114 miles of sabbath, and September news

 September began and ends in Bundibugyo, but the three weeks in the middle saw us travel out to Kampala, meet our Burundian partners, fly to Serge leadership semi-annual meetings for a week, take a ten-day off-line off-work real leave by hiking in the Alps, and then return into the usual fray.

This post is in praise of rhythms of reflection, and of rest. Not as the ultimate goal, but as the nod to our frail and limited humanity. God set 3 different week-long festivals of gathering for feasting and worship and memory in the ancient calendar . . . which makes more and more sense. And not that we had a grand plan, but the requirement of the meeting led Scott to propose that we return to the hike we started for our 30th anniversary 6 years ago that we aborted to be with his parents as his dad died. No regrets that we left and were able to spend Dave's last days with him and Ruth, an honour. And this year is still a 30th, not of marriage but of life in East Africa (we moved to Uganda 30 years ago in October). 

The juxtaposition of the meeting and the hike hits the beauty of a break from two directions. First, in the meeting we were with 17 Serge leaders, some of whom we've worked with those entire 30 years. And we had been tasked to gather data from all 11 teams/6 countries in our Area, which led to deep reflection on God's mercy and grace. We spent hours praying together, and reading Scripture, and sharing meals and stories. And hours generating strategies to bring our teams into the years ahead. I read today that a "sacred space" is like a circle, everything relates to a center and exists in the now, with distractions falling away . . which is true of these meetings. So while a week of required leadership work is not exactly rest, the focus on what matters with people we love, getting away from normal life, did make it a bit like a festival.

But the ten days following were the other side of true rest: we were outdoors, largely in wild high regions, unplugged and fairly solitary, climbing and walking and praying and meditating and occasionally talking, gasping for breath and watching for footing and awed by the views. We circled Mont Blanc, daily ascending and descending the roots of the mountain, ending in quaint towns with inns each evening and scaling precipitous ridges or strolling through meadows each day. The trail was more challenging than I had imagined as a person with brain injury impact, though I'm thankful for Scott's patience and my sturdy hiking poles. We were pushed to the limits (mine at least) physically and gifted with peaceful quiet and stunning views of glaciers and forests and rivers. It is a rare time in life to disengage for ten days and walk with God. And doing that on a mountain made the journey reflect life. Not easy, right on the edge of possible, but good to encounter both the dangers and the beauties together.

Last night we pulled back into the home where we have lived longer than any other, welcomed by our team and our dog Lindi. Ahead we have hard decisions and paucities of wisdom and energy and clamours of need and clouds of obscurity. But behind us we have the solid memory of a leadership team of real friends, and an Alpen route of true wonder. And a re-set spirit to remember that God is with us.

There and Back Again . . . 2+ months, 2 graduations, 2 moms, 2 moves, 2 continents

The first Sunday afternoon in August, and our second back here in Bundibugyo, has both the rooted familiarity of feeling we never left, and the head spinning reality of holding onto an increasingly dual-track life. In 1993, when we made our initial move here, we didn't have cell phone service or email or even a post office in the district, so the dislocation felt deeper and yet the singularity of living in the present more natural. Now in 2023, particularly post-COVID, the capacity and expectation to keep up with multiple worlds besides the one where we are actually located is real. This has many advantages, when we were in America for 2 1/2 months we had many facetime/zoom meetings with teams in Africa, and now that we are back in Africa we can text and call with family and interact every few hours it seems with our mission office or colleagues in other countries. Very helpful, but also jarring. 

On the helpful side, perhaps the greatest advantage was that immediately after the dorm fire (see post below in late June) we could communicate the needs of Christ School, and so many people responded generously to right the wrongs of destruction and injustice. On a concrete level that means we could immediately re-house students in other dorms with new mattresses, sheets, uniforms, books. And we could embark upon a dorm re-build, plus contract for safety improvements in wiring and smoke alarms and extinguishers campus-wide.  The truth is that in our hours of need we often find out just how many people do care for all of us here. That heartens those discouraged by danger and loss. And while most of the response was from supporters in the USA, not all of it was.  Last year another school in our district had a similar fire and we donated some of our Christ School funds to help them. Last week that school sent a delegation with ten 20L cans of paint for our dorm. This is the Gospel. We are not in competition, we are all collaborating to bless Bundibugyo and glorify God. 

