Easter Call: glory and wounds

This Easter weekend was spent mostly in the hospital, as we were both on call.  Which can be a little stressful when trying to cook nice meals or spend time with kids, but thankfully they're an understanding crew (including the delightful A.H., British classmate of Caleb who came back to school almost a week early to train for rugby, and is staying with us).  There were about seven new babies admitted to the nursery in a day and a half, the sickest at about midnight last night when a woman in a nearby town called her nurse neighbor to give advice on her stomach pain, after living in denial of being pregnant for nine months and in labor for a couple of days.  The neighbor convinced her to come to Kijabe, and she was quickly taken for a C-section.  I hurried through the quiet night into the bright buzz of the operating theatres just as the baby was laid limp and lifeless on the warming bed.  I haven't assigned an apgar score of 1 (on a scale of 1-bad to 10-good) very often.  It took a long five minutes of intubation and pushing oxygen into the lungs to get a response, and as we whisked the baby back to the nursery I wondered if he would pull through.  But now almost 24 hours later he's holding his own.  As is another premature baby, and a set of premature twins where the big boy is twice the size of the small girl.  Blinking, coughing, grimacing, crying, purplish and slippery, so easily winding down their heart-rates due to coldness or stress, these fragile bits of humanity land in our care, and the weight of responsibility is inversely proportional to their meager two or three pounds.  Then there was the lumbar puncture to do on a baby who was born with a huge ballooning cyst of brain fluid protruding from the middle of his face.  The neurosurgeons removed it, leaving a gaping hole in his split nose/mouth which will have to be fixed later, but unfortunately, he caught a serious infection, probably in the OR.  He looks somehow frog-like with his bizarre split-open face and his surgical scars, but in a loveably pitiful sort of way.  And of course the children on the older ward that I know less well, some gasping for breath, others too listless to feed.  We did manage to join the sunrise service up at RVA for staff, quite lovely, and communion this evening.  But no easter eggs, no baskets of chocolate, no hunts, not even a real church service, this was an Easter spent in the hospital.  One hand on the babies, the other on life, trying to hold them together.

Which, according to the book I've been immersed in through Lent, Surpirsed by Hope, is the proper way to celebrate.

The book focuses on Romans 8 and 1 Cor 15 to show that Easter is the reality of the new-heavens-and-new-earth breaking into time, the first-fruit demonstration of a re-made bodily life that will one day flood the world.  There are many deeply thoughtful passages, but I will just close with one that encourages me on call with visions of purpose and glory:  This brings us to 1 Corinthians 15:58 once more:  what you do in the Lord is not in vain. You are--strange though it may seem, almost as hard to believe as the resurrection itself--accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God's new world.  Every act of love, gratitude, and kindness; every wok of art of music inspired by the love of God and delight in the beauty of his creation; every minute spent teaching a severely handicapped child to read or to walk; every act of care and nurture, of comfort and support, for one's fellow human beings and for that matter one's fellow nonhuman creatures; and of course every prayer, all Spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel, builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption, and makes the name of jesus honored in the world--all of this will find its way, through the resurrecting power of God, into the new creation that God will one day make.  That is the logic of the mission of God. . . (p 208)

Sounds bracing.  But at almost 11 pm after only a few hours of sleep in this 48 hour stretch, I close with another quote too, (p 280):

It will, of course, be costly.  You don't get to share in God's life and escape without wounds.  Look what happened to Jesus himself.  

on the night in which he was betrayed

This phrase echoes in the wake of Passover.   Knowing that the rush of events was reaching a critical point, knowing that Judas had already moved across the line of betrayal in his heart, knowing that the most intense physical and spiritual agony was impending, Jesus reclined and feasted with his closest friends.  "He loved them to the end" . . . by washing their feat, inviting them to eat, breaking bread, reminding them of the huge story of redemption just as they were about to be plunged into a crisis of faith.  He created the context for meaning as they moved into the unthinkably painful hours of apparent defeat ahead.  Wine, bread, roasted meat, bitter herbs; scripture, promises, singing, conversation, encouragement; a moment of closure and a sort of good-bye before they walked out into the night of Gethsamane and the dark day of Golgotha. And he did this not just with those who "deserved" the attention, but with the very man who would within hours betray him to his death.  He washed Judas' feet; he handed Judas the unleavened bread; he poured Judas the cups of sanctification, plagues, redemption and praise.  Willingly.

