They shall not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain . . .

For Behold, I create a new heavens and a new earth;

And the former shall not be remembered or come to mind.

No more shall an infant from there live but a few days . .

They shall not labor in vain,

Nor bring forth children for trouble;

For they shall be the descendants of the blessed of the LORD,

And their offspring with them.

Isaiah 65

This is Jokim, on his way home today. When he first came in weighing 3.7 kg (as a 9 month old, in the most severe category of <60% wt/length), I could not bear to photograph him, it was like exposing a dead body. He was skeletal and covered with sores. For three weeks he held onto life by a thread, and his mother held on to him. We gave milk, and started him on TB treatment. Then suddenly about ten days ago he turned a corner. He was hungry, he drank, he smiled, he grew. The transformation was astounding. Jokim is for me a first-fruit sign of the promises of the new earth, where tears are wiped away. And this Christmas season we still sorrow over the infants who die too young, who hunger, who struggle, but we take heart in this glimpse of God's healing power.

Marvelous Market

That was the pastor's description of yesterday's market: marvelous. I'm not a huge fan of shopping, but I did enjoy tagging along with Pat and Jack and entering into the excitement. Huge crowds, milling, pressing, searching. Brightly colored new clothes, made in China and India, Obama-brand jeans. Yards and yards of sequined sheer wraps, or printed cotton. Cabbages, tomatoes, flustered chickens, raw meat, sort-of-fresh fish. Piles of bargain shoes. Tin bowls. Plastic sunglasses. Everyone on the lookout for an outfit and food they can afford to make the day special. And then, shockingly, a marching band, brass and drums, striding through the chaos announcing an herbal medicine from Congo that promises health and wealth. Curiosity, laughter. Jack and then Scott took some snaps of the festive market. Enjoy.

Seen and Not Seen

There are two accounts of the actual Christmas Night in the Bible: Luke 2, and Revelations 12. Yesterday for our staff CME/Bible study, we looked at both stories, printed out in parallel on a page. First we read Luke 2, and I asked every few verses for people to describe what they would have seen if they had been there. For the most part, it would have looked a lot like every-day Bundibugyo life: a pregnant woman, crowds, walking; chaos of disruption caused by arbitrary governmental decrees; the onset of labor at an inconvenient time and the search for a protected spot; sharing a shelter with animals; giving birth in unhygienic conditions without medical care; a not-quite-married pair of inexperienced parents; a baby wrapped up in scraps of cloth; the potential for death always quietly stalking in the background. Such a sequence of events could unfold today, here, unnoticed, because it is common. In fact it probably will, today and most days.

Then we turned to Revelations: here the pregnant woman is clothed with the sun and wreathed by the stars. Here the labor is on a cosmic scale. Here the baby is directly threatened by the waiting, gaping, hungry, evil jaws of a fiery dragon. Here the birth culminates in a barely-in-time rescue, sweeping the infant up to the very throne of Heaven. And here the sequence of events triggers a celestial war, with angels and demons and victory and defeat. I don't think most of the staff had read this before, and they were fascinated, laughing nervously. Because in Africa we don't doubt the pervading precence of the spiritual world, and the danger of the devouring dragon.

Both accounts are true pictures of reality: one a picture of that which was seen by human eyes, and one a picture of the unseen events that were occurring in the spiritual realm.

So we were encouraged to remember that what we see here, happening, tangibly before our eyes, is only a partial truth. The long line of patients with their needs represents dozens of lives in the balance, with eternal consequences. The tiny jaundiced newborn who responds to IV antibiotics so painstakingly given represents a victory that might be mirrored in a heavenly battle. The choice to come to work when most of the world around us is consumed in selling their cocoa and buying new clothes for Christmas day represents the kind of courage mentioned in Rev 12:11, the kind that overcomes evil, forever.

