done by the family and this boy’s grandmother was just not capable of stepping in for his dead parents. What difference would competent nursing have made in his survival? I hope to see. As with any new and short term person, she and we could use prayer for appropriate focus. And prayer that Larissa would grow in her trust in the LORD as much as be used by Him for the Kingdom!

Surgeon and Barber

In the middle ages these two jobs went together . . . And we sort of live in the middle ages. So as Caleb reached his six week mark with his cast today, we decided it was time to remove it. Those American fiberglass casts are STRONG. No problem though for a circular blade on an angle grinder, powered by our generator, then finished off with snips from gardening sheers. Caleb has been extremely patient and good natured throughout the month and a half of his hot and itchy cast. But it was a shock to him to see his pale and wasted thin arm, still at an unpleasant angle. Pray for his bones to strengthen, straighten, and completely heal. Meanwhile Scotticus was rewarded for helping in the cast removal by getting a free dry-hot-season hair cut, the same military buzz that all our boys have resorted to this month. So the surgeon and barber were at work . . . Always one of the challenges but also the satisfactions of remote living, the impromptu do-it-yourself nature of life.

Of Chicks and Politics

Picture a PhD from UNC, fresh from academic rigor, schedules, deadlines, research, intellectual challenge and stimulation, now as a mother hen hovering over her baby chicks. Yes, Stephanie’s day-old chicks arrived on Thursday night. Two hundred of them! Our Kwejuna right-hand-man Donato traveled to Kampala to bring them back in crates, on a bus. After extremely hot (90 plus IN my house) dusty weather, a thunderstorm broke that evening. His truck was delayed as the cold air front blew in. Stephanie waited anxiously to receive the chicks into their newly constructed dwelling, a mud-walled building that had been prepared over the last few weeks for this purpose, with a barbed wire fence protective perimeter and coffee hull flooring and watering containers. As the hours passed we feared they would all be dead from the cold air or the rough jostle of the road. Several team members stood nearby for moral support, while Stephanie and her Ugandan chick helpers unloaded the crates late that night. All 200 had survived! It was our pizza night so Scott gathered all the hot coals from our oven and took them down in a wheel barrow to add to the clay pots set up in the shed, for warmth. The young man who we hired to be their primary caretaker slept with them for their first night, adding his body heat to the clay pots as the chicks huddled. I saw them the next morning, fluffy yellow chirping cheerful signs of life.

It is Spring in America, and probably commercially already chicks are appearing as symbols of Easter and life. We pray that these chicks will also be signs of the Resurrection. Signs of life to children who are malnourished, as their eggs provide protein. One did die yesterday, so we would appreciate prayers that a large percentage would survive and thrive and lay eggs. Maybe as you see Easter Chicks on decorations, you’ll be reminded that real children are depending on real chicks to become egg-laying chickens in a real place in this world right now.

>From chicks to politics . . . Most missionaries don’t dream of nurturing goats or poultry, nor do they anticipate political struggle. But we found out that the man who has faithfully worked with the Kwejuna project in a distant corner of the district was punished by an unwanted transfer to another area. It seems that when the Kwejuna project provided a motorcycle to assist him in gathering data and coordinating care between several health centers that are 10-15 miles apart (work he had been doing on bicycle or foot) jealousies were aroused. And it didn’t help that this nurse is also a pastor and has spoken publicly against corruption in the district. Scott and Pamela found themselves yesterday pleading for his reinstatement . . . On politely deaf ears it seemed, though we heard later that the decision to transfer him may be reversed. All those Psalms that cry out to God to change the hearts of rulers feel very real at the moment. What could a movement of prayer for justice do in Bundibugyo? Food for the poor, and integrity in the process? Stay tuned!

Resurrection number 1001, 1002, 1003, . . . .

My friend Maria Garriott wrote a book entitled “A Thousand Resurrections”, about her life raising a family and planting a church in a violent, poor, inner-city neighborhood. The title sticks with me, and reminds me to look for those signs of the power of the resurrecting God at work in the muck of this world.

