Harriet Alive but not Well

Some people asked for an update, I know I’ve been reluctant because I keep hoping that I’ll have a dramatic praise to report.  The fact that Harriet is even alive is amazing.  She is getting “intensive care” which for us means ng tube milk feeding to keep her alive.  She is opening her eyes half-way and moaning, has more cough and responsiveness.  I called another hospital across Uganda which as a CT scanner but they did not want me to send her until she is more stable (which seems like a classic catch-22).  I drained an abscess on her hand today but that was a secondary problem from an old IV (though a testament to how bacterial this place is).  I started her on anticonvulsants, no real change.  Today I’m starting anti-TB therapy since she presented with severe respiratory tract symptoms first.  Could this all be TB?  I don’t know.  Could it be a tumor?  Possibly.  So I’m trying to keep her alive, treating anything that is treatable, praying for her daily or more, and waiting on God, not always very hopefully or patiently.  Thanks for asking.

4 down, 13 to go

The home alone report:  about a third of the way through the long stretch.  Only a snippet of news from Sudan confirming safe arrival, heat, good contacts and lots to see.  Meanwhile back on the ranch . . . Luke was the fourth team member to succumb to a very nasty virus last night, headache, chills, fever, nausea.  I’ve been anxious about each person who falls ill, second-guessing myself on advice and management and not wanting to miss something dire like malaria or meningitis . . So in that way each additional sick person makes the likelihood of a bothersome but survivable pathogen higher, and is oddly reassuring.  Unless the additional person is me of course!  I’m realizing how much I depend on Scott’s second opinion particularly for adults, and missing the ability to process team needs with him.  Not to mention the handful of sick neighbors and friends who seem to collect in my kitubbi at 8 am and 6 pm daily, or the complicated cases at the hospital like a teenage boy with a startlingly opaque chest xray, or emails about bank account numbers that I don’t deal with normally.  9 more days feels very long.

Circles of quiet

We prayed through Psalm 94 this morning—which in the Message includes the phrase “providing a circle of quiet within the clamor of evil”.  That image moves with me through the day.  Circles of quiet confidence and trust, safe islands within a world gone awry.  Team is that way.  Family is that way.  Snatches of musical praise.  Finding a child who nearly died of malaria still alive today.  A mother with AIDS happily showing me her baby’s negative test results, the baby clapping and babbling oblivious of her brush with a fatal disease.  The intent listening of a diminutive 13 year old boy who had accompanied his little brother to the clinic and was taking responsibility for his complicated antiretroviral regime after the death of their mother and illness of their uncle.  A waft of breeze at dawn as the sky melted eastern pink.  

We need those circles of quiet, because evil does clamor.  My heart draws away from the cacophony at times; how much better to move into the clamor bringing my own quiet with me, then invite others into the circle.

On sums in the universe

Last night as we put the kids to bed, there was significant unhappiness expressed about the fact that Scott is traveling to Sudan for almost two weeks.  Quite reasonably they did not relish the idea of being home alone with me!  In that moment we were reminded that this is not a zero sum universe, where someone always loses if another gains.  The balance of good and bad, of forces for good and evil, goes beyond what we can see and plan.  The trip can bring about good for the plans of World Harvest to move into this war-ravaged country, and our family can still be intact and healthy and thriving.  At least that’s what I believe in print; in my heart I’m probably feeling just like the kids were.  Kim and our field director Robert Carr are already in Goli, and Michael and Scott drove to Kampala today to fly up to meet them in Sudan tomorrow.  In addition to Goli and Yei, over the following ten days they will be in Rumbek, Aweil, and Bor, hoping that tongue-tripping names on a map translate into real people who stretch our concept of God’s grace, real places of beauty and need, real vision for the role of our tiny mission.

Meanwhile back on the home front we’re meeting for short daily prayer times that God would lead through this trip, and for our own needs here (Psalm 91!).  The whole doctor/parent/team leader/remote living package challenges us as a two-person partnership, so compressing down to one leaves me feeling weak.  Scott’s last to-do list item was a phone call to a supporter that he’d been meaning to make for some time, and did not want to leave undone as he packed last night.  This turned into an invitation for us to write up a proposal for major new funding for the desperate needs at Christ School.  Not yet a done deal clearly, but a very promising open door, and in God’s tenderness timed well to remind us of His provisions for all our needs.  

The One who infuses the cosmos with energy move money and glory using a higher math.