A few people in Luke 2 got to glimpse both realities, to see the material events in real time while recognizing their reflected spiritual impact. Mary, the shepherds, Simeon, Anna. For some, because God by grace overwhelmed them with inescapable visions. For others, because they had dedicated themselves to the search, and recognized God's hand in events. I'm praying to become that sort of person, grounded in the hands-on messiness of life and death on the streets and stables of our earth, but able to see the pattern of God's work, and be carried along by faith and hope, the unshakable evidence of things not seen.

A week 'til Christmas . . .

And the stockings are hung with care, though we don't have a chimney.  The cookies are being consumed as fast as they can be produced; the Christmas music, from baroque to Bing, carries through the house.  Most of the day our extended "family" of friends/students hangs out here.  Some have been with me at the hospital daily, and with the ward quieting down a bit (we actually have a few EMPTY BEDS instead of overflow on the floor!) I have enjoyed doing actual teaching rounds.  In fact, I'm hoping the alliance between them builds for their future in Bundibugyo:  we have a pre-doctor, a pre-nurse, and a pre-clinical officer, two of the three were school-mates at CSB, and it is a privilege to be living here on the cusp of transformation as these kids get the education and vision to serve.  The rest have done some projects around the house, including a tree-seedling-bed for Julia's tree project (she has visions of Wangari Maathai).  By 1 we are all back together for lunch, catered all week by my neighbor in the effort to keep a dozen teenagers fed.  We eat together and talk.  A couple of videos (their choice, State of Play, my choice, A Christmas Carol) in the afternoons, and a few soccer games, lots of card-playing, book-reading.  I can sense that the separation created by sending our two oldest to an American boarding school is not fully bridged in their return, that there is a new caution on their friends' part here, and a new reluctance in my boys' hearts who have tasted a different sort of camaraderie now, part of the cost of being of many worlds.  By late afternoon the students all drift out to their homes or other places, and we get a daily handful of other visitors, or occasionally go out for a visit ourselves.  But the evenings and nights have been quiet, family-only (mostly) times.  This is unusual in our house, and we purposely set boundaries with the bittersweet realization that this is our last Christmas before Luke goes to college, perhaps our last Christmas as as we know it in this house where we've had so many . . . so at our kids' request we've had sumptuous family feasts on our Christmas-holly plates, good conversation, candlelight.  And tonight will be the 6th and final episode of Lord of the Rings, watching the extended version a disc at a time.  Like Mary, I'm treasuring all these things in my heart, grateful for these days, knowing I can't hold on to them forever.

A decree went out . . .

Not from Caesar Augustus this time, but from the personnel office and the Chief Administrative Officer, that every health worker should report to the central offices to be counted and documented.  I suppose the disruption does not compare to that of Palestine two millennia ago, but in my narrow world it felt rather significant that EVERY HEALTH WORKER was to simultaneously leave his or her post and gather in one spot.  In some places an administration might consider the ongoing necessity of health care and worry about taking every nurse, every midwife, every lab tech, every person off duty district-wide for two days this week.  In fact they might consider leaving their office and traveling a few miles to count and document  personnel AT the hospital rather than calling the workers away.  But not in Bundibugyo.  Just like in Jesus' day, the powers-that-be make their declarations, and the small people have to sacrifice to comply.  Of course when we started making phone calls we were told that it was all an abrupt plan from above, that the district was powerless to stop it, that no one had been informed, that of course the workers could stagger their reporting or send representatives.  But by then the masses were not going to risk losing their perpetual pay-check, and EVERYONE decided to heed the call.  Everyone except our most senior staff member, the in-charge clinical officer, who dutifully rallied and stayed on site.  Biguwe is a good man.

Which is why I am particularly grateful for the student rescue.  Our med student Baluku Morris, two of my CSB students Birungi and Mutegheki, and my own personal student-son Luke, stepped in to save the day.  Particularly Luke and Mutegheki, who ran the HIV-nutrition program today.  I suppose since we were gone last week and next week is Christmas week, a month's worth of patients decided this was the day to come!  All four young men worked very hard, weighing babies, counting out eggs and beans and pills, writing in ledgers and charts, translating and organizing.  I think they got to see some science-in-real-life as we talked through cases, as well as get a sense of the hard work and important consequences of medical service.

