Malawi, stories, and rain at the frayed edge of grace

A week ago we pulled out of our gate in the early morning, to drive across Uganda through rainy season profligate green to the international airport. . . and this morning we drove out of Lilongwe, capital of Malawi, to their international airport to head back, past dusty plowed thirsty fields. Out of rainy season into dry season and back again. The rains on our continent make the same north to south sweep this time of year. 

Rainy Uganda above, to dry Malawi below

Over 100 years ago, Scottish presbyterians and South Africa Dutch Reformed missionaries followed the call and example of David Livingstone into the interior, and an innovative risk-taking Malawian leader in Nkhoma saw that these Europeans had guns, and decided to invite them to his area. His tribe could handle wild animals and vagaries of climate, but he thought the firepower would be very useful in protecting his people from hostile neighbouring tribes who also took captives to sell to coastal slavers from abroad. The missionaries noted that Nkhoma, at over 4000 feet, provided a healthier less malarious climate for survival than the lower lakeshore. So they accepted the invitation. Still, at the end of the first year, the tensions of cross-cultural collaboration and suspicion were high. On Nov 27, 1889 a crowd surrounded Rev. Murray. The rains were desperately needed and late. If he really had a connection to God, he should pray for the rain. They gave the missionaries 24 hours, until sunset on the 28th . . . and if no rains had come, they would take that as a sign that these foreigners displeased the spirits and should be sacrificed. Those men prayed, and prayed some more, through the night of the 27th and day of the 28th.

A half hour before sunset, the skies opened and rain poured down.

And so lives were spared and land was granted to the church to begin a collaboration that translated the Bible, built numerous schools and churches, and established a hospital and nursing school and teachers’ college and eventually a University. The synod leaders over the decades transitioned from foreigners to Malawians, as did most of the church, school, and hospital staff. Family after family came and went from various corners of the country and the globe, moving into the solid brick houses with their tropical verandas and tenuous water systems. Thousands and thousands of treatments and surgeries and lessons and projects later, here we are in 2022. So much good. And yet, Malawi remains, like most of this continent, near the basement of any development index. The Kingdom comes, but in the slow way that a mustard seed grows, good but not enough for twenty million people the thrive. Yet.

A bit like the old missionaries, were were responding to invitation and going to establish collaboration, though this time we pray with less colonial hubris and certainly no firearms, but the ongoing heart to bless our neighbours. 

Arrival photos, Daniel and Bethany in front of their house

A year ago the Robbins family moved to Malawi. They had served a short term in the area as school teachers shortly after their marriage over a decade ago, and after finishing graduate training and working in the USA and having three kids then joining Serge and completing needed PhD coursework to qualify for seminary professorship and counsellor training to engage with safe-house programs for abused kids (a lot happens in a decade). . . they were ready to move to Nkhoma. We had intended to make a respectful visit as Serge leaders pre-move to Nkhoma in 2020 but . . Covid . . then when travel eased a little in 2021 but . . . injury . . . so this trip was long overdue. Though many others have served and lived in Nkhoma over the years, we don’t assume our welcome or right to insert ourselves. We need the clarity of the synod leadership inviting us organisationally, and so we primarily went to sign an “MOU” (memorandum of understanding) together (THANKS to advance work by the Brotherton-Streets). 

With Rev. Vasco in his office for the signing

This is the Area Director side of our job, and quite delightful. The primary meeting was fun for sure, Malawians have a warm humour, and Rev. Vasco graciously signed with Scott while saying : yes, now we have the papers, but more importantly we already have the trust with Daniel and Bethany.  They have worked hard, and God’s abundant grace at the fray, has enabled them to already establish relational connection that is more important than any document. And that’s the real joy of such a visit, not accomplishing paperwork but witnessing redemption. Getting a front row view of the Robbins and others as they grapple with poverty and broken systems and find the places where their particular resins can seal the cracks. 

Because in our era, even a century on, there is still work to be done. Daniel teaches in the seminary faculty of the University, which invests in deep theological training over 4-5 years so that church leaders fan out over the country with not only a degree but a spiritual resilience, and also invests in broader diploma-level 2-3 year enrolments so that secondary schools receive teachers with competence. Bethany not only homeschools her kids (and she’s one of those dream homeschoolers who uses the flexibility to stimulate creative, problem solving, real thought about the way the world works) but also mentors counsellors locally and at distance, particularly those working in the hardest heartbreaking areas of abusive trauma in childhood. Non-Serge missionaries are also on station, establishing family medicine and surgical residency training, providing medical care to the marginalised. We toured the hospital and met with some of the doctors and professors and pastors and friends. 