We celebrated Passover last night, too, in remembrance.  This weekend is usually an intense time in our lives, the end of Lent, a team Passover, A Good Friday service with the local church with seven mini-sermons about Jesus' words on the cross, fasting, watching the Passion, a half-night or all-night prayer vigil on Friday, something for kids on Saturday involving egg hunts or acting out the story, a Sunday sunrise service with neighbors and team in the yard followed by Easter breakfast, a major-event church service again, then an all-afternoon team and friends meal with tables outdoors and games and leisure.  So it is a bit of another transition to spend our first holiday here, to rub up against the ways that it is different, to decide what to keep for continuity and what to let go of.  It is peculiar to find that in Kenya, at least here at Kijabe, there is no Good Friday service, and nothing about Easter was even mentioned last Sunday (no mention of it being Palm Sunday either).  We don't really have a team anymore to make plans with, which eliminates most of the traditions.  We will join the RVA-planned Easter Sunrise service and breakfast (hopefully, we're both on call . . .), but that is the only "happening" that I know of.   Mostly we are in observe-and-lay-back mode, trying to take this year as a sabbatical-sort-of time, trying to be OK with the periphery. But Passover is the favorite part of the weekend for the kids, and one of the non-negotiables of the holiday, so I invited the family we lived next to when we first arrived who have been so kind to us (Americans, long-term missionaries taking one year at Kijabe on behalf of the AIC's theological college), and the doctor I work with most closely with and his dentist wife (Indians who are here for part of a year in between finishing training in India and starting post-graduate training programs in the US).   This was a new tradition for them, so felt a little risky, but they were game for the hours-long ceremony and meal, candlelight and readings and parsley sprigs in salty water, the tears, or matzah dipped in sweet apple kharoset, the joy in the midst of labor.  

As I was getting ready, toiling over rolling out the matzah crackers and baking them, I know my heart was not like Jesus'.  No one here is going to betray me in more than the normal human friction of small disappointments and misunderstandings, but I'm sure I had less freedom of love in my heart.  I was trying to get things settled in the NICU so I could get the cooking done and feeling the push; I was wondering if I had invited an incompatible mix or if my kids would be OK.  I find my soul frequently weighted with uncertainty about what my role is, and grudging service.  So far from the way Jesus approached the night.

So I pray for healing and love, for the Jesus-attitude of sharing himself freely, even on the night in which he was betrayed.  For the ability to recline and feast in the face of suffering, for the ability to enjoy the goodness of friends and family even when loss is imminent.  For the rhythm of connecting to tradition even when history is about to turn the defining corner.  For love that overcomes betrayal.  

poem for today

Seven Stanzas at Easter

John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body.
If the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the
amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
eleven apostles;
it was as his flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that – pierced – died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of
enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a thing painted in the faded credulity
of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier mache,
not stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will
eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the
dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not make it less monstrous,
for in our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour,
we are embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

Source: 'Seven Stanzas at Easter, in Telephone Poles and Other Poems (London: Andre Deutsch, 1964), 72–3. 

Amen, as a doctor, we declare this is a holiday that affirms the holiness of the body, definite and material and redeemable.  

viewed through the tomb door

From old friend and fellow pilgrim MP working in a difficult place (and referring to another mk besides Tommy who fell and died this month):

 The celebration of life was tempered by the death of boy on their team the week before who fell from a height. Life and death. Joy and pain. It seems to only make sense when viewed through the door of the open tomb. Life conquers death and we rejoice but the pain is real. "We know the whole creation groans…" we walk and live amongst the groaning and look for redemption. "But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us." (quotes from Rom. 8) Honestly, I don't feel like a conqueror and often what I 'see' around me overwhelms. So, unashamed, I cling to the feet of him who is 'risen indeed' and ask for eyes to see, wisdom to choose and strength to respond in the fullness of faith. Is this not what Easter is all about? 

