Ebola Bundibugyo again: a lens for seeing and caring about Congo

Sixteen days ago, a puzzling cluster of severe illness and death in eastern DRC was finally attributed to the Bundibugyo ebolavirus. The same Ebola variant that killed Dr. Jonah 19 years ago, one of our closest friends and colleagues, and left us in the center of an unfolding outbreak. This time we were nowhere near, but we did get an immediate call from our team who had high risk exposures, and we’ve spent most of the last two weeks embroiled in the science, logistics, politics and faith of response. Our Serge surgeon, Dr. Peter Stafford, became infected and dangerously ill, but is now in recovery, and for that we are grateful beyond measure to an unseen army of people and grace.

 

I’ll close below with some personal thoughts, but since this sorrow is unfolding in Congo and a group of Congolese doctors and scientists published their initial report in the Lancet this weekend, let me use their observations. Five reasons this epidemic poses a particular challenge, and seven steps that must be taken immediately. 

FIVE CONCERNS about this 17th Ebola outbreak in DRC (italics are direct quotes from the article)

1. First, the outbreak is caused by Bundibugyo virus, for which there are no approved virus-specific therapeutics or vaccines, which deprives response teams of crucial tools for breaking the chain of transmission and reducing disease fatality. 

Like our smaller epidemic in 2007-8, the diagnosis was delayed because the initial tests for Ebola were carried out on more common strains, and turned up negative results. This variant has no specific treatments and no vaccine to quickly interrupt susceptibility and transmission. Even diagnostic test kits are scarce. The “index case” so far identified was a health care worker who fell ill April 24th, died April 27th. Bundibugyo ebolavirus was confirmed May 15th. We started behind, and the spread is outpacing capacity. 

2. Second, the outbreak is occurring both in urban and rural areas.

In 2007, Bundibugyo district had a SINGLE unpaved road access, and relatively little population density or movement. This time the Ituri epicenter contains Bunia, a small city of nearly a million people. Many live in crowded camps for the internally displaced (like a refugee but no international border crossed). Urban density, and the difficulty of reaching a widespread network of rural villages, make this setting more challenging. Samples have taken days to send for testing and receive results, by which time spread has continued or the patient has died.

3. Third, the epicentre of the outbreak is located in a province that shares borders with three other provinces and two countries, which increases the risk of national and regional spread.

Ituri shares a long border with Uganda, and some Ebola-infected patents have already sought care there. It’s a geological and cultural rift valley, where language groups are artificially divided by unseen borders they frequently cross.

4. Fourth, the outbreak is occurring in areas affected by insecurity, population displacement, and mining-related population movement, all of which can increase the risk of transmission.

The sorrows of eastern DRC preceded the outbreak of Ebola. Decades of suspicion and fear have boiled up in armed attacks, informal militias, shifting alliances, a thousand roadless wilderness miles from the central government’s order. Gold, cobalt, and other valuable minerals have fueled a scramble to exploit and control this territory. Arms and money cross the border, resources spill out, and children and the poor risk their lives to scrabble together a dangerous living as miners so that we have convenient cell pones. Congo’s poverty and insecurity are partly our global market’s making. It’s one of the most challenging places for Serge to maintain a team. 17 of 36 health zones in Ituri are at last partly inaccessible due to insecurity. And not many outsiders choose to live there.

5.  Fifth, Ituri was one of the provinces affected by the 2018–20 Ebola outbreak and has a history of high community resistance, especially against safe and dignified burials, due to deeply entrenched cultural and spiritual funeral traditions.

When your view of the world is dominated by the danger of displeasing ancestral spirits, who can (and do) cause grievous and fatal harm to you and your children . . . the risk of an improper burial looms more tangibly real than the risk of a virus you’ve never heard of. And when your entire region has been exploited by outsiders lying to take advantage, the trust in the sudden descent of foreigners is low.

