Watch, Pray, Shine: Christmas Candlelight

 Candlelight in Bundibugyo in 2024 flickers more from necessity than for atmosphere. The rotting power poles in this tropical rainforest mean the entire national grid connection, which is less than 15 years old, already fails regularly, so the power company has decided to shut down transmission all day every MWF to work on pole replacement. This has been happening for the last month or two. Since we had only solar panels for limited lights and computers for the first couple decades, we're not totally unprepared. . . .but no extra Christmas lights this year as we've become spoiled by more appliances and higher expectations.  A long digression to explain that candlelight it not just a quaint metaphor, it's a living picture.

So when Director Patrick returned to Bundibugyo this week for a few days of staff enrichment, fellowship, consultation, leadership and encouragement, and asked me to start off his Monday seminar with a devotion, I chose the image of candlelight. It's the first week of Advent after all, and John 1 talks about the light shining in darkness as he begins the story of Jesus' coming. 

End of Year CSB staff seminar 

The candle illustration

The previous post, Christmas Apocalypse,  alluded to second coming teachings of Jesus which are also part of Advent, lightening and signs in the skies which call for a posture of faith in times of cataclysm. Times of waiting. Times of change. Times like this. 

So today, the Christmas Candle as a picture of how we live by faith in the midst of dark uncertainty. 

That's a challenge for Christ School staff (never enough money, materials, supplies, time), just as it is for all the plodding workers in our Serge Area. We know that multiple times a day every day, we all feel like today's lectionary reading: Jesus is asleep in the dark tossing boat of our lives, and we just might go overboard into the sea. I imagine those waking him up lighting a candle, and hear his rebuke, why are you fearful? Darkness and chaos are no match for Jesus' calm. Instead of panic, He calls us to watch, pray, shine.

A candle allows us to watch, a frequent admonition to God's people. Watch. Look. Notice. Lighting up reality leads to both lament and thankfulness, gratitude and grief. We pay attention to the world's broken edges, to the sorrows, to the storms. And we also pay attention to the subtle signs of God's presence. Alertness is a perquisite for praise. So we hold our flickering candle ahead to see the terrain, to understand our calling. To be present, engaged, awake.

The word watch in these Advent passages is frequently paired with pray. Watch and pray. And in the tabernacle, the temple, and the word images of other dimensions, the fragrant flame, the rising smoke, symbolizes our prayers. The candle reminds us that we are not alone in this terrain, that we have a Heavenly companion who cares. Our lament and our gratitude both have a direction, a listener.

Lastly a candle in Jesus' illustrations shines. People see the light, and find hope. It is a beacon to find one's way home, a lamp that should not be hidden under a bushel. We pay attention to the real world around us, we commit all we see to prayer, and then we act. Shining little lights, making small things a little better. Bearing testimony to the great light that is driving out all darkness.

Final prayer walk of the year

The candlelight of Bundibugyo: CSB staff

A candle in the wind was a song in my growing-up days, and alludes to the truth that those who do watch and pray and shine sometimes are taken from us too soon. Yesterday, when I sat down to start writing this post, was the 17th anniversary of losing Dr. Jonah Kule to Ebola Bundibugyo, a then-new variant of the deadly virus that surfaced here in 2007. He modelled walking by faith into dark uncertainty as well as anyone, a thoughtful and insightful observer of culture and community, a prayerful person of courage, a doctor who worked in spite of steep barriers to care for the poorest. 

In 2024, we feel pummelled by the injustice we struggle through every day. But Advent is a season to remember that the darkness is where we belong, that in the storm Jesus cares even in sleep to preserve us. We watch and pray, and hope to shine. (Bonus post here from Center for Formation, Justice, and Peace).

Christmas Apocalypse

 Apocalypse comes to us via Latin "revelation, disclosure" from Greek "to uncover, reveal". . . but in 2024, the connotation of a world-ending cataclysm layers our perception of the term. And no wonder. Apocalyptic days have moved from movies to the newsreels. Sometimes it's not clear if one has stumbled upon CNN or a cinematic tragedy, as we see a people group decimated (in the literal sense, losing 10% of the population) in Gaza or Sudan, or the posturing threats of annihilating nuclear weapons in Russia or North Korea aiming at Ukraine. 

