Merry Christmas to Me

Those who know me know I'm a bit of a Christmas fanatic, the kind of kid who requested Joy to the World for hymn-sings in July, and had "We wish you a Merry Christmas" as my ring tone on my phone all year long. And in the tropical heat and mold, we still open advent calendars and decorate with pine and candles and play the Messiah and bake cookies. We insist upon a live, fresh tree even if it is not much to look at, and can only hold a fraction of our ornaments. And we always string up lights, but not very many. For one, our tree usually can't support more than one strand (though we also add in lights around doors or windows). But mostly our power can't support them. With solar panels charging batteries to run computers, house lights, internet satellite, and other essentials like the coffee grinder . . the margin available for Christmas lights has been slim. So we put them up, gather, plug in and ooohh and ahhhh for about five or ten minutes, then have to turn them off. Better than nothing. But this year Bundibugyo has POWER. It has been a complex month-long process to get the wires running along the road connected to our house, involving inspectors and papers and stamps and fees and grounding wires and tests and indoor outlets. But last night Scott put up FOUR strands of wildly colorful hypnotically blinking LED Christmas lights he bought in Kampala, on our tree and around two windows. WOW. That's about all there is to say. Anna said she could see them from the community center. We left them on all evening, for hours, playing with the different light-blinking modes (there are 8, from slow fade to disco). In the cause of Christmas, nothing is too tacky, and these are the essence of cheer. And we could even simultaneously watch Lord of the Rings (we're going through the extended version a disc at a time for six nights . . . actually a good family Christmas-time treat). All for about 25 cents worth of power, the meter runs on a pre-paid card. These lights are my Christmas present, and I get to enjoy them for hours a night for the next two weeks!

Signs of Christmas

Still waiting for the hot dry wind that ends the rainy season to blow in, which for most of the last 17 Christmases has been a herald of the season in our lives.  But other signs are in evidence today.  Cow prints in the margins of the road, from the herds going to market.  The margins of the road widened by the powerful grader, while choruses of "Make straight in the desert, a high way for our God!" resonate in my head.  Longer church services, as the choirs multiply and gather momentum, and the congregation builds in anticipation.  Massive lorries full of cocoa dominating the road, grinding gears, as this year's crop exits the district, leaving Christmas funds for many in their wake.  But not for all.  Old friends coming out of the woodwork, so to speak, showing up to greet us after months of laying low, mentioning their financial needs exacerbated by the expectations of the season.  No kids in school uniforms, a startling absence.  The scent of vanilla pods drying in the sun.  An evening at home decorating cookies, fingers stained with the not-likely-FDA-approved powerful food coloring we buy in Fort Portal.  Jack scouting out a likely capricious (juniper-like scrubby pine, the best we could do this year) and Luke single-handedly chopping it down with a panga (machete) and dragging it to our door.  Carols on our ipod, and on the piano as Julia learns them, while Caleb fools around with the guitar.  All four conspiring to get into the attic and bring down the boxes of decorations even though I'm still settling from our trip . . we set out manger scenes, hang ornaments on the windows, drape red-and-green tie-dyed kitengis everywhere we can, open Christmas picture books like greeting old friends.  Even a wreath on the door.  Our third Advent, this time with a handful of Ugandan co-workers and our down-sized team of 4 singles, making pizza and lighting candles and singing songs and reading Scripture.  Getting out my holly-wreath glass plates, an unlikely find in a duka years ago.   The biggest treat is yet to come:  this year Nyahuka has power, and Saturday our house was connected to the grid.  Scott is finishing some wiring and then our family Christmas present will be:  electricity!  Abundant and relatively cheap hydro-electric power will, we hope, allow us to turn on Christmas lights for more than 5 minutes at a go, for the first time ever!  Stay tuned.

Splendrous Gates

On the way back from Kampala, I re-read Through the Gates of Splendor.  Today, I saw on the news that an Irish priest who had lived in Kericho, Kenya, since 1968 (!!),  was brutally murdered in his home.  For a CD player and two mobile phones, it looks like youths pried the windows open before dawn, tied him up with rope, and killed him with a machete in his bed.  The priest was nearly 70 and had given his life, 40 years of it anyway, to the people in that community.  This happened near the town where Scott spent his summer college internship that drew him towards missions.  Brutal and senseless and absolutely WRONG.  

