a paradox production

Presenting...a brief cinematic review of the work of the Bundibugyo Team in 2010. We've just uploaded the video we made in August and have been showing coast to coast this fall (with narration by Jack, Julia, Caleb, and Luke!). Click HERE to see it on the Vimeo website. (We'd suggest clicking on that little "full screen button" on the lower right hand portion of the screen - and getting a pair of headphones - for the best experience).

a glimpse from the middle

Woke early, lying in the dark of a sleeping house.  Last night we welcomed Scott's parents, and late the night before we picked Luke up at the main bus station in DC after his 9-hour trip from Boston.  Still waiting on Caleb, but the house is filling for the holiday.  Sleeping in every available room from basement on up I realized we have 3 in the over-70 crowd and 3 in the under-20 crowd, and Scott and I smack in the middle.  A season of life in which we are supposed to be caring for those on both ends, only it's a little more peculiar when we don't even have a home or car or most of the accompaniments of success or independence, when we're in limbo ourselves, when we still receive from the financial generosity of our parents, and depend upon scholarships and aid for our kids.  So we offer what we can, listening ears, dinner planned and cooked and served and cleaned up, encouragement, medical insight, stories and entertainment and concern, a reason and focus to draw everyone together for a while.  

The middle has been a place of ache recently.  Long trip this past week, which was good, but left us wiped out.  Then immediately back to all-star soccer tournaments.  Both Jack and Julia loved playing with these teams, but both had disappointing outcomes.  Of course I realize that at least 75% or more of the teams leave without winning anything (brackets of 8 to 15 in the tourneys, 1rst and 2nd place trophies).  But it can be excruciating from the sidelines to watch a random ball make the difference between being in and being out, to watch the season end on a defeat.  In the end I think it was sadder that the season was over than that the teams lost.  J and J have made some friends, and it is the one place in America that they feel most at home.  More goodbyes, hard days.  And as well as Luke is doing, his road is also a steep one.  Wish we could make it better for him.  And our parents all have their challenges in health and changing relationships and growing limits, and I know we don't help them the way we should.

So in the early morning hours, awake and wondering how to make this week one of Thanksgiving when my heart is in a fog, how to honor our parents and care for our kids at the same time, how to bind up the hearts that are sad, how to be sensitive to change and age and expectation.  Looming over us, the reality that this week with Luke is one of our last for a long time.  The sorrow of that threatens to engulf, not just sorrow for myself but even moreso sorrow for our kids and our parents, all of whom suffer losses from our lifestyle.  

At that moment in the dark, there was a glimpse of reality, one of those rare moments when the veil is pierced: Jesus feels the same way I do right now, when He looks at this world, sorrow for our sorrows.  Jesus wept.  He had hope, He knew He was the resurrection and the life, and yet He entered into our time-fettered world so completely, that in the moment of loss, He wept.  

The New Sudan

The documentary film which we were able to see in Philadelphia a couple of weeks ago with the Massos is now available for purchase by DVD. Check out this web site:

http://www.nadusfilms.com/home/

The group seeks to tell the story of what is happening now in Sudan, raise awareness, and channel money from the West back into church development, water, health, and education.  Which is exactly what our team does.  Well worth watching to educate your prayers ahead of the referendum approaching on January 9, 2011, when the South will vote on whether to secede from the North and become an independent state.  Two quotes stuck out to me:  a girl born right now in South Sudan is more likely to eventually die in childbirth than to complete primary school.  And the tremendous progress towards peace and reconciliation and change that has occurred in the last five years has grown out of the prayers of the people of South Sudan.  The least we can do is join them.

being a parent is EXHAUSTING

One kid in Boston, victorious soccer match against Harvard, but lost his wallet, which is only important because of little details like credit card, money, keys . . .and being in a city far from home.  Many quick prayers for finding, and by mid-morning the good news, the wallet found in a car in which he had ridden, and he made it to the bus.  Age 17, negotiating his own way from Boston to Washington DC, via NYC, in the dark, on a bus.  Another kid calls from seven thousand plus miles away, almost to the end of a trying term of school work, a few run-ins with rules, about to fly alone over three continents, and by the way needs his SSN for registering for SAT's.  Two more kids in all-day soccer all-star tournaments, the anxiety of cheering as teams go down to defeat, watching near-miss shots, comforting, hoping.  An emotionally significant necklace lost on the field then found.  A sprained ankle in the last minute of the last game.  Pulling for them, believing in them, so hard to see disappointment.  Both manage to stay in the tournament, but no spectacular sense of victory.  

Does parenting ever get easier?  Probably not.  We want them to be safe, to be happy, to taste a bit of success, to have friends.  But we can not make that happen, we can only pray (for the lost wallet and the lost necklace I am very very thankful, for the sprained ankle and the tenuous travel and the dashed hopes I am still laboring) that God who knows more and loves more deeply will orchestrate what is good for the soul, will bring them through every challenge for their own good, and His glory.  

