Cry, Cling, Context: Making it through the mud to glimpse the majesty

 Yesterday Scott was talking to a colleague about our Rwenzori hikes, parenthetically to a doctor wrapping up 15 years' service in Tanzania. We are friends because in 1997 he was a college intern with us the summer we fled on foot from the ADF. (He carried Luke, age 4, a bit on that fateful day. . .  Now Dr. Luke is in his fifth and final year of orthopaedic surgery residency, Dr. Rob is a faculty member at Cornell who has shaped health care in Mwanza, TZ, the ADF are still creating havoc along our border but mostly on the run from more intentional military protection, and we are still here looking at the Rwenzori mist-shrouded peaks.) Scott told him about a post-hike T-shirt that he made that said: MUD AND MAJESTY. Because that about sums up the hike, and life. We slog through the bogs of this muddy world, mired in a thousand reminders of all that is unjust, wrong, broken, evil, painful, with very little filter to allow us to shelter ourselves from that reality. And yet, majesty. There are the moments on the snow-covered peak at sunrise, when the glory of goodness is undeniable. 

--------------------------- The MUD is obvious

It's the ratio of mud to majesty that sometimes seems unsurvivable. On a Sunday, looking back over the week since we last posted, we are remembering power outages and insect infestations. Our nutrition team overwhelmed by the hungry children left by their parents from DRC on this side of the border while they try to keep gardens going on their own side. Following up coughs, brain malformations, rashes, dangerous hypertension, mental health strains, uncontrolled diabetes, and more (this week alone) in people who manage to reach us for help in spite of our pause in regular hospital hours. Walking with our teams around the area, denied work permits, expired passes, hard decisions by partners to cancel things we feel passionate about, requests to fund things we sometimes don't believe are of great benefit, doing the research to distinguish between those two options. Wrestling through plans with our leadership for team expansions, personnel shifts. Advocating, praying. Following the news that warns against COVID complacency in Africa, and new studies that show the impact of vaccine misinformation and pandemic- related funding shifts which "threaten the lives of millions of children" (WHO).  Two days of very cross-cultural important but draining meetings, one with the district political and health leaders to deliberate response to the estimated 29,000 Congolese who have fled into Bundibugyo but prefer to stay blended into villages rather than in the designated refugee camp, and one with the Christ School board. 

The CSB board of 12 includes representatives of our founding body, World Harvest Mission Uganda/Serge International, plus local political and cultural leaders, PTA and Alumni representatives, and two Teaching Staff members.  Even that was a long boggy slog (literally the Board of Governors is the BOG .. . ) through the new Uganda curriculum's impact on school evaluations, text books, end of year exams and promotions, staff training, capacity. Of the amount of money spent to run the school for a year, and maintain and expand infrastructure, the parental tuition covers well below half, an intentional design to keep the school affordable to the majority small-scale subsistence agricultural population. . . meaning we have to raise funds outside the district. But in a year where the global economy is wobbling, and the local teachers and government workers in other sectors have been striking to demand higher salaries . . . the pressure mounts. How to prepare students well, respect teachers well, feed everyone, stay safe and healthy, and not implode, is not easy. This was a 9 hour meeting.

So when we got to the final item of the day, the final hour of the week, we were tired. In 2019, a large part of the reason we came back to Bundibugyo from Kenya was the rising insecurity of CSB under the leadership of a power-focused self-promoting head teacher (principal), and the final straw was the week in June that year when he incited students to riot against staff. Working through his exit, with this board, took grace and energy. The deputy head teacher at the time, Peter Bwambale, stepped in as "acting". We all just tried to pick up the pieces and make it through the rest of 2019, thinking that in 2020 we would institute another national advertisement and recruitment for head teacher. Then only two months into the new school year, COVID caused a nation-wide shut down, and except for a few weeks of exam preparation for the graduating classes, that lasted almost two years. In January 2022 we finally re-opened for our first normal year, and now in the middle of second term our first board meeting and opportunity to make leadership decisions. And like a Rwenzori climb, at the end we seemed to step out of the bogs and onto the glaciers and be surrounded by light. Because the board unanimously supported that we make Peter the official head teacher. Everyone had solidly good things to say about his humble, consensus-building approach, his faithfulness through hard times, his trust established with the community. We preach servant leadership; it makes sense to hire one. A moment of majesty, to call this man into the board (and today in front of all the students) and give him the good news.

