2009, out with a bang

From Sipi Falls we took a well-worth-it detour north into Karamoja, the savannah of NE Uganda where cattle-herding, nomadic, historically-violent tribes make their home, as well as a group of OPC missionaries.  One family was our pastor in Virginia before we left for Uganda, and the other family, couple, and assorted singles we have come to know and respect over our years here.  This is a brave and dedicated group, content with small inroads into an ancient culture so different from the rest of Uganda let alone from us, a culture with strength and beauty but marked too often by alcoholism, rape, suspicion, envy, war with raiding rivals from Kenya, and resistance to outsiders.  They have labored to organize agriculture in a way that provides jobs in the chronic poverty, built a clinic that offers high quality and compassionate medical care, preached and taught.  They are writing booklets in the Karamojong language, which helps preserve and dignify the local dialect.  They are good people and faithful servants of God .. but mostly we went just because we really like the missionary team and wanted to spend our New Years' Eve with them.  Between our three families we have 14 kids between the ages of 10 and 20 . . . a pretty fun group.  There was lots of hearty food and drink, a very long game of coming up with songs containing certain obscure words or phrases, and at midnight a showering of confetti from a chinese-made party tube under a full moon while we toasted the New Year.  And after everyone went to bed, we spent the first hour of 2010 with our good friends talking and praying for each other.  A blessed way to end a tough year, and see in one that will stretch us with its transitions and challenges.  God is good.

More thrills

From the bungee jump (see below) we continued eastward to Mt. Elgon National Park, on the Kenya border, a massive spreading extinct volcano with countless ridges, crevices, acres and acres of dripping rainforest and flowing streams. Through providence and persistence we ended up booking cabins in the park for two nights, bargain prices and so hard to find out about that no one else was staying there in spite of making the reservation very late. The road was barely marked, a narrow slithering mud track that climbed the lower mountainside, past huts and cows and cabbage-gardens, until it ended in a wall of dense forest at the park gate. Four mud-huts huddled in a line in the narrow strip between the road and a stream, we had been in the car most of the day, light was fading, everyone was hungry, and we were resigned that this was to be our cheap accommodation, AT the park but not IN it, watched by the ubiquitous handful of curious kids. But the park ranger opened the gate and instructed us to proceed up the track another two hundred meters. And we found ourselves in lovely rustic pine cabins, surrounded by forest, quiet and peaceful. My original plan (prior to the family meeting in which my kids voted on thrill-adventures rather than endurance-adventures) had been to camp and hike in the park, but we didn't have enough days to reach the peak, so we settled on the cabins and a day hike. We were VERY GLAD as unseasonable el-Nino rain has drenched East Africa, and we were snuggled beneath warm blankets in an actual bed, reading books while rain pounded on the tin roof. It was a perfect total get-away, nothing but birds and mist and shy monkeys, rustling trees. The staff cooked us hot Ugandan food, and we played games and read aloud our annual Christmas kids-book.

We did venture out on a day-hike to a waterfall, just as the sun finally made an appearance, we climbed over slick rocks to stand behind the sheet of falling foam, getting drenched by the spray. The trail took us later to a high ridge, where we could glimpse the peaks of Mt. Elgon as the clouds miraculously parted, leaving us under a shockingly blue sky. Fantastic wild flowers, some bamboo, a troop of blue monkeys and black-and-white colobus. Our guide took us to a cave which I was not so eager to enter, given the whole Marburg-bat-cave connection. He did not buy into that science, and when I expressed relief that no bats were hanging around in sight, he promptly knocked his walking stick echoing into the recesses and a huge fruit bat swooped over our heads.

The real reason we came to Elgon, however, was that our kids' second request after bungee-jumping was to rappel down Sipi Falls. This is a 100-meter (300-ish-foot) water fall nearby, a free-fall of water that spills over a rock lip into a canyon of deep green ferns and flowers. An Italian mountaineer trained some local residents and helped them put in a few rock screws and get harnesses and ropes, and now tourists can rappel over the edge, right beside the falls. The first twenty or so meters one's feet bounce off the crevices of rock, but most of the way you are hanging in the air, with views out into the plains far below, watching the torrent of water rush down beside you and crash into the distant pool at the bottom. More terror mixed with beauty. This time all four kids and I did the descent. The owner of the equipment later said they'd never had someone as young as Jack and Julia go before . . . guess I'm glad I didn't know that before-hand, but they all did great, I'm sure I was the most scared. Scott graciously allowed us to do it and took pictures from a view-point on the side.