SO WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

1. Retrospective case investigation must be stepped up. We don’t know how many cases we have already missed, and in what direction they have spread. The DRC dash shows 559 suspected and confirmed cases and 253 suspected and confirmed deaths today . . .but the news says the cases are likely much higher. Uganda has 9 cases and 1 death so far. 
2. Investigate every new case to find the time of infection and identify all contacts. Contact tracing, monitoring, treatment and isolation are the key to stopping the spread of the virus. 
3. Engage community leaders in the response. Outsiders who lack the language and cultural bridges will never be able to enjoin behavior changes that lower risk. Our team doctors, and a couple of other faith-based-NGO doctors, have been zoomed into meetings even while in quarantine. The trust of living for a decade in a place is invaluable when life and death are on the line. 
4. Engage the armed groups that control affected areas. The public health response has to work with the real humans in the real place, not a theoretical structure hundreds or thousands of miles away.
5. Fifth, urgently establishing Ebola treatment centres equipped with appropriate infection prevention and control measures, including adequate personal protective equipment for front-line health-care workers, is essential not only for preserving a crucial workforce, but also for preventing amplification of transmission within health-care settings. Samaritan’s Purse has flown in 25 experts and tons of materials, as has World Health Organization. AND YET, here we are on day 16 with faltering steps and slow. By this point in 2007 we were miles further. 
6. Step up infection control in ALL health centers in the area. This Ebola presents non-specifically. Bleeding is late, and not universal. MOST cases look exactly like malaria, or typhoid, or a dozen other more common illnesses. Any patient could be the next case, and every health care worker needs adequate resources to safely care for and diagnose.
7. Neighboring countries also need to be ready.  Uganda’s Ministry of Health task force issued procedures for border districts, which is why we had to cancel our hand-over celebration for the new Bishop Barnabas Theological College this week. Our entire region needs to practice good public health. 

Please pray for Congo. Pray that the virus would mutate to become less transmissible and less severe. Pray that people would work together, that paradoxically the desperation of this epidemic would overcome the divisions and fear that splinter the area. Pray that God would supernaturally protect the caregivers, and heal the sick, that grace would fill the gaps left by a slow inadequate global response.  Pray for innovations and hard work to accelerate the healing, for Congolese ingenuity and grit to amaze the world. Pray for the brave people of faith, from caregiving mothers to missionary pilots to village health workers to research epidemiologists, to be filled with love that overcomes death.

And join us in thanking God for sparing Dr. Peter. He was severely ill, unable to walk without assistance and troubled by mental anguish and high fever by the time the evacuation flight could finally be arranged.  His life was spared by the grace of God, the prayers of hundreds if not thousands, and the competent persistent work of many people in several countries. He’s nearly finished the treatment period and entering convalescence, as his family and another doctor (Dr. Patrick LaRochelle) have a final week of quarantine to be sure they escape infection, but so far so good.

The last post I wrote before Ebola grabbed our world again was about Dr. Jonah’s family. Ebola is a headline grabber for a few weeks or months, but the devastating effects last years and decades. We at Serge are long-term invested in the places God sends us, and nearly 20 years post-Ebola in Bundibugyo we are still using the funds raised there to educate new doctors and nurses and lab techs and nutritionists . . . and to sponsor Dr. Jonah’s children through their entire education. Our team will be back at work in Congo, for this year and for many to come. WE have set up a “Congo Recovery Fund” to help (click here) with the immediate response. Others will do much more in the emergency relief, but we will continue much longer in building capacity so this does not happen again and again.

The primary experience for us in these two weeks and two days has been to marvel at the timing, the connections, the rescues, the mercy we have been shown, and to mourn the real loss and heartache and fear that has gripped a place and people we love. Our team does not like to talk about themselves, but we all are willing to talk and write in ways that allow us to be a lens for the world to see Congo. 

*for further updates, follow the Serge press releases here.

Redeeming Ebola: 19 years later, hope continues

In the Fall of 2007, nearly 20 years ago now, a brand new strain of Ebola virus crossed from the Ituri forest into the people of Bundibugyo. Our dear friend and medical colleague Dr. Jonah Kule, who had just completed his training to be the first doctor from our area in a generation, perhaps the third one ever, went into villages to investigate the reports of fatalities. He, and we, puzzled over negative screening tests and continued to cautiously consult and treat the mystery illness as samples reached further labs. The day the new virus was announced, he was already ill, and a few days later, he died. 