On a small personal scale, we are ready to turn from November to December today. The last month+ seems to have stacked more conflict, more tears, more discouragement, more misunderstanding, more defeat in our sphere than should be possible. Both cross-culturally and within our work responsibility, I can't remember another stretch with SO MANY hours of meeting to listen and discern and grieve and struggle forward. From couples in hurting marriages to teams at loss for how to draw good out of scarcity to colleagues missing each others's hearts to credible suspicions of skimming funds or failing jobs, to unjust unexpected tax and documentation demands. . . each day has seemed to boil up in a new crisis that has significant implications, but goes unsolved and then overshadowed by the next. Not to mention the roiling politics and church of our home country this Fall. 

Today begins Advent, and it turns out that the traditional readings for this first Sunday and first day of December are from Luke 21, and Matthew 24. Jesus, who habitually collapsed timeline gaps in the foreign territory of being time-bound, stood with his people in the last days of his life and talked quite a bit about why he came, but also about coming again. Advent is a season to ponder the first coming, and whet our appetites for the second. And those passages DO sound apocalyptic in the cosmic sense of dramatic signs, and in the sobering sense of inescapable tragedy. 

Not so much in those Bible chapters about baking or decorating, about warm gatherings and luxurious gifts. The primary word is "watch". Be alert. When the world spasms in wars and earthquakes and meteors and hunger and floods, remember the story. 

The story of Christmas Apocalypse, in all senses of the word. God revealing God-ness in human flesh, a new living entity that discloses a nature of mercy and truth, of love and justice, of transcendence and presence meeting in a baby. A Christmas uncovering, revealing the framework of a bigger story of the world, one that overcomes evil in apparent defeat, one that passes through the messy danger of birth to the cross and the grave, but ends in glory. A Christmas cataclysm, history's inflection point, set in motion.

Watching forms the essential prerequisite to thanks-giving. Giving thanks that even in this month, this year, of desolations, God's Spirit quietly transforms. We've also seen relational and physical healing, generous funding, a miraculous visa, a massive tax relief, genuine kindness, solid reasons to hope.

This year, let's start Advent right where we are. It is into the darkness that the light shines. It is into the reality of Palestine then and now that Jesus comes. It is into our own struggling, hurting hearts that the assurance pours: watch and pray, be found faithfully serving, by endurance possess your souls. Hold on through Advent 2024. Christmas is coming.

The light filters through the clouds of our life.

And sometimes that sorrow refracts to beauty.

Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat . . in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of our world, we experience that God is present.

Picked up Patrick McClure and drove him back to Bundi, former CSB Director and now working with Association of Christian Schools International Kenya branch on our Nairobi team, to pour that serving into our staff this week. And the day before, spent a delightful but strenuous day of we senior types working out better understanding and collaboration for our junior types . . . Ambassador Ezekiel of the Free Methodist Church in Burundi, with yours truly the Serge East/Central Africa Area Directors. 

Cocoa makes our world go round in Bundibugyo these days . . . just in time for Christmas we have good rains, good harvest, and good prices.

CSB S1,2,3,5 (the continuing classes after the S4.6 seniors finished national exams) on today the final day of the 2024 term! Faculty seated in front. Patrick preaching for chapel this morning below. 

And we leave you with a fun Christmas photo . . the new Kampala thing is for hotels to have a photo spot, so when we met our Burundi partner we couldn't miss the chance to wish you a Merry Christmas.

'A small life, small steps, arcing towards good through all election outcomes

 Last week we visited a team whose trajectory has been slow and steady, small and sure. No dramatic earth-shattering victories that broadcast we are on the winning team. But dozens of friendships that lend a reflective pause to refugees whose roots are in desert hostilities and whose present includes a crowded urban landscape. Small opportunities for people to feel heard and seen, to know that there is a God who cares. Similar to Hagar (in origin and in experience) who learned the same things in Genesis 16 and 21. 

This work is the work of incremental mending (seems to be a 2024 theme), of a handful of people taking small steps in the direction of healing and blessing for the world. On one team that might be teaching a skill or inviting people into therapy groups, on another it might be rigging oxygen for preems or innovating surgical instruments, and on another giving coaches a vision for mentoring kids in love and truth. None of this work forces change, because real change needs freedom and choice, needs justice in levelling some playing fields to access survival, then solid encouragement to forge a new path, to choose life.

