BURUNDI!

The WHM board unanimously approved Burundi as a new field for our mission. Join us in thanking God for this calling, and humbly offering what we have to a nation recovering from civil war and genocide, making all things new and good and whole again.

back to bundi . . .

. . . or, "can you go home again?"

So much of this trip is familiar.  Packing the car in Kampala, last run of groceries, sipping tea and wondering how to keep that balance between the dangers of becoming dehydrated and the inconvenience of 9 hours on the road with bushes for bathroom stops.  The crazy traffic, trucks and pedestrians and bodas all criss-crossing the roads, jostling for position in the lurching stream of traffic.  A new scene:  squadrons of police, riot-ready, with their armored vehicles and gear, at each major roadway coming into the city.  Then the hours of cross-country driving, weaving on and off "diversions" as the roadwork continues, rejoicing in stretches of new pavement.  Sailing past vast papyrus swamps, whizzing through colorful trading centers, bracing for the inevitable speed bumps (or mountains).  The traditional lunch stop in Mubende, Scott fending off the aggressive vendors and choosing hot grilled chicken on a stick, sweet warm roasted gonja, papery-thin chapatis (one of the sellers comments to him:  you changed your car!  . . observant).  The obligatory hour in Fort Portal, where there are always a handful of errands, someone's last request from Andrews, a last trip to the ATM for cash.  This time I stand in line most of that time to pay school fees for one of our students, pushed from behind in that no-personal-space-African way of pressing lots of people into small spaces, until I am among the lucky throng in front of the tired tellers.  Then the final stretch to Bundibugyo, this time gaping at the wide swathes of roadway being cleared by the Chinese construction company tasked with paving, gawking at the backhoes and loaders and dump trucks.   Which end at Karagutu, making the narrow rocky slippery winding trek over the mountain pass seem even more treacherous.  We stop to look at the Semliki snaking its way to Lake Albert, and the hot springs steaming up from the edge of the Ituri Forest.  As we descend into Bundibugyo lightening breaks from clouds along the Rwenzori ridges, and we find ourselves trailing sheets of rain and strong winds. 

In fact we are only minutes behind what turns out to be the storm of the year, blowing roofs off houses, downing our new power lines, scattering branches.  Ominous, or a bracing symbol of the Spirit going ahead?  Darkness follows just as we pull in to the delighted claps and exclamations of our neighbors.  8 months gone . . . just long enough for Mejili, DMC, and Truffle to all look nearly ready to deliver.  There are hugs and welcomes, and soon visitors in spite of the dark hour.  Juliet and Arthur (delightfully cute) have walked up from school, the Johnson family interrupts their meal, Scott Will accompanies us home where we find Star bursting with excitement, and our friend and neighbor Asita with two daughters and stacked pans on their heads, bearing hot food.  We are home.

But not quite home, any more.  A house that used to be a home and is now, I hesitate to say it, rather depressing.  The paint is yellowed and peeling, the shelves are thick with dust, the drawers cluttered with unorganized utensils and littered with creature droppings.  Almost all the vestiges of love are gone, the walls bearing scars of photos no longer visible, the warm fridge no longer functional, the grimy stove no longer producing food.  It is still a solid, functional house, which the team uses and maintains.  It is still miles better than almost any other house in a fifty mile radius.  But it is no longer a home, not for us or for anyone at the moment.  And a house in the jungle that does not receive the constant entropy-reversing attentions of someone with a vision for glory .  . well, that house becomes, sadly, a bit of a dump, a place of broken things no one has the courage or energy to actually discard.  We should have been more ruthless in paring down, how crazy we were to think that all those books or games or pans or medicines would be useful.  

