Lost Week and Holy Week

Somewhere in the last week or so, before we got sick, all my devotions seemed to bring up the verses about rivers of life. Ezekiel 47 prefigures Revelation 22. The spring of the water of life,  trees with leaves for healing of the nations, come everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, without money and without price. A picture of abundance, of flow, of replenishment, of sustenance and cleansing and provision. Fearful people live in a zero-sum nightmare, clinging to our own needs and convinced that anyone else's gains come as my loss. Frankly that's easy to believe when you're stretched and weary.  So the verses where the stream grows and becomes a river, spilling out, sound like good news indeed.

Then we started literally bodily flowing out, and it all seemed a lot less poetic. 

However, on the other side of that now, there is a truth to the mystery. We didn't shrivel up to nothing, we were restored, we did drink from the river of mercy and find healing, and that replenished life is now flowing outward in healthier ways once again.

While we were down, life went on.

• First, the CSB Land Case reached an important court date, only the magistrate (judge) had a last minute conflict, the lawyer turned around and never came from Fort Portal, and our team mate Marc along with John who were filling in for us ended up having to drive all OUR witnesses to Fort Portal to sign statements. 
• Second, Mary Kendall, Madame Illuminate and Pamela and Suzan, with help from Jessie Shickel and lots of others, led the CSB girls to the district title in football. Trophy and all. They head to regionals tomorrow.  
  
• Third, our CSB debate team returned victorious from a Rwenzori regional meet.  We didn't even know there WAS a debate team, but evidently it was subsidized by another NGO a few years ago and some of the kids and teachers caught the vision and kept going.  We won first runner-up and one of our kids won top speaker! In DEBATE. This pretty much pumps up the whole district.  We aren't used to winning.  
  
• Fourth, Marc plugged along in the hospital with over 80 patients and 1 or 2 staff on the "25 bed" ward. It's malaria season. 
• Fifthly, Scott drug himself out of bed to keep a promise to the CSB staff to report on the results of a teacher survey he worked on using a SWOT analysis. He thought it would take 30-45 minutes. The teachers talked for 3-4 hours. That's good news that they are engaged. They have concerns and ideas, and they feel welcome and heard. Keep praying for that! The staff are the most important key to the success of the school, and therefore the transformation of Bundibugyo.
• Lastly, on Friday evening in the first hour I finally felt alive, we had a meeting to plan our mission school for Fall 2019 with no sure teacher plan (STILL RECRUITING!!!! Are you a teacher who would like to bless 7 kids who need you, and thereby enable health care and education ministry in one of the neediest spots on eartth??) and then led team meeting in prayer for our Area. We are truly living on the edge here.

Then Saturday we packed a small bag, got in the car (I literally sat on the seat and cried because the effort of picking up my little bag and walking to the car was almost beyond me) and drove 7-8 hours to Kampala, so we'd have a rest day Sunday before facing three days planned for bureaucracy.  Thankfully we got rooms in a lovely place that is conveniently located, we felt better by the hour, eating and resting. Because switching countries is no joke.

Kampala view from balcony

This week we started working on a 2-year entry-permit for Uganda. Step one means a morning at a Uganda police station designated as the Interpol intake spot, to apply for a background-check certificate of good conduct.  In an obscure 9-step process which takes about 2 hours and involves lines that look like scrums, payments with receipts for things like "office chai", copying everything in duplicate, writing our name and details in lined books, and finally having our fingers rolled in ink and pushed onto a finger-print document, one sends out one's identity to confirm we aren't wanted criminals.  

The police station, trekking between buildings for various steps, thankful for team tips on what to do!

Uganda Revenue Authority, our second trip so at least we knew the right office this time.

Then because our car is licensed in Kenya, we had to extend its permit in Uganda. And because the person who stamped our passport with our East Africa pass when we last came over the border from Rwanda into Uganda only gave us a month, and we are not leaving again until 6 weeks are up, we needed two more weeks on our interstate pass. This meant going to Immigration, where we found hundreds of Ugandans in interminable queues for passports, hot sun, unmarked windows, unlabeled offices, and finally landed sitting like disciplined school children in front of the Boss's desk.  She was methodically stamping a stack of Chinese passports but managed to upbraid and castigate us harshly for about fifteen minutes, heaping shame.  Why did we need more than a month to visit friends? Why weren't we back at work in Kenya? Why did we think we could get extra time? We should just leave. We should get in our car and go back to Kenya now. On and on she went. We kept politely explaining that we would do just that, but we left all our things in Bundibugyo 8 hours in the wrong direction. Could we celebrate Easter with our friends? What did she want us to do? Either she got tired of us just sitting there and not leaving as she suggested, or the Spirit moved her heart, but finally with much hostility and distaste she stamped our passports.  Hooray until May. Which allowed us to then go to the phone centers and extend our cell phone service another two weeks, since Uganda tightly regulates cell phones

traffic in Kampala, not for the feint of heart

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We never did understand the new parking system but hopefully the dollar this attendant asked for kept us in the clear, as she keyed unknown things into her device. And we resisted the watermelon man given our recent issues . . . 

It's complicated to live as an immigrant. 

As I read about immigration and America, I have to say, my perspective is different.  We felt humiliated and desperate in that office. We had no power. We tried to do everything right, but sometimes a stamp is misplaced or a date miswritten. It's hard to invest your life in a place you have no actual right to be, dependent upon shifting sands of politics to allow you to stay. It's hard to have to keep up with so many rules, in several countries at once. 

Which brings us back to the rivers of water, the healing, the abundance. This is Holy Week, the week we re-enact the final days of Jesus' life on earth. Jesus was the ultimate alien and stranger, no place to lay his head, not of this world fully. And Jesus looked at those who were ridiculing his soul and piercing his body, and said, Father forgive them, they don't know what they do.  As one would say if one's children were blowing it, even if they were causing a big problem, we wouldn't want them to get punished harshly. As one would say if keeping one's eyes on the limitless river of life flowing up and not blinded by need to elbow others away from one's trickle of survival.

Praying for all of us to grasp truth this week, to jump in the river and drink deeply.