Dr. Jonah’s death was more than the loss of the hope of a desperately poor and undeserved district. He was a husband and father. He left behind five daughters and a wife, Melen, pregnant with a baby who turned out to be his only son. As we reeled from the tragic epidemic, our supporters generously poured their grief and support into two responses: the Dr. Jonah Memorial Leadership Fund that has enabled the training of nurses, doctors, nutritionists, public health workers serving Uganda. And the Kule Family Care Fund to ensure that all of his children would be educated. School fees are the primary concern of most parents and would have been impossible for his widow to pay. Remarkably, from a place and time where few girls finish high school, his daughters have all done so! The first is using her degree in business and management with a large avocado project, the second qualified as a lawyer, the third is a nurse-midwife, the fourth completed nursing training as well. The fifth, Sarah, just finished her secondary school and wants to apply to medical school herself. (Jonah, the little boy born months after his father’s death, is still in secondary school).

As we have left Bundibugyo physically due to cancer, we have not left spiritually or relationally. We remain committed to raising funds for Christ School Bundibugyo and BundiNutrition, Kingdom-bringing projects that remain. 

Last month in Uganda with Dr. Jonah's daughter Nurse-Midwife Magdalene (also a mother, married to another Dr. Kule from a neighboring district!)

Melen, the widow of the late Dr. Jonah, and Mbusa who helps her and us with all the ongoing projects, as we visited last month

We’ve rarely asked for any more contribution to the Kule Family Care Fund because the generosity of 2007-8 saw us through, but as we approach the 20-year mark, we are running low. Melen and her children are shining examples of the generational impact of justice and mercy. They continue to serve, and will do so for many years to come. The family care fund has seen six children nearly through university. Sarah, and potentially Jonah Junior, are intersections of visions to improve health care worker capacity and to honor our colleague by caring for his family. Their lives reflect God’s love for the world’s margins. If you’d like to refresh the Kule Family Care Fund with a one-time gift this year, or smaller annual or monthly gifts for the next 7, that will take us to the final graduation.

Hands capped, hands clapping

 I've been, literally, hand-capped for about 5 of the last 7 months. Two broken wrists,  the first one old-fashioned casted and the second one requiring a surgical plate and screws, then a thumb tendon rupture that required a transfer of a tendon from index finger to thumb .  . . I've had bandages and splints, plaster, fiberglass, molded plastic, velcro and fancy knobs and strings and slings, all restraining my hands. 

This has not been the most important or the most difficult part of the last year, by far. But it HAS made all the important and difficult parts more challenging. And, it's tiring to be on round 3. My current contraption actually does look like a plastic cap, so looking at it for the last week has brought the word "handicapped" to mind. The word came from a wagering game in the 1650s involving putting money into a hat or cap for betting, and evolved to imply putting at disadvantage or equalizing uneven chances in a competition. In the last century the concept spread from race horses to children with physical challenges, and in my lifetime seems to no longer be seen as fair or kind. 

Whatever term is used, the truth is: every human receives a unique set of human capacities, capped by genetics or histories or cruelty or injustice .. . and cheered on by clapping from family, community, governments, God. We are all in an every-changing story of breaking a bone and snapping a tendon  . . . or strength and dexterity building exercises and gifts. Right now my abilities to type, cook, dress, bathe, play the piano, drive a car, wash dishes, hold objects are significantly limited. And it's not hard to see that! My bulky braced hand is visibly impaired. Objects clatter loudly to the ground around me. I'm in a season of waiting (aren't we all).  Healing requires both grace (God's mercy in tendons reconnecting along stitched lines) and effort (PT/OT exercises). No guarantees how far either will take me. But as I sigh and look mournfully at this brace (that feels clunky and unwieldy, but is actually protective and a gift) . . . it's a good pause to remind all of us of the hidden truth.

post-op plaster and wrap, and our wood stove, two pics of survival.