But house-cleaning is not our priority for this week.  We are here to walk alongside our team and understand their new reality first and foremost, to reconnect and reassure that we are still intimately involved and caring, to renew friendships, to bear the burden temporarily, to pray.  So today dawns with post-storm clarity, and we plunge into the long parade of greetings and conversations.  Everyone thinks Caleb is Luke, and Jack is Caleb (Jack has changed shape pretty significantly these last few months, topped off by a serious bout of sickness that was probably malaria, I see through their eyes that he has become tall and rather thin).  Scott makes people laugh be mixing Swahili in the conversation.  I find my Swahili veneer is very thin and the old Lubwisi is much more accessible.  We sit and greet and greet some more, walk back and forth, tour the health center (more staff than I had hoped for, but largely non-functional in terms of drugs and blood and labs and services, sadly).  Many hugs and exclamations.  There is time for sitting with team mates and listening, time for wandering around CSB.  Julia joins the girls' football team for training--the impact of our team has spread, and now there are SIX SCHOOLS in Bundi fielding girls' teams for a tournament this weekend!  Jack plays barefoot football with the younger students.  Every few steps up and down the road another familiar face.  Quote of the day:  "at least you could come back now and stay, well, forever".  At least.

The day ends in Nyahuka, first at Melen's where she prepares a feast of scalding hot matoke, kahunga, and rice, topped with chicken, goat, sombe, and a smoky thick gnut sauce.  Not to mention fresh passion juice.  No one minds the rat running in and out the door a few times, we're all so happy to be eating real Ugandan food again, chatting with Melen who is brave and perseverant against the odds, playfully interaction with little Jonah.  And then to CSB for the teacher Bible Study, carried on now by Travis and Amy, a good spirit of participation.

Can you go back?  Not really, the back we might imagine reaching no longer exists, we have to go forward to meet the Bundibugyo of 2011.  We're wiped out be the effort today.  Pray we would gracefully extend the love and approval of Jesus to a wearily over-worked set of team mates and Ugandan colleagues, that this week would not be about our loss, but about their encouragement.

Along the Road

your heart may wander . .

Friday, we left Kijabe, me almost in tears. Instead of an orderly morning of handing over all the NICU babies on rounds to the young doctor who will be responsible for the two weeks I'm gone, we were intubating baby Richard who was sliding down towards death. No bed in the ICU where the ventilators are, so through begging (by me) and grace (by nurses) we arranged to "borrow" a ventilator and bring it to nursery, and there I was a few minutes before departure showing the next doc how to set it all up (as if I really know that much, I don't). Not ideal. As of this morning he's still alive, so keep praying for him, but it was a hard way to leave. Still, as we finally piled all our bags into the back of our LandRover for it's maiden family road trip, ran back for one more forgotten item, then headed steeply down into the valley, I did feel the relief of the road trip, the letting go and moving on.

From Kijabe to Tenwek, I think the two biggest mission hospitals in Kenya, certainly both places rich in history and amazing in pulling off incredible amounts of care with few resources. Dr. John Cropsey of the aforementioned McCropder team gave us a tour, which is something only a few of us can love, the bustle and smell of humanity compressed into ward after ward, dangling mosquito nets, ingenious light-bulb-heated home-made baby incubators, a spiff new surgical suite and teaching amphitheater, some high-tech equipment and row after row of simple beds. From the hospital we checked into our guest-house quarters and then joined the McCropders for an evening of pizza and fellowship, talking about anything and everything. It felt very normal to us to have a baby in arms and seven 2 to 5 year olds romping around and not-always-sharing the blocks . . I'm sure they could not imagine the blink of an eye that occurs between that situation and our three teens exiting post-pizza to hang out with RVA friends at Tenwek. We already love this fledgling team and are rooting for them. The WHM board will decide in the next two days whether they believe God is calling us to send this group to Burundi. Praying for clarity and peace and courage as we move ahead together.

