A calf, and milk!!

Our dairy cow, DMC (for Dairy Milk Chocolate, the local Kenyan brand) delivered a calf on Sunday while we were away on our retreat. More about big blessings later, but as we returned home last night and head out to the work we've taken a break from this morning, here is a quick picture of the newest member of the Myhre family farm. The baby is a spindly-legged nappy-furred big-eyed girl, white and brown patched. DMC looks none the worse for wear, relieved of her burden and placidly eating away as milk begins to flow again. The kids are still deciding on a chocolate-related name . . . l

The milk from this cow is probably responsible for several inches worth of healing normal growth in our adolescent spurting children, and for significant contributions to the staying power of our whole team, not to mention various neighbors. We are grateful.

In the Semiliki Wilderness, Seeking Blessing

In a few hours we will trek north within our district to a lovely
tented camp within the first gazetted game reserve in Uganda,
Semliki. We have received MANY notes of encouragement and prayer
which demonstrate that you are joining with us in turning our eyes to
the LORD. Please pray for Him to show up in unmistakable and
unexpected ways. Pray that we would have a unified sense of His
leading. Pray that we would honor and love each other well with our
words. Pray that the kids would be renewed and boosted by Bethany's
ministry to them, and that all of us would be blessed by Donovan's
care for us as we plan. We will be off-line until next Wednesday.
For the world's good and God's glory . . .

On advocacy, abuse, enemies and justice

When I was in residency I pursued child advocacy as an essential aspect of pediatric care.  Sometimes a child's doctor might be the only adult who sees the neediness of his or her life, and the only voice to call for help.  Today Heidi and I were able to see that in action right here in Nyahuka.  We had called our local "child protection officer" about the little girl Lydia who was admitted last month with a severely burned hand while in the custody of her paternal grandparents.  The protection officer delegated the case to an energetic and articulate young woman whose role as "assistant community development officer" on our new Nyahuka Town Council seemed to infer the authority we needed.  So we found ourselves on benches in the treatment room shoulder to shoulder with Lydia's teenage mother and her cousin-brothers on one side, and Lydia's paternal grandfather and aunts on the other.  The grandfather gave his story of the injury (it was an accident and Lydia's fault because she was impatiently hungry and stuck her hand in boiling water to pull out a cooking banana), and then her young mother gave the story she had heard from this nearly-3-year old child (she was teased and goaded into trying to put her hand in the boiling water, but refused, so un-named persons at the home forced her hand in).  Medically the evidence fits the latter.  The officer then gave the grandfather the option of returning the girl to her mother's care and paying a monthly assistance, or of going to court.  There was much wrangling negotiation which took the better part of an hour, mostly based on everyone's assumption that the primary need in the family was for the grandfather to successfully pay the school fees for the absent young father so he could return with income to care for the two kids he has fathered with this young woman (I was the lone advocate for stopping his schooling and allowing him to face the consequences of his choices as a severe mercy).  In the end the grandfather wrote out a statement that he would pay a certain amount through the Town Council office monthly, and that Lydia's mother would take her and her sister home to her relatives.  This is only one small story of abuse and justice.  And I'm sure I've incurred some new enemies by speaking out.  But I have real hope that attitudes and expectations are changing, and responsibility is being required.  Let us pray.