After 2.5 months of visiting in America, celebrating graduations, driving about 5000 miles to help various family moves, a full week of vacation with our 5 kids which is nothing short of a miracle to align as they now have scattered back to their disparate jobs and schools . . . we are now back in Bundibugyo, back where we started. The same weaver bird colony is noisily commenting on the sunset. We had an in-district team "retreat" day to pray and study the word together and look ahead to the year. We've been at CSB nearly daily with meetings and projects, budgets and chapel and greetings. We've had visitors too, hosting a family we knew 20 years ago here in Uganda. We've connected with several of our leaders in our Area, seeking input, making progress. We've tried to catch up with our kids on this side of the ocean, those we've sponsored and fostered, meeting new babies born in our brief time away. 

There and back again, a privilege of the richness of life in more than one world, and the weariness of a heart divided amongst many people and places.

    

The Bundi Team . . August 2023

Baby Ariella

Baby Elsie

Basime and family coming to greet

Scott taking the four new donated laptops to the computer lab 

Inspecting the dorm rebuild, so far so good

A very cute greeting delegation, the Dickenson kids!

Baby Zuriel

Team pizza again!

Scott had this sign printed on metal, and here is installing it on the school gate.

Bwampu in the BundiNutrition office describing the program to visitors 

Baby Eugene

Another school on fire, this time OURS

 

At 2 pm Tuesday afternoon in Bundibugyo, smoke began billowing out of one of our boys' dorms and the two attached staff apartments. The students were in class, but some kitchen workers ran in and saved the lives of two small children napping in the apartments as a major fire gained strength. No one knows how this fire started. An electrical short is suspected, an accident with a cooking device or candle considered likely, but a malicious arsonist can't be ruled out. The context of a boys' dorm in a school SO SIMILAR to and so close to ours being firebombed by ADF rebels to kill students a few days ago (see previous post) had everyone on high alert and feeling anxious already.  It's not surprising that the rumour that rebels had attacked quickly gained momentum. Parents and community members streamed into the school compound looking for their children even as the staff scrambled to respond, to take a roll call, to use any means they could to control the fire. The nearest actual fire brigade is hours away so all they could do was stop anyone from trying to reenter the disaster scene as the roof imploded. It was a terrible day.

Now night has fallen in Uganda. In case you see the story, we wanted you to know what happened. We are very thankful that:

• No child was injured, all 39 dorm boys and both staff families are fully well and accounted for.
• The Serge team and the CSB staff mobilised to control the situation effectively and compassionately. We are so thankful for their tireless work today.
• All the students have gone home for the rest of the week, given the context of the ADF targeting border boarding schools and the trauma of watching a dorm burn, we thought they needed rest and safety.
• The police will investigate the cause. A week or so ago an anonymous letter of threat to burn the school down was received after a kitchen staff worker was fired for theft, so the possibility of intended evil exists even though we think that at 2 pm on a Monday a faulty wire or human error are more likely.
• We will be raising funds to replace the destroyed properties (all those kids lost everything, their clothes, books, money, shoes, sheets, mattresses, towels, papers .. . the metal bunkbed frames may be salvageable but not much else) and to rebuild the dorm.

PLEASE PRAY for the students, staff, and families who lived through the chaos and fear today to find the peace that passes understanding filling their hearts tonight. Pray for wisdom and clarity in the investigation. Pray the we can resume school quickly and safely. And keep praying for the Mpondwe parents who lost so much more.

Evil will not have the final word but it is shouting a lot of painful horrors this week. It's why we need to hold onto our witness and live by Romans 12: "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." 

Paradox summer: grief for the place we love and live, gratitude for the people who send and surround us

The image above is from the New Vision Newspaper in Uganda, taken in Mpondwe NOT in Bundibugyo, of mourning families and coffins, unspeakable grief. Late Friday night, ADF rebels attacked a school about a hundred miles south of us on the Congo border. They burned, looted, abducted and killed. 37 students and at least 4 others lost their lives, locked into a burning dorm or shot or hacked by machetes. The assailants took off back over the border with food and girls. But more than that they grabbed attention and headlines, highlighted Uganda's vulnerability and presumably impressed common enemies with their chaotic destructive prowess. The point of terrorism is terror. And terror ensued. 

