evening encouragement

Yesterday was a long pummeling bounce from one crisis to the next. Everything seemed broken, from a team vehicle to the entire water system to the propane fridge at the health center used to store blood. And these are not mere annoyances. Passive-aggressive staff behavior and nation-wide bureaucracy and corruption will cost lives, the lives of innocent kids. The first case of potential cholera in many years was admitted to the isolation ward, which had no water. Hundreds of students are about to arrive on campus and need to eat, and the kitchen is not yet functional. At one point as I watched Scott figuring out which valves to turn at the town's water tanks .. . I felt more alone than we have been in many many years. We're not alone, I know. God has called us to this moment, and He's asking us to hold on.

In that context, the evening was very encouraging. We had invited the CSB staff to share pizza with our team (well, what's left of it, our pared-down family of four with Heidi, Anna, Scott Will for two more days, and Ashley just arrived). Last year we were never able to manage this kind of gathering. And with all the change of the last few months, without the PIerces, and with the uncertainty of starting a new year, it was with some trepidation that we invited them. But God was gracious. His primary symbol of presence-on-earth is a meal, communion and community go hand in hand. Last night, we experienced that incarnational reality. About 20 staff joined us, outside, as we created pizzas and encouraged them to try the unfamiliar (I also had massive pots of rice, meat, sombe and beans so that no one would leave hungry . . . and though people ate the familiar, they left most of it in favor of adventure). Soon there was loud laughter in the dimming evening, candles, joking. Jack and Julia and I kept walking around with fresh pizzas, and staff members would joke and insist they were full and then be cajoled into a bit more. Scott Will brought a wealth of toppings, and when we got to the dessert pizza (condensed milk, jam, and chocolate!), people were amazed and delighted. Two young guys actually had to lay down on the grass they were so stuffed. Later we sat in the front room and played a game, and then ended the evening with recounting some blessings of 2009, worship, singing together and praying for the year, that we would all reflect God's glory in a dark place. It was a moment of tasting goodness, in the food and in our team's super-helpful hospitality and in the staff's joy and fellowship. Many more problems will come, starting today no doubt, but we are encouraged as we plunge into the year.

Some scenes of the week

Miss Ashlely Welcoming Party: her football players, Julia and Charity! Getting initial hugs from Ashley by the MAF plane. She's just left the snowiest winter in Virginia to land in blazing equatorial mid-day heat. Finding a bit of shade on the airstrip while the MAF pilot does a routine check. Jack entertains with card games during a cooking lesson: Miss Anna took Jack and Julia to a neighbors' house where their friend Naomi taught them to pick, clean, pound, and cook sombe and ground nut sauce. The sombe, leaves from a cassava plant, ready to cook. Some processing required: cassava leaves contain cyanide, and have to be pounded in the wooden mortar/pestle apparatus before cooking. Flavor added with pili pili (peppers). The Send Me Band, Bundibugyo's first Christian Recording artists, perform last Sunday afternoon at the Community Center. Scott Will and friends groovin' to the tunes in the back row of the standing-room-only crowd.

police work

Our police tend to sit in their office and wait for crime to come to them.  But a couple of good things have happened this week.  Note, this is not a kid-friendly post, even though it's about kids . . . so don't read it if you don't want to hear.

First, the rapist from the weekend was truly transferred yesterday to Bundibugyo, and will be appearing in court tomorrow.  So far, that case, very public, has not been dropped.  And that encouraged Heidi and I to follow up on our case from last summer, the little six year old girl Heidi called Miss Polkadots who was grabbed in her garden and held down and raped while her siblings ran home crying.  Though we had pushed and pushed for the police to find and arrest the perpetrator most of June and July, he ran away, or so we were told.  Now that six months had gone by we figured his guard might be down.  And we have a couple of new officers posted here, so it was worth a try.  Sure enough, they raided this morning, and brought the man in.  I went to the station myself, and have to say that the satisfaction was hollow, I was prepared to hate this man with righteous wrath, and instead I felt sorry for him.  The man is ill, younger than I thought, pitiful, sitting shirtless and handcuffed on the floor, looking terrified.  I talked to him a little, seems he just had an abscess drained on his back and his wife just delivered a baby girl.  He has the right name, right village, right history of being in the UPDF, and the police are convinced (in a sort of circular reasoning way) that he is the guilty party because they arrested him.  I just felt sobered by the responsibility of having his blood to account for if we're wrong.  Still out of loyalty to Miss Polkadots and little girls everywhere, I agreed to drive him with an armed guard to Bundibugyo town.  They located his file, but not the key for the handcuffs.  He'll be examined at the hospital, and then taken to court too.  The half-dozen other shirtless young men behind bars begged me for money.  I tried to talk to them about using this time in their lives to pray because God if forgiving.  I don't think they were convinced.  I thought of Jesus talking to his cross-mates.  Bundibugyo jail is a pretty barren place.