-------------------------  The MAJESTY takes work to notice

When you're climbing the mountain range, the density of the foliage, the folds of the craggy valleys, the misty rain of the equatorial jungle, make the goal impossible to see most of the way. And we find that true of life. Majesty breaks through, but only in short bursts. Our team is reading Prayer in the Night, by Tish Harrison Warren. I'm sure we'll talk about it again, but chapter 3 this week pulled us back into the Psalms as much more than poetry, they are God's gentle guide to us to life in a world wracked by grief. The Psalms of lament lead us to three key ways to cope with the sorrowful realities of the world. First, we cry out to God, honestly naming all that is wrong. It is beneficial to consciously NOT pretend all is well, because it is NOT. Collective cries, joining to call out the injustice and pain, must be the beginning. But the psalms do not leave us there. We also cling to truth. The authors remind God of his promises, of his character, of mercy, of power. And then remind us of the context. Our story is a small part of a much bigger story of redemption. We are part of the renewal of all things. The end is distant, the sunrise on the peak is not visible in the night, but it is coming. As we cry out and cling to what we've been told and shown, we find our place on that long arc of all things being made right and good.

Pray for our team, and our Area, this week. To cry over the broken edges that hurt us and those we love and serve, to cling by faith to the promises of God to have mercy and love, and to remind each other of the context of the big picture of redemption. We all need that.

The girls' football team played a friendly match Friday evening

More majesty 

and the majesty of friendships, the wives of two young men who grew up with our kids, visiting to check on me

___________________________________________________________

And some historical pix of the Rwenzori Mud&Majesty Trek of 2008

Take Words With You: walking through Bundibugyo

As a generally wordy person, that injunction from Hosea 14:2 in my lectionary reading yesterday jumped out. Take words, to God and to the world, because words build bridges. Words paint pictures and require thought and processing, that gives life meaning. Words draw others in, and generate prayer. So words were on my mind as I finally got to open my computer after a disrupted morning of knocks and needs. . .  only to note that somehow it's already two weeks since we last posted any words. 

Thanking staff for prayers at the morning CME

Two weeks of walking through Bundibugyo days. A midterm break for Christ School sent us out to Fort Portal for a staff retreat, leading sessions on vision and servant leadership, enjoying the great team building Patrick and Mike put together. Work with our team, with our Area, meetings too numerous to count as we monitor goals and progress and trouble shoot problems. Leading prayer times and Bible studies. A new baby born to our Fort Portal family the Opeduns, welcoming Louise. Health consults for team and neighbours. Two funerals, a shocking unexpected collapse for a young CSB graduate trying out for police after completing training as a clinical officer (PA level) and a man across the road with severe TB whose treatment was appropriate but too late to save his life. A morning to greet the Bundibugyo Hospital staff and thank them for praying for me; other days to catch up on the politics and reality of medical care in our district this year. The hard, hard news that our dear friend and colleague, the medical superintendent, whom we connected to a scholarship for becoming a doctor and who has been a tremendous blessing of integrity and compassion and skill for this District, came to the painful decision to take a job across the country where the politics did not prevent him from getting the job he had trained for. Meeting with a group of visiting medical students for a lecture on global health. Working on the budget for CSB, the ever-changing visa requirements to renew our work permits, planning for fundraising. Celebrating a team 4th of July, and another team birthday. And then yesterday, an entire day with the political and religious leadership of Bundibugyo hosting the first-ever visit of the Archbishop of the Church of Uganda. Two weeks ago I turned 60, and the year has already been full. Some deeply cross-cultural days and nights with staff and neighbours and leaders, some deeply familiar connections with team and region. 

Too much to catch up with words, so I will narrow down to two.

First, glimpses. Taking words requires taking note of what is happening, what is worth focusing on in days that are often overwhelming. At one of the funerals, after the burial as we were walking away from the freshly dug grave behind the cluster of earth-plastered homes, a woman caught up to me with expectant eyes and an incongruous smile. I didn't recognise her, but I could tell she wanted to talk. I stopped to listen, and then called Scott back to witness. She wanted to tell us about her son, whom we remembered from early days of the Kwejuna project when we introduced pre-natal HIV testing and single-dose Nevirapine treatment of moms in labor to prevent transmission of the deadly virus to their babies, before other ARV treatments were available out here. Her baby did NOT get infected, and is now a young man, and she just wanted to say thank you. A similar thing happened at the Archbishops's festival yesterday. We were seated behind the people of power in this district, all the elected leaders and even the cultural king; we were quiet nobodies on a day of many speeches and recognitions. But after one choir sang, one of the women filing out came over to slip us a note with a big smile. She had seen us and gotten someone to help her write a message of thanks, because Scott had payed school fees for her son to become a dental assistant. Those two moments came in the midst of huge crowds and had nothing to do with the bigger events we were attending. They were unnoticeable women that no one was seeking out on days where we were paying attention to preachers and chairmen and members of parliament. But both were glimpses of the importance of small inputs into small lives. Of the way that a test and a pill, a willingness to listen and pay some fees, can change the direction of a life. And of the way that can be a ripple that continues to tip the scale of good against evil, years and years later. Noticed only perhaps by moms who were at the end of their rope. But when the evil is easier to see, what a gift those glimpses were of connection and joy, of being a little part of the way God sees the marginalised and responds to them.