In this world we will have trouble (John 16:33). Jesus was a realist. We have trouble every hour. As he walked into a trap that would take his life as his most trusted friends scattered, Jesus didn't call down fire from heaven or open everyone's eyes to the angels or separate the sheep and the goats for clarity (much as we think we want that). He chose a path of the electric chair, the lynching tree, the public execution, the cross . . . not the throne. Yet he finished his sentence telling his friends to take heart, because in by dying he was overcoming death. The word '"overcome" stems from the greek "nike", victory, a goddess of war and conquering . . . yet the word is used by Jesus in John and Revelation to paint a picture of overcoming that includes perseverance through hardship, returning to the first love, reordering our values, walking into suffering. The grief is real. The anchor of hope will hold, but we feel the extreme strain.

All a long preamble of preaching to ourselves that God calls us into a life that is faithful in the small steps we can take day by day, in how we live and who we help and how we talk and give. The arc is rather too gradual, with wandering steps and slow. As we wrap our minds around a political outcome in America with rhetoric that seems quite far from Jesus' teaching, we are once again with the 11 disciples, unsettled and discouraged but holding on, that we are called to overcome fear and exclusion and greed and derision with good. With love. With empathy and presence for those who are our neighbours who have been directly threatened. With our small lives taking small steps that lift our eyes towards the beauty and truth that Jesus has overcome the world.

Silent September on to Organisational October, Service and Celebration and Clean Water!

 September silence began with a Serge Ministry Team semi-annual meeting, where leaders from each geographic and a few cross-cutting topical areas meet with our US-based Executive Leadership Team to analyse current needs and opportunities and create rolling three-year strategies. Since some of our international work involves the risk of being disallowed from that person's country of work if associated with a faith-based NGO like Serge, we all avoid public pictures or current updates and practice silence . . . then after that week, we did a remote hike for a week as a real rest from work, then headed to California to care for Scott's mom, then back to NC/WV to be with my family for a wedding and "apple butter" making time together, stopping on the way to see Luke and Abby's first post-training "real" job and home. By the second week of October we were flying back to Uganda, a few days for key meet-ups in Kampala and then back to Bundibugyo almost a week ago. 

A bit of silent wilderness in September, above . . but to get there the path was indistinct and cloud-obscured (below) which seemed to picture this season for us perfectly. We are plodding in attempted service, and the cloud of God's presence on the mountain occasionally opens to glorious vistas but more typically calls us to keep going in the mist.

Back to Bundi

Reflecting on the month, the themes of service and celebration were entwined throughout. We served our Area and our mission as we spent hours in intricate discussions and analysis and prayer . . . AND we celebrated friendships whose depth plumbs work partnership and personal care for each other. We served our family by moving a beloved mother into a safer sociable senior apartment or by assisting with hosting and projects   . . . AND we celebrated the delight of a new marriage with dancing and toasts, or the traditions of Fall mountains with apples and stories. We served our decades-long colleagues and neighbours from Bundi by visits and counsel and meeting financial needs  . . . AND we celebrated another return to the home where the most significant joys of our lives have occurred.  A life of only service sounds like drudgery in a world so brimming with beauty, a life of only celebration sounds unrealistic in a world that hurts. As is usually the case, we don't blend the two for a lukewarm steady state. We step right into the places of need and right into the places of wonder. Both-and. 

  

My mom (above) in her home, and Scott's (below) in the courtyard just outside her new patio. Thankful they encourage us to keep serving, and we lament the cost of our absence to both of them.

Yesterday those two threads braided in a supervisory visit to the Mabere Water Project, the gravity-flow clean water scheme that Josh worked tirelessly to create over the last few years. The bulk of the work was done by May when we last hiked up, before Josh left. But over the summer, floods and a landslide damaged the intake, and slowed down the last steps of installing taps and meters. Our mission engineer Tembo has been working the last few months to tie up many of the loose ends, and since we have pretty much used up all the funding, we were hopeful that the project would be functional even if not quite finished. Service, for sure, in the many steep and strenuous miles we've climbed only a handful of times but Josh, Tembo and team had repeatedly scaled with bags of cement, massive wrenches, rolls of pipe. I felt every minute of my years and every deficit of my brain trying to balance and breathe on the narrow uneven paths. Generally these days, when people are unreached by a basic life service like clean water, there is a reason. It's hard to get there. And yet celebration, too. While we watched, Tembo opened the gate valve that lets water flow into the four rock-and-sand filtration tanks and then into the main holding tank, from which it flows down hill to 9 small tanks and 13 taps, to serve 1500 people, homes and schools. It worked. Yes, we had a thunderstorm break out in fury as we started back down, and lost footing in the mud several times, and it's taken hours to clean up and recover. But service and celebration in Mabere joined, as Psalm 85 so poetically puts it, righteousness and peace have kissed. A few crucial community responsibility and maintenance steps should lead to the final completion by December.