Then a strenuous hike back up to the level of the top of the falls. I hope everyone's thrill-deficit has been filled for a while, and we can stick with the really dangerous activities of surviving on road trips . . .

Visit of the Magi

Early Sunday, our family and Scott Will crammed into the truck on a very wise-men like post-Christmas journey. He was heading to the baptism of the baby of a former agricultural extension agent whom he had befriended on a previous trip to Uganda, and we were heading to the baptism of our friend and sponsored medical student Monday Julius' new baby, Kambere Byamungu Christian Rock. We had a long trek, about 6 hours to circle the Rwenzoris from NW to SE, to reach the village surrounding Kagondo Hospital.  The church was packed with about three hundred or more worshipers led by the Bishop of the South Rwenzori Diocese of the Church of Uganda, and we entered as they were giving a special prayer of thanksgiving for Julius' protection from Ebola. He took care of more patients than anyone, and most of them before we knew the nature of the disease, yet he did not contract the infection.  And so two years later, married and a father and back in school, he saw fit to very publicly give thanks.

After the service about two hundred of us walked on a small path to the neighboring compound of Julius' father, a neat cement house perched on the hillside.  There three huge tents draped with festive blue and white chiffon were waiting, an enormous Bible-shaped cake, a sound system, and various choirs.  We feasted on hot sweet ripe matoke and flavorful beans, peculiar tidbits of chicken, crunchy cabbage, cow parts unknown (Julia recognized braided intestines in her take).  Baby Rock made an appearance for cake-cutting and gifts.  Scott gave a short speech, and Julius read Psalm 116:

What shall I render to the LORD for all His benefits toward me?

I will take up the cup of salvation,

And call upon the name of the LORD

Now in the presence of all His people.

We stood in silence to remember the health workers who died in ebola.  And it struck me that without that epidemic, we would not have been there. Julius' character would not have shone.  We would not have come to know him.  Dr. Jonah would not have died, and dozens of generous supporters would not have given the funds which now pay for Julius' medical school.  Perhaps he would not have married the spunky and competent nurse Alice, and had baby Rock. We sat with another of our three med students, Ammon, who also would not have gone back to school.  There is no adding up in God's economy, no visible balance to prove it was all worth it.  We still grieve Jonah.  We still remember those days with a pit of sorrow and regret. 

But Psalm 116 goes on to say:

Precious in the sight of the LORD

Is the death of His saints.

When the magi brought their gifts and homage, innocent children died, in droves.  The Kingdom comes, in blood.  Two years out from ebola, we do not yet see clearly all that God was doing.  But we acknowledge that the losses are being slowly, surely redeemed.  After the party we took a long evening walk, touring the village and the COU hospital with Julius, Ammon, and delightfully a nursing student named Julian who used to be in my Christ School cell group.  Kagondo is the kind of place I feel at home:  crowded wards, TB and leprosy and AIDS, swarms of relatives, white-capped nurses, a monument of making-do with little to serve many.  And decades ahead of our situation in Bundi:  xray, oxygen, power, large lab, chapel, a dairy to make their own nutritious feeds, 8 doctors, full surgical services, space.  So to walk around the grounds with three young people, to watch them catching vision, to dream of what could be . . . this gives us great hope.

Like the Magi, we brought gifts to a baby, but left with the deeply satisfying glimpse of God coming concretely into real lives, and making new that which is broken.

Pat Abbott summarizes 2009

We are off, tomorrow morning very early, beginning the long trip taking the boys back to Kenya.  First stop will be an Ebola-survival-thanksgiving and baptism party for medical student Monday Julius. . . and other adventures along the way to Karamoja where we will bring in the New Year with our former pastor from Virginia Al Tricarico and family, missionaries in Karamoja . . then a weekend at Sunrise Acres in Kenya . . Kijabe and RVA . . Kampala, and a side trip to Mundri South Sudan to see the Massos.  Not sure how often we will post over the next two weeks.  This Christmas season has been meaningful, memorable, and all a Christmas should be, so thankful to have spent it here with our kids, all together at our home once again, and many of our team.  Two highlights of the day:  the kids' choir at church singing 'Jesu abiyawe', 'jesus was born', with such Spirit . . . and later many of us playing round-robin ping pong on a table set up in the shady grass after a fantastic al fresco grill-out Christmas dinner.  Fifteen of our last seventeen Christmases have been in Africa (as were Jesus' first several . . ), so it feels very right to have completed Luke's last pre-college Christmas just where he spent his first one.  

