Edgy

Scott and Luke headed out under the crescent of a waning dawn-tinged moon this morning for Kampala with Kim, Nick, Jesse, Katie and Michael.  Unfortunately, they had to go in a vehicle with the hood held on by a bungee cord and hourly bolt-tightening checks to make sure one of the loose wheels does not fall off.  That’s because this vehicle is MORE reliable than the one that nearly subverted my trip last week:  after much work, Michael and Scott prepared it for a test run last night, but it overheated without ever leaving our driveway.  And that’s because they had to leave me the MOST reliable of the three, our truck, which had three flat tires within the last 24 hours but still beats out the other choices.

The group is heading to Mundri, Sudan, where the Massos hope to establish a WHM team presence by the end of this year.  And the unsettled, edgy feeling I have today reminds me of that the team will not just materialize, there is cost involved. All three Masso children are moderately ill, not a great way to be left with a single parent, one with the first really significant asthma attack of her life.  As soon as they pulled out Jack, who had had a better weekend, began to spiral downward, and only went to school by faith, pocketing a verse from Psalm 23 to read and memorize when he felt the waves of sadness coming.  CSB was attacked by theft on Friday, someone breaking two padlocked doors and getting into a safe, someone who was incredibly lucky and brave or who knew just what they were doing.  So a school already in debt, already struggling, now losing another couple of thousand dollars. Our RDC is mobilizing people to awareness in case the anti-LRA increased pressure by MONUC in Congo sends any rebels our way (no real threat, just being cautious, but not the kind of thing one wants to hear).  Some of the UNICEF milk is now expired and patients showed me maggots in their packages today, just as the nurses I sent for training to Mulago called to say that in spite of my visit and verbal affirmations from Kampala that it would be fine, now that they are there the Mulago staff are expecting to be paid “something” to allow these two nurses, their own Ministry of Health colleagues, to observe and learn.  Aren’t we all trying to help starving children here?  Just to remind us of that reality, the latest admission, a 15 month old boy, severe malnutrition (6 kg--of which a fair amount is edema) Owera came in with his burning fever, listless gaze, scabby skin.   His father died with AIDS last year, and his mother finally gave up on the meager slow help she was getting elsewhere and came to Nyahuka to try and save his life.  And I hope hers, while we’re at it.  My patience wears thin and I was not so pleasant to two men asking for money and medicine, stopping me in the hot sun as I huff back home on my bike.  I feel overwhelmed already, and my guys have only been gone six hours.  In short, it is a morning that screams, “the world is not right”.  

But we head out on a wobbly wheel, believing that the Kingdom is still coming.  Needing prayer for our hearts mostly:  that hours and days of boxing with the devil, of pleading phone calls, of sympathetic listening, of weary prayers, of plain old sweaty gritting it out, will see the results.  That the cost will not prove more dear than the beauty to be revealed, in Nyahuka, in Mundri, in us.