We loved being students again for a morning's dive into a Scripture passage as Professor Robbins drew out observations and analysis, then challenged us to examine trinitarian relationships in the context of voluntary submission. . . significant for understanding God but also human relationships. Wow.

Our role as outsiders now is to come alongside people who are the primary sealers of the broken pieces, people who were born and raised here. Like Rev. M who is preparing a thesis examining the Hebrew concept of “anavim”, a word in the Psalms that comfortable people assume to mean internal moral poverty . . . but perhaps the people who wrote it in ancient Palestine and the people who read it in 2022 Malawi see a richer (and more accurate) both-and meaning of spiritual and physical, internal and external need. Or Professor H who is juggling the finances and administration of the entire University while raising his family, or his wife E who brings quality improvement projects into the nursing care at the hospital. These people and their children are the future of Malawi, and yet God continually sprinkles in people from afar too. People who have benefited from a life that allowed for development of their skills and passions and who are now willing to be the seed of similar blessing and training in a new location, people who have access to tell the stories and channel the resources which are not fairly distributed in our world.

H, his son, M, and Robbins fam having stimulating discussions over fruit and eggs from M's chickens

That’s why we are in Malawi, new to Serge though not new to the centuries of Africans who have laboured and lived and loved here. To listen to statistics and witness the reality that Malawians endure. To willingly encounter the sorrows that harm so that we can be a tiny drop of the grace God rains down. 

On our final evening last night, I walked out on the porch to sit and read as the light faded, a moment of rest before our early morning return flight. It was about half an hour before sunset again, in mid-November, and the parched heat of dry season radiated back up from the dusty floor as it does after months of sun and wind. Gradually I noticed an unfamiliar sound and sensation. 

Raindrops. 

The tentative beginning of the annual deluge had arrived.

PS The team would love to have more help. Priorities are seminary professors and family medicine doctors, or nursing professors or teachers or counsellors. . . . mostly people with the humility to listen to and learn from our partners, and the faith to try new things in hard places.

We can testify it's a fun crowd to spend a birthday with!

Nkhoma mountain, Malawi. May God's Kingdom come here in all it's healing, refreshing beauty. 

All Hallow's Eve: on community and facing the unseen realities

Theology, in most of the world, is a communal concept. 

In Africa, we remain hourly aware of the impossibility of survival individually. We lean into the vast, frayed, knotted, repaired, beautiful net that upholds each person in a family, a clan, a tribe, a region, a country. And not just the living, but the awareness of ancestral lines stretching back into time, the sense of a parallel reality that breaks into ours. Perhaps because of that assumption, it makes sense from this continent to read the Bible seeing that God spoke to communities of people, called families and tribes, and is so vastly beyond us that we need an entire world of humans to refract and reflect His light. 

So “All Saint’s Day”, the commemoration on the church calendar tomorrow, reminds us of this communal nature of our faith. We are part of a vast multitude of humans through time and across continents who have worshiped God. It’s an opportunity to be thankful for those who have lived and those who have died. For Martin Luther who re-set the idea of church as infallible power to an institution in need of constant humility and reform. For Bishop Hannington who died bringing the Gospel to Uganda, and for Dr. Jonah Kule who died living that out here in Bundibugyo. For the untold stories, the invisible-to-us saints who are nevertheless precious to God. The neighbours who rose with the light this morning to feed their children and get them to school, the pastor up the road leading an early morning prayer gathering, the nutrition team heading to the hospital with peanut paste. These are the saints, and their faithfulness and tenacity lend courage to our ongoing walks of faith. We need each other.

Some saints you may not have ever heard of: Bwampu and Bahati above, Nusula and Swalleh below.

And the unnamed people who feed us, plus the very dear saints on this team.

The communal nature of “All Saints” seems obvious from our continent of vulnerability, in spite of the peculiar individuality of American traditions. 

And on the Eve of this day, I’d observe that the spiritual nature of Halloween (All Hallow’s Eve) seems more obvious on this side of the world too. 

From the 600’s onward, the holiday of All Saint’s Day and Eve has been influenced not only by pious proclamations but also by local traditions, which crossed cultures and evolved and came back, in a complexity beyond this short post. But suffice it to say that medieval people were much more in touch with the constant lurking presence of death . . . so practices of wearing disguises, baking cakes, singing, moving about in groups as the holiday began at sundown on the 31rst made sense in a cosmology thick with angels and demons, spirits of the dead, forces beyond explanation. 

