along the road . .

Highways, galore.  Multiple ways to go from one city to another, concentric rings of bypass options, always options.  A bewildering transition from a country with paved roads in about five basic directions total fanning out from the capital, to this one with more miles of pavement in the average county than we have in the whole country.  Maps and directions are rather passe now, the new way to navigate is by gps.  In every car, on many phones, a constant ability to check in.

Billboards that light up in computer-screen precision graphics, and change as we drive by.  

The ease, of knowing that within five minutes of about anywhere you are you can find a decent bathroom (with plumbing and privacy) and even a decent meal, served in minutes.  No planning ahead for the ONE stopping place on an 8 hour trip, instead you choose from thousands.

Large people.   We read the nutrition literature, and the American obsession with obesity always seemed so far outside our experience in Africa where under-nutrition is the issue, that we shrugged it off.  But the change in a decade is noticeable.  And it is the poorer strata of this society that are the larger, the wealthier people attend to health and social mores and pay for exercise and high-protein food.

Americans.  Yes, this place is FULL of Americans. People who speak English, with familiar accents.  It still shocks me to overhear conversations and realize that it is NORMAL to run into Americans we don't KNOW. Everywhere, in the rest areas, bathrooms, gas stations, restaurants.  

Pies.  Probably shouldn't mention that in view of the item two above.  But I am known to love them, and Wendy had a hot apple pie in the oven on our way north, and JD had a hot berry pie in the oven on our way south.  I felt very loved by these two friends who went to great efforts, in a way that was meaningful to me.

Books on tape-a new variety, the private head-phone set, so that there is complete silence from the backseat, and no arguing over which book to listen to or complaints from older brothers.  From the library.  And they even insisted on giving us extra batteries.  Very nice.

Roads smooth enough to read on.  Or type this email.

A longing for order

I love reading through Judges and the Books of Samuel.  There were the Israelites, moving into  a land they had heard about throughout their childhood, the place where their distant ancestors sojourned, a place whose mystique intrigued them in songs and stories and anticipated glories.  Only it wasn't quite empty and waiting, and as they fought for a place to settle, there were many pockets of other tribes of people left scattered among them. People with similar skin tones and language roots, and even outwardly similar religious ceremonies.  People with lives rather comparable in most ways to theirs.  And these people had kings.  They did not take their directions from an unseen deity attended by priests before a tent.  They had proper thrones, human faces of leadership, rules and regulations, armies and boundaries.  The Israelites wanted that too.  God had given them a lot of freedom, but by the end of Judges what should have been freedom felt more like chaos.  God was fighting their battles, but they wanted to follow a human leader into war.  So they begged God to appoint a king, so they could be like everyone else.

I have so much sympathy for the Israelites.  Because there are many days when I'd like to be a little more like everyone around me.  We've visited some amazing homes in America already, places that kind of remind me that bare cement floors and three kids in a 10 by 10 bedroom and the 4th sharing a storage closet, walls where lizards crawl freely and water drips from industrial bare pipes in the sink, are not quite as luxurious as they seem in another context, the world of mud-and-wattle homes.  Instead, here we find places with pools and pianos and framed art and spotless kitchens.  And what's more, these are families who are loving and generous and well-adjusted, with affectionate teens and bright toddlers, with world-concern and creative priorities.  For the first time in America, I think my kids are noticing it too, and at least considering what it would be like to live like this.  (I discovered that I had a sort of mental deal that I wouldn't be swayed by wealth because I'd see the spiritual emptiness that accompanies it, but what to do when visiting family after family who are materially AND spiritually blessed?).  

Being led only by God felt too risky to the Israelites, they wanted some concrete human structure to assure their future.  And they did not want to be "chosen" as separate and unique anymore, after a long exile, they just wanted to be normal. They chose limits, to get order and to fit in.  I can understand that.  Right now I'd like to NOT be always on the move, borrowing cars and clothes, hoping for things to work out, asking for help, a step behind, on the edge.  I'd like to be a bit more like everyone else.