Saturday morning, pancakes and hugs and goodbyes, then we hit the road again. We knew we were in the general area of the village where Scott spent a summer as a college student 28 years ago. He knew the name of the village and the pastor with whom he stayed, though he knew the pastor had had diabetes even back then and was almost certainly dead. We still wanted to thank his family for the care they gave Scott that summer . . he was their first of several American summer student missionaries, and they really took him into their family, caring for him through illness, feeding him, sending him out to teach Bible in many elementary schools, staying up at night to process and talk. The roads that were dirt are now paved, and everything seemed a little different. We stopped repeatedly, asking directions, getting help, winding and bumping about an hour off the paved road into the deep rural countryside of patches of crops, cows, markets, bicycles, red dirt and green tea fields. At last we found Cheptalal, and looked for the oldest men hanging out at the shops. They told Scott that Pastor David Chumo had died ten years ago, but found us a young man who could lead us to his homestead. Another mile or so, a dirt trek that was barely a path, and there was the house just as Scott remembered it. Pastor Chumo's 75 year old widow remembered Scott, as did his 50-year-old eldest son (Scott's peer with whom he had walked and worked that summer). It was pretty cool to sit in their home, see the room where Scott had stayed, recall some stories with the family. They quickly picked ripe sweet garden-warm pineapples and cut them up, fingers dripping with stickiness, and made us promise to come back for a real meal. I hope we do.

The trip down memory lane is always a little longer than one plans . . so it was mid-afternoon before we headed northwest, back across the Rift Valley, climbing then into the Nandi Hills and at last swallowed up by the Kakamega Rain Forest. There we had arranged to spend the night at a Christian Retreat Center (Rondo Retreat), an improbable lovely little English-cottage cluster of porches and chairs, tasteful rooms and groomed gardens, carved into the forest. A hike in the forest at dusk, the noisy flapping of a flock of Great Blue Turacos, slippery muddy paths, humidity. Then a very civilized dinner and restful sleep before heading on to Uganda today.

Traveling with TCK's is always fun. Checking our time as we started: "Julia, it looks like you need a new watch" "Mom, all I need is a better piece of duct tape". Counting the trucks lined up to cross the border: 196. Scott turns on our newly-fixed air conditioning, our first time to ever travel with this luxury, and the kids reject it, preferring the wild-blowing-familiar-rush of all-windows-down. As we cross into Uganda, Jack remembers the good greasy hot chapatis at certain roadside stands, and we scan every row of shops until we find them, buying six wrapped in a piece of brown paper-bag. Earlier, Caleb bargains through the window to get us roasted corn. Everyone appreciates the irony of being passed by a truck driving haphazardly on the shoulder of a two-lane road, with a slogan about "patience" painted on the side. We stop once for cold sodas at the only flush-toilet bathroom I know of along the day-long journey, and Julia alertly spots the man with the TP hoarded in the hall, and we ask for that luxury too. Caleb spends the day putting half a shirt or pair of shorts out the window to dry at a time; he had washed out his own sweaty clothes the night before (after RUNNING the path that the rest of us walked) and used the trip to dry them all. We all realize how acclimated to Kijabe we've become. Uganda is HOT.

But it is also green, and vibrant, and somehow bright and rich. I smell charcoal fires, something I don't notice in Kenya. There is color and life along the roads here, craziness, a flare that the subdued cousin Kenya somehow lacks. I suppose it is because it feels like home. Caleb fixes my phone up with my old Uganda sim card, not expired even though it should have, a small welcoming gift. And here we are like old times, at the ARA, the place we fled to when we had nothing but a diaper bag and the clothes on our backs, the place where my kids learned to swim, where the staff welcomes us like old family. And we eat at our favorite restaurant in the world, Khana Khazana, ordering the same courses we always do, and finding them just as amazing as we remembered.

Tomorrow to Bundi. It will not all be greetings and warm feelings. It will be a re-entry into the field of spiritual battle, no doubt about that, this time in the role of holding up the arms of the Johnsons. Last night a lorry full of CSB students overturned on the way back from a soccer game. Miraculously, only a few broken arms, no life-threatening injuries. But the "accident" won't be seen as an accident here, people will be nervous, cautious, wondering what curse caused the event. Pray that whatever was meant for evil will be redeemed for good, that instead of FEAR the students and their families will sense the perfect LOVE of a God who saved them from death. Pray we would be more of an encouragement than a drain to poor Travis, sick with malaria, and Amy, and Anna, and Scott Will. Pray that our kids would reconnect with home, and we would reflect God's love to those who struggle to see the Kingdom come in Bundibugyo.