On Faith as a Substance

Harriet continues to struggle on that line between life and death.  Every morning I arrive at the hospital hoping for news of a miracle, but every day I find her hot little body and vacant eyes.  After ten days of IV fluid and antibiotics we’re now giving her milk by an ng tube.  I know many people have prayed for this little girl.  And I don’t know what faith looks like here, what kind of substance should it have?  Confidence in healing?  Or confidence in God’s goodness? Habakkuk determines to rejoice even if the fig tree does not blossom and the fields yield no food (Hab 3:17).  David declares God’s ability to work trust and gladness like the “season that grain and wine increased” in a time of conflict and betrayal (Ps 4).  Harriet is not my child.  If she were I know my heart would not be able to calmly consider the substance of faith, instead I would be hanging on to that substance in the turbulent and threatening sea.  Keep praying.

Sunrise Mourning

Link here http://scotticcus.blogspot.com/ to read team mate Scott Ickes’ poetic reflections on the struggles of the weekend here.

Little girl, arise

Dear Prayer partners . . .
Would you take a moment to pray for Harriet Tungu?  She is a five year old girl who has been in a coma for almost a week.  In spite of treating any infections we are equipped to handle she has not improved much.  We are at the end of our strength and would love to see the power of God return her to life (just read in Mark this morning where Jesus says little girl, get up and eat . . .and she does).  Her very caring family has been faithful at the bedside for many days now.  

If you have been reading this blog you know we are under attack on many fronts:  rumors are that the community at the source of the water project has turned off the valve to the pipeline repeatedly, leaving our hundreds of CSB students and our entire town without clean water.  A disgruntled student is trying to sue one of our missionaries for not connecting him with American financial sponsors.  27 of the 200 chicks have died in the last 24 hours as an infection sweeps through the flock.

Jesus raised the little girl in Mark 5 just after storms at sea, demons, crowds, and conflict had assailed his followers.  We could use a similar reminder of Who is in control.
Love,
Jennifer

Wresting rest, crises of the hour

Sunday, day of rest.  Rest implies passivity, but here we have to actively wrest rest from the onslaught of circumstances.  This morning we awoke to find our dinner had disappeared—two catfish we purchased yesterday and were trying to keep in a basin of water for dinner today . . Gone.  Later we found one which had flipped and crawled about 40 yards, still alive.  The other was gone forever.  Dinner ration cut in half, no grocery option.  Then a boy appeared at the door asking for help—his brother had hit him in the eye with a stone, leaving pain and swelling.  Before handing out tylenol Scott pried open his eyelid to find the eye had ruptured.  Saline, dressings, transport costs, referral letter to the regional hospital in Fort Portal, all before breakfast.  Meanwhile Larissa had been notified of an impending C section and went down to help, where it turned out that the young mother had an unrecognized twin pregnancy with one baby long dead, the other severely depressed, infected, struggling to breathe, and in spite of over half an hour of resuscitation efforts the baby died.  On my way to pray with Larissa over this grief I met Stephanie who was mobilizing veterinary help for the chicks—at least 20 were lethargic, dozing, not eating, sick, about to die—count this evening is 16 dead.  Also saw Pamela just off a phone call where she learned that her aunt had died.  Second aunt in two months to pass away, always difficult news when here too far away to join in the family grieving.  Back to church, thankful for the wisdom of the leaders who are helping us this weekend deal with a young man who is trying to take a missionary to court for what he perceives is an attempt to block him from receiving sponsorship for university studies (having already been sponsored completely for six years of secondary school), a distressing situation.  Then home to a message of crisis at CSB.  No water in the tanks means that students go to the river to wash clothes, bathe, and gather drinking water.  Not a healthy practice, and disruptive to the school.  Scott checked the lines and tanks, no flow at all.  So that’s a problem for the water engineers Michael has trained.  Earlier in the week our whole team had come to the end of our propane, used for cooking, so that we were resorting to charcoal, though thankfully Bob in Fort Portal was able to get us a handful of tanks.  Diesel fuel is also scarce in the country due to pipeline problems.  Sometimes just the normal background of life (water to drink or bathe in, fuel to cook with or drive, solar power for lights) comes prominently into the foreground as inevitable glitches in supply throw life into chaos.  Two team members sick.  And so the day went on, ending in a column of swarming winged seasonal insects whose larvae rise from the ground after heavy rain, a grey cloud against the sunset, turn off all lights (they fly towards light) and keep the door closed.  Crises accumulating hour by hour . . .