A week of friendship

Acacia slipped into our family the way she usually does, as if she  belongs here, which she does. We are thankful that our WHM family  still includes the Massos even though they have shifted their home  base to Sudan, and that our kids can still enjoy a week of friendship.
Travis and Amy dropped into our lives out of nowhere . . . well, not  exactly, they were gifts from WHM loyalists Josiah and Barbara  Bancroft, Rick and Tee Downs, and Dan and Gini. A small picture of  the Kingdom community, these couples who went before us now meeting  and mentoring couples who can follow us, and forging the connections.  We do not yet know what God will do in their lives, but we don't  exactly get personable, committed, healthy, enjoyable, available  doctor-teacher couples dropping in regularly, so we hope it is an  indication that our paths will merge, soon.
We are praying for 2009 to be a year of expansion for our team and for  WHM in Africa. The Clark family has reached the 80% mark of support,  and Scott Will hopes to wrap up his stateside sojourn and return by  June. We could use all of them yesterday. Another medically-oriented  family to partner with us, a family with gifts and passion for  education to partner with the Pierces, a couple or family with some  Africa-experience and pastoral hearts to care for our team when we are  on HMA next year, and possibly a couple of more short term  teachers . . . . these are our hopes. The Sudan team expects several  interns and three single missionaries to join in 2009 when their  support comes in, and they could also accommodate more families. And  Sudan is only one of the three new fields we asked God to open. So  please pray for God to stir in the right hearts, and please feel free  to prompt your friends to contact WHM with potential candidates.
A week of friendship gives us a taste for more. 

Our eyes are upon You

God continues to draw our attention back to 2 Chronicles 20, the story of a desperate situation, of fasting and confident relationship-grounded prayer, of moving into the wilderness of battle with songs of worship and finding that God has gone before and fought, and won.  It is our sense that this is the story He wants us to tell in 2009:  we are outnumbered and doomed, but He is on the move.  Our role is to pray, to believe, to stand still and watch, to put our eyes upon Him and witness His work.

Already, in the two short weeks of this year, we have seen some encouragingly concrete examples of this story at work.  Doors opening and closing in a holy pattern, generous provisions arriving from nowhere.  Let me give a few examples.

*  CSB, like all schools in Uganda, has struggled maintain low enough fees to reach our target of educating the poor . . . and yet pay enough to attract qualified teachers, and nourish the students with enough calories to support learning.  Over the years the gap between income and cost has grown, to the point that the Pierces and we were wondering if God was trying to tell us to do something radical.  But in the last week we got news of some amazing 11th hour provisions.  The mission and a donor church have come alongside us in generous ways.  We are extremely grateful.

* I discharged two kids today who could have easily died.  Peter John's picture was on the blog in December, needing prayer, an orphaned toddler with AIDS, malnutrition, and a very stressed teenage sister as his caretaker.  By God's power his body is healing, he gained more than 5 pounds (!, almost a 50% increase in weight), his sister rose to the occasion, he's smiling and walking and inexplicably whole looking.  The other was Masika Immaculate, who came six months ago as the most scabby, pus-filled newborn infant I've ever seen, also born to a teenage mother with AIDS, it was impossible to imagine someone so frail and tiny overcoming so much infection.  Yet she was back this week for a minor problem, smooth-skinned and smiling, and tested negative for HIV.  Amazing.  God's work.

*  We are finally having a several-times-delayed team planning retreat this week.  The nicest tented safari camp around, located only a couple of hours from us, improbably agreed to allow us to stay there for four nights at less than a quarter of the usual rate.  Two gifted and caring WHM counselors, Donovan Graham for the adults and Bethany Ferguson for the kids, were able to free up their schedules to come and minister to us as we plan and meet.  Donovan will stay on longer to focus on CSB needs, too.  That time could have been blindsided by competing needs, but those potentialities did not materialize, which we trust was again a provision from God.  And lastly after two months of a waiting list for a flight to get them in on Friday (I checked every week or two but no flight was available with either of the two mission organizations that fly), yesterday MAF contacted us to ask if we wanted a flight on Friday.  God's care.

*  Pat was feeling pretty overwhelmed just after the new year, and we asked how we could pray.  "I would like to see the road graded from the airstrip to Nyahuka" she said.  It may sound trivial, but jolting over deep and dangerous ruts and potholes every day wears a person out, not to mention their vehicle.  OK, we thought, we'll ask God . . and can you believe that the grader suddenly appeared and graded that very stretch of road?  Which has not happened in months if not years?  

*  Our Kwejuna Project Food distribution money for 2008 was generously provided by friends of Pamela.  With economic crisis in the US, and Pamela no longer on the field, we had every reason to believe that this would not continue in 2009.  But this past week we got the amazing good news that another 25 thousand dollars would be available to augment the diets of HIV positive women and babies.  Amazing.