Bible Class and Mana

One of the unexpected delights of visiting my sister in Charlotte was being invited to speak in three 11th grade Bible classes at her kids' Christian school. We told the kids we were there because I'm Emma's aunt, and because God called me to missions when I was a kid, so it's not to early for them to be considering the world's needs and their passions. I have new admiration for teachers who go all-out high-energy for a 50 minute class, and then do it again, and then again. It's a great school, and the kids asked good questions. It was mostly a delight to get into our niece and nephews' lives that way, to meet their friends and see their environment, to cheer at a basketball game and walk down their roads.

Another unexpected delight was to reconnect with our friends Mark and Marnie M. They were missionaries in Uganda back in the day, and we ended up at Kijabe having babies at the same time. In fact Scott delivered their second son. We visited them in Uganda, and we've occasionally kept in touch even since they moved back to America. Mark finished a graduate degree and worked in politics, but recently decided the way he could serve Africa was to begin a company to produce RUTF, ready-to-use therapeutic food. Right now the primary product used in aid situations around the world is produced by a French company. Being peanut-based, Mark saw the potential to make this in Georgia. So he invested all he had, and all he could convince others to give, in a plant that is just starting up. If he can get UNICEF approval and contracts, this could be a product that saves many lives. And though it is a business, it is also a mission, one that exists to address real causes of malnutrition, to pour back into communities, to enable local production of nourishing food (the American plant will only be for emergency situations). Who would have guessed that his company's small headquarter office would be set up in Matthews, the same quaint suburb town where my sister lives? So we dropped in. The feel is of a political campaign or an entrepreneurial adventure, walls plastered with papers and markers, ideas, photos. Used furniture, young enthusiasts, the edge of potential failure or potential greatness. The zeal of a man who has invested everything because he believes in it. Check their web site at : http://mananutrition.org/.

A third delight came that evening, when my sister hosted several relatives to see our video and chat with us over desert. I have cousins and second cousins and cousins of in-laws, a complicated and extensive family. And some have had hard years, surviving breast cancer and destructive addictions and mental illness. So it is a privilege to just have an evening to be together, and to know that in spite of infrequent meetings and many other life issues, they still care about us.

But the last delight of the evening, Mark and Marnie showed up too. And I was reminded of that bond. There is something a bit haunted, or out-of-place, a bit changed, about those who have lived in Africa for long seasons, something that never goes away, and is recognizable to fellow-pilgrims. And something that does my heart good when we encounter one another again.

Homesick, but seeing

Basime's small window of intact vision has been preserved, for now. The surgery was successful, and he continues to heal, slowly. Because his eye has absolutely NO reserve, Dr. B is monitoring him very closely. Which means that Basime has been in America for almost a month now, and still has at least a week or two to go. Where he finds himself living in unimaginable luxury. This is a kid whom we helped rent his own tiny mud-floored room as a teen, because as an orphan the corner he'd been given at his aunt's house was in a room she used for her alcohol-selling business, and he was finding it impossible to sleep or study in the noisy confusion of the impromptu bar. Now he's being looked after by saints from Tennessee, complete with a tastefully decorated bedroom, private bath, internet access, new shoes, and unlimited food. So it surprised him this week that he felt a certain heaviness in his chest, and a longing for home. That he missed kahunga and sombe and the familiar sun-soaked village, here in the land of dreams.

Which made this the perfect time to go and visit him. We drove from my sister's in North Carolina westward to Chattanooga. When we traced the home where he was staying, his face glowed as we all greeted each other in Lubwisi. I forgot how tiny Ugandans look here in the land of the large. We took him out for the afternoon, and he talked and talked. Perhaps because so much had been stored up inside, or he was with people who got his accent (or maybe he's talking all the time to everyone, I don't know). I love seeing America through his eyes, a view similar to our own kids' views.

What do you do for an afternoon in Chattanooga? We chose to make a pilgrimage to Covenant College. This small institution has been well represented in Bundibugyo. All of the Herrons, for starters. Wendy Gray first came as a student. Teachers Matt Allison and Ashley Wood, interns including the two who fled from the rebels with us, and more. We went to pay homage to the place that formed these remarkable friends, to show our kids the school (who knows? the brochure says 99% get some kind of financial aid), and to give Basime the chance to see the place his friends Peter and Lydia and Luke Herron studied. Since Basime is enrolled in a Library Science degree at Uganda Christian University, we thought he should see an American library. And whom should we find behind the desk, but Laurel Brauer, another WHM MK! Small world.

Our day passed too quickly, and ended with a lovely meal with Dr. B, his wife, newborn son, and inlaws. This family has sacrificed thousands of dollars and countless hours to save Basime's vision. It still makes me shake my head in awe that God provided for our paths to cross at the exactly right time, and moved them to go to such extraordinary lengths for a kid they barely knew.