Grateful for WV ortho care, and my companion through every broken bone . . .

We can't see the plethora of hand-capping events that shape other lives. But we can remember they are there, and clap for the small increments of hands creating and working all around us. 

Cheers from here to our teams all over East and Central Africa, where unfamiliar languages, dangerous roads, armed adversaries, drained budgets, protective exclusion, spiritual fears, abusive histories, and on and on, all cap the ease of living. Our teams and our communities deserve the celebratory reality-check, that feeding the hungry, healing the sick, speaking the truth, all shine in God's eyes. Schools like Christ School Bundibugyo are taking in their new class of students for the year, with parents anxiously gathering whatever they can to ensure their kids' thriving. Some Sergers are traveling hundreds of dusty miles this week to tell the good news in places that have never heard it. Others are staying put even though floods or wars or epidemics stalk uncomfortably close. Our partners are putting up with our mistakes 70x7 times and still going. Yesterday we made it to the end of the Christmas and Epiphany seasons, and plodded back into "ordinary time".  

Certainly awards and contests and holidays get their share of the spotlight . . . but for today, let's clap for the ordinary.  People with their own unique stories of handi-capping, persisting anyway, for you are hands clapping. (Or hoping to clap if they are ever healed enough!).

Can we all pray this prayer of faith for 2026???

Please pray if for us.

Ordinary days, supporting extraordinary people from afar.

Prostest as lament; locating our story in God's

 Like many Americans who are people of faith, we've been pondering a Biblical framework in which the current story fits the big story of God's arc from "in the beginning" Gen 1 to "all things new" Rev 21. That is the daily work of "heeding, pouring, detouring", looking for truth and beauty in the reality we live through, investing our gifts and resources for the good of others, changing our plans to adapt to the constraints of life in time and space. 

This Chameleon was located in a story set in Rwendigo, but Luke re-located him in the icy story of Sago with his Christmas creation.

That's life. And how, we are all wondering, does that look in January 2026?

This morning one of my current reads focused on lament, and it gave me a location for much of what I see in Minnesota. Scott was born in Minneapolis-St.Paul, and his maternal roots come from the Norwegians and Swedes who settled on Minnesota farmland, people of faith and determination, tough and yet understated, who do what needs to be done. So we resonate with the 50 thousand marching in subzero temps to say: something is WRONG. Protest is a mass lament, a naming of broken systems, a resistance to harmful happenings. Lament acknowledges the gap between the goodness of God and the terrors of the world. When that many people lament together, physically, they provide a needed perspective that all is not well.  The Bible is full of people crying out to kings, to judges, to GOD, not accepting the status quo as right just because it's the status quo. Protest, lament, heeding what is happening, naming the sorrows, these are our calling.

And another read reminded me that all power is secondary to the rule of Jesus. Earthly rulers are derivative. Everyone answers eventually to God. There is no place that we are told to obey human governments IF they contradict God's ways. That is why the protests that eventually led to the abolition of slavery were largely located in Christian churches (though to our lasting sorrow, not all churches and not enough). Or why faithful Germans like Dietrich Bonhoffer stood against the holocaust (yesterday's remembrance). No government perfectly aligns with justice and truth, so "just obey" never absolves people of conscience. Current events are NOT as dire as slavery or holocaust, but they still require thoughtful believers to weigh their reaction. To live together, we have to compromise up to a line, and decide where that line is. For many believers, it is abortion. Or revoking citizenship for immigrants, or withholding food from the hungry or healthcare from the old, or other "love thy neighbor as thyself" summaries of the law. So expressing to our government that we expect constitutional protections to be respected by our military, AND by our customs and border patrols and immigration agents, is not ungodly. Pouring into the streets sometimes comes from an outpouring of love.