So I offer three more resurrections, and one transcendent moment, in the spirit of her book (which I highly recommend):

1001: Last week I admitted a nine-year-old boy named Bwambale. His father carried him into the ward, burning with fever, comatose, dehydrated, close to shock. That day the entire hospital was so packed we could barely squeeze him onto the floor. I ended up doing a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) while we tried to balance his longish thin body on a small table in a closet-type room where medicines are stored, because the usual procedure room was being used to isolate triplets with gastroenteritis, and I thought it would not be technically feasible to get the specimen bottle under the needle if he was on the floor! Since we celebrated Jack’s 9th Birthday this week, a 9-year-old boy hit my heart hard. Also his parents seemed really destitute and bewildered, having brought him from a remote mountainside village more than ten miles away, with only the clothes on their backs. But in spite of my concern I had no idea of his diagnosis. His spinal fluid was crystal clear, his malaria smear was negative. I gave him all my best medicines (literally all) and a blood transfusion. By the second day his coma progressed to the point where his posture and reflexes led me to believe he might die, or at least have permanent brain damage. I asked our whole team to pray for him, and my kids took up the cause. I went to see him on Saturday even though it is not my regular day to do rounds, and felt slightly encouraged that he seemed to have a moaning response to his father’s voice, though none to mine still. I was afraid to find out the news this morning (Monday) when I walked onto the ward. There he was, looking like any normal child. He walked up and asked me for bread! (Which seems to be a normal post-resurrection need, remember Jairus’ daughter). I am so thankful. I still don’t know what was wrong with him but I believe God healed him anyway.

1002&3: Last Wednesday, as I sat seeing patients in the AIDS clinic, a nurse brought a plea from Jonah that I come to the operating room where he was doing a C-section, because he expected the baby to need major resuscitation. Since our nurse-anesthetist was involved in a motorcycle accident last week, he had been reluctant to do any surgery. But this lady had had two previous C-sections, and in both cases the baby died. Now she was presenting in labor needing a third operation, with no baby yet to show for all her suffering, and the midwives could not hear a heart-beat on this baby either. If there was any chance to save it he had to act right away, not send her to Bundibugyo town. So he went to work in the operating theatre with improvised anesthesia, and by the time I was called the procedure was well underway. I walked into the room to see the baby lying limp and grey on the counter. The midwife and I began to rub and suction and give breaths with a bag and mask, and the baby began to gasp. But then we heard Jonah exclaim “There’s another one!” and to everyone’s surprise he pulled another purple lifeless looking little baby feet-first out of the bloody hole in the unconscious mother’s abdomen. Baby 1 was starting to breathe so we shifted our efforts to baby 2, who responded quickly. Soon both were crying and protesting. The mother still looked a bit frightening, trembling under a mask of ether as blood dripped around the floor. But as of today all are alive and well, two pink and pretty little baby girls and one weak but grateful mom.

And lastly, a transcendent moment. As I mentioned above, Jack turned 9 on Saturday. The whole team and his local friend Ivan came over for tacos and a multi-layered drum-shaped cake. There were balloons and games and presents, but the real event of the evening was a dance party. Some line dancing, some free-for-all. Imagine a room full of missionaries gyrating in our candle-lit front room to SuperChick’s “Rock Bottom . . .if you’ve been there put your hands in the air and let someone know that the Most High cares . . “ It was fun, but HOT. After about five songs there was a general consensus that we move the party out into the yard. I had bought glow-stick bracelets (great for out-door equatorial nights!) and the whole team put them on, we moved the speakers out with an extension cord, and danced in the yard, which was really only marginally cooler. Just as we were about to call it a night someone said “there’s a family in your kitubbi” and went for a flashlight to find out what medical emergency was going to break up our birthday party. But no, it was our neighbor, Mukiddi’s equally old and infirm brother Tabaka, with a half-dozen younger girls from his compound. He hobbled up with his walking stick and said “Twasie kubiina”--we’ve come to dance. They live just behind our house and could no doubt hear and see all once we moved outside. So like good African neighbors, they came to join in. It was one of those rare moments when I felt like we were connecting as human beings, doing what was natural, not making a cross-cultural holy effort, just enjoying normal life together. The girls were delighted with the bracelets, we danced to the Shrek soundtrack, the younger kids ran all over the yard streaming colors, the moon shone hazily through oppressively warm and low clouds, and we had a taste of the marriage supper of the Lamb.

Mission-wide Day of Prayer: March 6, 2007

Our entire mission is observing a day of prayer and fasting on March 6, 2007. A list of prayer requests for our team is available from our "Download-able Prayer Letters" page accessible from "Our Links" on the sidebar. Thanks for praying!

Happy Birthday, Jack!

Jack Thomas, (aka, The Jackelope) marks nine years today....the last single digit birthday in our family!!

Check out that priceless smile...that's the mark of a boy who has just received his very own spring-loaded 3-inch Gerber JACK KNIFE.

Whoa, careful now! I guess you know how to pray....