It is only in the last century or less that the form was divorced from the meaning. In much of the wealthy world, the idea of dressing up and having parties has become popular for all ages. And almost no-one who participates assumes ANY connection with an actual spiritual world, good or evil. 

This year, however, the tragedy in South Korea screams that evil is not an imaginary concept, it is dangerously real. It’s hard to read about a surging crowd and suffocation and not be overwhelmed by the sadness of it. Of course, we personally don’t doubt that reality encompasses more than what we see, that the “spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” that Paul mentions in Ephesians are the real enemy, NOT flesh and blood. So from wars just over our border to the west that lead to death and displacement, and connect to greed and precious resources, to an Ebola epidemic in districts to our east that has smouldered and flared because fear drives people to hide and spread the risk, to the apathy and cynicism of our own hearts . . . we don’t pretend immunity from evil this Oct 31rst. Or any day.

But that gives the All Saints Day context too. We need each other precisely because it is TOGETHER that we are called to overcome that evil. The Eve might be dark and full of dangers. But dawn comes. The last week, as we’ve been out for our daybreak early morning walks, we’ve passed dead snakes on the paved road twice. Forest Cobras both. And quite large. In a place where antivenin and ICU care do not reach, and where children sleep in homes where reptiles can slither in for warmth, I can’t blame anyone for defending themselves or their family. Traditionally a killed snake is thrown onto the path to be crushed over and over, to be out of the family compound. So frankly, the sight of those dead snakes gives a little picture of the defeat of all that is harmful. 

A bit past dawn, but my hopeful morning view of the Rwenzori mountains, royal palms dangling weaver bird nests, and home. 

May your All Hallow’s Eve strengthen your hope in the end of all evil, and your All Saint’s Day bring joy in the community traveling that way together. 

Love, mystery, beauty: thoughts on why we keep on going on

I got a text this week, asking why we keep going. Perhaps inertia, perhaps hope, perhaps the sovereign plans that are bigger than us, perhaps many motivations we aren't even able to see. 

In Ephesians 3, Paul writes that "through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places." Not a phrase that ever stopped me in my reading tracks before. But this week, it did. It sounded like a pretty good summary of what's happening here. 

First that word "manifold" is actually in the Greek, “multicoloured”.  Varied, diverse, multifaceted. A good reminder that God’s thoughts and ways are complex, even perplexing, and also beautiful. Mysterious, but in a way that invites rather than excludes.  In a novel I was reading this week, this line about the ritual of a funeral: “the opacity of God unites them briefly before His clarities again divide.”  Yes. Manifold wisdom has lots of space for variety. And as hard as it is to take in and comprehend, when you do, it is rich and resonant. A painting perhaps, or a musical, being watched by the unseen cloud of witnesses. Or a rainbow, stretched over a perplexing landscape. 

As complex and beautiful as the shining wisdom is from our human viewpoint, because it comes from God it is consistently true. And the deepest truth of the universe is love. Which is what the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places can witness, watching life on earth play out.  To quote Tish Harrison Warren one last time (sadly we’ve reached the last chapter in our team study) . . . God’s love is the primary constant of our reality,  like the speed of light, an unchanging reliable center.  Sounds clear . . . Yet we encounter the love of God paradoxically in our actual life, slogging through the gritty fray… refracted through suffering. When the speed of light is refracted by rain/cloud/tears . . we get a rainbow. Light plus cloud, love plus suffering, viewed from a place apart, show the way.

Rainbows courtesy of Rwenzori Mission School 1rst and 2nd grade

Ebola map from yesterday

So we keep at it. This week, this month, this year, this life. Bumping up against corruption when we get called to pay dubious fees, for instance. Bumping up against poverty when only 3 of our 76 students taking final exams have actually paid their final tuition, making it challenging to feed everyone or keep up with electricity and water and staff salaries. Bumping up against our own weary frailties, and the pesky illnesses of team kids and friends, or the dangerous reality of Ebola climbing to over 100 cases and 48 deaths in Uganda now. Bumping up against hard decisions, separations, longings as we work with 76 Sergers in our Area who all have to weigh the needs of their families of origin , their families on the field, their kids who might be in boarding school, their teams and communities close by, and want to love them all in spite of it being impossible. 