Second, presence. Our teams in this area have had some rough weeks this summer. Sicknesses for sure, perhaps a COVID variant or just the million other microbes in the tropical mix. A transformation-oriented business unable to keep up with the economic ripples of fuel, Ukraine, prices, isolation. Fighter jets on the border, responding to escalated rebel tensions. Partners moving their own committees and structures in ways that are hard to understand. Conflicts. Power outages, constantly. Parents agonising over the sorrows of kids who are always outsiders, always at risk. Then our own parents left behind who are aging, or weary of distance, or dying of cancer, or just lonely. The endless struggle to stay legal in systems where requirements are set at aspirational levels that are nearly impossible to actually meet given reality (actually my high point of the week was getting an email asking us to send in yet another document, more certified expensive copies of the same things we've been filing for 29 years to work here, from our taciturn agent in Kampala entitled "more drama".. . .it felt like a small victory that even he could see the absurdity).  People we love and trust making the hard decisions to move elsewhere. It just seems to have been the month that our CEO warned us of post-conference, a month where we are bumping up against the evidence that God's love for us does not work out exactly the way we'd like to design it. Hard things still happen. Today is the M'lim holiday that remembers the trial of Abraham when he though he'd have to sacrifice his own son, a story that certainly runs counter to the victorious comfortable winners-only outworking of faith we'd prefer. We're still living in a broken world and not immune to its sharp edges. But rather than make us invulnerable to suffering, God enters our suffering. He doesn't fix everything with a shazaam magical flourish, but He does promise presence with us. A presence that ultimately absorbs all the harm and transforms it to a good so glorious we can't imagine the end of the story. We're living in a penultimate chapter, and holding onto presence, hoping for a good plot twist soon.

So glimpses and presence are the words we're taking into the next week.  Eyes open to the sparkles of light in the darkness, to the ways that love persists in real connections and beauties and joys. Hearts open to the presence of that Love with a capital L, the nearness of God even in our hardest times.

Louise, our newest glimpse of love, pc her photographer dad Boas

Scott facilitating a discussion of vision with CSB staff on retreat

The Americans in Bundibugyo, on the 4th of July

team meeting in the COVID era (outdoor and spaced)

The Archbishop of the Church of Uganda, preaching to probably a few thousand people in Bundibugyo

Our tent, sitting behind elected parliamentarians and governor

Reflections on 60, and the paradox of shadow and life, grief and gratitude again.

 60 is a reality sort of birthday. When one comes as close to death as one generally can and still retreat, at 59, then 60 carries layers of sober joy. We have a new puppy, and are back home in Uganda after weeks of travel to our company conference. I went on an hour long dawn walk this morning through sleepy village homes with a crescent moon hovering over the mountains. With the person who means the most to me, and has been my absolute survival coach to make it to this point. I remembered the name of a neighbour we greeted on the road we hadn't talked to in years . . but I also have to focus on balance and vision just to stay intact. Our team here celebrated with us at our usual Thursday night pizza, by baking pies and making homemade ice cream, a relaxed fellowship with people we live with in community and care deeply about. But several were sick, one of our team kids has malaria, last night we got a call because refugees from DRC who were on their way back to the border reached too late and needed to camp out in our church across the road overnight, and this morning when we walked back to our gate one of the most aggressively notorious alcoholics in our village was waiting in a severely inebriated state to demand...chocolate (we refused, haha). So reality, the beauty of a celebration embedded right into the brokenness of the world. That's 60.