When the Israelites asked for a king, they got one, and all the loss of freedom and distance from God that entailed.  He had asked them to be content with His presence, and to be set apart, but they did not accept His risky offer.  What was good for the nations was not necessarily right for them, but they wanted what they could see.  So I sigh, and admit that what God gives others around me He may not give me, that for us the order of a Kingdom may not be palpable until eternity.  That I'd rather have the holy wild disorder of a life of pilgrimage than the security of a settled life where my order becomes a layer of obscuring cloud between me and Reality.  Praying that I could pray for what is true to my heart without selling out my soul.  And that the toll it takes on four teens would not torpedo them, but rather strengthen them to grasp onto the Presence of a God who leads in obscure and unexpected and disruptive ways.

Grumbling about Grace

Wrestling with grace right now.  Which only shows how little I grasp the truth.  

Hither by thy grace we've come . . . a hymn phrase which is excruciatingly true for our family.  So many times we could have turned back, we were advised to turn back.  So many times that a tragedy almost blasted us off course.  Yet at the end of 17 years we are here on a furlough in the USA, with four fantastic kids, getting within spitting distance of fifty but pretty healthy and strong, and a whole world of other people in Africa whom we know and love and pull for.  And to top it off, a child who is about to embark upon one of the finest educations this world has to offer, at a negligible cost to us.  Which leaves me feeling that at any moment, we'll be found out.  I think I felt that way when I went off to school too, as if those grades and scholarships were pushed my way by God for a purpose, and soon it would be clear that I was an impostor in the world of brilliant people.

So I imagine, in a crookedly illogical way, if our station in life now had been based on our merits (as I imagine others to be, our friends whom we visit with their jobs and houses and causes), then it would be somehow more assured.  The skills that brought us to this place should, after all, keep us here.  That if Luke had been tested in top-level American schools all along, we'd know he is about to be fine in college. In a time of transition and homelessness, I want to grasp onto that.

Instead we have grace, undeserved good things that are showered upon us.  Which means that at any moment (as anyone who has read Job must know) it could all fall apart.  Which is not very reassuring.

But here is where the wrestling touches the hip, and leaves a scarred triumphant limp.  Would I rather rest the next decade (three more kids to get into university and paid for, and four to launch into life, new roles with WHM, a new country of service, new language, while maintaining ties and commitments in Uganda, dreams and projects and learning and science and relationships, maybe even a wedding by the end of the decade?) on who we are, or who God is?  Grace feels nebulous and shifting and unreliable.  But God is NOT.  

The Main(e) Thing We Appreciate .. .

. . .about Maine, well, it would be hard to choose just one. Lobsters, for sure, have to be near the top of the list. When we arrived Thursday our good friends the Meyers, a family with whom I grew up way back when in Virginia and who subsequently resettled in Maine, took us to an authentic lobster shack where we learned to dismember the bright red steamed creatures and dip the sweet white morsels of meat in butter. Yum. There was a mist coming in from the ocean over the boats and stacks of floats and traps on the docks, and we all used rolls of paper towels as we talked and snapped shells and picked our way through the messy meal.

Lakes would have to be a close second. We're staying in a small camp on Damariscotta Lake, one of thousands. The Meyers keep this summer cottage about half an hour from their real home. Surrounded by oaks and pines, a swaying dock leads to a canoe, 4 kayaks, and an 18-foot sail boat. For three days we have the privilege of our own space as a family, to swim and float, and cook our own meals, make smores over a campfire as the daylight fades, and be on our own schedule. We were in the water most of Friday and Saturday, but the winds and clouds have picked up, and now after church it's about 60 degrees and grey. Good sailing weather, and Jack says the water is fine, but I'm wrapped in a blanket enjoying the shore.

Winding two-lane roads, modest houses, incessant green, blueberries for sale and a box of tomatoes by the roadside, historic towns, an outdoorsy laid-back atmosphere. What's not to like about Maine? But the main thing would have to be the kindness of our friends who made this weekend possible. It has been 17 years since Scott and I visited, Luke was in utero. We've seen the Meyers in Virginia on visits, but this is our first time back. Thankful for muffins and cookies and tours of the fabulous model railroad in their basement, and thankful for love and interest in us over all those years, for the grandparently smooth landing we can make here.