When we said goodbye, Basime told us that he no longer felt homesick, that being with us was like being home. But I found that being with him only made me miss Uganda and all our "kids" there more. So one case of glaucoma and homesickness cured, but another case only deepens.

The Big 5-0

Today we celebrate Scott. (See his facebook page for lots of great appreciations, some funny and many poignantly sweet). And when I reflect on who he is and what God has done in and through him, a half-century seems a short time. We met just over 30 years ago (!) and so I've had a close-up view of a long process of polishing, refining, shattering, remolding; the creation of a full human being. There is no one else I'd rather be with in any situation from having a baby to hiking a mountain to surviving a war to making a dinner to watching a sunset to swimming a wave to just being quiet and doing nothing. Looking forward to the next 50 years up close, too, with the greatest gift in my life.

The Human Development Index

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them . . . 

You have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings, and crowned him with glory and honor . . 

(Genesis 1 and Psalm 8)

How far, and how unevenly, we have fallen.  The UNDP released the 2010 report this week on the development index, which ranks 169 countries all over the world based on life expectancy at birth, years of education, and income.  Not surprisingly, the most highly developed countries are Norway, Australia, New Zealand, United States, and Ireland. . . then other countries in Europe and Asia.  And also not surprisingly, the bottom of the list clusters in Africa. 

Here are the neediest 25:

# Uganda

# Senegal

# Haiti

# Angola

# Djibouti

# Tanzania (United Republic of)

# Côte d'Ivoire

# Zambia

# Gambia

# Rwanda

# Malawi

# Sudan

# Afghanistan

# Guinea

# Ethiopia

# Sierra Leone

# Central African Republic

# Mali

# Burkina Faso

# Liberia

# Chad

# Guinea-Bissau

# Mozambique

# Burundi

# Niger

# Congo (Democratic Republic of the)

# Zimbabwe

 As people who are called to fight for the restoration of the glory of God's creation, I think this is one pretty good indicator of where we need to be.

Take a TCK shopping

Though we're seven thousand miles from Uganda and transitioning to Kenya, we still have a huge investment of our hearts there.  Perhaps the largest part of that is in the kids we have sponsored, which means that we continue to fill a parental sort of role in their lives.  There are seven still in school for whom we are fully responsible, three partially, and two young adults who have embarked upon life (besides our medical students and biological children . . ).  Paying and Praying are our main connection to these kids now, but I have the opportunity to send a few small Christmas gifts, which is the other main role of a parent.  So Jack and Julia bravely accompanied me to two stores having good sales yesterday.  None of us are super-shoppers, or great decision-makers about STUFF.  But I found them very helpful in knowing how a certain thing would be perceived, what Ugandans might like.  My last item was for the only girl, whom we've known since she was born, friends of the family and on Julia's soccer team, and who we partially sponsor helping her dad.  I was looking at a display of necklaces and nearby were lotions and perfumes.  So I asked Julia what to choose.  

And she had no hesitation, which for those who know Julia may be a surprise.  Mom, she explained, if you give her a piece of jewelry, then when she wears it, everyone will see she has something different and be jealous, and she wont' want to be excluded by the other girls that way.  But if you give her this perfumed lotion, she can share it with the other girls, and everyone will be happy.

Which is why TCKs make good cross-cultural workers.  They get it.  

Note From the Bench

I like being on the field, which I remembered Wednesday evening as Julia's team scrimmaged parents vs. players.  It was about 8 dads, 2 brothers, and me, versus the team.  Thanks to weekly family soccer with Luke and Caleb and Nathan and Ashley, I at least held my own, which I felt was important as the only mom on the field.  (Though I did accidentally trip a girl in the box which resulted in a penalty shot, not very motherly, but it thankfully went directly into the hands of our keeper).  It was a pretty even game, 1 to 1, until Jack showed up in the last ten minutes and came in for the parent side and scored the winning goal.  I suppose Julia was ambivalent, it is good to be from a soccer-family, but a bummer to be beat by your brother.

But I digress.  I like being on the mission field too, in the game so to speak, running hard and working hard, right in the middle of the action around the ball.  But I've been subbed out, and I'm sitting on the bench.  

So what does a good bench-warmer do?  First, I think, trust the Coach, who sees which players are tired, or about to be injured, or are dragging down the team's play, and need a rest.  Second, cheer.  When my kids are subbed out, they are still fully in the game, pulling for the team.  Luke in particular impresses me in his all-out loyalty, as happy for a team mate's score as his own.  

Next week I'll join the last of Scott's nearly three weeks of WHM meetings, the Team Leader training and retreat.  I'm not a leader any more, but I want to be a good bench player.  One who cheers on the other players, who cares about the game, who is ready with the water bottle or pats on the back to strengthen the starters as they take a brief rest, who trusts this out-of-the-action assignment and waits patiently, who does some warm-up exercises and stays ready to go back in.  Because the only point of being on the bench is that one is waiting on the Coach, in faith.  Not very glorious, but a lot of the Bible is about waiting.  From the bench.