And in the midst of frustrations with the poor planning, with the usual sadnesses and struggles, two outstanding moments of redemption today.  First, a chunky cute little six-month-old whose AIDS-patient mother wanted to save his life by weaning him, but only if he was actually not infected.  His blood screening results were not yet back, but some phone calls to the lab in Fort Portal actually worked, and we found out he was HIV-negative.  Unusually, both mother and father were present together, and their joy on hearing the news fortified me for the rest of the day.  And, to save the best for last, Masereka Jokim smiled.  This is a 9 month old who has been barely alive at 4 kg for several weeks, one of the most skeletal and scabby infants I've ever seen, held by his all-alone Congolese mother, inactive and whimpering.  Over the last few days he finally began to respond, to be hungry, to drink, to inch upward in weight.  Today he hit 4.5 kg, and as I examined him, he looked up and SMILED.  This is a monumental sign-post of hope.  

We can live through arbitrary decrees, absent staff,  and just about anything for a smile from Jokim.

Congratulations Scotticus!

Good news on our email this morning: Scott Ickes defended his doctoral dissertation at UNC, using data gathered right here in Bundibugyo! This is an amazing feat, and one which only someone of Scotticus' can-do nature could pull off. The BBB arm of BundiNutrition was developed by another 2-ish year missionary, Stephanie Jilcott, who initially wrote up the funding as a post-doc for a Fulbright Scholarship but ended up putting together a program for our mission and working here to implement it. Scott was teaching our kids and coaching track and taking a pause in his own doctoral program in nutrition at the time. By the end of his commitment in Uganda, he had decided to return to UNC and complete his degree. I remember well the late-night discussions on our patio, waiting for bread to bake in our brick oven post-team-pizza, talking about his future and providing a listening ear. But when Scotticus did come up with a dissertation plan based on Bundibugyo . . . I was not a believer, I'll admit that right now. I was very worried that the inevitable frustrations and inexactitude and muck of life here would derail his educational success, and said so. Thankfully, he didn't listen to me . . . and others were more faith-filled. With the help of Baguma Charles, a couple of short term trips, efforts from half our team and especially Nathan, the project continued. A couple of posts ago I quoted Elizabeth Elliot who says that we missionaries should not be afraid to take a critical look at our work, our impact, our successes and failures. I like the fact that thanks to Stephanie and Scott we have done just that with BBB. We learned through his research that our educational messages to caretakers had to be tailored to address diluting methods of cooking the food we gave. And in spite of that, we learned that only about a third of what we distribute is actually fed to the malnourished child. We learned that the caretakers face significant hurdles to come even to the decentralized closer-to-home programs. We learned that the program significantly changes and IMPROVES the quality, variety, and amount of feeding, even after the families are no longer enrolled. We learned in spite of that, the diets of children in Bundibugyo are particularly lacking in protein and calcium. Which gives further impetus to the newest branch of the Matiti project of BundiNutrition, developing local breeds of dairy goats for ALL children to supplement their diets with milk.

A "mission" is so many things, the hands and voice of Jesus to the poor, the seeds of a church, a small factor of justice in a messed-up world, the inadvertent importation of values of a foreign culture. . . .and the incubator of the next generation of leaders, both Ugandan and otherwise. Baguma Charles is also applying to grad school. One of our Kule-Leadership-Fund med students appeared to pitch in at the hospital yesterday, on his Christmas leave, while a second stopped to greet us and a third called on the phone. Nathan is in the middle of a week of med school interviews back in the States, having decided during his work here to become a doctor he began the application process so that God-willing when he finishes in Uganda next summer he'll head back to school. Sarah has applications in for an MPH. A former engineering intern Josh is back in touch this month, nearing the end of his graduate studies and processing the possibility of return. And on an on. It is a privilege to cheer from the sidelines as God uses the unique experience of Bundibugyo to propel these young men and women along their journeys. And to cheer when they reach significant milestones, like Scotticus!

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.