 

I like his image of looking through the door of the open tomb--here we are, in the place of death, but looking out at the Garden where the only fully alive human, the first-fruits of the renewal of the entire universe, walks.  In the cave it is musty, dry, dim.  All three of the babies I left struggling for life the first of April as we headed to Uganda, died.  That was hard to hear.  All were critically ill so it is not surprising, but there had been such an investment of work and hope and prayer.  Why not at least one save?  During our meetings in Uganda I prayed for Aidan to sleep, and no sooner were the words out of my mouth than he wailed, awake.  So I'm not seeing amazing answers to prayers these days, at least as far as babies are concerned.  Instead I feel the walls of the tomb, and can imagine the weight of the stone, blocking escape, trapping in the cause-and-effect reality of pre-Easter physics, where sick babies in Africa die, and tired irritable missionary kids cry, and friends' teens fall fatally, and we let each other down, and the bones collect.  Then it is hard to believe that a very real force already blew open that cave, pushed the stone away, so that we are crouching, glimpsing, blinking out at the sunshine at dawn, scent of flowers drifting in, the song of birds echoing into the place of death.  

Can we walk out of the tomb?  I suppose that is what Christianity is all about, exiting the trap of a deathly dark hole and stepping into the garden to cling to the feet of the One who removed the stone.  We still carry the reek of the grave, but by faith we walk into the grass and feel the sun.  At least some days.  Others, we hover by the door, still lingering in the decomposing dust, still squinting into the daylight, not fully free of the tomb until we pass through.  

Praying the stone rolls, the view is opened up, the Gardener beckons.

Really home

Now we are home, really home. Star is here.

A dog is a helpful creature for a myriad of reasons, but the largest is this: in a world of transience and misunderstanding, she is a spot of consistency and acceptance. Which is pretty much what we all long for in a home.

We are grateful for many prayers. Basically we brought Star to Bundibugyo as a puppy ten years ago, and she never left. We brought in vaccines once or twice, we treated her ourselves for some ailments, but she was pretty much healthy and strong and low maintenance. Which is great until it is time to get official. We had a Ugandan immunization card with one sticker in it . . and with that and her puppy papers we threw ourselves upon the mercy of a vet in Kampala (recommended by the Johnsons, thanks!). The vet made it clear that we had been remiss, but thankfully she was one of those practical people who saw the reality of the situation: a family of five in Kampala on the way to Kenya with jobs and responsibilities, not really at liberty to take an extra week or month to jump through the numerous hoops that could be erected. So she administered updated vaccines, heart-worm medicine, did an exam, checked all the boxes, and even inserted a microchip, a sort of sub-cutaneous electronic tag that we're told is necessary for international movement.

Then Friday we loaded the vehicle and pulled out at dawn for the 11 1/2 hour trek to Kenya. Our man Salim, the border angel, met us and took all Star's new and old paper-work. As he and Scott managed each tedious stop through the no-man's-land of the border zone (car, sticker, insurance, visas, stamps, this, that) we kept Star quietly in the back seat. No one asked to actually see her. But they did keep sending Salim back to Scott for more "fees". Scott asked, is it because we don't have the right papers? No, Salim explained, "your papers are perfect. It's just that everyone has to 'eat'." Ah, classic. But it was worth the cash flow to bring her over to our new country.

We spent the night in Eldama Ravine at our favorite missionary guest-farm, and completed the long journey with another 4 hour drive on Saturday. The closer we got to Kijabe the more excited all the kids became. I had forgotten what it was like to return to Bundibugyo with them--I would be dreading opening the house, bugs, laundry, people with problems, demands, a month or more of groceries to put away, camping gear to sort out, etc. and they would just be thrilled that we were coming home. This is the first time we've all left Kijabe and come back, and I realized they had fully made the transition. This is home now for them, and there was unmitigated relief to be back, to pile out of the car, to show Star her new yard, to run back into their own rooms.