And if I wanted to take a day away from such reality, the breaking news on my birthday eve that the Supreme Court released a decision that overturns Roe v. Wade, which sent our home country into yet another conflagration of despair and disagreement, makes that even harder. It's a 213 page document that I've only read about 10% of, and begun to think about, so a birthday post is not going to do that justice. Except to note the same theme: life is full of nuance and contradiction, paradox and murkiness. As a doctor and a Christian, I see something holy and unique about the human embryo that makes care and choice weighty, different that other medical decisions. But the court decision (as far as I've read) doesn't even address that; instead it justifies throwing the questions back to the voters, who would in our 2022 democracy would vote against a full ban on all abortions if put to a popular vote. But because we have a fractured state-level disparity, we seem to be entering a time of local rules being different in each place. Which means that we aren't "protecting" life, we are hiding behind privilege and unknowing and feeling self-congratulatory and tribalistic as we distance ourselves from the truth: child-bearing is fraught with powerlessness, risk, disappointment, chance, surprise, grief, thrill, longing, fear. No one gets by without cost. Both extremes of the spectrum of opinion would like to create an unassailable hill of what feels like unassailable logic: it's all about a woman's right to decide what happens with her own body; or, it's all about the value of a child's life which is no less in the early months of gestation than any other time. Except in real life, all human interaction and love involves compromise of power over one's being, and everyone has grey areas in their thinking about human rights. I realise for me, some of the darkest times in my 60 years were the months after losing three pregnancies at the end of the first trimester, and that grief makes it hard for me to listen to strident arguments that imply those losses were just my tissue. However, I also have lived with the reality that the loss of those babies was NOT perceived equally to the loss of a 2-month old or 2-year old or 20-year old, not even by the pro-life church. And the reality that my experience is true of a significant proportion (30% or more) of all conceptions, gives a different big-picture view of the universe. Very little of the dialogue seems to stem from love. And I guess that's what I'm listening for in my 60's. If we people of faith devote ourselves to showing love for others, listening to their sorrows, protecting girls from sexual exploitation, giving them confidence and value, modelling respect for women so that boys expect to take responsibility for their actions, investing in the social fabric that enables children to thrive, ensuring that health care and jobs and parenthood are not mutually exclusive choices, well it seems to me that those are better ways to protect the unborn than having six judges go back on their word to overturn a 50 year old law supported by the majority of Americans . . . and calls into question accepted medical procedures for ectopic pregnancy or infertility.  

So yes, my birthday this year carries shadows of death mixed into the light of life. My family of origin gathers for their annual reunion today, the post-COVID revival of the tradition that began in 1946 to thank God for the safe return of 5 sons from WWII. The Aylestocks of Sago gave me a strong foundation. After our Serge conference, we visited Scott's sister in Norway--I briefly thought we could pull off Scott's mom's 90th, my 60th, and our daughter-in-law's 30th for a triple crown of 2022 celebratory togetherness there, but it was only possible for the two of us to visit her. And those are the memories I want to end this post with. Yes, this life is full of hard griefs, and this year has been a doozy. But we had a few days of immersion in the rugged beauty of the land of water and mountains, rocks and trees, endless solstice sunshine, that gave rise to the Myhres. We did some steep hikes by the fjords that a few months ago I could not have dreamed of reaching, chugged up the spectacular inland waterways on a ferry, and visited the church Scott's ancestors built and the farmland some distant cousins still manage as a dairy. Those men and women who took their name from the wetland could never have imagined their son would spend 29 years as far away as Africa  . . . but they wouldn't be surprised to know that seeking justice and practicing love have kept the family anchored for generations.

Glad to be part of both families, the Aylestocks and the Myhres. Glad to have just spent two weeks with our Serge family, pouring into the rising generations. Glad to know my own family of five kids just spent a week together in Utah, supporting each other. And mostly glad to reach 60 with Scott, who is my heart's family until death. Which thankfully has been delayed another year. Cheers. 

Literacy: why it matters, and a glimpse of redemption

This morning, Scott and I dropped in on a workshop to teach teachers how to teach kids to read.

That sentence is hugely important, on SO MANY levels.

First, we know that reading is foundational to learning, so a strong grasp of decoding the written word is essential for all students in all cultures to learn all their other subjects.  Second, reading opens up connection to God through Scripture, and a Lubwisi Bible is only as helpful as the capacity to read it.  Third, reading competence seeps out into all of life, into contracts and shopping and road signs and menus, into newspapers and media and connections to the world at large. Lastly, we are creative beings, and the spoken and sung truths of this place will last longer if they can be written down.

But in a culture where their own mother-tongue language has only been in written form within the last two decades, where there are NO books or print media other than the New Testament and a few primers, where almost NO CHILD is exposed to books in their home . . . teaching reading is truly a mountain of a task. The primary school teachers themselves were not taught phonics as children, it's a new concept, and until the last couple of years all teaching of reading has been in English and by memorising sight words. Thankfully the Carrigans had the insight to begin connecting with a "Read for Life" program here in Uganda, and sponsored some local teachers to be trained in how to use phonics-based instruction. The McClures wisely saw the importance and value of this program, and have continued to support it and collect data. They've shown that even in a few weeks, it is possible to significantly improve the ability of students to identify sounds with letters. In the few short weeks that Ugandan schools were open in 2021, they pre- and post- tested a sample from the Read for Life trained teacher schools and control schools. The control (no intervention, normal baseline instruction) school students increased their sound recognition by 0%, and the Read for Life phonics-based instruction school students increased by 66%. In only 5 weeks. Then when schools shut down for COVID, the McClures arranged for literacy camps for kids here on the mission. Those kids similarly made huge leaps in their reading ability.

Literacy camp students last year

This year, in 2022, with schools finally back in session, the next step is to have the five Read for Life trained teachers teach OTHERS. So as we entered the first term break, Patrick and Alexis put together a training for about 30 teachers in 7 local primary schools. They invited them to a 3-day workshop at . . .  Christ School! Which has the added advantage of connecting our secondary school with primary schools, giving teachers a view of the goal of preparing their younger students for success. And our brand new chapel is doing just what we hoped it would, blessing the broader community. 