Moving up the East Coast

This post comes from New Haven, CT. Though Luke chose Yale sight-unseen (for any of us), we have now spent an afternoon walking the campus with my cousin Geoffrey who completed a graduate degree in Architecture at Yale and still lives in the area, and we are all excited about his choice. Yale's system of residential colleges means that the vastness of the University is divided into manageable blocks of classic, integrated buildings and courtyards where students and faculty live and interact. It's almost like EVERYONE gets to live on the Lawn (for our felllow Wahoos). Geoffrey knows a ton about the history, and of course the architecture, of New Haven, so he was a great guide. He even met us to start off our afternoon at THE original pizza restaurant in America, Pepe's on Wooster street. Everyone who knows us knows there is nothing like a superb oven-fired thin-crust pizza in a congenial atmosphere to put us all into a positive mood about this city! Lux et Veritas, Light and Truth, is carved into many buildings. We pray Luke seeks both while here. And we trust that Light and Truth will find him.

The last few days we have been gorging on relationship, drinking in the kindness of others. Team mate Sarah and former intern-WHM kid Tim W both showed up at our Sunday School presentation. In spite of a sound system glitch it was a great morning (Scott, handy man that he is, had brought an extra speaker set). Grace Church knows and loves us and Bundibugyo, so it was great to have an hour to talk to them. Afterwards we were treated to a fellowship lunch at the assistant pastor's house, and reminded of the richness of new friendships that can unfold here. Then we left on this trip early Tuesday morning. First stop was Rick and Wendy's in Delaware. Our old neighbors. I'm awed to find people like us coping so well, integrated into American life, and using their Africa hearts to bless the several thousand international graduate students in the nearby University of Delaware. Chase is the smiliest little thing, and the devotion that the family is pouring into all the boys is humbling to witness. We got to see Grant's arm-in-process. Only Aidan was pretty intimidated, too young to remember us but old enough to be shy. That was a real treat. Then we stopped at Princeton where one of Luke's best friends is about to start school. And ended the day in NW New Jersey on the Elwood farm. After two years knowing Nathan, and hearing about this place, it was almost like another home-coming. Horses and organic vegetables, a rambling historic farm house, beds for all (due to the sacrifice of the family), warm hugs, a gracious candle-lit pasta and salad dinner from fresh ingredients, and even the famous apple-cake we tried and failed to replicate in Uganda. We were made to feel like family, and it was wonderful. This morning we added to our treats by visiting Pamela B-P in her apartment in New York City! I love the way that seeing someone's home unfolds new depths of seeing that person, not just who Pamela is in Uganda but how she reflects that in her space in NYC. With Nathan, Sarah, my mom, and all six of us, we pretty well filled the place, but she managed to host us with bagels and tea and a chance to catch up on our lives. Afterwards we drove around the part of town where Columbia's medical school and school of public health are housed, where Nathan and Sarah will spend the next few years. And then on to New Haven, as above.

Thankful to find old friends and great food and reunion and beauty as we move up the coast.

Celebrate

News from Heidi: Uganda has been conditionally approved by GAVI to begin administering the pneumococcal vaccine. For the paradoxuganda faithful, this was an issue we spent a good bit of heart on early in 2010, advocating by gathering data and composing letters and emails and making phone calls and recruiting prayer. It sounds small, but in the big picture of child survival in Bundibugyo, because it is the epicenter of sickle cell gene prevalence, and kids with sickle cell die of pneumococcal sepsis, this vaccine could significantly improve and extend the lives of children. Very thankful. And part of the trend of what God is doing, our team often now acts as on-the-ground advocates but God brings larger, well-funded, international organizations to step in and provide the money and programs we so desperately need.

SCHEDULE

8 August (past) Community Methodist Church of Half Moon Bay, CA

15 August-Sunday School Grace OPC, Vienna, VA (9:45 am)

17-24 August- Trip to Maine, leaving Luke on the way back at Yale in New Haven for orientation

26 August-Caleb departs for Kenya

Sometime between September 7 to 10, visit in Cincinnati and Indianapolis (not yet arranged!)

12 September-TBA, but hopefully Lawndale Community Church 

17-25 September- Mission Training International Debriefing and Renewal retreat in Colorado

25-30 September visit Scott's family in CA

Drive back from Chicago to Virginia . . . 

10 October (Sunday) Faith Christian Fellowship, Baltimore, MD

17 October (Sunday) Trinity Presbyterian Church, Charlottesville VA

22-24 October Family Weekend at Yale

27 October to 13 November . . . Field Director meetings for Scott at WHM in Philadelphia, followed by Team Leader training

20-27 November family Thanksgiving week, with most of our immediate family, including Caleb returning from Kenya (!!)