There are many things about Uganda that I still miss, perhaps moreso this very moment, after a visit. Uganda is lush and green and abundant, in foliage and personality, hospitable and generous. Uganda is warm (OK, hot actually). I miss the security of a mosquito net. The depth of relationships forged by trial and time. The intimacy of being on a team. The craziness of life on the edge, the border, the challenge, the end-of-the-road-last-resort nature of existence. The sense of place in the community. The respect I have for people whose lives I know well. The view of the mountains. The sacred places that have become rests for us over the years. The ability to understand the local language, to talk to a patient's mother easily. The amazement and hope that comes from sitting with our students and dreaming of their futures.

But the transfer of Star, the transfer our kids' loyalty, is another step in the goodbye and letting-go process. (My Dad died five years ago today, which is a big part of the whole picture of loss, transition, moving on, in my heart at the moment too.) Kenya is more stark, more windswept, with a harsher beauty, a caution that reflects a more complicated relationship with outsiders. But it is also a beautiful place. There is a cool dry-ness here that feels fresh. I love my house. The fridge was ON and COLD (no kerosene, no matches, no moldering warmth). I've already got three loads of laundry on the line, the advantage of machine over man. There are nearby paths without houses or crowds, places to walk and run alone. Though we start back to work tomorrow, and we find it more medically and intellectually challenging, more demanding in many ways than Uganda, the spiritual oppression and emotional drain are just so much less here. The Kingdom has pushed into Kenya further, and deeper, and it shows.

It was good to go back, and it was also good to leave again, each time a little more fully. Our brave team's initial mantra was to build on the wisdom and history of the past, not to change too much too soon. But a year down the road, they are ready to embrace their own vision, to prune and to redirect growth. And so we step a little further away with this trip and return, with blessing and release. Which makes it good to have our dog here with our family, and to call this, for now, home.

Homeward Bound

Remember the movie with the talking dogs and cat, overcoming all obstacles to be reunited with their beloved family?  We have one more obstacle to overcome with Star today, and it's a big one:  the Uganda/Kenya border.  Star is our 10-year-old yellow lab, whom we brought to Uganda as a puppy after our study sabbatical in 2001.  In all those years, she provided a dose of love and stability in a life for our kids that was often chaotic or painful.  She created a safe environment in our yard.  She distinguished friend from thief.  She was a large part of what made home, home.  She waited for us these last months of HMA and moving to Kenya, cared for by our kind and generous and overstretched team.  There was a very happy reunion last week, and a lot of excitement when she got into the car with us instead of watching us pull away.  

Yesterday here in Kampala we saw a vet, updated immunizations, filled out paperwork, dosed with dewormer. . . .even got a microchip, which we're told is required for moving countries.  We have our agent at the border who is ready to help us with the export/import details.  But this is Africa, the borders are always a little nerve-wracking, the potential for someone to say "you didn't get this permit" or "you can't do that", to be arbitrary or demand money or whatever, is very high.  We've never done this, and it might be hard.  

Please pray that all will go smoothly, for the sake of some very precious missionary-kid-hearts.

Homeward Bound

Remember the movie with the talking dogs and cat, overcoming all obstacles to be reunited with their beloved family?  We have one more obstacle to overcome with Star today, and it's a big one:  the Uganda/Kenya border.  Star is our 10-year-old yellow lab, whom we brought to Uganda as a puppy after our study sabbatical in 2001.  In all those years, she provided a dose of love and stability in a life for our kids that was often chaotic or painful.  She created a safe environment in our yard.  She distinguished friend from thief.  She was a large part of what made home, home.  She waited for us these last months of HMA and moving to Kenya, cared for by our kind and generous and overstretched team.  There was a very happy reunion last week, and a lot of excitement when she got into the car with us instead of watching us pull away.  

Yesterday here in Kampala we saw a vet, updated immunizations, filled out paperwork, dosed with dewormer. . . .even got a microchip, which we're told is required for moving countries.  We have our agent at the border who is ready to help us with the export/import details.  But this is Africa, the borders are always a little nerve-wracking, the potential for someone to say "you didn't get this permit" or "you can't do that", to be arbitrary or demand money or whatever, is very high.  We've never done this, and it might be hard.  