Meanwhile, some Baptist missionaries we met a couple of months ago are back doing a seminar in our Community Center for teachers and church leaders, sensitizing them to Ugandan law and childrens' rights.  Great topic, great timing.  And today's national paper carried two gruesome stories of ritual murder to obtain body parts for witchcraft.  We think that both rape cases were related to the devil-inspired-hope that an HIV-positive man can be cured by sex with a virgin.  Evil abounds, but there are people standing up, journalists and lawyers, policemen and doctors, saying "no further".  Let us pray.

pared down

Team composition ebbs and flows, like the tide.  Or in this agricultural context, there are rainy seasons of abundant growth and dry seasons of retraction, pruning, burning.  Right now we're kind of cut back to the stump.  This week we also say goodbye to Scott Will, who was here for four months in transition to his "real" appointment to the Sudan team.  He's an amazing missionary, combining genuine enthusiasm for people of all sorts with sincere service and savvy skills.  Another gaping hole will be left in our team, and in the lives of the dozens of young men and kids who hang out at his house, the friends he has made, the staff he assists at the hospital.  And most of all, in OUR lives, as another person moves on.  Barb Ryan did a Birthday skit/game for Scott that involved a stack of hats . . . he needs ones with various former-team labels to whip on and off, because the more people who move through, the more hats he gets left with.  Yesterday,  once again water was not flowing in Nyahuka, and Scott noticed a gushing pipe that had been cut behind the community center where dozens of people were rapidly filling jerry cans, which led to the discovery that some unscrupulous residents had TURNED OFF the valves to the huge tanks that serve the town in order to build the pressure in the line to feed their personal cut-pipe-water-source.  Then he whips off Michael's hat to put on various others, friends of old missionaries, coming in the week before school to ask us to contact their old friends for help with school fees.  Then the church planter hat because our presbytery is in a conflict and both sides want his ear.  And of course the CSB-board-chairman-only-missionary-left hat, dispensing the last piles of Pierce stuff they left in the house to give away, taking Deus to the bank to sort out the new account and signatures, dealing with the electricians, getting the field mowed, answering queries, turning in accounting to the US office.  His REAL hats, medical and team leading, had to take a rest yesterday, but will be pulled back out not doubt today.  

It was Scott who led the team bible study on John 15 this week.  Pruning never feels very pleasant to the plant, I'm sure, and never seems to make sense.  But that's the state we're in right now, as a team, as a family, as a mission--we've had entire branches removed, some to graft elsewhere.  Please pray for an abundance of life to flow in the little bit of us left, and bear fruit.  Please pray we'd stay attached to the vine, and not despair of our limits, rather be faithful conduits. Please pray that all this pruning would make room for new, healthy growth!  

A red thread (or strange encouragement)

This morning the Pierce family pulled out, in the tapering drizzle of a stormy night's downpour. We had a lovely team goodbye last night, a civilized candlelight dinner with stories and toasts, followed by some tributes and gifts and prayer. Annelise showed her draft-version slide show entitled "World's Hardest Mission", which sort of goes along with "Crisis School". In other words, it's been a long and challenging three years for them, and yet they are competent and compassionate people. If they barely made it through intact, what about Deus as new head teacher, or Scott who is stretching himself even further as a more-involved chairman of the board? As they pulled out, the last direct missionary supervisors of our very-much-central mission project, it is hard not to wonder, how hard will it now be without them? We all agree this is the right plan, God's timing, the next step, for them and for us. But at what cost?