Praying with our Area

Monday afternoon, a good portion of those 76 joined in an Area prayer time by zoom, because our vulnerable humanity trying to shoulder those crosses NEEDS the powerful presence of Jesus, and we find that as we pull together with Jesus’ family in prayer. From people in a dusty arid town in Kenya learning Bible Stories to share with others, to teen girls in Malawi receiving counseling as they heal from trauma, to a doctor in Burundi pulled out to rush to an emergency C-section, to food supplements for people in DRC displaced by yet another flare of rebel warfare, to a Bible study with ophthalmology residents in Rwanda, to an engineer triple checking a zillion calculations to bring clean water to thousands of people in Uganda, this is the refraction of that light of love through the cross of Jesus in our Area as we prayed.

CSB chapel today, the good news of God's love into our vulnerability going out

If all this reflection on why we keep on going, what is really happening in Serge East and Central Africa, in the lives of countless real people in the church universal, is too "manifold" to make sense, well, that's part of being human. But let me end with one of my favourite songs ever, because Dave Wilcox expresses everything I've stumbled clumsily through above in poetry and music, which are a much better language for love.

SHOW THE WAY (click here or here or here to listen as you read the words)

You say you see no hope

You say you see no reason we should dream

That the world would ever change

You say the love is foolish to believe

'Cause they’ll always be some crazy

With an army or a knife

To wake you from your daydream

Put the fear back in your life

Look

If someone wrote a play

To just to glorify what's stronger than hate

Would they not arrange the stage

To look as if the hero came too late?

He's almost in defeat

It's looking like the evil side will win

So on the edge of every seat

From the moment that the whole thing begins

It is love who mixed the mortar

And it's love who stacked these stones

And it's love who made the stage here

Although it looks like we're alone

In this scene, set in shadows,

Like the night is here to stay

There is evil cast around us

But it's love that wrote the play

For in this darkness love can show the way

Now the stage is set

You can feel your own heart beating in your chest

This life's not over yet

So we get up on our feet and do our best

We play against the fear

We play against the reasons not to try

We're playing for the tears

Burning in the happy angel's eyes

For it's love who mixed the mortar

And it's love who stacked these stones

And it's love who made the stage here

Though it looks like we're alone

In this scene, set in shadows,

Like the night is here to stay

There is evil cast around us

But it's love that wrote the play

For in this darkness love will show the way

How to risk Joy?

 Paradox was a concept I first encountered in GK Chesterton's writings (before we were even a pair of docs) and have held onto like a life-raft ever since. Gratitude and grief, for instance, the words that described the last year of severe injury and mostly-recovered relief, apply to most of our review of the past. We aren't forced to wear rose coloured glasses, to pretend everything was wonderful. We can lament honestly.  But we are enjoined to pay attention to the mystery of good, even as we acknowledge and mourn the losses.  Holding two opposite, disparate truths at the same time, it turns out, is also the path to hope. Looking ahead as well as looking back, we know that everything won't go our way . . . and yet we dare to believe that love is stronger than death, that good overcomes evil. That ultimately, everything we actually need will be true, because God is with us.

But living with paradox takes a toll. As we slog through reality, choosing joy risks experiencing disappointment. 

Right now power is out, again. We have a long slew of tasks to accomplish that are made more difficult by the zero-electricity state, not to mention the thunderstorms pouring forth. People we love have some significant injury and illness issues, heart-breaks and challenges abound. In the last week, our team's been slammed with some confusing tax/facilitation/government/legal fees here in our country that could potentially mount up to way more than our annual salary (not that we have to pay it all). That plus Ebola simmering on the edges, and constant reminders of disability, make choosing joy a challenge. 

To quote the book I always quote because we're reading it as a team,

And we pray that far under the surface of our lives, however easy or arduous, there would be a deep source of joy, a constant current of love that will never run dry.

This rain has me thinking of that underground river of joy that is available, but needs some excavation to tap into. So how do we risk it?  How do we dig down to the source of joy?  Paying attention to the presence of God in daily life, and reminding our soul that that is what we actually need. Looking back on the week, for me that happened one morning in a little wooden shack of a pharmacy shop, across the road from the health center. I had gone down to see the daughter of one friend who was recovering from a C-section and as usual the needed medicines were missing from the hospital stock, so we had gone across the road to buy them. It was a place I hadn't been to in ages, and so when the proprietor turned out to be a nurse we'd worked with long ago still cheerfully plugging along and delighted to connect, it was encouraging. She had about 3/4 of the vials needed for the full dose, and the energetic commitment to procure the rest.  But even better: her daughter was on the porch of the shop and came in, and she had not only graduated from CSB but was a trained nurse-midwife herself and worked at the local government health center too. (In fact, we hadn't even been aware of the first friend's daughter's C section because the health care system we and others invested in for so many years, including these people, worked to save the mom and baby alive.) And the daughter's daughter was the cutest little preschooler, all smiles. To encounter a family who embody the all-things-new of what God is doing in Bundibugyo, lives spent serving the sick and endangered, faithful to their jobs and enjoying each other's presence, investing now in the smallest 3rd-generation member like we had invested in the 1rst and 2nd . . . it was a moment to glimpse that committed work with the hospital, school, church, discipleship, scholarships, encouragement and example, does keep rippling out. For the world's good and God's glory, our vision statement says. Many days we don't see much of the world turning good, and we don't feel that we're reflecting much glory. But risking joy means celebrating the "sacramental reality", the presence of God in the muddy, complex, tangible stories around us.