The repaired source, the ready-to-fill tanks, at about 6-7 thousand feet up the Rwenzoris

Today, heavy on the service and not much celebration yet. We are gathering documents for a meeting tomorrow, a bit of an organised protest of a sudden levy of massive tax burden on our school and mission. Though we have been recognised as a charitable non-profit here in Uganda for decades, Uganda needs revenue, and is squeezing left and right. We were reflecting that between thorough financial audits, reporting to our local government and the NGO board, a month-long interminably obscure re-certification of decades of documents with the bank, and now an out-of-the-blue attempt by the Uganda Revenue Authority to demand tens of thousands of dollars of tax from what was spent years ago to build things at school . .  . we've spent nearly a quarter of our lives this year in administrative bureaucratic tangles. It's the hard result of being betrayed by our former administrator, and being left by almost all our team. We are weary, and we've only been home 6 days. If you read to the end, pray for a miracle of logic and justice to shine at the meeting tomorrow.

Looking forward to being able to celebrate that!

And for anyone who has read this blog for many years, today Ruth Ann Batstone celebrates a life of service to Jesus and the world in Heaven. She has been a stalwart friend, wise counsellor, joyful host, dedicated truth-teller, prayerful labourer in our lives and so so so many others in Serge. Yesterday she died in the arms of her husband, surrounded by her children, a solemn passage from years of debilitating lung disease into an realm beyond time and oxygen, the embrace of God. We feel the weight of missing her, along with the gratefulness of having been on this journey together.

one of Ruth Ann's many inputs to our life, see original here.

    BONUS: MORE FAMILY PHOTOS related to the celebratory visits at the end of Sep and beginning of October . . .

The Myhre clan as we went to the wedding!

Noah and Emily are married!

Very festive rehearsal dinner, with my niece, sister, and mom below

The day after the wedding we went to WV where we peeled five bushels of apples and cooked them in a copper kettle all day for apple butter

Luke and Abby's new home, which they have already opened to Caleb staying a few months.

The beauty of the California coast with Scott's sister above, and Aspens on our way back East below.

A mending life

All fabric frays. Life has a thousand ways to pick loose threads, to stretch and strain and stain and wear down the quilt of our lives. 

once upon a time I made my kids quilts. This one had a subsequent frayed life. . .

and was fixed by Julia but I can't find the pic

Today in Bundibugyo: someone we've known for decades with his x-rays limps in asking for help with his joint pain, young people concerned about their mother's deteriorating health ask for money to send her for treatment, a neighbor brings his pregnant wife saying she's hungry and needs to buy sheets, another friend shares good news of kids' school performance but is deeply concerned for a spiritually and mentally troubled wife, another messages about a decades-long friend diagnosed with cancer, another friend looks morose about a son who was hit by a motorcycle, two young brothers arrive to report their house is leaking from the incessant unseasonable rain. All these are people we know who will struggle to sort out next steps because their finances are very limited and the resources available often cause as much harm as good. Meanwhile we have meetings and write up reports and follow up issues that seem important about our legality in Uganda, about teams in our Area and their own needs. All before heading to an end-of-term CSB staff meeting where we celebrate so much good but also hear about a student who threatened to poison another student who reported his rule-breaking behaviour, other conflicts, chronic lack of text books, difficulty with the changing curriculum, latrines filled with garbage as the influx of plastic and cheap manufactured good races ahead of a village-turning-to-city's capacity to manage waste. The unseasonable incessant rain requires new drainage plans. Later another neighbor with a baking business wants to use an oven just as a couple of families we invited for dinner arrive. Her oven broke, and our water intake valve for the school broke today. At least the power stayed on most of the day.

None of the above constitutes a life-altering traumatic rip that shreds the proverbial fabric beyond repair. 'Tis the season of political speeches in America and one governor recounting a season of sorrows concluded "none of that's remarkable, it's life". Some people have capital-T traumas (and we've had some ourselves) where life and death are on the line and before and after are irrevocably separated. But the normal days that make up normal years are like this one, full of wear and tear. A constant series of not-what-we-hoped for griefs for our own hearts and those we love. Frays and tatters in need of mending.

Mending is a small grace. Stitches that are not particularly strong or perfect or artistically remarkable, but serviceable patching to return to the whole.