Please pray that all will go smoothly, for the sake of some very precious missionary-kid-hearts.

Notes from the Nadir

Team in Bundi is an ebb and flow phenomenon. It is, to put it bluntly, a HARD place to live for outsiders. The spiritual battle of principalities and powers is fierce, even though the resurrection assures ultimate victory, there is a lot of disputed territory in the area (like the lives of infants, the loyalty of marriages, the honesty of district accounts, the reconciliation of church leaders). When you add to that irregular power supplies, weak phone signals, sparse markets, rampant malaria, a punishing road, a language with few learning tools, notorious schools, and a lot of moth-and-rust, well, it is just not an easy place to recruit people to love. And those brave souls that do show up are often driven out by problems they did not choose or anticipate. In our decade as team leaders, we planned and cried through major goodbyes for about seven long-term long-serving families, and probably twenty 1 to 3 year missionaries, and many more short-term interns. But we also welcomed a nearly balancing number, so that we always had a core of fellow-colleagues, though it never seemed enough. In the last year though, the ebb has outpaced the flow. At this moment, team Bundi consists of one family and one single woman on the ground. That is, we hope, a nadir.

The problem with a nadir is that the accumulated relationships and ideas, and projects and investments of two decades and parades of missionaries push on, while the personnel left to move forward or even maintain the minimal upkeep of territory dwindles. So we spent the last two days in Fort Portal with the Johnsons and visiting acting-ministries-director Dan and Gini Herron, praying and debriefing and pruning. Pruning hurts. It hurts to give consent for programs that have served hundreds, that have saved lives, that have brought blessing and signs of the Kingdom, that have pointed to Jesus . . to be suspended. It hurts to know that more people will suffer, at least in the short term, including the tiny team on the ground who will have less to offer to those in need, who will have to turn them away. It hurts to wonder what God is doing, why we are so short staffed. It hurts to see our dear friends, both Ugandan and team, stressed. It hurts to let go of the things that we invested our lives in.

But pruning is done with purpose and hope. When we toured the CSB cocoa gardens, Travis and Alex showed us that the trees have to be carefully trimmed so that only four main branches split off the initial trunk. The fifth and sixth and more shoots have to be cut, so that the tree will produce the pods of fruit. If we saw every branch as potential, we would leave them all, and the cocoa tree would probably keel over from the exuberance of foliage. It would certainly not produce much cocoa. There is nothing bad about the extra branches, they are of the same good substance as the rest of the tree, there are just too many for the tree to support. So they have to be cut, which is a form of suffering. A cut. A scar. A loss.

A year ago in our team planning, we began this process, but we did not prune radically enough. We did not anticipate the lowness of this nadir. Too many activities had a way of creeping up the list, of inserting themselves, of draining the sap of life away from the fruitful.

So this time, we revisited everything. We asked: how has God gifted the team that remains? Where do they sense joy and life? Where have their hearts been drawn? What might we want to hold onto in spite of the cost, because the potential for help is close? What do we have to trim off, at least for now?

God is the vinedresser, the pruning shears are in His hands. We found remarkable agreement as we worked together, a continuity with our emphasis on youth, training, empowerment, discipleship, raising up a new generation in the Gospel. An affirmation of the central place of CSB in all that, a hope that with the new Head Teacher, Travis will be able to shift more of his energy to the medicine he loves. We recognized the longing of the team to be unshackled from some things so that they could devote more time to language learning, to investment in their own new relationships. And a willingness to let the sharp shears snip off some otherwise good things so that better fruit might come.