the little newborn who we went to see . . .named Lindsey after one of our teachers!

Glimpses of glory, Margaret and Asita with decades of faithful work for this place

And Yoneki and Damali, saints that remind us God is present

2nd and 3rd generation blessings, which give us the audacity to risk joy

Living on the Edge

If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much room.

Our friend Pat found that on a shirt for us once and bought it off someone's back, because it so encapsulated a life principle (I've seen it attributed to dozens of sources, including Jim Whittaker first American to summit Everest, or Morgan Freeman the actor). "Hard-to-reach hard-to-stay" is the phrasing the NGO world uses. Every part of our world contains unexplored depths of beauty and brokenness, every village and city and farm welcomes justice and mercy. But some spots are more edgy than others, be it access to goods or power, to water or electricity, to child survival or media attention. Living on the edge, then, reflects a willingness to do without guarantees. And trying to insulate oneself from all risk means less space for the majority of the world that can't make those choices. The edge symbolises proximity to hardship.

And the edge seems to be a place where God's presence becomes particularly palpable, be it a burning bush in the desert, a thunderous trembling mountain, a shelter shared with farm animals, or a cross in a cursed hill of skulls. 

When we're trying to be at the center, it's hard to be open to loss, to change, to being wrong, to being weak. 

What does that look like this week?  Watching kids gather to the ever-cheerful Clovis at Nyahuka Health center where he prepared to weigh and enrol those who were suffering from not-enough-nutrition. A mentoring meeting with team mates designing a new water system that will save lives, and give women back the hours of carrying marginally clean water from distant unprotected sources. . . and another preparing to re-open the mission preschool. An ultrasound for the pregnant wife of a faithful young man who works for our mission (all is well); another for a friend's daughter. Brainstorming with another NGO interested in advancing care for sickle cell disease, since we live in one of the world epicenters of that gene prevalence, and researching potential testing and treatment options. Reports and emails, immigration issues and plumbing issues, laundry and cooking. Suppling  all the 76 seniors at our secondary school (S4 and S6) with malaria prophylaxis (they also sleep under nets, but malaria is so pervasively endemic here) to take that one factor out of the equation as they begin their month of national exams next week. Praying together with team. Wrestling with our cultural assumptions, with discerning truth. 

Oh, in the fine print of team leading, managing construction of new latrines for the church. . . 

And in the background of all of that, the looming terror of Ebola. 74 cases (54 confirmed) and 39 deaths (19 confirmed) per today's numbers. We are proud of our local hospital and health center IV for preparing, drilling, educating. . . but we also know that human behaviour can be dangerously illogical when fear over-rides the hearts and thoughts. 

with my two girls, Abby left and Julia center, on a hike in August . . 

And as much as we love the edge, and tomorrow will mark 29 years since we landed in Uganda and shifted our main sense of home here . . . another reality of the edge is that it separates us from people we cherish. So today our hearts are actually with our daughter-in-law, who is having surgery for a chronically torn ligament in her ankle. She's a nursing professor and a triathlete so being unable to walk puts quite a stress in her life. If you read this pray for Abby to have a good result. 

And pray for us, to not grow weary of embracing edginess, to stay expectant of God's mercy in places where it's hard to see. Can God prepare a table in the wilderness? Ps. 78:19 says that's the crucial question of faith. Pray we can keep saying, yes.

Please pray for CSB students beginning national exams next week . . . photo above is all the S4 and S6 kids coming forward for prayer by staff during chapel last Sunday.