*  After five months of delay (politics and problems), Dr. L finally moved to Nyahuka to take up his post at Nyahuka Health Center this week.  We had a staff meeting on Monday which welcomed him.  Before the meeting he told me that he had finally managed to set up an account for the health center in order to get the proper funds which the government has promised, since only 2 months out of 12 in 2008 were disbursed, but so far no money had come into it.  I tried to contact the chief administrative officer, but he was unavailable.  Hmmm.  In the meeting I told the story of 2 Chronicles 20, and challenged all the staff to pray against corruption this year.  We are powerless to know hearts and to remove those who steal, but God can do it.  The next morning I got two messages on my phone from the officer in charge, promising full return of all missing money for 2008 and asking us to keep praying and trust him to make progress in 2009.  We will see what happens, but a good start.

* Acacia Masso was able to get a good ride in and out of Bundibugyo so she could stay with our family for a week--God's idea, not mine, and a clear blessing.  She has been a delight.

* After a year of pruning in 08, our team is ready to sprout out a bit in 09.  We prayed at the New Year for out top needs (education family to partner with Pierces, medical family to partner with us, interim team leader to care for team during our upcoming HMA time in 2010, and more 2-year teachers to teach missionary kids).  This week we have a potentially interested family visiting, we have another family thinking of the summer, and a handful of others who are emailing.  All this is quite sudden though we've had the need out on the WHM radar for months.  God is moving.

God has allowed us, as we have looked to Him, to see these ways He is fighting for us.  We are going away together from Friday to Tuesday, and asking that God continue to allow us to see His providing presence, His powerful work.  Please join us in praying that God would lead, would say to us as He did to the people of Israel:  "Stand still and see the salvation of the LORD, who is with you".  We are praying that our diversity of gifts and experience would lead to creative and lively discussion, and that we would emerge with a clear sense of God's direction.  You readers are part of this process, so please consider fasting and praying to seek the LORD with us (v. 3 and 4).  Then you will sense the truth of the testimony of v. 21:  His mercy endures forever.  Let us walk together into the valley of wilderness until God renames Bundibugyo the valley of BLESSING.

Welcome Home, Arthur!

This is Arthur in our car, pausing to look cute en route from his aunt's Christ School apartment (where he and his mom Juliet have been staying for the week after he was born) to his home, the house that we helped Ndyezika build for his new family.  We gathered their bags and sundries (including a live chicken and a hefty stalk of matoke) and drove up the road, then unloaded and walked down the path, escorted by my kids and an ever-growing number of curious onlookers.  When we entered the compound, a little island of grass and order in the dust, I almost cried.  Ndyezika had put balloons and a sign on the door:  Welcome home Arthur, we love you, to God be the Glory, love, Mum and Dad.  There were two Bible verses as well.  I wanted to cry, because it was such a poignant moment.  This is exactly the sort of thing MY parents would have done.  And because of them, it is the sort of thing we have done.  And because of us, it is now the sort of thing that occurs to Ndyezika to do.  It made me homesick for my parents and yet at home in the extension of their love down to a new generation in a new continent, all mixed together.

Re-Entry

Coming back to Bundibugyo, as usual, a two-day process of exhaustion and joy, reality and relief.  

Beginning:  Friday morning, dawn in Kampala, up to pack the next month or two of groceries and all our trunks from a two-country trek to take Luke back to school, into the back of the truck.  From the room across the hall our dear friend and former pastor Al emerges to lend a hand!  He is also in Kampala en route to the airport to send his oldest daughter Katie back to college in the US after her Christmas break in Karamoja.  Sweet reunion, but too brief.  The truck loaded with everything but the frozen goods we leave the kids sleeping and head out to the airport.