Lastly, we won't get this right. The quote that keeps coming back to me this week is: "the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. " (Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago). Every human (even the ICE and BCP agents who fired fatal shots, and the protestors who "impeded" their wishes) contains the imprint of glory, the image of God's goodness. And every human is marred by evil, the evil of their own choices, the evil of their hard stories in a world that doesn't work for their good, and the evil of a malevolence that lurks to harm. No people are only good, or only bad. We try, we detour. We admit our own self-centered self-protective self-justifying hearts, and we forgive the same in others. The platform for this "truth and reconciliation" as Bishop Desmond Tutu showed us can be the family, the community, the legal system, the institutions that connect us. To listen to each other, to call out right and wrong, to choose to restore the threads that bind. 

Renee Good and Alex Pretti were humans who tried to do the right thing from all we can see, yet it cost them their lives. Their killers were humans who possibly believed they had the right to kill anyone who got in their way. Lamenting this state of affairs, holding the policy-makers who led us into this situation of January 2026 to account, and humbly examining our own hearts as we seek to build bridges to others, these are all holy occupations for God's people in any country. We usually ask readers to pray for our teams in Africa, where injustice and death seem more common, where the concentration of power and money in the hands of too few is even more problematic. But we add prayers for America too. Prayer is a real moment, not a platitude, an action of putting the story of life into God's story of good. Re-orienting our priorities, and heeding the next step of pouring love and detouring plans. So let's pray.

Together, we can change the world.

Even ICE can be beautiful . . .

And speaking of prayer . . thanks for those who prayed my ruptured thumb tendon into a new story of surgical repair.

 preop to post op

The scars are incorporated into the story.

Epiphany, an ongoing season of eyes wide open

 'Til the season, of . . . epiphany, which has somehow come to mean a very individual big-idea insight, rather than a conspicuous manifestation of a reality. 

So in deference to the original meaning of the word, this is the season after Christmas, when magi traveled from Iran before it was being bombed, because their careful ongoing eyes-wide-open study of the nighttime sky led them to conclude a once-in-a-lifetime regime change for the known world had been set in motion by a royal birth west towards the Mediterranean. At extreme effort and expense, they mounted a caravan and spent weeks on the road towards a murky destination. And became the tangible moment that Christ's birth story's significance crossed borders, exploded to be relevant to all the nations, not just one.

"Heed" is a key word in this story. The tale starts in motion, because of attention. They had to heed the star-sign. Not everyone notices a new configuration of the galaxy-distant lights. Their awareness of the impending change, their finding a path they had probably never passed over, their questions of a bewildered court, were all active pursuits of opening their vision to new horizons, to the ancient truths taking new forms. 

"Pour" is another, upon arrival they showered Jesus' family with gifts that befit his kingly status. Heeding led to relinquishing. Precious metals, precious products, in an era where the spice trade and the gold trade were the mobile money and banking. These were not given out of an endless fringe of abundance, they were treasures they parted with to honor the occasion. Costly. Bestowed. Entrusted. 

"Detour" is the last key to the story. After heeding led to journey, and pouring led to treasures transferred . .. they were required to react to a changing scenario, to danger, to embrace a new path and plan. As Middle Eastern royal sages themselves, who studied and financed and acted . . they were perhaps more used to being in control than to being redirected. Dream-warnings needed heeding in the end, and they chose to NOT fulfill Herod's expectation of a return report, but to depart a different way.

The frozen river we cross to go to church

These wise humans set a pattern for our own millennia of post-Christmas wait for the baby to reign. 

Eyes open to heeding the ongoing work of God, which is often obscurely messy and disguised at the weakest margins, we begin 2026. Yesterday a long meeting with our leader in Uganda, trying to discern the complications of contradictory interpretations of our tax status, mourning severe illness and loss in friends we've known for decades, weighing out how to be faithful. Then this morning a letter from that team that fills the picture in with lives impacted. Same in Kenya, and Burundi, and all our Area. Very real challenges, and very real goodness. Seeking wisdom to heed God's merciful, true, calling.