Prayer Letter for Downloading

We try to send out a hard copy Prayer Letter every 2 or 3 months, realizing that not everyone follows our exploits on this blog. For those of you who do follow the blog, you have the advantage of early delivery and color copy! Click HERE to download our latest letter (a 4 page pdf file ~1MB). Thanks for your interest and prayer!

Prayer as a Burden

Today, many burdens.  Some burdens of prayer for those in our hearts, but far away.  The Gilliam family, and our WHM family, grieving the abrupt finality of a slippery accident, lamenting the world at its most broken.  Scott's dad, admitted to the hospital in CA with a "minor" stroke. Friends M and J agonizing over their future calling and direction.  Our Bundi team, once again under attack, this time a threatened lawsuit from a disgruntled former employee.  

Some burdens of prayer and hands and sweat, for babies closer to home.  Baby Peggy's mother came to Kijabe a few nights ago in agonizing labor, though she had not previously been cared for here, something in her heart told her to come.  She had an emergency C-section, and her baby was sent to the NICU, where our alert clinical officer Bob noticed an unusual amount of drooling . . . and by the time I arrived he had taken an xray showing the naso-gastric tube which failed to pass coiled up in Peggy's throat.  A relatively rare congenital anomaly, esophageal atresia with tracheo-esophageal fistula, or in plain words her swallowing tube ends in a blind pouch at the top, and the lower section next to the stomach connected directly to the lungs.  Which is, needless to say, incompatible with life.  No baby with this anomaly has survived at our hospital, perhaps not in Kenya . . but generally they are transferred here in poor condition too late.  This time we could call the excellent pediatric surgery team and within hours Peggy was in the operating theatre, having the two fragile sections of her esophagus disconnected from her lungs and reconnected to each other.  Now she's in the ICU, fragile, complicated, with a chest tube and on a ventilator, with at least a chance of surviving.  Baby Issa's mother spent her first 39 years in S0malia, given as a girl by her family to an older man.  9 children later and 9 months pregnant she accompanied her 80-year old husband over the Kenya border as a refugee, and then delivered an infant with an omphalocele, a defect in his abdomen so that his intestines protrude in a sack.  Doctors in the refugee camp gave her a syringe and told her give her baby sips of water with it, and put her on a bus to Kijabe, which involved 12 to 15 hours of jolting through the desert.  She arrived with a cell phone but no money, unable to speak to anyone, wearing worn dusty clothes, bleeding and sore.  I found her this morning with quiet tears dripping down her cheeks, sitting by her baby, she pulled my arm to alert me to his oxygen mask slipping down.  We found another S0mali mom on another ward who speaks English (and is a friend of our WHM-colleague Kimberly!) and I tried to explain Issa's situation, which is grave.  She assured me that if he dies, that is OK, it is God's will, and she was anxious about her 9 children back at the refugee camp whom her elderly husband could not care for.  I said God had led her here for a reason, so let us at least try to help Issa.  Baby Richard's mother delivered him ten days ago, and went home, but he did not feed well, and her milk did not come.  Perhaps because it was her first baby she failed to realize how sick he had become.  Perhaps she worried about payment.  I don't know, but when she walked into the outpatient clinic today he was shriveled and in shock, with dry skin, no tears, labored breathing, a too-slow heart rate, blueish feet, parched and acidotic.  His labs were so off-the-chart that the machine could not register his sodium level, way over 200.  We pushed in bolus after bolus of fluids, while testing and probing and treating.  I don't know if he'll survive (we're at 160 cc/kg as of an hour or two ago, which is A LOT, with minimal improvement).  These three babies and the dozen or more others on my service stretched me all day, and into the night.  I pray for their survival, a tenuous hope at best.