Entebbe:  Travis and Amy, a doctor/teacher young couple who are finishing degrees and exploring God's next step for them, touch down an hour late, after a harrowing almost-miss-the-flight-re-route-because-of-weather very indirect journey from Charlotte via New York, Paris, and London.  We enjoy the unexpected enforced idleness having a cup of tea and discussing big picture vision issues as we approach a team planning retreat.  

Back to Kampala:  We add in the kids, the frozen goods, and at the last minute the entire team's fresh and frozen items . . because unforseen car issues mean that the second team vehicle will be in the repair shop all day.  We had planned to share responsibility to transport the Johnsons and Acacia Masso (who is taking the opportunity while her parents do logistical errands in Kampala to spend a week as a Myhre).  Instead we cram 8 into our double-cabin truck and embark on our cross-country trek home.  

The Drive: 8 hours of animated conversation while being jostled and compressed.  Fun to get to know the Johnsons, and they are good sports with it all.  Always room for a little more, we pick up other items in Fort Portal . . . then hit the deep silt of dust that has become the dry season road over the mountains.  As we top the ridge the hot springs steam below us, and the setting sun reflects on the coils of the Semliki River.  The up side of traveling late in the day, we see dozens of colobus monkeys and baboons.  It is dark, equator-with-no-power dark, by the time we get to Bundibugyo town. 

Arrival:  The Pierces welcome us with hugs and a hot dinner, having patiently waited, it is now about 8:30 pm.  We relax and enjoy their company and deliver some of the goods. . . then drive back up to the other houses on the mission to put three other house-hold's worth of groceries into their fridges.  It is now between 9:30 and 10 and we have not yet made it to our house.  As we pull out of Pat's driveway there is a terrible flapping sound--our rear tire has punctured and though we have only a hundred meters left of our 2,000 plus kilometers to go . . . we have to jack up the truck and change the tire.  Then we unload, settle the visitors in their bed at the Gray's, start up our own kerosene fridge, put away our groceries and sleep.

The Aftermath:  Saturday, hot and dusty.  Unpacking.  Greeting.  Dozens of friends,  A few needy people who have waited long.  Baking.  Sweeping.  The sad news that our little goat (the post-Ebola thanks goat) was bitten by a snake and died last week.  In spite of some slashing and clearing the responsible snake has not been found, only a small juvenile cobra.   We know the mother is out there.  Scott sets fire to a brush pile while a half dozen teenage boys stand on call with hoes and pangas, but no snake appears.  Unsettling to know something venomous enough to kill a good sized goat still lurks nearby.  Later we visit our new "grandson", baby Arthur Atukunda ("God loves us").  Juliet, nervous but competent, laughing now as she describes her hard labor.  Ndyezika beaming, proud.  We also visit our neighbors, the Mukiddi family, who inform us that due to Mukiddi's senior status his two wives will return to their ancestral homes this week for further post-burial ceremonies, a new aspect of culture we had not encountered before.  By evening we have settled and organized, and celebrate being truly home with a feast for our guests as a full moon rises orange and bright.  Lastly, a viewing of one of our favorite movies, Blood Diamond.  We go to sleep late, with images of God the committed father who pursues the prodigal child-rebel, who knows who we truly are and is willing to risk death to call us back.

We're home.

Themes for 2009, part 2

2 Chronicles chapter 20 has been on my heart and mind the whole year
(all 8 days of it so far). It is a dramatic story, enemies amassing,
impossible odds. Jehoshaphat as king must lead and respond, and he
does so by seeking the LORD. After fasting and praying, he reminds
the people of their identity, and of who GOD is. He concludes by
praying to God: "Our eyes are upon You." God responds by telling
them they will not fight in this battle, but they must move into
position and then believe, stand still and see the salvation He will
bring. So the entire assembly moves out in choir formation, singing
rather than attacking, and when they reach the battlefield they find
their enemies have all killed one another in disarray, and the only
work left is to organize the spoils of victory.