From Boas Opedun, in Uganda

So we pour out hours in calls, meetings, emails, documents, payments, agreements and ideas. Not our favorite way to work, but the season's cost nonetheless. Most of our days stretch in an office, with some punctuation of distant meetings we must travel to, or more frequent medical appointments to attend, or family issues to be present for at last. And as we pour out this phase of our lives, we ask others to do the same, raising money for the very similar magi purposes of blessing babies who face danger, by BundiNutrition and Christ School support. 

Scott presenting at a Serge leadership meeting two weeks ago

And detour is the name of the game in 2025, spilling all the way through 2026 too. We wanted to be Area Directors who were present with our 11 teams in 6 countries, controlling our caravan's plans. Instead we are reacting to death threats and finding new paths. As are all at some level. The world spins into 'might makes right' and into the 'wealthiest drain the poorest', with fewer of the restraints that have limited evil through our lifetimes. Adapting to new road blocks and new open doors becomes essential.

    

At the Serge office, sporting the coat Julia made me for Christmas

Epiphany's root is the word "shine". Shine on, display, come into view. A star is best seen in the darkness of night. May Jesus' love, truth, hope, all be best seen in us shining our small lights in 2026. 

BundiNutrition: Aid that Works

Following the Star . . . 

This season's Christmas story brings into focus the vulnerability of becoming a baby in a marginal place of poverty. Like Jesus' family, many of our neighbors in Bundibugyo and around our East/Central Africa Area deliver babies proximate to sheltered livestock and distant from secure assistance. And then struggle to keep those children fed, healthy, growing. In 2025, their sense of isolation has increased as USAID-funded programs have been cut off. But BundiNutrition maintains a solid, faithful connection from distant compassion to those who need it. The generosity and courage of strangers, like those of the proverbial wise men, bring gifts that enable the endangered to survive.

This year, our team of Bwampu, Ivan, and Clovice pressed on without missionary presence for the first time. At the main district hospital, they found and enrolled 913 malnourished children out of the nearly 4000 they screened. In the outpatient program at Nyahuka, they enrolled 549 kids from 14 different Bundibugyo subcounties and from across the border in DRC. That's 1462 kids, over 300 more than last year, showing the pressure on our little program when other funding is cut. They also provided meals for 79 mothers in the NICU so they could nurse their babies. The full report will be prepared after the year ends, but the preliminary data is encouraging. Malnourished kids in Africa have mortality rates in treatment around 10%, but of these thousand-plus, only 2 died. Food, medicine, and attention are the gold, frankincense and myrrh of 2025. 

Would you consider a year-end gift? Our Serge BundiNutrition Page tells you how to donate. Please share this blog post to pass the good news, to augment the cheer, that it's possible to close a rough 2025 by bringing food to Jesus, a la Matthew 25.

An unlikely infant altered the course of the universe as he cried for his mother's milk in Bethlehem. We are all now part of that story, and the good news is that we too can push the arc of the ending towards good.

Construction and Comfort: Isaiah's call to attend Advent 2025

One more week of normal work until the week of Christmas brings us close to the end of 2025. Light is fading on our WV farm as we brace for plummeting temperatures and a winter storm watch today. Clouds have covered the sun most of this month, providing a physical context of dull obscurity.

A year ago, the words I anticipated forming the year were 'mend, send, attend'. And as we draw near the year's close, I hear these words echoed in the chapter I keep coming back to, Isaiah 35, and in Isaiah 40's opening Messiah chorus. 'Mend and send' are congruent with the highway construction project in the desert, the filling of valleys and leveling of hills, the straightening of country-road curves. The advent season of waiting is not passively idle, there is a call to preparation. God is coming. The realities of a redeemed future reach back into current events as we mend the broken people and places, as we send good forward. A year ago, I expected the setting of mending to be Bundibugyo, and the setting of sending to be in-person in our Africa area. A Trinity-Forum podcast this week said that hospitality entails both preparation to serve AND embrace of disruption. A good word for life and an apt thumbnail of this year upended by Stage IV cancer and continental shift. Still 'mend' and 'send' sound satisfyingly active. 