So we listened briefly to the work of teaching sounds, putting together words, getting class participation. The training uses the same active, involved, aural and visual and motion-aided teaching styles that will make these men and women better teachers in general, as well as more comfortable with phonics. It's been fun to see our team mates facilitate this, because if you are a Kindergarten/early primary teacher in America, nothing gives you more joy than seeing the same great portal to reading being opened for a few dozen teachers who will take it to hundreds of kids, eventually impacting thousands. And it is in our heart that the Lubwisi Bible and Literacy group can carry this forward in the local language too. 

Christ School is more than an academically excellent secondary option locally. It is a place where little seeds of justice are nurtured to flourish, as our students become teachers and our doors open to help other primary school teachers learn to bless children, the effect is multiplied. We're half-way through our 3-week break between school terms, but today we glimpsed redemption of that time as our space was used to augment educational capacity in the district. And afterwards we walked around to thank the workers also using the time to paint staff housing, repair other buildings, keep working on our perimeter brick fence which has become more necessary as our environment urbanizes. Thankful for our supportive partners who invest, and if you're one of them reading to the end, know your investment is reaching many.

Why we admire Volodymyr Zelensky..(by Bret Stephens)

 By Bret Stephens (the New York Times) 

April 19, 2022

Why do we admire Volodymyr Zelensky? The question almost answers itself.

We admire him because, in the face of unequal odds, Ukraine’s president stands his ground. Because he proves the truth of the adage that one man with courage makes a majority. Because he shows that honor and love of country are virtues we forsake at our peril. Because he grasps the power of personal example and physical presence. Because he knows how words can inspire deeds — give shape and purpose to them — so that the deeds may, in turn, vindicate the meaning of words.

We admire Zelensky because he reminds us of how rare these traits have become among our own politicians. Zelensky was an actor who used his celebrity to become a statesman. Western politics is overrun by people who playact as statesmen so that they may ultimately become celebrities. Zelensky has made a point of telling Ukrainians the hard truth that the war is likely to get worse — and of telling off supposed well-wishers that their words are hollow and their support wanting. Our leaders mainly specialize in telling people what they want to hear.

We admire Zelensky because of who and what he faces. Vladimir Putin represents neither a nation nor a cause, only a totalitarian ethos. The Russian dictator stands for the idea that truth exists to serve power, not the other way around, and that politics is in the business of manufacturing propaganda for those who will swallow it and imposing terror on those who will not. Ultimately, the aim of this idea isn’t the mere acquisition of power or territory. It’s the eradication of conscience.

We admire Zelensky because he has restored the idea of the free world to its proper place. The free world isn’t a cultural expression, as in “the West”; or a security concept, as in NATO; or an economic description, as in “the developed world.” Membership in the free world belongs to any country that subscribes to the notion that the power of the state exists first and foremost to protect the rights of the individual. And the responsibility of the free world is to aid and champion any of its members menaced by invasion and tyranny. As it goes for Ukraine, so, eventually, it will go for the rest of us.

We admire Zelensky because he embodies two great Jewish archetypes: David in the face of Goliath and Moses in the face of Pharoah. He is the canny underdog who, with skill and wits, makes up for what he lacks in fearsomeness and brawn. And he is the prophet who revolts against the diminishment and entrapment of his people — and determines to lead them through trials toward a political culture based on self-determination, freedom and ethics.

We admire Zelensky because he fights. Fighting is not supposed to be a virtue in civilized societies that value dialogue, diplomacy and compromise. But the world isn’t always civilized: There are things for which civilized persons and nations must be prepared to fight if they aren’t to perish. Zelensky and the Ukrainian people have reminded the rest of the free world that a liberal and democratic inheritance that is taken for granted by its citizens runs the risk of being taken at will by its enemies.

We admire Zelensky because he rouses the better angels of our nature. His leadership has made Joe Biden a better president, Germany a better country, NATO a better alliance. He has shaken much of the United States out of the isolationist stupor into which it was gradually falling. He has forced Europe’s political and mercantile classes to stop looking away from Russia’s descent into fascism. He reminds free societies that there can still be a vital center in politics, at least when it comes to things that matter.

We admire Zelensky because he maintains a sense of human proportion befitting a democratically elected leader. Note the contrast between his public encounters with journalists, cabinet members, foreign leaders and ordinary citizens, and the Stalinist antics of the Putin court. In the ostentatious trappings of Russian power we see the smallness of the man wielding it: the paranoia and insecurity of a despot who knows he may someday have to sell his kingdom for a horse.