An hour later we were in church, which due to aforementioned rain was off to a trickling slow start, so I was catching up on some Bible reading in Genesis, and as usual found encouragement in an unexpected chapter, 38. Many interesting things about this story, not the least of which is injustice and double standards and a woman's initiative. But this time through I was struck by the tenuous nature of the whole ancestry of Jesus. God's plan hung by a thread. Judah and his sons did not exactly behave in the most upstanding manner. The two older sons died and the younger seemed to wander off track, without any progeny. That left a foreign-born daughter-in-law, who had been shoved off back to her father for a decade or more, to risk her life to get an heir gestating. As she was about to be stoned, she produced the red cord, the staff and seal that proved the unborn baby's paternity. Then she could have easily died again delivering twins, a hand presentation in the pre-surgical era (or in Bundibugyo) is generally a death sentence. Again the red thread, this time marking the anticipated first-born, who subsequently gets pushed to the side by his brother Perez the true heir. Two red threads, representing a tenuous blood line, a fragile continuity.

God seems to purposely hang His plans on thin strands. We feel it right now, with the opening of the school year a week away, and so many unknowns about how this new arrangement of mission/school partnership will work. But I was encouraged by this story that God will finish the story the way He wants to, in a way that shows the power comes from Him and not from us. Both Scott and I know that the next six months will not be easy, and will not be what we had anticipated or hoped for our lives in 2010. That's good. There were other readings in the service, from Acts 21 and Mark 8. We humans tend to assume that if God is at work we should see victory; if danger and difficulty loom then it's time to retreat, something must be wrong. But Jesus told Peter that was Satan's logic, that His path led to the cross. And Paul said the same as he headed to Jerusalem. So, deep breath, here we go into 2010, with a slippery hold on a scarlet cord, the blood of Jesus. And hope that we'll look back and see themes of His presence and work in spite of everything.

Historic handover

A historic handover occurred this afternoon as the executive leadership of Christ School – Bundibugyo passed for the first time from the hands of a missionary, David Pierce, into the hands of a Ugandan, Tumwesigye Deus. Keys ceremoniously changed hands today, but the entire week has been spent carefully passing off financial processes, academic schedules, and administrative lists as well as discussing broader principles of discipline and leadership. As we wrapped our final loose ends in the office of the Head Teacher, Deus asked to share a few words. He quoted from Joshua 1:9 – “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” He spoke these words as a send-off to David and as an encouragement to his two new Deputy Headmasters, Masereka Godfrey and Ajeku Robert. David and I (Scott) then laid hands on these men and prayed for them as they kneeled before us. While there are sure to be times when our school will live up to its nickname given by Rick Gray – Crisis School – my heart is peaceful that God has brought us the right man at the right time.

miniscule victories . .

My praise today is over a very small detail, in fact a moth-ish type dead bug.  Or rather it's removal.  We began rounds this morning confronted with a child in significant respiratory distress, the grandchild of a staff member, with a dozen or more concerned relatives all watching in anguish as this baby struggled, wide-eyed and tired, with a lung infection.  It took some serious effort to rouse the man-with-the-key to the generator, get it on so we had some temporary power, and retrieve the oxygen concentrator from maternity.  This is a machine that takes room air and puts out a low flow of enriched oxygen, and one of the MAIN reasons I'm excited about potentially connecting to power next week . . .anyway, the maternity staff told me sadly that it's not working anymore.  Meanwhile the baby's mom was sobbing the death wail, sure her child was dying.  So me-of-minimal-mechanical know-how (where is Luke when you need him) plugged it in and started fiddling with buttons and switches.  Just when we're on the brink of electricity it would be so like Bundibugyo for the oxygen concentrator to die.  I found that the flow meter shot up when I began to unscrew one of the fittings where the tubing to the patient is supposed to attach, and by a process of trial and error determined the connector was plugged.  Every-ready nurse Heidi handed me a needle, and I poked around in the hole and sure enough, the aforementioned dead moth was extracted.  After which oxygen did, indeed, flow.  And the patient closed his panicked eyes and fell asleep in his mom's arms.