But one of the things that I find most stressful is this:  taking care of other people's children when my children are ill. While I recognize the life-threatening gravity of my critically ill patients, I had a hard time going back into the hospital this afternoon with Jack shaking his bed in chills and a temperature climbing up over 104.  His peculiar illness puzzles us:  fever and headache Saturday evening, then fairly well Sunday, dramatic spiking fever again Monday late afternoon, OK Tuesday, then a return of the terrible spasm of fever and headache again today.  No runny nose, no cough, no vomiting, no diarrhea, no rash, no nothing but the wracking chills and fever, and an enlarged spleen.  It looks a lot like malaria, but we've done three negative rapid tests and two negative smears under the microscope.  White count and platelets LOW.  In the midst of his fever today he sobbed "it's because I'm the only one who fell down and scraped my leg in the caves!"  Hmmm.  We started an antibiotic tonight in case of strange tropical rickettsia and spirochetes . . . but wish we knew what we were dealing with.  

So .. . Gilliams, Myhres, M and J, Bundi, Peggy, Issa, Richard, Jack . . a heavy burden of prayer for today, we can only rest in the truth that Jesus carries the real weight as we pull together.  

desperate for resurrection

In my mind today, I was thinking I should post some thanks. For some answers to prayer. Through perseverance, phone calls, and major providence, our student JM from Uganda got into an A-level program to repeat his last two years of secondary and hopefully improve his scores, something that had been weighing on my heart, one of those tough parenting-from-afar things to arrange. Closer to home, Caleb survived the second round of cuts for rugby, as the massive 80-plus field of boys has been narrowed to 50ish (final cuts after break, to bring it to 42 I think, 22 JV and 20 Varsity). One of Jack's biology papers was called "best I've read" which was a huge boost to him after agonizing on it. Julia made the JV girls' volleyball team (a totally new sport in our family), and had two friends for dinner and a movie on Saturday. We took full advantage of our first weekend in a while without call or other duties and entertained Fri/Sat/Sun/Mon straight, a bit exhausting but thankful for the amazing people God brings into our lives here. Our departing Paeds resident whom I will greatly miss unloaded all her extra snacks, ziplocks, sunscreen, and hair products on me tonight, not to mention a few handy reference books. Three of the longest-term sickest babies in the NICU were discharged, Precious, Patience, and Sheila, each a miracle of survival. Listing these things is a discipline, a training of thankfulness in the midst of a world gone awry.

But tonight it's hard to remember those things, or if I do, to not feel somewhat guilty about them. Their importance recedes to trivia, and mocks the truly crucial. Because we just got the news that one of our WHM kids, Tommy Gilliam from Charlottesville via Ireland, died. I think both Scott and I felt this as a punch in the gut. Tommy was Luke's peer, also starting college this year. His parents were our college-mates. He and Luke hung out at our mission retreats. We met up with him when we visited Charlottesville. He was a great young man, faithful, polite, smart, pleasant, hard-working, Kingdom-oriented, world-aware, courageous, multi-cultural. There is nothing but a fine line of circumstance that made this their tragedy and not ours, he was on the roof of a building and slipped and fell. One false step and his life was over, no second chance, no rewind. In my nightmares I imagine this phone call, this irretrievable loss, but I know I can't even begin to touch the surface of what his parents are feeling now.

As we head into Easter, our only comfort in life and death, that Tommy and we belong body and soul to Jesus. That He has not just smoothed over death, or transformed death, but He has conquered and reversed death. The sudden, unexpected, untimely death of a vibrant 19-year-old makes that reality a lifeline to which we all cling, the sure Resurrection.