We admire Zelensky because he models what a man should be: impressive without being imposing; confident without being cocksure; intelligent without pretending to be infallible; sincere rather than cynical; courageous not because he is fearless but because he advances with a clear conscience. American boys in particular, raised on preposterous notions of what manhood entails, should be steered toward his example.

We admire Zelensky because he holds out the hope that our own troubled democracies may yet elect leaders who can inspire, ennoble, even save us. Perhaps we can do so when the hour isn’t quite as late as it is now for the people of Ukraine and their indomitable leader.

Easter Matters

 Easter matters.

If there was any doubt, this year makes it very clear. My dad died 16 years ago on this date, and it matters to us to have a different story ending than just loss. I am personally limited and weary and awkwardly impaired, and that's not going away in any discernible timeline. The world is spinning into more atrocity of war in Europe, and it's hard to even keep straight the attacks in our neighbouring countries in this continent, or the floods and droughts. We need resurrection, not as a theoretical unseen unknowable theological postulate but as a force that exploded one grave and now marches out into every corner of our globe and life.

Resurrection. Painting by Serge artist Constance, look her up on insta for more.

Because there is nothing we can do to save ourselves, to rescue my vision or protect our team when trucks of soldiers are rumbling towards the border, or smooth all the conflicts or cure all the fevers. It's outside of our capacity. And Easter says, that's OK, because God saw, and came, and acted.

So here in Bundi, we started the day well before sunrise like the women worried about Jesus' body, preparing coffee and cinnamon rolls and walking out to the football pitch to await the light and our team. We sang and listened to Jesus' words about himself, and celebrated. Then to a church that became more packed with ever hour, to be reminded by Pastor Mike that the power of the resurrection is real and effective and universe-changing. Even though our problems are not demonstrably removed, Jesus stood up and exited the grave and in his wounded body quietly sparked a complete reversal of entropy. 

Sunrise, singing by faith

And more singing a few hours later in church

Easter smiles from Miss Michaela, not because everything's easy, but because love is real

And more beautiful colour and hope from Ann

The day is just beginning for our families in America, and we're still cooking and washing dishes and preparing for the Easter meal.  Just wanted to pause to say: Thanks for your prayers. Still amazed that we are HERE for Easter, and still can't believe how tired every day makes me, and still clinging to the truth of Easter. Because it matters.

Plot Twist: Friday

 Last night we celebrated Passover with our team and visitors, the story of the deliverance of the enslaved Israelites in a foreign land miraculously delivered. Which is the same commemorative meal that Jesus celebrated with his friends, his last night. 

On a week that included the shouting hopeful excitement of Palm Sunday's entrance, and the annual meal that celebrates God's powerful ordering of history to rescue his people, one can only imagine that by Thursday night the inner group around Jesus were poised for a solidly good ending to the story. All signs pointed to prophecy fulfilled, a new King established, in the company of winners.

And frankly in some ways our week could look that way too. We welcomed visitors on Tuesday with a pizza party at our house, a team from another country where our NGO works, including very good friends who used to work here. And Wednesday we spent the entire day at Christ School to commemorate the new Chapel completed this year. It's more than a building by far. It's a concrete symbol of the synergy of global partnership, funds raise by parents of Serge missionaries to bless parents of Bundibugyo by creating the largest and most functional meeting space in the District, a beautiful and safe hall where we worship and learn. Scott has poured immeasurable energy into this project over the last couple years and many others as well. To see it complete, in spite of COVID, school shutdowns, budget stress and lack, shows this community that God sees and rescues and cares. Every top political leader in the District came, and in their speeches we were moved to hear them referring to the spiritual character development CSB emphasises along with academic excellence. Yes, that is the core value of our team and our staff, to model and teach servant leadership and to promote education for women. But to hear the unsolicited recognition that this is happening, out of the mouths of our parliamentarians and governor-level people, to see alumnae attending and to have evidence that the slow deep changes of heart are being manifested through them, was very gratifying.  School is back with our biggest enrollment ever, we have a committed staff, and we all hope COVID is ebbing and life is improving.

CLICK HERE TO SEE A BRIEF RETROSPECTIVE SLIDESHOW WE SHOWED AT THE CHAPEL DEDICATION CELEBRATION

So by Thursday it would be natural to think, here we are in 2022, and the plot is finally moving to a good chapter. Friends, visitors, songs, poems, food, reunion, fellowship, worship, hope. The disciples of Jesus probably thought they could predict the next chapter too.

But Friday.

Plot twist.

Sleepy with the four cups of passover wine, the sumptuous meal of lamb and unleavened breads and dried dates and honey and sauces, reclined in the garden trying to appear holy in prayer, who would have seen that the end of the world as we know it was on the way. Betrayal, sham trials, scourging, abandonment, shame. Instead of enthronement, within hours Jesus is being brutally impaled by spikes, attached to a cross with two criminals, mocked, dehydrated, dying. Dead.