Mary and Joseph, Elizabeth and Zacharias, shepherds and magi, all had mend-and-send sorts of roadwork in the months before Jesus' arrival too. Most of them were literally on the desert highway, literally moving towards Jerusalem in anticipation. From paying taxes to setting up camp to labor and poetry, they were each doing their part to make way for the coming one.

Having lived on Bundibugyo road from muddy quagmire to paved highway, having spent decades in a place where childbirth requires foot-path hikes and still risks death even in the best circumstances, having witnessed the arrival of new life be not sterilely technical or safely separate from the messiness of life, having spent Christmas displaced by war and by fatal epidemic . . . the reality of the road resonates. And here on our gravel, riverside road in Sago, the "take me home" of this state sings out a longing for those roads to lead to belonging. Those with little power mend and send in small daily faithfulness around the globe, moving towards home.

    

But that final word, 'attend', is the one I'm ending the year on. Comfort ye my people, speak peace . . these are phrases of pause, of paying attention. Phrases of noticing a change, a new situation, a pardon and a hope. The promise of a King who is pictured as a shepherd, the one who gathers gently, is a radical departure from the machinations of human empire.  Presence, not power. A new way of thinking (repent means "change your mind-map") can only be noticed if we slow and stop. If we listen and look. If we 'attend'.

Advent should be a season of paying attention. But in our attention economy of 2025, such focus requires intention. I am guilty of spiraling into the ever-increasing wealth of writing, art, music, shows, quips, thoughts, opinions, news available from every corner of the planet every second of the day. Choosing only four (4!) Advent series sounds crazy. . . but there are so many options. Today's passage in one of them quotes Karl Barth on Zacharias as a story that, even a hundred or two thousand years ago, listening to God requires us to stop talking about ourselves. Requires a shaking encounter, a disruptive re-set. Stop. Attend. 

Because 'attend' is more than concentration. When we 'attend', we are present. Present in the behind-the-veil reality glimpsed by Isaiah. Present in the God of the universe turning our lives upside down to make the whole world better. Presence with God in the cloud is a double-edged experience, the comfort of being enveloped in goodness, the disorientation of having our whole conception of goodness reset.

Let me end with Is 35:3. Strengthen the weak hands and make firm the feeble knees. That is how we enter such a draining attention, asking for Jesus' strength in our weakness. It is also our family verse for December since I'm recovering from surgery on a second broken wrist that has left my hands weak, and Luke is recovering from major surgery on his knee, and everyone feels feeble in the face of Scott's cancer.

 Not to mention the despairing directions of much of our world this season. So my final image is from a former teacher on our Bundi team who continues to be a key support to our Area, and spent 2025 in her own life-threatening struggle that brought her baby prematurely and risked her baby's life too. Here we are, in the reality of a life of brokenness (see the feeding tube still many months later) but embracing the smile and color of Christmas, the truth that Jesus changes everything. Waiting, attending, because love is stronger than death.

    

Gratitude and Grief (again): Thanksgiving 2025 edition

Gratitude and grief were key words for us over the past few years, starting with my near-death accident and moving through dwindling team and stolen resources and personal betrayals. And we’ve certainly come back to them in 2025 which began with a lightening bolt of stage IV cancer and complete upheaval of home and work and life and future. The pairing insists that the world is complex, that even in times of shaking loss, if we pay attention, we will see reasons to be thankful. The fingerprints of divine mercy grace even the scorched waste of a rough year. As we have grieved, we have gratefully celebrated too.

   

November winds down into the American national holiday of Thanksgiving, and the paradoxical pairing pins the complexity of gratitude and grief in place once again. Gratitude is the essence of this holiday: for survival, for feasting with friends and family, for finding our place in a story that hints at redemption in spite of darkening days. For the unfathomable list of things tangible and intangible provided from outside in. We humanly need the communal pause to focus on that providence. Being thankful is not a time for gloating. Being thankful acknowledges the many ways our days are better than they could be. Thanks becomes both humbling and directional, a posture that notices the thousandfold bounty of access to much we did nothing to earn or deserve. In 2025 we don’t have to invent penicillin or electricity; vaccines and public resources have smoothed all our paths. Many of us thank parents, or elders, or teachers, or colleagues, as well as thanking God. It is a national moment to breathe in the changing season, to taste the pleasure of food and drink, to lean into the relational girding of our neighborhoods. To look beyond ourselves.