A Day

Darkness fading, Bible reading, birds awakening, the morning scramble for showers and breakfasts and bookbags and byes. Off to chapel, exuberant, crowded, all staff condensed into a packed space. Nursery, wafts of heated humid air, examining the two newest admissions both scrawny and dehydrated, punching numbers in the calculator to plan fluids designed to gently normalize dangerously high sodiums. Pages, the intern called to receive babies being delivered by C-section in the OR. By Scott, who is working with the OB team today, and labors through 3 C-sections as an assistant then finally at 5 pm a 4th one on his own, sweating, cutting, dabbing, delivering. Slipping out for an hour mid-morning to circle with about ten women my age and above for "Moms in Touch", a prayer group for our college-kids, appreciating the collective wisdom and burden of love, sneak previews into my future. Called out of the prayer time for another admission, which turns into a two-hour life and death struggle, ending in death. The plump little six-week-old gasps and grunts, we prod and measure, dose and monitor, but he deteriorates. The care turns into a code, intubation, CPR, our arms tire of giving round after round of chest compressions, boluses of fluids, epinephrine, checking glucose, at the end even a taste of atropine, IV's and ng tubes, and then the blood froths up from his lungs, and we slowly lose ground in our battle. Pulmonary hemorrhage. The mom watches, anxious, I try to fill her in as we go, between listening for a heartbeat to return. It does not, and I am the one who has to call off the effort at last, to admit defeat. I tell the mom that he is gone, and she collapses in tears, I put my arms around her and feel my throat tighten and voice waver as tears try to come for me too. Not the time for it. Somewhere in the midst of all this I realize my kids are locked out of home and have no lunch. Scott is in the OR. So Julia gamely volunteers by phone to troop back up to school and eat in the cafeteria. By the time we sit and pray with the bereaved family, another complicated consult is waiting on the neurosurgery service. As I walk between wards a plane buzzes directly over the hospital, it is Caleb and his aviation group returning to Nairobi, swooping over their home. Around 3 I finally slip out for an hour, the comfort of cheese and crackers and an apple (my after-school snack as a kid is just what is needed after the strain of this baby's death), scouring books about pulmonary hemorrhage, trying to learn and evaluate what we did, for next time. Clothes in from the line before it rains, kids briefly touch base and off to sports practice, Scott turns back for the final C-section of the day and I follow to go over x-rays with our radiologist, and check labs. In between all of the above seeing two staff kids for various ailments, checking their labs too, writing prescriptions. Evening approaching, home at last, cooking, welcoming Caleb. Family dinner, tales of adventure from the skies over Northern Kenya, hard-core missionaries and lasagna in the desert, roasting camel meat on a dune, landing an airplane, swimming in Lake Turkana, hunting rabbits at night in dry river beds on ATV's. We sit on the couches and hear more from Caleb, checking CNN for the world news. A lead comes in by email for a school placement for one of our boys from Bundibugyo, so I make phone calls . .. answered prayer, a space in a school that looks nurturing. Budgets, money, a few emails to arrange a plan for this kid, then skype with Luke, pray for his housing lottery tonight for next year. Put in laundry, and debrief by blog under the comforter, eyes drifting shut even as I type, Scott asleep, wiped out from the day of surgery and checking in with his ward patients too, Caleb playing the guitar he missed so much all week, Jack and Julia off to bed with no new papers to write for a change, and now a few hours to recharge before it all starts again tomorrow.

Mt. Suswa: There and Back Again

The monsoon force rains parted for a brief 48 hours, and we did not camp in the rain as we dreaded. Thanks for many prayers. In fact, you prayed so well, that we're sunburned. (Yes, at this elevation on the equator we're finding that our laissez-faire sunscreen habits are not so adaptive, even in the newly-begun rainy season.) Mt. Suswa rises out of the floor of the Rift Valley south of us, a dormant volcano a couple of hours away, mostly on barely discernible tire treks through the acacia-dotted savannah. One giraffe, several Thompson gazelle, a herd or two of cattle, and thousands of sheep and goats watched our motorcade of five cars and a huge school bus. And quite a sight we were, as the bus got stuck in deep mud and had to be heaved out by Scott's shovel skill and the combined efforts of 46 8th graders and a rope. I learned that Mr. D's definition of "drivable" would not be my definition. We rocked over uneven volcanic boulders and slithered through waves of standing water, the whole thing taking twice as long as predicted, but we did all make it to the crater rim.

After a brief packed lunch the kids tore off behind our Maasai guide, complete with his red blankets and beads and smooth walking stick, to climb around the edge of the crater rim to the highest peak. We were advised the hike would be 3 hours up and 2 hours down, but our intrepid kids pushed the limit, reaching the summit in 1 hour 20 minutes. At least half the group did, and about four of us parents gasping in their trail. The other half decided the view from the path was just fine, and turned back at various points.