Character, purpose, and seeking the good life in Uganda

Uganda, as a 20th century political entity, turns 60 today. 1962 saw both of us emerge from gestation and begin a long path towards each other (I've now lived here or near here almost half my life, and half of Uganda's!). 60, however, sounds ridiculously truncated as a duration for a civilisation that existed many, many centuries before ancient Greeks became intrigued with the legendary Mountains of the Moon, or Europeans began seeking slaves or farmland or influence. But 60 years ago on October 9th, Uganda as a protectorate of the British empire formally gained independence.

And the day before, we celebrated the upcoming independence of our Christ School soon-to-be graduates. The end of "high school" here does not involve the same sort of graduation milestone that we personally grew up with. Because the 4 years of O-level and then 2 more of A-level end with a multi-week staggered series of national exams, students sitting for a dozen or more half-day papers in 4, 8, 10 subjects . . . their final days are somewhat scattered and anti-climatic. Instead our kids enjoy a "candidate dinner", a good meal with speeches and music and hoopla, a week BERORE the long and strenuous exam stretch starts. So Saturday afternoon, the 33 A-level and 43 O-level students decorated the chapel into a party hall, fussed over a cake and a special meal, dressed up in their finest, did their hair, and danced in. We joined the staff as invited guests to celebrate them. And Scott as chairman of the Board of Governors and last-man-standing parental figurehead, was given the concluding speech.

He commended them for reaching this point when they will leave the structure and rules of a boarding school, the limitations of childhood, and move out to seek the "good life" by making choices. That transition from submitting to parental and teacher authority to exercising personal responsibility is a part of maturity in all cultures. Exciting, intimidating, heady to some extent.  In this one, there is less risk of the illusion of living only for self . . . All of the accompaniments of adulthood are more deeply communal, life consciously tempered by the collective. Job, marriage, children, home, income, spending, tribe and clan, voice, worship, further education, all involve some choice and some negotiation with family.  But, he said, a good life requires those choices be made with two things in mind: who you will be as you live your "good life",  and what that "good life" ultimately accomplishes. Character and purpose.

Will you serve others in the model of Jesus, working for the kind of all-things-new world He gave us a glimpse of? Or will you serve only yourself, willing to take whatever paths are necessary no matter who is hurt?

We certainly hope and work for the former. Christ School's vision is to produce servant leaders (character) for the good of Bundibugyo and the glory of God (purpose). We pray that these 76 add to the hundreds of alumni who have gone before them to enable child survival, to produce art and literature, to govern well at the community level,  to treat illness and teach school, to invest in business and farming, to establish loving families, to care for and honour the elders. We pray that the temptations to progress by stealing, cheating, taking or giving bribes, witchcraft, violence, will be resisted. Those paths might look easier, natural, rich at first. But the life they lead to will not satisfy. 

None of us can always make Jesus-like choices. But that's the good news of the Gospel: that the Spirit invites us to participate in the good-life-for-the-world anyway. To work for 60 years towards a Uganda, an Africa, an earth, that is more like the Kingdom of God, we lean on the supernatural help of God. Let's pray for the Spirit to enable these graduates to fight evil, to purify their hearts, to heal the brokenness of systems all around us. To have the character of our meek Saviour, and the purpose of our loving God.

PS..

PS. Would you like to partner with us to help sustain Christ School-Bundibugyo, financially?  

We desperately need more partners who can help subsidize this increasingly expensive project in this desperately poor place. 

CLICK HERE TO LINK TO OUR SERGE GIVING PAGE FOR CHRIST SCHOOL!

Bless the Dying: Ebola, Hurricanes, and 2022

 Ten days ago, Uganda declared an Ebola outbreak in the centre of the the country. Mubende District and the contiguous districts east and west have now reported 50 cases and 24 deaths. Numerical exactness remains elusive early in an epidemic, because it takes a cluster of deaths to even raise suspicions, and by the time a suspect person reaches a regional referral hospital and the alert doctors there consider testing what looks like malaria (fever, vomiting, diarrhea, some bleeding, extreme weakness)  for a hemorrhagic fever virus . . . there is a lot of damage to control.  So those 50 cases are actually 31 positive tests; the other 19 are suspected by history. Those 24 deaths occurred in 6 patients among the 31 test-confirmed cases, but we are also counting 18 deaths among the 19 suspected cases. Meaning that looking back a few weeks, at least 18 people who died in the area were already buried in a cluster of families that all have connection to people now testing positive. Uganda has sprung to action. There are press conferences and informative posters urging caution and isolation and good hygiene. Hospitals around the country are setting up isolation wards and setting aside protective gear. We have a Uganda Viral Research Institute that identified the Sudan strain of the virus in the first sample sent, so we didn't have to wait for distant labs. UVRI is supposed to have a mobile lab in Mubende by today.  Four doctors, a med student, and an anesthetic officer are among the patients who have tested positive now amongst the 414 contacts being observed.