From the Biola Lent series

Today we resonate with the bewilderment of those friends who waved the palm branches and poured the passover wine. Everything seemed to be on track, the right group improving, even winning. So the unexpected (though he tried so many times to tell them) killing of Jesus, their unexpected aloneness, must have been devastating. And we resonate because our own stories keep having plot twists that don't yet fit resurrection's dreams. One of our visitors delivered her baby prematurely in January, and even then we thought, OK it will be some long weeks in the hospital but surely "we trusted in God let Him deliver us since He delights in us" . . . only to see little Titus die in a Nairobi hospital a few days later. What? Even this week with its glimpses of glory has ended with a disturbing thievery incident,  team and visitors struggling with sickness, setbacks in news from other places, and always the personal struggles of being a bit impaired and weak and slow. The temptation is always there to think, wait, this isn't the way it was supposed to work out. War in Ukraine, terribly divisive politics, a brutal police shooting of a Congolese immigrant in America during a traffic stop, not to mention Congolese in Congo killed by rebels, unrest in Jerusalem, increased hunger. We instinctively feel, this is not supposed to be the way the story moves.

Today we sit in the dissonance. The end is promised, not seen. The Friday and Saturday and into Sunday punch of loss is hard. We wait for the plot to twist back.

From bandwagon to cancel culture: Holy Week

Palm Sunday, all of Jerusalem on the Jesus bandwagon. He rides into town on a Zechariah-prophesied donkey colt, to the sound of jubilation. Probably the crowd is anticipating the end of Roman oppression, a return to the glory days of the Davidic Kingdom, regional respect and prosperity, with a king who can heal people and make wine and multiply fish and loaves to boot. It's a high moment, and yet Jesus consistently returns to his theme of approaching suffering and death, which no on seems to hear. They want to be on the winning side.

The palm trees in front of our house this Palm Sunday morning

Palm Sunday service at CSB, with palms that have twisted to cancel culture

Even me, as we say here. I would choose power and healing and food and drink over a slow execution any day. Yesterday Scott finished the installation of the overhead projector for the new chapel at CSB. He has poured a lot of his life into this school and lately that's been finishing a huge meeting hall (aka The Chapel), including roof, floors, windows, doors, electricity, all through funds raised from our team's parents to bless parents of CSB students. As he got the video going and connected it to the TV, the students were able to watch the end of a Premier League soccer match. And they cheered, universally, for the team that was already winning.  It's what we humans like.

By the end of the week, the crowd is jeering. They switch sides when it becomes clear the power has shifted to the religious and political establishment, away from this upstart itinerant. Not much has changed in two thousand years, except that we can jump on the bandwagon faster from all over the world and then be convinced en masse to cancel what is out of favour. If Jesus were here today, we'd all be deleting his InstaGram account this week.

Our preacher at CSB today related Palm Sunday to the kids. We have 380 of them, the biggest enrollment ever. And a new Chapel, and an overhead projector that works, and a girls' football team that went to regional quarter-finals (excellent for our rural distant school), and smart uniforms and good choirs, and this week the end of exams and closing of term one, after two years of COVID sorrows. Chaplain Edward told them, as you go home, you might feel like you are somebody pretty special. Maybe not quite messiah-king material, but almost. When you get there, your parents will celebrate you perhaps, but you will also find reality, find some hard truths. He estimated 90% of local homes have some role in hosting refugees from the DRC. We're getting requests from neighbours to help them with food for the larger family crowd, and meeting with the district about responding.  Chaplain Edward warned them that they might be crowded out of their usual room for sleeping, or making do with fewer meals. And so like Jesus, they are progressing by the end of the week from the celebration of Palm Sunday (we literally have a huge event planned for Wednesday to dedicate this new chapel with speeches and songs and food as the Learys bring a visiting team) to the suffering of the cross. How will you respond, he asked? Will you, like Jesus, choose to serve? Will you try to bless and help your family humbly, sleep uncomfortably, work dirtily, garden and cook and clean? Or will you demand your honour and expect others to serve you? 

Our return to Bundibugyo has had some sweet moments, perhaps a taste of the Palm Sunday bandwagon. Friday we were invited to a celebratory dinner by one of the church elders we have known almost 30 years, and he recounted with flourish times we had provided medical treatment for his relatives or given him rides. Many friends have come to the door to be grateful with us for God's mercy. Yes, we've invested our lives in a small obscure place, but hey, if you almost die and show back up, it's nice to feel like people cared. They did, and do. But that's not the goal of Jesus' life or our mission. There is still abundant evil to struggle against, and the brief bandwagon quickly devolves to hard realities. Corruption, missing paperwork, tangled messaging, conflict, people with intractable illnesses and needs, insecurity both macro (armed rebels) and micro (doubting hearts). Scott reinforced the chapel message when he was called up at the end, describing that though he's Chairman of the Board of Governors and a father in his family, he still chooses to clean up the dead rats or empty the garbage or wash the floor. The more I try to approach "normal" old life, the more discouraged I am by my limitations and the burden that puts on others, particularly Scott. Maybe it sounds trivial to break a dish or struggle with an email, but it doesn't feel trivial when it's because of neurologic impairment. I'd rather have this be a story of triumph than one stuck in messy chapters of unknown duration. 