This summary of 2009 comes from an email from Pat, so beautifully put, I am posting it in case we are not on line to say Happy New Years' ourselves: 

A small group of Bajungu (foreigners) brought together by faith in the resurrected son of God: Shared fears, mistakes, misunderstood, separated from family, united to 

see the Kingdom of God come in Bundibugyo. The vision, now my vision through World Harvest Mission, a community of weak people united for God's glory and the world's good. Learning how to pray and believe, "...not my will Father, but your will be done." Learning to wait on God, not passively but actively trusting him not circumstances or relationships, especially when I don't understand. Living in the wilderness and what it has to teach me about myself and God. Desire to seek and know God in the transitions of life rather than fleeing back to slavery. Entrusting two little girls in to the loving arms of my heavenly Father. Learning how to forgive over and over again. Learning a little about boundaries and how to make them. There is only one Savior and I am not him. Themes of grief, sorrow and loss balanced by community, trust, wisdom and joy. 

 Amen.

Merry Christmas from the Myhres in Bundibugyo

"Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men,

and He will dwell with them,

and they shall be His people,

and God Himself will be with them and be their God.

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes,

there shall be no more death,

nor sorrow,

nor crying.

There shall be no more pain,

for the former things have passed away."

Then He who sat on the throne said,

"Behold, I make all things new."

Rev 21:4,5

Watching with you for the coming of Immanuel, God with us, in new ways this Christmas. . . .

Thanking you for the part you play in wiping away tears and death here in Bundibugyo.. . .

Wishing you a merry celebration of the One who came and is coming.

Much love,

Scott, Jennifer, Luke, Caleb, Julia and Jack

Christmas Eve Slaughter

Christmas Eve has dawned in Bundibugyo, clouded and thick. As the daylight suffused the veil of mist on the mountains, I saw groups of young men walking briskly down the road, machetes in hand, talking loudly.  Since I'm reading Tracy Kidder's Strength in What Remains, about a young Burundian genocide survivor, I felt the chill of reality, of the potential for murder and destruction.  But these men were accompanied by cows.  And they were heading to slaughter them all around the town.  Because Christmas in Bundibugyo is a day for eating meat, Christmas Eve is a day of butchery.  When a few hundred thousand people all try to consume beef on one day, in a place without refrigeration or grocery stores, the blood-spill and dismemberment of beasts is not pretty.

But Christmas is not all pretty, either.  The passages in Isaiah 25 and 65, and Rev 21, put the future glory into the messy context of judgment.  

But you are those who forsake the LORD . . 

Therefore I will number you fort he sword,

And you shall all bow down to the slaughter,

Because when I called, you did not answer;'

When I spoke, you did not hear,

But did evil before My eyes,

And chose that in which I do not delight.

(Is 65:11, 12)

Once again, the culture of Bundibugyo provides a graphic picture.  Throughout the Old Testament, the people of Israel (and other nations) slaughtered animals, to appease the wrath of Justice, acknowledging their wrongs.  Blood had to be shed, for survival, for covering, for measuring the gravity of sin.  Until Christmas, the blood of Mary and that of her infant seeping into the blood of Easter which dripped from the cross.  Because the making of All Things New required a judgement against all things evil, a purging, a sacrifice.  Not of cows, but of God Himself.

Webhale Abhili na Bhisatu!

Today's traditional greeting:  thank you for the 23rd!  The festive atmosphere builds.  Markets are bustling.  People are greeting.  Bundles of food are moving from gardens to homes, or from one branch of the family to another.  Clothes are being washed and ironed.  We wandered around to all our neighbors and also branched further afield to friends, sitting, greeting, smiling, just affirming our connections.  Christmas is nearly upon us.

So in the spirit of the special nature of this week, we've been giving gifts to our patients.  Forgive me Amy and others, for not remembering a camera these last two days, as the malnourished and HIV-affected children, and those admitted with malaria and pneumonia, all received the stuffed animals, blankets, and toys that we have been saving up from your boxes for this Christmas season.  Except for one 2-year-old who was terrified by his brown furry teddy bear (keeping in mind that most of these kids' only experience with something of that size and texture would be a large live rat, and they have no mental category for a stuffed toy) . . . the gifts were immensely popular.  I looked back to see a mother stroking a toy Elmo against her cheek, and the caretakers could not keep their hands off the goodies.  The ward is only about half full, and we have only one child left on nutritional rescue . . pretty amazing for the holiday.  But the few who are there are quite ill, and I think it strengthens their parents' hearts to know that far-off strangers have made the effort to bless them.  So in spite of snake bites, coma, appendicitis, and AIDS . . there was laughter today, and this is God's will.

For behold I create Jerusalem as a rejoicing

And her people a joy.