Mourning, singing

The rain weeps down today, cool and constant.  I have just returned from taking Jonah’s wife Melen and sister Sophia to the second family burial in three days.  First an 87-year-old patriarch died, a clan elder related through Jonah’s grandfather.  He had lived a long and full life and left 107 live descendents!  But last night, as the family was still recovering from the upheaval and grief, and burial of the elder’s death, a child died.  His ten-year-old granddaughter, the daughter of the woman who had been caring for the old man, got a fever yesterday morning.  It did not seems serious until evening when she began to have convulsions.  She was rushed to Bundibugyo hospital for a Quinine drip, but before the full dose of medicine could even be given she died.  

So this family gathered again, this time there was no sense of a life long and full, but a naked bereavement.  I learned that the mother had also lost her two-month-old child in February, something like SIDS, where the baby was put to sleep fine and found to be dead a few hours later.  Not surprisingly the gathering today began with accusation and fear, what kind of curse or neglect could produce three deaths in rapid succession?  I entered the mud and wattle house with Melen.  37 women sat hip to hip on mats on the floor in a room the size of a generous American walk-in closet.  The dead girl lay wrapped with her mother weeping hysterically over her.  Melen wiggled her way up close and bowed her head crying too.  I know we were both thinking:  we have 10 year old girls.  We think they are past the danger of high infant and early childhood death risks in Bundibugyo.  But then this, a normal child, in third grade, with a typical fever and then a few hours later, dead, no more.  Somber faces, bright head scarves against the chinked dirt wall, rustling of legs to make room for more women, wailing, while the men sat quietly outside.

Four teenage girls sat along the wall by the door of the room, singing.  Their pure quavering voices in harmony, mostly songs I did not know, then suddenly a chorus in English:  What a song we will sing, the day that Jesus comes.  Over and over they sang that, and I joined them.  They sang hope into the room of death, truth into the place of mourning.  

Goats, God's provision

It was a goat party, one big goat party, the kind God would throw, where mostly widows, orphans, the infected and desperate were invited.  About a hundred adults (which in Africa means at least a hundred kids tagging along) gathered on Thursday for the distribution of 68 specially breeded dairy goats, the fruits of Karen’s Matiti project, purchased by generous donations from friends in the US, and arranged by Karen’s visionary work here.  The goats arrived from a dairy-goat-farm British mission project in Masaka (near Kampala) on Tuesday.  After a day of feeding and sorting and matching ear tags with lists of eligible patients, the community gathered for the celebration.  A representative of the recipients, mostly HIV-positive women and a smattering of grandmothers caring for orphans, got up to say that they would be praying for God to bless our mission.  That was powerful for me, the prayers of the poor extravagantly poured upon us.  For me these were not just names on a list, or faces in a crowd.  I could remember grieving with this woman the death of her child, or celebrating with that one the news that the baby had avoided infection, or struggling to pull another’s infant through severe illness.  Pamela encouraged the people to care for their animals, and Karen drew the analogy to seeds, as each goat could breed with local varieties so that the blessing could propagate on to many, many families.  We live in a district of chronic undernutrition, so that a sustainable source of calories and protein for young children can have wide-ranging benefits for development.

Scott spoke on behalf of the mission, telling the story of Abraham and Isaac in dramatic detail.  If you have never lived among people for whom Bible-story standards are as shocking and fresh as a first-run Hollywood movie plot, you can’t appreciate the gasps and laughter.  And if you’ve not lived among people for whom goats are the traditional currency and source of life, you can’t imagine the relevance of stories like this one.  The child at risk, the grieving and wondering parent, the moment of near-death, the ram in the thicket, God’s provision.  The goat saves Isaac’s life.  What a context for goats being handed out to people with hungry, marginalized children, to save their lives.  Then Scott pointed out that Jesus was the ultimate sacrifice, God’s true provision for our lives.  It was a great blending of real-life flesh-and-blood salvation from starvation pointing to deeper truths in the spiritual realm.

Pamela and Karen and Stephanie tirelessly shepherded the waiting recipients through registration and speeches and a generous lunch, then the group migrated from the community center to the Masso yard where the 68 goats were penned.  Our veterinary assistants were joined by some of the kids (Acacia, Julia, and Jack) bringing goats out of the pen one by one.   It became a nearly whole-team effort to match the goats to the records, the records to the right patient, documenting, handing over.  Rascally goats jumped energetically while women stunned at their good fortune grasped ropes and hauled them away towards home.

A community leader from each of 16 subcounties received males to make available for breeding, while the females went to families whose children needed the protein boost of milk (something to think about when you pull a carton of milk out of the fridge so easily).

God’s provision, but detoured through the efforts of many, many people.  The kind of party that Jesus would definitely attend.  Check out the sidebar for ideas (top blog on the team list).  It was so much fun we’d like to do it again this year, if the money comes in.