For us, an Ebola epidemic of this size in this country carries a heavy weight of memory. In 2007, Ebola crossed into our population here in Bundibugyo with a brand new viral strain that took time to identify. At that time there were four of us doctors in Bundibugyo, and we had all seen suspect patients. Two were infected; Scott and I were not. Our dearest friend here, Dr. Jonah Kule, died, while Dr. Sessanga recovered. Bundibugyo lost a treasure in Dr. Jonah, and 4 other health care workers (nurses, eye assistant, clinical officer). That is a long and sorrowful story for another day but it does give us a sobering context for 2022. 

Because safety is not our final promise, or goal. Not all prayers for healing are answered.

No one needs to be convinced of that, though we often seem to pretend that it could be true if one were just more holy, more committed, more intelligent, more hard-working.  Right now Florida is being stomped by a category 4 hurricane, a powerful violent storm of wind and wave surge and rain. The Americas have had a disproportionately severe outcome from COVID which is now the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA. Not to mention school shootings and the war in Ukraine and rebel attacks and a million small stories of lost babies and unexpected cancer and dwindling parents or grandparents. Grief stalks each and every one of us. In our hearts, we feel like Uganda has had more than her share of grief, so another Ebola epidemic really seems hard.

As a team we continue through Tish Harrison Warren's Prayer in the Night. And this week we got to the phrase, bless the dying. Very poignant for all of us as Ebola percolates in our country (it's not here in Bundibugyo we just feel the fragility of our medical system and are realistic about human behaviours that could lead to dissemination). The Forrest family just traveled to California to the memorial for Kacie's dad who died. And my cousin died this week too. We share the same name (!) and she's just two years older than me, someone who always seemed admirably stylish and hip as we vacationed together growing up, and someone whom I grew to admire on new levels as an adult (though sadly at a great distance) as she faithfully and loyally held onto her family and overcame addiction . . . only to be saddled with early and metastatic cancer. 

cousin Jennifer far left, last visit with her a year ago

Warren writes richly that "bless the dying" in the early church was steeped in paradox: that God can heal but eventually all of us die, that death is our final enemy but also gain, that we are right to hate death while at the same time we embrace in faith the truth that death is not the end. That death, specifically the horrifically painful and unjust crucifixion of Jesus, was the means of the redemption of all things. That on the other side of death, we await resurrection. And yet none of those truths obviate the human experience of grief. We cry. We pray. We wait. We work.

Sitting in 2022, whether in a rainstorm in the southeastern USA or in the Ebola zone in Uganda, this is our hope. Not that we will be spared all suffering and never fall sick or die, but that our dying would be blessed.  Blessed one day in dying like Jennifer, in her sleep, in her home, her daughter having arrived that day, after a month or more of goodbyes and preparation. Blessed now by informing our living. May our awareness of mortality paradoxically bring us peace to focus on the important: love, truth, beauty, connection, service. May we let go of pretending, and make space for the presence of reality. Of God.  And may we have courage to realise, that is actually what matters and what is promised as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

Warren's chapter ends with this:

We are dying, each and all. Yet the kind of blessing we most need is the kind that comes to the dying--a blessing we live our life avoiding, a blessing found only in darkness.  In the pace of deepest desolation, we meet God himself. 

The Partnership of Parenting

 Parenting. A rich concept and word that provides the foundation for pretty much everything, encapsulates the generous love of God, forms our earliest and most powerful memories and human bonds, and not surprisingly also becomes the locus of our deep pain and failure. None of us receive or dispense perfect parenting, but we all relate across cultures and languages and time to the goal. At Christ School Bundibugyo, parents are our partners in blessing the youth of this place. They bring us their sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, grandchildren and neighbours, whom they have struggled to keep alive and growing, and entrust our staff and administration and the mission to care for them for four to six formative adolescent and young adult years. They want academic achievement that prepares their student for a sustainable future, and they want character development that solidifies their child's respect for the culture and the country and the earth. We want the same. Academic excellence and spiritual transformation. Together our hope is to enable these kids to become "servant leaders", the operative paradox of CSB. That means people with the capacity to lead and the heart to serve, people who invest in the good of Bundibugyo and the glory of God. People whose metric is not personal fame or wealth or honour or power, but "well done good and faithful servant" effective use of their gifts to bless all. 