I will rejoice in Jerusalem, 

And joy in My people;

The voice of weeping shall no longer be heard in her,

Nor the voice of crying.

(more from Isaiah 65)

And the Word became flesh . . .

Yesterday we were invited to the annual Lubwisi/Lwamba Bible Translation and Literacy Project end-of-year celebration. In many ways it is a typical Ugandan party: dressing up, siting on benches in a hot room, enduring speeches, waiting for the hugely desirable chicken stew on rice ultimate meal. But in other ways, this party is unique. In the room were a couple of dozen people, from 10 different church denominations, male and female, younger and older. As we all stood and introduced ourselves, one of the wives of a committee member was a real fireplug going on and on about how thankful she was that they were acting like bajungu and inviting WIVES to join in! And anyone who did not bring their spouse had to explain why not! Some worked to translate, others to check and approve, others to teach people to read in their own language. This is a very independent project now, and our inputs are minimal. 21 of the 27 books of the New Testament have been translated now . . which means that in 2010, we should see a full New Testament!

Scott gave a very encouraging speech to these faithful men and women. Because of them, God's glory becomes more full, more complete, as He is known in another language, one which equally reflects who He is. Because of them, the people of Bundibugyo can read for themselves what He has said and sift out the impurities of western culture that have infiltrated "Christian" practice in Africa. Scott said it was appropriate that we celebrate their project during the Christmas season, because Jesus is the WORD of God, and they, like Mary, are giving birth to the word, this time in paper and ink.

Early Thanks

A few early Christmas presents this year:  first, hugely, that a major donor who had been contemplating covering two salary positions at CSB for 2010 decided to commit to that, a gift of about fifteen thousand dollars.  We are so thankful that this man and his family put their support behind the school, a sign to us that God continues to have plans there!  Second, also hugely, that a church in the US decided to fund the Mundri, Sudan's team housing needs, appealed to a donor and came up with fifty thousand dollars for them.  They are currently living in a rented house and tents, rather squeezed.  This will allow them to complete construction on several small locally appropriate houses for the team as well as for the Bishop (see WHM Sudan "Beyond My Faith" blog link for story).  Thirdly, we've heard from a few other donors who are willing to support either nutrition or CSB, and are waiting for year-end-accounting to figure out where the need is greatest next.  And lastly, about fifty of the goat ornaments have been claimed, raising almost ten thousand dollars.  It's not too late to get one if you haven't!  We're hoping the project will get close to twenty thousand dollars to continue through 2010 (see link on our sidebar, "Give-a-Goat", which takes you to the WHM site).

All of these are specific answers to prayer,  signs of God's blessing, being given to our team, in order to bless others, which is His pattern for work in the world.  To conclude with more of Isaiah (65 this time):

They shall build houses and inhabit them;

They shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit . . 

It shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; 

And while they are still speaking, I will hear.

They shall not hurt of destroy in all my holy mountain,

Says the LORD.

Dreaming of a White Christmas

The news of the East Coast Snow Storm of the decade (?century) has been a bit hard to take here where dry season has begun to bake us in the oven of sunshine and dust. The only thing very white about our Christmas is us. But being a family of Scandinavian heritage (Scott's dad is of Norwegian origen, and mom Norwegian/Swedish) we have imported some of those traditions even to the equator. So yesterday the kids spent the morning cutting out the most intricate and amazing snowflakes, which we suspended from the ceiling with fishing line. Then we set up the front room for an authentic White Dinner Feast for our team. The idea in Norway I guess is to have a dinner where everything is white: fish, potatoes, bread, fruit salad covered in cream, even cauliflower as the veggie. Heidi has added in the first course cold cucumber-yoghurt soup, and everyone on the team brings some white food specialty, topped off with a coconut cake for dessert. And I give my all to the lefsa, a potato-tortilla that is rolled with butter and sugar. Scott said the table blessing that his grandfather always prayed in Norwegian. We ended the evening out on the patio with our final advent readings, focused on the theme of home, how we miss it as pilgrims and strangers on this earth, how the longing points us to our real home being prepared for us (John 14, Isaiah 25, 65, and Revelations 21).

And in this mountain

The LORD of hosts will make for all people

A feast of choice pieces

A feast of wines on the lees,

Of fat things full of marrow,

Of well-refined wines on the lees.

And He will destroy on this mountain

The surface covering cast over all people

And the veil that is spread over all nations.

He will swallow up death forever,

And the LORD GOD will wipe away tears from all faces;

The rebuke of His people

He will take away from all the earth;

For the LORD has spoken.

Waiting, in Bundibugyo, for that day, and tasting the signs that it is coming.