But even the week of Thanksgiving, gratitude is not a platitude that coats a glossy veneer over troubles. We gather around tables spread in metaphorical wildernesses. Attending to reality requires the dual discipline of noticing reasons to be thankful, and reasons to mourn. Both have a direction towards family, community, and God. Psalms of lament and psalms of thanksgiving, both/and, give voice to the tangible truths.

So this Thanksgiving, join us in thanking God that Scott’s cancer treatment is actively extending his life. (And thanks for all the comments on his birthday post below!) I am writing this on the house-on-the-rock porch in Sago, WV, where a rain-swollen river churns by and acres of woods embody the beauty of death renewing life, leaf color fading as leaf-fall returns richness to the soil, thankful for the wild wonder of this old farm. Two of our kids will travel to California to bolster one grandmother’s holiday, two will join their loved ones’ families, and we will be hosted by my sister and nephews and mother, thankful for all these family networks. Every day we miss our Africa life, but we also have ongoing reasons to be thankful. New doctors trained in multiple residencies and medical schools multiplying healing. A failed rebellion in our old home manipulated young people and cost some their lives this past month, but that accentuates the goodness of hundreds of others a few miles away daily grounded in Gospel truth and nourishing safety at CSB, as the school year draws to a peaceful close. Our photographer in Fort Portal has gathered a cadre of others to create art and tell stories that the world needs to hear, and just joined a sister team to bless a country in our Area with much suffering and few believers. Thousands of blind people have had sight restored as the Eye Love Africa project trains and provides cataract surgery. Two places that have suffered horrific violence, this year and for decades, had Gospel-hope incarnation visits from our teams, and a third has our team back making homes in spite of temporary evacuations. Hundreds and hundreds of people heard Bible stories that they could relate to and ponder the nature of God’s love and work in their immediate worlds. On every team, we are the bridge generation to African saints with bigger hearts and minds. SO MUCH to be thankful for, SO MUCH that God continues to do through the 80 workers we left behind, so grateful to maintain a thread of connection to all this work. 

And this Thanksgiving, join us in holding onto the paradox of both gratitude and grief. The God whose mercy allowed all the above is not offended by our crying out as we encounter the massive sorrows that persist. Wars have not ceased, and from Sudan to Congo to Gaza to Ukraine we lament the greed and fear that preclude peace. Hunger has not ceased, and in every part of our Area we ask God to provide more funding and food for those who suffer. Sickness has not ceased, so we call out for God to spare the lives of people we know and love, and the many more that are known to God and not to us, to protect women in labor and vulnerable newborns and frail elderly and everyone on the margins. 2025 has been a shocking year to be back in America where we are more tuned into the news, to pay attention to the abundance of injustices here and everywhere, of punishment without due process, of sexual harm to children, of mass shootings, of resource concentration to serve the wealthiest at the expense of the poorest, of rescinding protection and hospitality to the stranger . . . we lament all this, and the unseen truth that our hearts need new priorites in Jesus.

At your Thanksgiving table this week, we send our wishes that you embrace the discipline of searching carefully for traces of God’s goodness to stir your thankfulness, and that you unabashedly mingle those thanks with weeping over the world’s woes.

Jesus wept for Jerusalem on the way to his final passover feast with his closest friends. May we all make room in our hearts for complex realities.

Thankful for a tractor and trees, getting ready for winter

Thankful for this farm and the family that settled in Sago

And pray for us to be thankful for countless zoom calls (this is how we appear in our little office, calling Africa)

PS if you read this far . . . here is an ablum of songs about the Table that is appropriate to this week, listen as you cook and serve, or if that doesn't work, search Spotify for Table Songs by Porter's Gate.