If we, like Job, asked for explanations, I think we would be told, like Job, that God is God (Job 38).  Elizabeth Elliot quotes that chapter in her epilogue--those last pages are worth reading again, often.  For my own heart and anyone associated with Fr Jeremiah Roche, I quote EE:  

I believe with all my heart that God's Story has a happy ending.  Julian of Norwich wrote, "All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well."

But not yet, not necessarily yet.  It takes faith to hold onto that in the face of the great burden of experience that seems to prove otherwise.  What God means by happiness and goodness is a far higher thing than we can conceive . . . 

The massacre was a hard fact, widely reported at the time, surprisingly well remembered by many even today.  It was interpreted according to the measure of one's faith or faithlessness--full of meaning or empty.  A triumph or a tragedy.  An example of brave obedience or a case of fathomless foolishness.  The beginning of a great work, a demonstration of the power of God, a sorrowful first act which would lead to a beautifully predictable third act in which all puzzles would be solved, God would vindicate Himself, Aucas would be converted, and we could all "feel good" about our faith.  Bulletins about progress were hailed with joy and a certain amount of "Ah! You see!"  But the danger lies in seizing upon the immediate and hoped-for, as though God's justice is thereby verified, and glossing over as neatly as possible certain other consequences, some of them inevitable, others simply the result of a botched job.  In short, in the Auca story as in other stories, we are consoled as long as we do not examine too closely the unpalatable data.  By this evasion we are willing still to call the work "ours," to arrogate to ourselves whatever there is of success, and to deny all failure.  

A healthier faith seeks a reference point outside all human experience, the Polestar which marks the course of all human events, not forgetting that impenetrable mystery of the interplay of God's will and man's . . . 

I think of the Indians themselves--what bewilderment, what inconvenience, what disorientation, what uprooting, what actual diseases (polio, for example) they suffered because we missionaries got to them at last!  The skeptic points with glee to such woeful facts and we dodge them nimbly , fearing any assessment of the work which may cast suspicion at least on the level of our spirituality if not the validity of our faith.

But we are sinners.  And we are buffoons. . ."O Lord, deliver us from our sad, sweet, stinking selves!" . . It is not the level of our spirituality that we can depend on.  It is God, and nothing less than God, for the work is God's and the call is God's and everything is summoned by Him and to His purposes, the whole scene, the whole mess, the whole package--our bravery and our cowardice, our love and our selfishness, our strengths and our weaknesses.

Amen.  These are the words of experience, pain, hard wisdom, long perspective, that ring true to me.  We are a mess.  God knows the full picture.  Terrible, terrible things happen, and are not immediately justified or explained.  Some of the terrible things are our fault, many are not.  We must examine all the data, even the unpalatable parts, to grow in holiness and grace.  But in the end, God is God, and I am not.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever

If you have not read this book in the last week, it's time to read it again. Preferably out loud, with people you love, under stars around a campfire. And if you're prone to crying, then have someone else read Chapter 7.

It is a slim story by Barbara Robinson about an annual Church Christmas program that is unexpectedly thrown into disarray when the Herdmans, absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world, get involved. It is a story about nothing less than grace.

Imogene is bossy, loud, mean, manipulative, aggressive, unpopular. But when she encounters the reality of Christmas, it "comes over her all at once, like a case of chills and fever". Unlike the self-righteous flower committee . . she encounters Jesus' mercy without presumption or preconceived ideas. This has been an Imogene Herdman sort of year for me. I'm reflecting a bit on why as we go through this season of Advent, preparation, anticipation. As a team we're looking at the first chapters of Revelation and the gifts God gives of life, a new name, a vocation, and a home, paralleled in the Creation and Fall , redeemed in Jesus' first coming, and to-be-perfected at the end of time. And I'm grateful for the deepening awareness of sin and shortcoming and the harsh cost inflicted on others, or at least I want to be grateful, which is a good first step. I think God planned out our lifespans so that people in their 40's have teenagers to sanctify them (and vice versa), and for some of us we're in the "adolescence" of our 17th year in community as well. In your 20's and 30's a lot of life goes on, but you're so busy surviving . . . that in this decade of 40's it's time for some important character forming work, a lot like the teens, with swinging hormones and decision branch-points, to become hardened in one's ways, or to become a person of gentleness and joy. That's where a few bold teens come in handy, particularly if you're blessed with one who is brutally honest, verbal, insightful, growing spiritually, and partially separated from home so that he has a separate world of holy, patient, committed, competent adults to contrast you to. Then throw in some good hard relational conflicts, some great meditation time with God, some insights like the poison ice cream that peel away how you wish people saw you and mirror what your friends and colleagues really encounter, and the stage is set for a Herdman-sort of pageant, a coming into Christmas tentatively and sorrowfully.