The good thing about a nadir is, there is nowhere to go but up. We prayed for the encouraging list of 2 families and 4 singles already approved and raising support, already on the horizon, the people we hoped would bridge the gap a year ago. The first arrives Friday, Dr. Jessica! All but one have committed to 4-5 year terms instead of 2. We are extremely grateful for Jessica, Josh, Ann, Pamela, Michael, Lesley, Finch, Rob, Sheila, Avery, Avelyn, and Haidan, as well as the Johnsons, Anna, and Chrissy (on medical leave). There are a handful of others in early stages of potential interest. We still need more. Any stable pleasant Gospel-empowered mid-30's couples with a 6 year old girl and a 4 year old boy out there??? Anyone who believes God could be calling them to a decade or more? Change in a place like Bundibugyo occurs on a geological generational time scale, not a neat American 2-year project cycle.

The other good thing about a nadir, and a pruning process, is this: the sparse branches we see above the soil line are supported by a vast network of unseen roots. You. Team Bundi needs prayer, now more than ever. Pray that the pruning would produce life, would channel energy into the right places. Pray that the Johnsons would sense more relief than burden. Pray that the trimmed team would be strong to support the new growth of entering team mates, and those that come would tap into the true stem of Jesus, would thrive in His life. Pray for the people of Bundibugyo to see Jesus in this process too, both the pruning and the new growth. And lastly pray for many to be blessed as the fruit appears, in its season.

Bye again, Bundi

It is much easier, the second time. By virtue of showing up again nine months later, two things have been shown: Bundi is surviving quite well without us, and we will keep coming back.

Our last evening was spent with the CSB staff. On the way into Bundi I bought ten chickens, and arranged with new Headmaster Isingoma to share them in a staff meal. There is so much symbolism and humanity in shared eating, it is often the picture of redemption and the kingdom, for good reason. We wanted to thank those who had persevered through transitions yet again, congratulate them on the best O and A level results ever, greet the newly hired and re-emphasize the vision. Mostly we wanted to make it clear that Scott stood behind Travis in changing the administration, and fully behind Isingoma as God's provision. I reminded his wife Christine that our first real Ugandan feast was Christmas 1993, spent in their staff housing at Nyahuka Health Center, when we were very young missionaries left alone for the holiday. Neither of us dreamed that nearly two decades later we would be eating together again, with Isingoma leading a school that WHM started, and Scott bearing responsibility as field director. But looking back God's hand is obvious: all Isingoma's medical and business training, his experience as the moderator of the Presbyterian church, preaching, healing, and equipping others, come together in this job. His work and Travis', and the good spirit among the staff, leave us very encouraged about the future of CSB.

On Friday we gathered four of the young men whose lives we have invested in for a lunch in Fort Portal as we headed out. Richard is the top student in a technical school electrician program; Kataramu in his first year of medical school; Nuuru in his first year of training as a clinical officer (PA); and Birungi just completed A level with grades that will possibly qualify him for medical school as well, if we can manage the funding. In the context of a week of being confronted with the spiritual battle that is Bundibugyo, spending time with the future is a good antidote. Even as I visited with the leaders of the health center, who bemoaned every aspect of how inefficiently and poorly the whole system runs, we reminded ourselves that in five to ten years this will change. The long view is essential. Dr. Jonah's death bears life. He was being crushed by the injustice, but now with 4 and potentially 5 doctors in training, we have great hope that a quorum of righteousness will sweep in.

Five days in Bundi, short, inadequate, like the five loaves, but we pray that there was some miraculous multiplication that will bring blessing and life. The role of "used-to-be-present-so-understands-but-is-now-removed" is a new one, and in its own way opens doors. Some greetings are superficial, but more than I would have thought involved conversations about marriage strains, miscarriage, alcoholism, hopes for children, fears of discrimination, evidence of corruption, the sadness of ongoing broken relationship and the expectation of change and renewal. We also got to step into some of our team's work, tromping around the goat pens and cocoa farms, stopping in at the health center, touching base with a village-health-team meeting, participating in an RMS field day. I'm thankful for that privilege, for the opportunity to break the meager gift of time and prayer, listening and bearing with. But those two mites were costly, and we left the district pretty tired, and in need of renewal ourselves.