30 December Departure

In case anyone can connect with us as we move, here is the general plan.  We have about five supporting churches, which represent our life trajectories (Cincinnati and Virginia, meeting and merging in Charlottesville then Chicago then Baltimore).  We want to thank as many of you face to face as possible.  Please join us in asking God to bless others through a first-hand testimony about what He's doing in Uganda, and to find fresh help for our brave and perseverant teams in East Africa!  

youth and perfection

Our culture is a bit obsessed with these.  I suppose everyone knows that, but coming from a place where we still have people who scoot along the ground with limbs withered by polio, or are missing half their teeth, where used clothes are worn creatively until the holes outpace the fabric, where to call someone "mamba" (grandma) is a huge compliment, where elders are presumed to be wise and young people required to remain silent . . . well, this focus on looking young and perfect through the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th decade and beyond is somewhat surprising.  I'm spending a lot of time in doctors' offices these days.  Today I accompanied my mom to one, and we thumbed through the magazine in the waiting room, which gave us an eyeful of what is considered desirable here.  Yesterday at the gynecologist, of all places, underneath my insurance form was a paper which said "Are you interested in our spa services?  May we call you to discuss what we have to offer?" followed by a list of procedures for injecting gel into facial fold-lines, or ridding legs of visible veins.  The dermatologist office went further, showing actual videos with before-and-after pictures in the EXAM room.  So while you wait in a paper-thin-gapping hospital gown to get the prognosis on a potentially cancerous mole, you are reminded that the REAL problem is not a little cancer here or there but looking like you've lived 48 years.  These are two very legitimate medical practices where real life-and-death problems are seen, and they are both promoting cosmetic procedures.  Money-makers I am sure, and once a tipping-point quorum of people avail themselves of this resource, it becomes the symbol of wealth, and then the and the lack of availability makes the rest of the society feel deprived.  Of course we've also been in the mall once, and to a few other stores, where the volume of STUFF to buy to look good is unreal.  A vicious circle of bombardment with images that emphasize an ideal, leave the viewer feeling inadequate and hungry for more, while business prospers.

Our God is a lover of beauty.  God THOUGHT of beauty, to begin with.  I have no problem with color and style and uniqueness and symmetry and the total art form of the human body.  But somehow we've gone further than that, from a balanced attempt to display the glory of who we are, to a paranoid drive to change ourselves into never-aging always-in-style homogenous perfection.  

And interestingly, we rented a movie tonight that shows the endgame of that trend (have I mentioned the REDBOX as one of my new America-favorites?  What a deal! Right there in the grocery store, one dollar for a movie, it pops out of a vending machine, and you return it the same way the next day).  "Surrogates" is not great cinema.  Mediocre writing and acting.  But the concept is fascinating.  An entire society of sculpted perfect robots, with the real people hiding in dark bedrooms and living virtually.  Every surrogate is a beautiful person, without blemish.  But our hero Bruce Willis longs for the reality of connecting as an aging, grieving, imperfect human, with his similar wife.  He also of course saves the world in the process, but don't let me spoil it.  After watching the movie, one feels glad that not everyone has had plastic surgery, that the world is a bit scarred, and real.

A friend wrote today that by October we won't even notice this anymore, so keep processing while it's fresh.

you're not in kansas . .

 . . . anymore.  Or in Uganda.

A few clues from a bike ride today.  Yes, my trusty ten-speed bike from well over 20 years ago, is here.  The thin tires, the pink and grey paint job, and the gear levers on the supporting bars mark it as very non-modern.  But it is in great shape.  I rode out with Julia, remembering all my commutes to work in Chicago . . and then looked at my hands, expecting to see the disintegrating rubber smearing my palms.  But no. The deterioration of a year or two in Bundi does not even happen in a decade or two in Virginia.  Amazing.  