Imogene, after playing Mary in the pageant, asks for the Sunday-School picture of Mary as a keepsake, perhaps revealing the purity of what she longs to be. When we got to that point in the book this time, I was deeply impacted, because about a week ago a picture came to my mind which we had seen in the civic museum in San Sepolcro, Italy, some years ago, and with the wonders of the internet I actually found it to look at again. It is by an artist named Gerino da Pistoia, and is called something like Madonna del Soccorso. I had never seen any portrait of Mary quite like it and was very drawn to it at the time, and all this delving into names and vocation brought it back to my heart. In it Mary is clubbing a demon with whom she fights for the life of a baby . . but all the while looking serene, beautiful, radiant. Since pictures of Mary are not a normal part of my life and thought, the two encounters this week caught my attention. How to have the passion and power of a club-wielding woman-of-God, without friendly-fire accidents, with a face of love? And how to know His grace when I see how far from that portrait my own reality lies?

The season is not yet at its final chapter, the awe of grace has not yet fully washed over. Let us wait in anticipation, welcoming redemption, unexpectedly wrapped in swaddling clothes.

Kampala

Mission guest house, quiet oasis in a seething city.  People, stories, lives, walking on roadsides, packed into mini-van matatus, selling fried grasshoppers out of large tupperwares at traffic stops, dining in suits and ties, shopping, tending sidewalk newspaper stands, pumping gas with aggressive service, braiding hair in open-air "saloons".  Horns, sirens, whistles, traffic police in their shocking white uniforms looking for trouble, careless drivers, barreling buses, inching traffic, stalled round-abouts.  Hawkers carrying entire stores, from the car window offers of newspapers, airtime, shoes, maps, inflatable toys, phone-chargers, ties, pants, tomatoes, green peppers, suitcases.  Boda-cycles darting around the slower SUV's, garbage being dumped on a sidewalk.  Our mechanic's junk-yard-looking work-compound at dusk, handshakes and greetings to all our kids, remarks on their growth as we pick up our truck after the latest fix.  Laughing with craft-market ladies as I try to come up with Christmas shirts for all my boys that aren't as wide as they are long.  Candlelight and spicy Indian food at the end of the day.  

It is not optimal, or easy, to shop in a few hours for weeks of food, something small for our kids' stockings, and for the six names we drew for the team, while also buying a truck-load of medicine for the hospital, dealing with some minor immigration paperwork and adding pages to our kids' bulging passports, paying phone bills, getting mechanical work done, etc.  On the other hand, it's kind of nice to have only one mall, and one day, and one bookstore, and few other choices, and to know that the rest of the season we'll be home.

Weekend of Wilderness

Saturday morning most of our team headed out of Bundibugyo, and in spite of car problems and forgotten items and a rain storm, managed to make it over to the eastern side of the Rwenzori range to Campsite 2. This is a promontory overlooking the Kazinga Channel between Lakes George and Edward, an isolated patch of national park where we love to camp. Everyone who had not previously camped there with us joined in. We arrived in the late afternoon to set up tents and cook dinner, grilling sausages and vegetables to wrap in tortillas, all over a fire, as dusk deepened and a light chilly rain began to fall. Because of the rain we all scurried into our tents early, and miraculously Scott slept. He is usually up tending the fire and shooting hyenas with a sling-shot, but he was so utterly spent by the last few weeks, that between the rain and the weariness we didn't notice any nocturnal visitors. Not so the newcomers, who were anxiously attentive all night to the plethora of animal calls.