That's life. We keep inching towards making earth like heaven. This week the New England Journal of Medicine (the most famous medical journal) published a trial done in Niger (189th out of 193 countries listed by human development index). Giving 1-5 year olds a single dose of a common antibiotic, azithromycin (zithromax) twice a year reduces their risk of dying by 14%. It's not easy to survive this continent, and a 14% boost is not a sure thing but a significant help. Vaccines, nutrition, stronger families, stable security, malaria prevention. . . and a twice yearly spoonful of antibiotic syrup. These are the day-to-day mends that make up life. Not glamorous, but essential.

My two favourite menders fixing a wedding dress this summer, the perfect concluding image of repair and joy

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BONUS photos  . . . 

And some mending is done by listening and visiting. Some by prayer and teaching. Some by cleaning and hammering. Some by patient perseverance. Still praying for progress with our Ugandan paperwork. It's endless.

Ann  with two couples she has blessed, and who bless us all. Team almost gone but thankful for these!

Term 2 ended with no fires or riots or major ripping apart of the school, but lots of frays to analyse and repair

 

One afternoon this week Scott was trying you-tube fixes on broken stuff

And another project, replacing broken wooden doors at school with new metal ones

Still smiling at the end of long days . . . Pat's daughter Lydia in town 

Olympics, heaven, and the paradox of unity and diversity

 The Olympics gave us a taste of "on earth as it is in heaven",  in ways the community of those who have been loved and redeemed by relationship with Jesus should do. This is the point of an excellent book I just finished by Jamaal Williams and Timothy Jones, In Church as it is in Heaven. Their story of a multiethic city church in Kentucky demonstrates that our unity as humans, as believers, is a gift to us that reflects God's uncontainable glory (way bigger than any one culture, language, race) and blesses the world as we employ our unique talents to the world's needs.  As a church we have not always been a picture of heaven, so we can learn from the Olympics.

For those days in Paris, we celebrated the excellence of people of all sizes and gifts and colours, from five continents, 206 countries and the refugee team. We listened to anthems and raised flags and marvelled at the art, costumes, parades, music. We were on the edge of our seats as a runner came from behind to win, or as a gymnast flew through the air in perfect rotations, or as a javelin was thrown an unbelievable distance, or the table tennis serve was too fast to even see, or the climbing walls were ascended with the most fragile holds. We looked up St Lucia on the map, or researched the difference between Korean and Japanese martial arts. Over and over we exclaimed with wonder at the human capacity, body and soul. 

Peruth Chemutai of Uganda with Silver in the 3000m steeplechase. . we also had a men's gold in the 10000m from Cheptegai

Because not all the highlights were the gold medals. Some of my favourite moments were the ways the (mostly) women cheered and encouraged each other, seeing silver medalists genuinely cheer for the gold from another team (Simone and Jordan bowing to the Brazilian). Or also the USA marathon men who were nowhere near the front, staying at the finish line to congratulate everyone who came in after them, or the relay team that did NOT win getting grilled by the press and refusing to blame each other, standing stalwart in "we did our best and this wasn't our day". 

The Olympics highlight diversity by everyone being assigned to one of those 206 countries, but unity by everyone having an even playing field to compete on. Sort of. Many Africans compete off continent, either they or their parents moved to a place like Europe, looking for safety or better facilities or financial support for their family, or maybe they were forced overseas long ago by human trafficking . . . in the women's marathon, 9 of the top 10 finishers were African, but 4 of those 9 ran for off-continent countries. 

 

The Sudanese-Canadian about to pass most of the pack to get silver, behind the Kenyan . . .

The church could learn from the Olympics--how can we hold the paradox of celebrating each person's unique background, genetics, artistry, story, as one sliver of the prism of colour that makes up our God of light? And at the same time find the connection that we need as a community, to work together to make the world liveable for all?  How can we enter new cultures without turning them all into bland amalgamations? We've spent our life trying to honour this little pocket of Uganda's language and culture, music and traditions and food and dress and style, while also equipping our CSB students with the English skills and math/science background to move into the world. Both-And. No easy answers. 

American Pizza night with the CSB Leadership team . . . sharing cultures, learning from each other

About two hours after this photo and yet more prayer, the bank finally unfroze our accounts for a week so we could pay our staff and pay for food for our students . . . Still struggling to fit into the Ugandan ever-evolving administrative complexity, with integrity. A hard road to walk. Pray that we sort out a longer term solution this week.

Why we keep trying: these hundreds could be the next Gold Medalists of compassionate development

The book referenced . . .