And a victory that I hesitate to celebrate quite yet, but may be more than miniscule.  For months I've been struggling with the district, the lab, the blood bank, the clinical research center in Fort Portal, various staff, anyone who would listen, to get a workable system in place for ensuring a steady flow of blood for transfusion, and prompt delivery of some samples and results from Fort Portal.  I've had the royal run-around. So today I invited our DHO (head of everything for health in Bundibugyo), the in-charges of the two main labs, a CRS representative who was supposedly funding the non-existent transport, and all our staff to a meeting.  It started two hours or more late.  It required tedious listing of all the history and details.  It veered off several times into unsolvable dilemmas.  But praise God, thanks to having everyone in one spot and thanks to the clear thinking and selfless suggestion of Moses from the lab, we made a multi-party agreement of a new system that we all think will actually WORK.  There is nothing more tiring than making phone call after phone call and getting vague excuses and knowing money is being embezzled while anemic children are dying.  So I am very thankful for everyone's effort today and hopeful for the future.

Thirdly, there was quite a hubub in Nyahuka last night, including two gun shots and a lot of shouting.  It turned out to be police scattering a mob who had caught a rapist in the act of harming a 12 year old girl, a well-known business man who is suspected to have AIDS.  Praising God for tough justice, for our new in-charge officer who seems to be taking this seriously.  About two hundred people were on the road around the station this morning to make sure the man was carted off to jail and not allowed to bribe his way out.  Encouraging to see people on the side of the victim, at least for now.

And last but not least, the national paper ranked ALL secondary schools today.  There were 2,231.  They were published in order of best to worst, based on exam results.  Christ School Bundibugyo ranked 403--that puts us in the top 20% (or you could look at it as the 82nd percentile) in the country.  The next best Bundi schools were below 1700 on the list (bottom quarter).  Maybe another decade to the top 10%, but given what we have to work with, pretty amazing to be where we are.

This post is a bit of a pep talk . . long week of emerging from illness and struggling with discouragement.  Good lessons from the rich book of Job:  keep engaged with God, stop trying to control the world because God is doing a much better job (God never explains much to Job, other than to show him His greatness), and pray for your friends no matter what, even if they criticize you.  At long last, trying to take those lessons to heart, and as I do, seeing God's power and mercy from dead bugs to apprehended criminals to improbable political victories.

TCK's

First, I should say that the sobering, unimaginably horrible daily news from Haiti puts all our troubles in perspective.  It feels somehow dishonest to be blogging about transitions and exams in a world in which 50 thousand bodies are piled up on an island, unknown and unsung, for mass burial.

And then I should say that this line of thinking was, indirectly, brought to my heart by a TCK (third culture kid) I know.  His PE class was studying stress, and they took a quiz in which they answered questions about stressful events in their lives recently (separations, hospitalizations, deaths, losses).  The exercise then gave them a prediction of their chances of being stricken with a serious illness in the next year due to stress.  My informant scored 80% chance, highest in his group.  However, that did not phase him.  What he took away from the experience was this:  if I scored 80%, what would my friends at home score?  What about my neighbor, a kid my age, an orphan, who this weekend buried his step-brother who died of AIDS, who lives shuttled between relatives, whose other brother has basically stolen his dad's land?  

Good point.  There are many, many hardships of growing up between cultures, not the least of which is the fact that you never quite fit in anywhere.  And as we've prayed for Naomi and Quinn this week the reality of being a kid whose world changes so drastically as parents move on has been very acute.  However, there is the strength of knowing first-hand how others live, of looking through statistics to see faces, and of putting your own life into a world-wide perspective is priceless.  I remember my kids talking about an estimation question on an Iowa test: the topic was percentages, and they had categories like "talk on the phone" and "flown on an airplane".  And in their minds, the answers were tiny, because they see the large denominator of the world.