We camped in a settlement of about 15 tents, big ones to fit groups of boys and groups of girls, and small ones to accommodate the parents, teachers, and Maasai guide who accompanied them. Scott led worship with his guitar, another dad gave a short devotional talk, then there were the requisite campfires, smores, stories, shivering, and as curfew approached, wildness, yelling, chasing. And then quiet, the moon shrouded by clouds but the rain mercifully minimal.

Up on Monday to have breakfast and break camp, and just as the last tent was being packed into the cars, the Maasai brought a woman with a "stick in her hand" to see the doctor. She had a terrible abscess that Scott ended up incising with a leatherman (note to self, pack scalpel next campout) and we bandaged her up and put her on antibiotics with strong recommendations to get to a health center. Then we were off to the caves.

Mt. Suswa is famous for a huge network of "lava tubes", massive caves that drill into the depths of the volcano roots, where lava once flowed and cooled and left arches and entries. We broke up into groups again and clambered down a rocky wall to enter cave 17. At first there is ambient light, but then one has to stoop and pass through a narrow neck. When the passage expands again it is completely, utterly pitch black. (Another note to self, what kind of veteran missionary forgets sunscreen, scalpels, AND a flashlight??). I tried to stay right on the heels of any kid with a light, stumbling over unseen rocks, knocking my head pretty hard once. Hot, humid air surrounded us from the sulphurous depths. Jack's group elected to proceed to the deepest parts . . . another hour into the earth . . but I was feeling a bit claustrophobic half way in, imagining the mines of Moria, or viral-laden bats, and decided to turn back to daylight with a different group. On the way in and out we passed a passageway where a man on a spiritual retreat sat praying on the stony floor, his torch holding back the darkness. I am guessing that for focus and lack of distraction you can't beat a cave, and God did reveal himself to Moses and Elijah in similar circumstances. But I was glad to get back to the sunny surface with a breeze through the leaves and bleating goats.

Our adventure concluded with a stop at the home of the lead RVA guard, Given, who invited the entire class to stop and greet his family and drink gallons of hot smoky sweet chai and eat chapatis. I don't know how they came up with at least 60-some mugs out of their corrugated tin home or mud-walled kitchen, but they did. I would have been a little stressed by the undertaking but they showed nothing but delight.

And thankfully as we headed home we were giving a ride to two local men who led us on a maze of paths back to the main road, avoiding mud-holes which evidently snared the other vehicles. I was on call and it was our turn to host the weekly dessert for new Kijabe volunteers, so though we felt slightly guilty over our easy return when we heard about more stuck-in-the-mud travails, we were grateful to clean up and cook some food before the first calls from the hospital came, or the first guests arrived.

It was a weekend of adventure and beauty, a taste of the wildness of this Kenyan land and the community of RVA, time to chat with remarkable kids whose families work all over Africa, and with faithful staff. It was also pretty tiring (the hike, the sun, the rough travel, the hard ground, the onslaught of new names and faces, the minor medical issues, the rush home to more duties).

And we came home to both good news and bad. Good: Julia enjoyed staying in a dorm with friends, and she was voted MOST VALUABLE PLAYER and MOST INSPIRATIONAL PLAYER by her team and coach! They had an end-of-season party Sunday night where she received those awards. We are very proud of her effort and faithfulness and teamwork. Bad: ah, the news from Bundibugyo is ever heart-wrenching. This time it is the passing of Aligonilla, a little boy whom we've blogged about before, the 7th child of his father's to die. Aligonilla lived an improbable number of years (?ten at least, probably 12 or more) on sickly stick legs, a swollen belly, yellow eyes, all from severe sickle cell anemia. Since he was born I can't count how many times we've begged and borrowed to get him blood transfusions, how many times we've pulled him through a brush with death, even as often healthier-appearhign siblings died of the same disease. He had the spunkiest smile. I was so sad to hear of his death. I will miss him when we go back to visit in April. A flurry of deaths and a dearth of helpers and the usual weary sad news of Bundibugyo, a reality-check after wilderness and awards. The world is still broken, deeply so.