The school that was attacked had so many similarities to Christ School we are sobered as well as outraged and grieved. Started by a north American NGO that was trying to help families who could not afford education, pouring in computers and buildings and books, working with a local board, located on the very western edge of Uganda at the foot of the Rwenzori mountains. This one was on the south side and ours is on the north. In the two days since, the UPDF (Ugandan Army) has visited our school, and though we had already been using night guards and locked gates and barred doors for years we are very much on edge. And thankful for the donors who supported completion of the perimeter safety wall this past year. 

The ADF have been wreaking havoc in Uganda and Congo for 26+ years . . . It was June 1997 when we personally first fled from them. As soon as CSB opened in 1999 we had to move our students out to Fort Portal for a while to escape their menace. And countless times since we have had smaller attacks, threats, dangers, including some significant incursion just six months ago. But the scale of this attack and the choice of the school as a target represents a real escalation.  Our hearts are heavy with the reality of evil, and with sorrow for those who suffer.

This weekend we arrived in California at the half-way point of "HA" or "home assignment" which is a somewhat oddly paired name for what workers like us do periodically to stay connected with our origins and stay accountable to our supporters. The first 5-6 weeks were about half in WV and half in Utah and the second will be about half in California/Oregon and half on the road. Half-way is a good point to summarise the purposes of an "HA" and share a summary of our life . . . but then the ADF struck again and our souls feel scrambled and drained. How can we even mention joys when so much is deeply wrong in the world? As it turns out, one of our team leaders with Serge in our Africa area, Dr. Eric McLaughlin, wrote an article last week about this very dilemma. Please read it here. He eloquently paints the richly hued picture of our redeemed life with it's celebratory days of joy occur in the context of painful days of sorrow. Neither negates the other, both are true and real. For us, and for Jesus too, weeping for Jerusalem the same day the city was erupting in hosannas. 

So if you started with the weeping of Mpondwe, please follow into the paradox of a few hosannas.

Family Milestones and Family Service

Living seven to ten thousand miles from our family means we miss most of their lives, the daily contacts that give depth and meaning . . . and distance and COVID meant we missed our soldier's ceremony for finishing his most intense training, and Jack's masters' graduation from Cambridge. So with Julia and Luke both completing their studies in Utah this summer, we planned this HA to encompass both. Julia received her MBA in early May, and Luke's orthopedic surgery residency celebrated their six seniors with a day of research presentations, speeches, awards and dinner in early June. In between we based ourselves in WV where my mom and niece have been staying and my sister and family visited too, plus our son his army buddy who cared for me in the ICU in 2021. And now we are with Scott's 90 year old mom for two weeks. We have been delighted to see our kids in their work and study contexts and the impact their passion for justice in the world has in their communities. And we've been trying to support our brave moms who are independent and brave but too often alone. 

Supporter Thanks and Reports

Grace Church has been our bedrock for nearly 30 years overseas, not to mention most of my life . . . so we were grateful to spend an evening with some leaders and a Sunday speaking and greeting and thanking them. As we've crossed the country we've stopped to see a couple of supportive families, giving personal greetings to individuals and a few groups who have prayed us through the ADF and more. From Sago Baptist to the Methodists here in Half Moon Bay too, we need all the prayer we can get!

Projects, Maintenance, Serge work and Life

We try to keep a hundred-year-old farm house we inherited from my family inhabitable even though we're rarely there, and to be reasonably parental in assisting with two cross-country moves for our offspring. Which means power washing and meadow mowing and weeding and packing and just the normal parts of life. And as Area Directors, most of our job transfers remotely and follows us along the road. This morning we had a 6:30 am conference call with Uganda, followed by a supporter coffee here in California. Most days in the last 5 weeks have included hours of communication, study, mentoring, administrative paperwork, planning, only this time squeezed not by the neediness of a remote rural African village community but by the desire to be present and participant in our family's lives. The 2023 reality of internet allows a great degree of multi-time-zone effectiveness, but also makes it challenging to keep so many balls in the air and people in the heart. We did get to meet our Serge boss IN PERSON as we each drove half-way between WV and Philly, which was a rare treat in the virtual world. 

6 weeks down and 5 to go, hope this gives a glimpse of Home Assignment reality. Rejoicing with those who rejoice and weeping with those who weep, as Romans 12:15 commands, pretty much sums up this itinerant period. We are giddily thankful for the graduations, dinners, hikes, fellowship with so many whom we love. And we are bearing still the burdens of our home-assignment country's divisiveness and our adopted country's loss of life today.