The parents depend on us to teach their children. And to provide spiritual truths, visible role models, safe dorms, clean bathing and latrine structures, sport and club opportunities, protection from harm, focus on what matters, social interaction, a healthy rhythm of fun and sleep and work. We depend upon parents to provide school fees that cover about half of the actual costs of running the school (and we depend upon donors for the rest). To keep the partnership strong, to provide accountability and community, we try to have an all-day parent event at least annually. Reports from the Head Teacher, the Director of Spiritual Life, the Director of Development, the Chairman of the PTA and the Chairman of the Board. Songs from a student choir. An introduction and greeting by each of our 25 academic staff and a handful of support staff too. A meal of course, massive pots of steaming hot matoke, rice, beef stew, beans, ground nut sauce, cabbage. Informal conversations and mingling, formal questions and answers. 

Because of COVID shutting down schools for most of the 2020 and the 2021 academic years, we could not return to a "normal" school schedule until late January 2022. So as we began our third term of 2022 in September, we gathered all the parents for the first Parents' Day in three years on Friday. 

The day was as rich as the word parenting with which I began this post. Exhausting, yes, 8-9 hours is a long time to host and listen and translate and interact. The parents' main concern was financial, that they were struggling to be able to pay 50% of their subsidised school fee amount at the beginning of the term, a policy we had enforced in order to afford food for their children and payroll for the staff. We are all squeezed by the government changing term length from 12 to 14 weeks, changing the curriculum which requires new texts and materials, and by the inflation in prices of all food and commodities due to the war in Ukraine and other global trends. We have not increased fees in spite of those factors, so we really don't have margin for non-payment. We listened to their woes; we tried to explain the pressures on the school too.

Staff Introductions

Head Teacher Peter giving report

Scott as chairman Board of Governors speaking to parents. Mike as Director of Spiritual Life and Patrick as Director of Academic Development also gave great talks.

But in spite of all our struggles, the general mood was so hopeful. We reviewed performance on national exams and rejoiced that most of the district's Division One (top) students came from CSB, and almost all the students who qualified for national university scholarships were ours. We heard about class trips, extra effort to catch up from lost time, study camps during break times. Parents have noticed. This year we had 107 students in our S1 class meant for 60, and had to turn another hundred away. The low fees and the solid education translate into value, and our culture here (like most others) delights in a bargain. Our dorms are packed full. But the algebra of more kids, more staff, more meals, more needs, when fees are kept affordable but costs keep rising, becomes complex to solve. We live by faith, yet again.

As we prepared for this meeting, Scott put together a lovely slide show of the new chapel, the new perimeter fence, the renovated staff housing, the new classrooms, the growing staff, all the ways that the school has inexplicably been blessed even during a few of the most challenging years ever. He wanted parents to feel secure in God's love and our commitment . . . and yet to also want to invest their hard-wrought cash. It's hard to hold onto both. Peter, our new head teacher, ended his report with four prayer requests for parents, and that is a good ending here. We do our best, but our best is never going to get us through without prayer.  Please join the parents in praying for  1. The upcoming month of national finishing exams for S4 (UCE, "O Level") and S6 (UACE, "A Level") graduating students , 2. The other four classes to study and behave in ways commensurate with promotion, 3. Financial provision for parents and donors in spite of inflation, and 4. "A good ending of the year". We seem to be on target for that!

Perks of getting old: we were around when this midwife Rose, our colleague, gave birth to this daughter Judith, named for my mom, and now Rose is a key CSB Parent and Judith is a star pupil

Desmond and Scott have carried the CSB vision through many trials and changes for over twenty years.

The outgoing PTA chairman Edison was one of the first people in this area to meet and welcome our team

John our next door neighbour since he was a baby, grew up with our kids, went to CSB in one of their classes, and is now our key mission administrator with his CPA license. He serves as Deputy Chairman when Scott is out of the district. We rely on him a lot! This last photo really shows the fulfilment of the servant leader goal.

PS. Sorry this blog has been silent for over a month . . . we traveled to the USA for a Serge meeting, saw both moms and all our kids, officiated a wedding and visited a few friends, did not repeat the bike accident disaster that I had before this same meeting last year (!) but had decent medical follow ups. We flew back to Uganda just over a week ago and have been back in Bundi for four days. It's been a lot of travel, time zones, people, interactions and we wanted to be present for family and for Serge leaders. But it's good to be back home in Bundibugyo! And if you're seeing Uganda in the news for Ebola, yes, there is a new epidemic but it's over a hundred miles away and so far the country is responding with their usual skill and zeal. We are fine here.