And then, later on the ride, zipping down PAVED ROADS (another clue), back on what used to be a one-lane road to the water reservoir through woods and is now a winding hilly unmarked pavement passing monstrous new mansions, we came across a snake in the road.  At first I did not even find this remarkable.  Because I OFTEN find snakes in the road in Bundi.  Dead ones.  The preferred method of snake encounter in Bundi is to kill and then throw on the road surface. So I often see dead snakes as I bike to the hospital or to visit.  Sometimes I slow down to look better.  No responsible citizen would allow a live snake to carry on through their own home area, because snakes are potentially deadly.  This time, the snake was a good size, maybe two-fingers thick and at least 3 feet long, jet black on the back and whitish belly tapering into spots on the flanks.  So I stopped, right by it, to look more closely, thinking that I should learn some American species.  Only then did I see that this snake was NOT DEAD.  No one had killed it and thrown it on the road, it was slowly writhing its way across the pavement, little forked tongue flicking out to sense its way, turning its head towards me as the curves of its body rippled.  I backed up, wishing for a handy hoe or panga, then wondering if that was considered a good deed here or an anti-environmental faux pas.  It was not the snake that jarred me, it was the fact that it had not been killed that shocked me.  

We're not in Kansas anymore.

love/hate

I suppose a lot of relationships are this way.  Ours with Bundi certainly was.  Heidi's recent post with the blanks implies the same.  And it's no different here in the good old USA.

What I love about America:  

WASHING MACHINES.  You can do laundry any time.  Six people can have clean clothes in an hour.  Or less.  Amazing.  And the machine does not have hang-overs that make it miss work, or go to burials of great aunts, or get into sulky moods, or need morning tea.  (an hour after I wrote that and never sent this post . . the washing machine flooded, inexplicably, the whole extra-large wash and rinse water in a spreading lake through the kitchen and filtered through the floorboards into the basement, what ironic timing).

SHOWERS.  We actually have a pretty good system in Bundi, thanks to Scott, a roof tank with a pump so we have pressure, and an ingenious solar-heating panel that allows the sun to make the water very very hot.  On a sunny day, that is.  By evening.  But here one can have instant hot shower, any time of any day, any length of shower, for multiple people.  And I have not seen a single roach scurry across the tiles, or any mushrooms growing out of the cracks in the walls.  Nice.

CLEAN MEDICAL INSTRUMENTS AND PAIN RELIEF.  Just back from the dentist again.  So organized, sterile, and humane.  Very confidence-inspiring.  In Uganda mostly dentistry consists of pulling teeth which are past the point of repair.  Instead our extremely competent dentist keeps patching mine up, and his numbing techniques are an art form in itself.  

FRESH SALADS.  Fresh fruits, vegetables, lettuce.  Mounds of it.  Every day.  No more buying fresh and then having a two-month pause between the next trip to Kampala.  And BERRIES.  All shapes and colors, so tasty.  One hardly knows where to start.  After five days in CA with gourmet cooking by Ruth and Sonja we are quite spoiled . . but managed to pull together an exceptional meal at my mom's last night too.  

What I have a hard time getting used to:  

ABUNDANCE WITHOUT ACCESS.   Movies on the plane are pay-per-view.  The luggage carts in the airport have to be rented.  There is wireless internet everywhere, locked.  Every book I've searched for in the library has been checked out.  Several people have offered to loan us cars, but the insurance/liability technical issues lead into quagmires.  We will manage to get what we need, by God's provision, but I sense the frustration of seeing it without being able to reach it.  In Uganda there is a lot we can't get, but that's mostly because it's not actually THERE.  Once you see it, it is not so hard to reach it.

EVERYONE IS SUPPOSED TO KNOW THIS.  Everyone plans, far ahead.  We should have known that to take Caleb on a campus tour of Stanford, one must make a reservation.  On line.  Two weeks in advance, minimum.  Maybe they do background checks (see below).  In spite of this, we did a self-tour, and using techniques gleaned from movies I managed to get into a key-car-only dorm so we could even see a room.  Or take activities.  And all this stuff costs money (see above).  My kids are already too old to enter any new sports I think, people start young, and have played their whole life.  Community soccer leagues for the Fall closed registration on July 25 (I'm still investigating).  This is a culture where it is hard to just walk in, be spontaneous.

SECURITY, WHICH IS REALLY MARKETING.  To buy Luke a phone we practically had to donate an organ.  He's not 18, so Scott had to answer a zillion security questions.  I begin to see why right-wing militias hole up in Montana off the grid.  It's incredibly invasive.  All those details, to keep someone safe?  Or to gather marketing data?

I'm sure that's enough for today.