Servant-leadership has been a value of this team, this school, this mission from the start. You'd think we would naturally have that down, but this Holy Week reminds me that we humans in all eras still want to win rather than to die. The good news is that as we follow Jesus into the Garden of Gethsemane this week, the priests' courtyards, Pilate's porch, the hill named for a skull, that paradoxical route leads to life. While I'd vote to fast forward to Easter morning, and to fast forward to a strong body and mind, Jesus asks us to hang in through the Holy Week and the Holy Life where we swat mosquitoes and get interrupted and cry and disagree and are sometimes even hated or hurt . . . because this road leads to Redemption. 

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Do something that won't compute

 In church this morning, the first reading was from Daniel, the story of the emperor making his 90-foot tall golden statue and requiring everyone to pause and respect it when the music plays. Maybe that sounds quaintly archaic, but in fact it pretty accurately describes 2022.  People in power decide what to promote, and it is usually publicly visibly impressive, expensively exclusive, directly connected to political ascendancy, and the consequences of ignoring the trend could be dire. . . . not that most of us want to do so, because we are so embedded in the culture around us. For instance in  some parts of the world this week movies, music, awards were the central story, in others football and politics, in others weapons and negotiations. But the goal of being shiny, and winning, seems pretty universal. Even for our students in chapel, we could be unconsciously modelling that our goal for them is to win our tournaments, make the best grades, dominate the competition, work hard, promote our name, make our donors and parents proud.

Cheering on the girls (above), chapel (below) . . . without making them idols we pray.

Along comes Jesus, another couple of weeks until Passover, moving towards the centres of power but turning expectations upside down. Answering questions with more difficult questions, throwing out phrases like whoever doesn't hate his family and forsake all can't be my disciple, walking into risk and refusing to call down angel armies. Pastor Mike preached this today from Ephesians 2. Grace, not glory, saves us.

Someone posted this poem this week, which puts that in 21st century North American terms from Wendell Berry (Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front):  

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

So how can we look back on the week, and find things that did not compute, that won't make sense for next week either? In our area, we see people who love the world by caring for the malnourished or teaching medical students or training counselors or coaching kids, all with zero fanfare and mostly lurching steps forward. Here in Bundibugyo this week we were delighted to have Waller Tabb back in town as a translation consultant, remembering the years and years of faithful work he and partners spent to complete the New Testament in Lubwisi and now continuing to work remotely with local translators on Joshua and Genesis and Psalms, thinking about how to consistently represent place names and describe the mysteries of God in a language that until this project had never been written. We spent a day at a burial, walking that odd line of ours of being historical and yet outsiders too. Another day Scott met with district leaders to explore how to best react to the estimated 23,000 refugees that have permeated the border from Congo after brutal ADF attacks  . . . because most prefer to stay with family and move freely back and forth to their gardens, so only about a hundred actually sleep in the designated transit camp. They are driving up numbers accessing our BundiNutrition program, which has led us to apply for more funding via a grant we could really use. Other long meetings addressed our tedious and complex NGO re-approval process and implications for work permits. In between we continue to receive visitors, old friends with greetings and others with medical problems or financial strains. And we work on Christ School and team issues, and mourn power outages and snakes. It often feels like too little, too weak, too ineffective, in the wrong places. And I often feel like I'm more tired than is reasonably explicable. 

Waller and Aristarchus the translation consultants, with our team

This is the translation work in process, Waller in the back room far right.

Jesus said to value Him above shiny success and even above family togetherness, which bites harder leaving kids than it ever did leaving parents.

But the last line of the poem shines out. Love someone who does not deserve it. Yes, that's our story. We are loved. We are the people who don't deserve it. We can walk into the does-not-compute territory because we walk there with Jesus. We can stake our lives on grace, not profit, because love is the truest reality of the universe.

Two weeks from today we'll be celebrating Easter, and frankly I don't feel ready for all that is on our docket leading up to that. But that's the message of this year for us: we aren't enough, it does not compute, because grace balances the equation outside of the Daniel 3 structure of the world. 

In the theme of LOVE, surprise ENGAGEMENT of special intern Sarah Grace to her visiting boyfriend Drew. We are rejoicing with them!!

Rainy season brings rainbows to team meeting . . . 

Team CSB support! The McClures primarily, but happy to join.