So today let me pause from complaining, remember the families who are sleeping under tarps and searching for drinkable water and threatened by anarchic gang violence in the country that was Haiti, and pray for their rescue and restoration.

bearer of bad news

Uganda, catapulting into the 21rst century, introduced a new service:  receive national exam results by sms.  So the over half-a-million 12 to 15 year olds who finished primary school at the end of 2009 and sat for their all-important Primary Leaving Exam (PLE) could send an sms this morning with their exam number, and receive instant results.  Great news for many kids who performed well (including the late Dr. Jonah's two daughters supported by the Kule Family Care Fund in their Kampala school, with excellent results).  There are four half-day exams in four subject areas:  English, Science, Math, and Social Studies.  1 is the best score, 9 is a failure (low # = good, high # = bad).  So the best possible outcome is an aggregate of 4.  The worst would be an aggregate of 36.  When WHM started Christ School, Bundibugyo ranked at the very bottom of all districts, and our first classes of CSB comprised students with scores in the mid-20's (and above).  Last year we had made our way down to the low and mid teens, a decade of improvement, and we are no longer listed in the papers among the five worst districts.  Still we have far to go here, there are many top secondary schools in Kampala who only take students with perfect scores of aggregate 4, or maybe 5, while we would be HAPPY to get someone with a 12, and usually settle for 14-18.  In the paper I learned today that thanks to the Universal Primary and Secondary Education schemes, there are 916 government-aided secondary schools in Uganda which are supposed to absorb 390,000 new pupils (that's over 400 per school, which sounds frightening, since they will probably be in at most 2 or 3 classrooms).  The 3,000-some private schools will take the other 120,000 (40 per class, a bit more realistic).

That is a long background to say that the instant sms system is a lot less fun when the student cries.  One of Jack's good friends, to whom we leant study aids, had at our house a lot over the last year, and really pulled for, scored a 27.  It isn't a failure, but it is a LONG way from his dreams.  He's a complete orphan, no mom, no dad (both died of AIDS), in a public crowded chaotic school (one where our kids attended briefly years ago) across the street, 15 years old, pleasant and conversant in English and an all-around nice guy.  But the PLE is the final word on whether, or where, one continues in school.  It is the sole number which dictates the future.  And this number tells him that his future is not at Christ School, where he longed to join his biological brother as well as my kids and his other friends.  My mom-heart felt heavy giving handing my phone over to this boy today.  Like many, many kids in Bundibugyo, he will probably struggle on in mediocrity, in a sub-standard secondary school with poor discipline and unmotivated staff.  My words that God was still good and in control of his life felt hollow as he held back his tears.  

Prenatal care, stable families, good early nutrition, protein, iron . . . stimulating nursery and early elementary schools, reading material, interested adults, an organized life, protection from disease . . . there are so many steps before the PLE that stand stacked against this kid and many others, that I know we have to take a generational long-view . . but that's small consolation to today's sad student.

Handover

Prayers appreciated this week for the Pierces, Scott, and our new Head Teacher Deus, as well as accountant Loy and deputies Godfrey and Ejeku.  Since CSB was founded over ten years ago the intention was to establish a fully Ugandan staff, with the mission providing ongoing vision and support and continuity.  The Barts ran the warm-up and then the first eight laps of that marathon, then there was a transfer ninth lap, and the Pierces have run two more strenuous rounds on their own.  By Friday, the baton should, at last, be in the hands of Deus.  So much work and prayer has led to this point . . .and yet the work and prayer to follow seem even greater.  Many closures are merely steps through a door into a whole new set of corridors.  David and Annelise are investing tremendous effort to tie up loose ends on policies, funds, staff, and schedules, use of property, down to the adequacy of the furniture and design of the renovated library space.  For them this is a bittersweet time of completing the calling they heard God give them, and moving on to find their next direction in life.  Scott needs to establish solid rapport with the new leadership team.  For them it is a challenging but potential-filled time of beginning in new working relationships.  And all needs to be ready for the return of the full staff next week, and the students the week after.  Not so that we can have a perfect school, we are far from that, but so that CSB can continue to be a Kingdom outpost, a plot of holy territory where rules and love both matter, where girls are safe, where lessons are actually taught, where God's creation is respected, where the Gospel is clearly heard and seen, where prayer changes hearts, where lives are set in directions that will ultimately transform Bundibugyo.  If that depended upon us, we would despair, but we settle in for the next term, expecting God to show up in new and clear and rescuing ways, bringing PEACE to our tumultuous hearts.