Sunday was a true Sabbath. We drove for several hours around the park. My favorite memory of the day was the swallows, blue, darting, swooping, keeping pace at eye level as we sat on top of the truck bouncing along the rutted tracks. And a monitor lizard, a grand-daddy of the reptiles as big as a small crocodile, stretched across the road blocking our path, in no mood to move. And the afternoon boat launch, breeze on the water, thousands of birds, up-close yawning hippos, wallowing buffaloes along the shore, graceful stilt-legged storks and jeweled kingfishers in the reeds. And the elephants. And sitting around the campsite reading, while the kids kicked around a small soccer ball amidst the cactuses and clouds, in the heat of mid day. And just about everything! In the evening we joined up with Pat, and the PIerces, who were staying in lodges, and after dinner had a celebratory cake to say goodbye to Sarah.

Then back at the campsite we read through our week's Advent readings aloud and shared what God had been impressing on our hearts this week, as the fire sparked upward and joined the millions of starpoints of light in the clear sky. Kids young and old roasted marshmellows (or as Ashley says, marshed roastmellows), and we sat around the fire singing every Christmas carol we knew and some we didn't, until late at night. Lions rumbled their territorial growls across the channel, and later we were awakened by the rising sharp call of hyenas gathering nearby. But nothing disturbed our circle of fire and friendship.

There is something about getting away into the wilderness that brings our hearts back to God, to the wildness and order that He created. The tensions and problems of life fall away as we enter the isolation of the game reserve. Our humanity is put in context, and we are humbled. Very thankful.

GIVE-A-GOAT

This year's opportunity to buy a dairy goat (and get a Christmas tree ornament) is now officially open! Here is the information, provided by Heidi:

Hunger, sickness, loss: the gift of a goat to a family with any one (or more) of these challenges, leads to milk for a malnourished child. This gift translates directly into protein and calories - a very tangible demonstration of the love of Immanuel: God with us. This year, as a result of your generous gifts last Christmas to BundiNutrition's Matiti Project, 109 goats were distributed to families coping with these very real challenges in sustaining life in Bundibugyo. We are so grateful for your generosity. It is a privilege to be your "hands and feet" on the ground here as we see the smiles on a mother's face as the arrow on the scale creeps higher and higher! This Christmas, if you would like to "Give-a-Goat" to provide milk for a hungry, sick or left behind child, $130 allows us to purchase a high grade dairy goat (due to the number of goats distributed to date, we are now able to purchase their progeny locally here in Bundibugyo), train the family in its care, give them a few tools for constructing a simple shed, and then enable them to take the goat home. $200 will allow us to do the same AND to set aside a portion for supporting the ongoing development of a local high grade dairy goat breed in Bundibugyo – an effort to develop a culturally appropriate and sustainable source of milk to boost the protein and caloric intake more widely, in a district where half of all children are chronically underfed. For the third consecutive year, we are offering African handmade Christmas tree ornaments to the first 100 Give-a-Goat donors (at the donation level of your choice). Please read the following directions carefully, and a very Merry Christmas to you from all of us here in Bundibugyo! How to "give-a-goat": 1. Use the "Give-a-Goat" button on this blog or at www.whm.org <http://www.whm.org> to donate by credit card. This is the simplest and fastest method, and allows our colleague Ginny Barnette in the Sending Center to quickly confirm your donation and address and mail you the ornament. Here is the direct link : http://whm.org/project/details?ID=12375 2. Send a check to WHM Donation Processing Center, P.O. Box 1244, Albert Lea, MN 56007-1244, writing "Goat Fund 12375" on the memo line. Since the processing and return of the information to Ginny could take a couple of weeks, you may want to email her (GBarnette@whm.org) in order to be sure you receive the ornament before Christmas. 3. If you would like the ornament mailed to a DIFFERENT address than the one on your credit card or check, you must also communicate this to Ginny. A card will be included with each goat describing the program.