Myhre Adventures

Luke is on his way back to school after a very fellowship-rich Spring Break, having flown to Michigan to visit a half-dozen former RVA classmates, then back to New Jersey to the Elwood home, then intersecting with the Letchford family from Kijabe to be enfolded into their family vacation in upstate New York including a mountain cabin and a day of skiing.  

Caleb left Thursday on "interim", a week-long opportunity for small groups of RVA Juniors and Seniors to disperse all over Kenya on various trips designed for cross-cultural learning and team building experience.  Some climb Mt. Kenya, some work with orphans, some study coastal ecology.  . . and Caleb's group is learning to fly with small mission planes in the deserts of Northern Kenya.  He flew over out house on his way north, and now he's on the shores of Lake Turkana tonight.

Jack's 8th grade class leaves in the morning to hike, go caving, and camp overnight on an old volcano in the Rift Valley, Mt. Suswa.  And we volunteered to join the chaperone crew.  Which seemed like a fun idea at the time.  But after three months of unmitigated sunshine, we have been plunged into three days of unmitigated rain.  Not a limited storm or a distinct shower, we're talking incessant steady downpour, day and night.  Standing water on anything level, gushing muddy streams on anything not.  An abrupt transition from drought to flood, and we're headed into it with fifty kids.  

Julia will spend her first night in a dorm while we're gone, the lone Myhre left at Kijabe for about 36 hours.

We pray God meets each of us in these departures from our normal routines, and gives us grace to interact with our companions, and a refreshing glimpse of Himself.

A Birthday Party, An Unlikely Community

Not many people get a party to celebrate their actual Birthday, the original. But Noreen was born in November, in spite of being due mid-March. So when she reached her "Birthday" this week, at 1800 grams triple her birth-weight, we decided to celebrate. Her mom has spent most of her days and nights for over three months in the nursery, and I wanted to honor that effort. So the night before I baked two cakes, and gathered a balloon, candle, noise-maker horn, and bubbles. The interns and nurses all congregated and we called Noreen and mom in and sang. Then the doctors served all the moms of all the babies and all the nurses and staff cake. For that half hour, the NICU was more like a community than a ward, eating and laughing together. I hope Noreen will live to "blow a thousand candles" as they say in Uganda . . . but at least she's had one party, one day to give God glory for protecting her tiny life. I also hope some of the people who cared for her along the way see this post and are encouraged. I hope that the dozen-plus other moms with admitted babies sensed that Jesus cares for them too. I hope the staff gains a sense of teamwork and accomplishment by seeing how far they've come.

Because many of the stories in the NICU are sobering. We have about five babies now who will not likely survive their first year of life, or if they do, only with significant impairment. We were chastised by a senior doctor this weekend for admitting a one-month-old Somalian baby with major congenital anomalies who can not be "fixed". I agree that we often struggle to admit our limitations, and push too hard for solutions that burden families. However, I've seen from the moms of these almost-sure-to-die cases that there is a value to their stay that goes far beyond the medical accomplishments. Some need the safety and space the NICU provides to adjust to their new reality. They need to learn to care for a fragile baby. They need to know the exact extent of their baby's problem, and have it clearly explained. They need to be treated with respect and see people valuing their "damaged" child, tenderly and expertly handling their baby, using his/her name. Mostly they need to be in the circle of the community of mothers, bunking in the adjacent ward, sharing meals, clustered in the nursery every two hours giving feedings, knowing they are not alone.

So while we strive to offer the best medical care possible, to test and interpret and examine and prescribe, that is only part of nursery care. We are also creating a little pocket of warm, humid, clean, nurturing space where women and their infants can rest, can sense support, can heal and grow. Or for some, can come to terms with the sadness of dashed dreams, in the context of feeling valuable. If a birthday party for a less-than-four-pound little person helped accomplish that, I am satisfied.