And for renewal, we take a page from Job and Jesus. The wilderness. There are few places to go in Uganda that are devoid of stares or demands. Campsite 2 at Queen Elizabeth National Park has long been one of our favorites. The five of us, three small tents with sleeping bags and mats, two pans, five spoons, a bag of food, firewood, and pretty much nothing else. We arrived and set up camp at sunset last night, cooking as darkness settled, gathering around the fire, Caleb playing his guitar. At dawn we went game-driving in a light rain at times, one of our best ever, with two hyenas posing unhurried right by the road, spotted and powerful. Then we came upon three male lions, resting, shaking manes and barely deigning to glance at us, unconcerned, dominant, also right by the road. Not another vehicle in sight. We stayed by them a long time, watching. When we returned we were damp and shivering, cooking bacon and French Toast, and wondering if the whole camp-out idea was workable. But the day gradually dried up, allowing relaxing hours of just hanging out in nature. The scarlet-red gonolek, shrieking fish-eagles, chirping weaver birds. The breeze in the cacti. Open sky. No people. Reading books, dozing. Peace interrupted only by a herd of elephant passing through, which was a bit unnerving as I happened to be in a rather compromised position in the bushes as they approached. We stood quietly by the car, ready to dive in and drive off if necessary, but they merely sniffed with their trunks and flapped their ears, gliding, massive, graceful, pulling at the vines and grass clumped around the bushes, eating. They gave our camp a berth, moving to both sides while we watched in the middle. One mother acted a little perturbed when her baby trotted too close, and we could hear their rumbling growls as they moved away together. The only thing better than a game drive, a game-camp, where the animals come to you. At least in the daylight . . .

The rest, the beauty, the quiet, the sunshine. I think the game park also renews as a picture of parallel reality. God's world, God's timing, God's rule, which coexists on earth with places like Bundi where humans have marred everything. The dimension where elephants take no notice, where our control is minimal and our problems not the center of perspective, where life in fullness is passing along as it was created to be, good.

We long and wait for the day when God's rule and power and glory will be as evident in us, and in Bundi, as it is at Campsite 2. Until then, we'll keep running here for doses of the "dangerous beauty" that points us onward.

Two Pictures at Dusk

This evening Scott and I went to visit our neighbor, Tabaka, the 82 year old brother of the late John Mukiddi. These two men had been fatherly figures in our lives here, our elders, claiming us in their clan. Tabaka now has cancer which seems to have spread to his spine, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. Neither of his wives were anywhere to be found. He lay naked save a towel, in a room dimly lit by a partially-covered single opening, alone in a house made of dirt, with a few pieces of cloth and a tin of milk and not much else. But as we entered, he carried on a long and cheerful conversation, about how blessed he was to see us one more time, about his past travels, about his current condition, about our kids. Here is a man who is slowly passing into death, but asking about Luke's course of study at Yale. No pain-killing drugs, no hospice nurses, no therapy, no senior citizen program, no insurance, no equipment, no bathroom . . . but also no complaint. Somehow that juxtaposition captured something of the privilege of this reality: starkly stalking death, without pretense of immortality, but a courage of spirit and a welcome to us. And his impending death, following Mukiddi's, one more loss, one more thread that ties us to Bundibugyo being cut.

Half an hour later, a few meters away, back at our house, the pizza oven glowing with coals, the team gathered. Floury hands, conversations flowing, rolling pins rattling, the pizzas sliding in and out of the oven, steaming hot, dripping cheese. Isingoma, the new headmaster, joins us with his oldest son and one of our "kids" Birungi, and later his wife Christine just arriving from Hoima. Our neighbor Asita shows up with her son, and Anna's parents are here for a visit too, so the group is large and hungry and production and consumption continue well into the darkness. There are stories and stargazing, and later Caleb pulls out his guitar and plays.

Being away and coming back, re-affirms for us: this is NOT AN EASY PLACE TO LIVE. Perhaps it is one of the hardest I know of (Caleb pointed out that Kijabe is for wimpy missionaries, but assured us that's OK for a while). Sin is everywhere, but I believe there is some geography to the intensity of the spiritual struggle. In light of that, these two pictures represent staying power. The human connection with neighbors and the suspension of the battle for an evening of relaxation with team. Please pray that this team would be graced with both those cords to bind them to Bundi.