2 years

Today marks two years since the death of our dear friend and colleague, Dr. Jonah Kule, from Ebola. Last year we had a formal church memorial service. This year we simply spent the afternoon with his family, his widow Melen, 5 girls, and toddler boy Jonah, plus Pat, a family day of lunch and hanging out. We've been through a lot together. And in spite of the soberness of the memories of loss, today was relaxing. Little Jonah is a babbling, active, laughing little boy, chasing balls and delighting his bevy of sisters. The older three girls are reserved, polite, finishing another year of school on scholarships provided through the Kule Family Care Fund. The two younger girls are playful and uninhibited. Julia as usual poured herself into drawing everyone into games, and sent them home with an armful of books to borrow and read. Melen, Pat, Scott and I reminisced and just sat with each other, giving Melen a chance to debrief. She has moved through the last two years with courage and grace and success-against-many-odds. The workers-compensation funds finally paid out by the government have led to hints of death threats against her, greedy people imagining taking over care of her children and assets, which she finds more distressing than the actual work of surviving or the weight of grief. I told her today that Jonah would be proud of her. Perhaps my favorite moment, I mentioned that a few days ago I was on the road an met a motorcyclist wearing a yellow helmet and for a second expected it to be Jonah, and she nodded and confessed that whenever she sees anyone approaching with a hint of yellow she thinks it could be him. Jonah laid down his life in a way that few people ever will. Today we honor his memory.

Bhibabulu

This is a local term for "intestinal wounds" . . a syndrome that came into my awareness as a belief-disease-entity about five years ago.  I remember the case, twins, one was dwindling, and quite ill, and the parents refused IV antibiotics.  The idea is that this disease causes wounds inside, which are not seen, and must be treated by local herbalists/witch doctors, and if the family instead accepts IV fluid or antibiotics, the child will die.  So they usually stay at home and give enemas using herbs, soap, water, administered into the rectum via a gourd.  The child I first remember seeing did die, which reinforced the belief that hospital treatment is fatal, though over the years I've also seen many respond to general nutritional rehab and recover.  The idea of bhibabulu has gained momentum.  Tuesday we had two children admitted who had been treated for this at home for a week or more using local herbs, and they both died shortly after arriving at the hospital, within 20 minutes of each other.

On World AIDS Day we remember that that illness was first recognized as a syndrome, that alert people had to put together constellations of symptoms and risk factors and recognize that a new disease had emerged.  In a place like Bundibugyo with an extremely high background level of disease and death, how do we know if bhibabulu is anything other than just the end stage of under-nourished children, diarrhea from a hundred causes, some with sickle cell, poor family dynamics, inadequate hygiene?  The kids tend to be under age 2, listless, with fungal infections in their mouths and perineal area (hence the wounds), poor appetites, anemic.  But that describes a large swathe of the population.

What I do know is that staying home and further dehydrating a child with enemas is deadly.  So we preach against it, at every opportunity, encouraging ORS, encouraging prompt evaluation in the health center.  Of course when two kids come in and die, it does not exactly inspire confidence.  One was not yet 2, with a pregnant mother, weaned months ago (way too early), deathly anemic, convulsing, unconscious.  In spite of warming, glucose, blood, anti-malarials and anti-biotics, his body was too far gone.  The other was a motherless baby a couple of months old, whose two grandmothers seemed to be mismanaging him, the one who had been breast-feeding fell ill, so the other one took the baby to her home, and at that age and size a little body can't survive for a week without milk.  Both were of course convinced that they had been doing the right thing to save their children, both involved older women in the family preventing treatment at the hospital, both came at the last minute when the child was dying.

I'm reminded this season of Rachel weeping for her children, of the way that the battle between good and evil on this earth most often sweeps the under-2 infants into death, collateral damage in struggles that involve belief, evil, spirits, sacrifice, trust, mistakes, family conflict, tragically inadequate intensive care in the hospital, etc.  So we will keep pleading for their lives.  And looking for ways to pull them back.

Adventures

Luke's friends left Bundibugyo yesterday, on foot, hiking together over the mountains to Fort Portal. Unfortunately, it was another down-pour day, so the steep rutted path was a muddy bog or a flowing stream, and there was no real rest in the downpours. The three boys from RVA, Luke, Caleb, and one friend from Bundi, all spent the night in a local hotel in Fort, before parting this morning as the three RVA boys boarded a public transport bus to Kampala. Then Luke, Caleb, and Mutegheki hiked back. This time the day was clear, and since all three are wiry football-playing Bundibugyo natives . . .they made the crossing of the pass in 3 hrs 16 min (I include that detail in case any interns are reading, it's a ridiculously fast time . . . ). I guess I'm transitioning as a mom, to take in in stride that my 14 and 16 year old can traverse a 20-plus km trek on an uninhabited pass through a national park, find their way on bodas to town, arrange for dinners and a place to stay, and return back the same way the next day, all on their own.