This is an appropriate end to a long post, it's our license plate. The fact that it's on a truck that we're driving probably 6000 miles or more these couple months makes it representative of the dedication to presence and service, and the fact that it says paradox makes it representative of the days filled with both beauty and brokeness. . . and what better holiday than Juneteenth to post on, a day that constitutes celebration but was necessary because of injustice. We thank you for traveling with us in places characterized by both, where we need to be and where we love to be.

Losing for Lent, and other reminders of the season

Today Good Friday, Passover, and Ramadan all intersect, holidays that have shaped cultures around the world to remember that the path to redemption passes painfully through deserts of deprivation, rocky wildernesses where we are called away from what makes sense, what looks sure, what our natural inclination towards self-preservation and self-promotion would cling to. We've been at this a few decades now, but the truth still startles. The pivotal moments of our Christian story remain: not a battle or a coronation, but an obscure displaced birth of a baby forced to flee across borders, and then a public execution of that child grown into an itinerant teacher with no official title or position, chased down by manipulating crowds and fears and courts. 

In that spirit, we had our (we hope) final meeting yesterday with the wealthy, highly placed, political police fire brigade commissioner, plus his parents, and his three sets of lawyers, who have drug us through court for 9 years to reclaim land that his father sold the mission over twenty years ago when money was needed for this man's school tuition. The property was a small piece of farmland which we used for the first decade or so for food production for CSB students as well as agriculture practical education, until the seller changed his mind. We lost the land, lost the appeal, and to add insult to injury were presented with an exorbitant bill for the court costs for those who orchestrated the injustice. Months of negotiation later, they agreed to a quarter of what they initially asked for in legal costs, which is still more than the actual value of the land (but thankfully we had quickly sold another piece of mission farm land as soon as we lost this one to cover the expenses.) Nothing like sitting in a room for hours with people who have stolen from the poor of Bundibugyo, using the court system, to really enter into the spirit of Good Friday.  Sigh. We think of ourselves as nobly being on God's side of the dispute . . . but that does not translate into being on the winning side, as Jesus showed us that day. We've shed tears and hours and sweat and sorrow over this court wrangle, but not blood. Jesus did both. 

Sitting here on Friday now, we take it by faith that the weekend will progress to Sunday, to resurrection and transformation. All of history drew to a point on a hill that Friday, to darkness and agony. And all of the future began at that chiasm, spreading out to a new way of the universe operating, as Mike preached this morning. Those hours of cross and grave were the mysterious unseen unimagined way that evil was defeated forever. 

And so we are called to keep walking on those wilderness ways, away from insta-glory, into areas that are risky and uncomfortable. And as we do so, we trust for the moments where all-things-new joy presages the peace and wholeness of "today you will be with me in paradise", the home Jesus prepares.

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A few of those moments have been ours this month, visiting teams in Rwanda and Burundi (as well as Fort Portal and our usual Bundibugyo both in Uganda) where we walk into the hard stories each person carries of burdens for kids struggling close by or aging parents far away, of cross-cultural faux pas or danger from insecurity or lethal disease, of new regulations or old prejudices that just make this sojourner life hard . . but even as we walk into those realities and grasp them we also catch views of the beauty God is working.

Kigali, Rwanda, Cropsey family and RIIO eye clinic and teaching (our new partners even gave us a certificate!)

Kibuye, Burundi, our biggest area team, dozens of meetings, and the unexpected treat of getting to see our SON as a surgeon (he was finishing up a month there!).

And at the end of that week . . Abby arrived!!! 

Which began an epic road trip to Uganda, her first time to see where Luke grew up! We camped in the wild at a game park, hiked a shoulder of the Rwenzoris, immersed in the Ngite Falls and saw the Ituri Rainforest hot springs. More importantly, she met teachers and friends who had shaped Luke's life since infancy. Luke spoke to the students at Christ School and visited his old Rwenzori Mission School (and Bundimulinga Primary). We watched the district football tournaments, and after three packed Bundi days visited Aunt Pat and other friends in Fort Portal and then Kampala and then out via Entebbe.

That's a lot of life in a few weeks, many miles, many faces, many conversations and questions. Luke and Abby came to us in an excruciating (cross-filled) time, and their perspective and loyalty and love reminded us that this path is truly worth it. Thanks for reading and prayers . . . and may all of us hear Jesus calling us by name this Sunday.