I sense God telling us that He is ready to do some dramatic things in
2009, but in unexpected ways. That we must move fearlessly and
worshipfully towards the battle, but the victory will be so clearly
out of our hands that all will see it his His alone. Please join us
in praying this for the new year. Pray that our eyes would be on God,
and that we would experience His powerful intervention in impossible
battles. Though the real fight belongs to God, we are called to
witness, to move into the fray and see what He will do.

The story ends with the wilderness of the battlefield being re-named
The Valley of Berachah, the valley of blessing. Yet again a place of
struggle, dryness, and death is transformed into an oasis of beauty.
Please pray that God would give our team the privilege of watching
Bundibugyo, the valley of the shadow of death, become the valley of
blessing, for the nations which surround us.

Blessings and Sorrows of 2008

Blessings of 2008: Heidi arrives * Nathan arrives * Grammy visit,
climb Sabinyo* Ryan visit, spiritual food* Rwenzori Hike (!!) *
Zanzibar short sabbatical * Baby Jonah Muhindo * Ndyezika and Juliette
Wedding * Luke admitted to RVA * Pierces transition to lead CSB *
Student milestones, Ivan finishes PLE, Mutegheki finishes O levels,
Birungi finishes A levels * Basiime admitted to University
miraculously * Luke makes soccer team *Our RMS teachers Ashley and
Sarah, breaths of fresh air * Austria TL retreat, enveloped by love of
our WHM family and celebration of survival * Jack's heels, Luke's
knee, Basiime's eyes, and Ivan's leg healing * Bolthouse visit,
friends and safari * Baguma Charles for BundiNutrition * BBB
established and tested * Former team-mate weddings for Scotticus &
Jane, Becky & Lars, Larissa & John, Rachel & Craig * generous
supporters * sponsoring 2 medical students and facilitating
sponsorship for 3rd, the future of Health in Bundibugyo * Writing *
Continuity, especially Pat * Sensing God's love . . .

Sorrows of 2008: Massos move to Sudan * Luke leaves home * Mukiddi,
our neighbor for almost 15 years, dies * Mourning Jonah * The inverse
of some of the above: Luke's knee injury, Basiime's severe glaucoma,
Jack's struggles, Ivan's broken leg * Goodbye to Barts * Heidi gone
for two months to jump nursing license hoops * Financial strain of
rising costs and limited funds especially at CSB * Grammy appendicitis
and close relatives unemployed * Plowing on in hard relationships *
Getting older and slower * Supply shortages, especially gloves *
Blatant corruption * not-always-helpful staff changes * watching
children die . . .

Themes for 2009, part 1

We began the year with a quarterish moon rising through the deep dark
of the savannah sky, hearing the rumble of a lion, the snort of
hippos, the pop and crackle of our camp fire, and the distant bray of
elephants across the water. Four small tents circled the light of the
fire, to house us, our four kids, and three teenage Ugandan boys,
friends. We sizzled smores over the coals and took turns recalling
the best and worst of 2008. The lion's rumble became more and more
ominous as the night deepened. And the evening pictured clearly some
themes for 2009: community, beauty, and the circling threat of danger.

Community, because these boys have taken the risk to come into our
lives, to endure some teasing and ostracism from their other
colleagues. And we have taken the effort to support and encourage
them, to listen, to pray, to celebrate their success and still believe
during their failures. They represent the hope that after a short
African generation, the 15 and counting years of living in Bundibugyo
are bearing fruit. Real relationship, and real impact on lives, hard
to define but glimpsed in a camp-out. And real change for us, for our
kids, to become people whose friendships span cultures.

Beauty, because the wildness and isolation of camping in a game park
allow us to see the wonder that is Africa. The extravagance of
creatures and landscapes which exist for glory, not for profit or
practicality. The character of God.

And danger, because that community and beauty must be wrested from a
broken world, must be cultivated and protected, and exists within
earshot of death. Peter compares our Enemy to a roaring lion, and in
the dark of night I sense the aptness of that, the stalking one,
unknown and mostly unseen, hostile and powerful, but hesitant to enter
our light.

May 2009 bring fullness of relationship, awareness of beauty, and may
the danger be kept at bay.