Let's not repeat this week . . .

A week ago we pulled into Bundibugyo on a Friday evening, having flown back from the USA, spent one day doing errands and resupply in Kampala, then driving across the country. We went to bed for the last time Friday night in the borrowed Dickenson house and woke up Saturday to news of my dear friend Robin's death. No time to grieve because that day we had to move into our new/old house, loading up the last carload or two of suitcases and groceries we had lived out of since last December and bringing it across the road into the freshly repainted, re-wired, re-plumbed and cleaned house in which we raised our family for 17 years. All our Kenyan furniture, books, clothes, sheets, curtains, etc etc had been stashed in a container 11 months ago then hauled across two countries in August then moldered in a dusty ratty store room a few months. Each piece of a bed or chair, each trunk, had to be washed off before it was installed/opened. A few of our team mates were able to come up to help for a few hours, which was tremendously important. Our goal was to get all the junk dusted/cleaned a bit and into the house, and a bed set up that we could sleep in that night. Six days later we have a functional kitchen (except for the fact that the electrician came to work on a final step last night and turned our power off for the last 24 hours, not so helpful for food storage). We have places to sit to talk, and to eat. We have books on the bookshelf and clothes in the wooden wardrobes. The guest room is still a pile of curtains and blankets, and the office pass through is still cluttered with unopened boxes. But we can affirm that we made a huge amount of progress by staying up late and hauling and discussing and sorting and repacking. The second phase (curtains, pictures, rugs, office) will take another couple of weeks I'm sure.

Having a new puppy helps attract workers

Moving, transition, is just plain hard. It is hard to re-learn patterns, to find keys and the coffee filter and your toothbrush. It is hard to get filthy things clean and dry when it rains much of every day. It is hard to put the energy into yet another home, though a bit easier since this is round two on this one. It just takes tremendous energy to go through days without ANYTHING being easy and routine; such is the nature of crossing cultures and making moves. It is hard to live in the spot where the most significant parts of life occurred, without 4 of the 6 people involved. It is hard to focus on trivialities like shoe storage and trash disposal when being pulled into much more significant issues. Still, we know that a spot of visual peace will sustain our souls, and our bodies need a place to exist in the minutes between crises. And hospitality has been a crucial part of our life. We got the first taste of that last night, as our team of 23 came for pizza night, and we added in two freezers turning of homemade ice cream to celebrate Scott's birthday.

Bwindi the birthday dog

Meanwhile, our push to get ourselves settled this week had to be squeezed into the gaps in the tension of the four other huge parts of our job.

Team-we are the de facto leaders, trying to have meetings, organize the finances, supervise, plan, meet with individuals, and on and on. We're not doing a superb job. We used to be much better at this. We are weak and even though the Bible keeps saying it is GOOD to depend on God, we need some pretty big prayer here.  We have pulled together the essentials, and we have a great group of people independently moving forward, and helping each other. We have our son John Balitebia without whom we would surely be lost; he's an accountant and Scott's right hand on team and CSB matters. This week we added the Dickenson family back, having grown to five with the birth of Benjamin in September! And we welcomed Lindsey Knapp who had interned here for a summer three years ago. Ready or not, the team is growing.
 


In our weekly team meeting we are working through Bethany Ferguson's "The Mission Centered Life"

CSB-Scott is still up to his neck in CSB affairs, and there is always something.  The jungle basically pulled down another section of fence. We discovered the social security taxes had not been paid all year. A teacher had to be let go. Thankfully the O level (UCE) exams finished without any scandal, and A level (UACE) exams started. There is a weekly leadership meeting, weekly chapel afternoon, weekly Sunday services. We are getting ready for a board meeting next week, and the next court date for the land case. Our main witness changed his mind and now wants to retract his testimony.  Policies are always in question and needing shoring up. Again, weakness. It's too much.

Medical-Monday was one of the most hectic days I've ever spent on the Peads ward, and that's saying something!! Expected help had last minute issues, patients had accumulated all weekend and were literally spilling out the hall into the sidewalk, every space crowded and every case difficult. This morning I had five in a row who would have been in an ICU most places: hemoglobins less than five, oxygen saturations in the 80's, respiratory rates 60, 80, 98 (!!), heart rates 188 or an ominous 85, moaning, grunting, lethargic, pale. Malaria is a wicked disease. The nursing staff was mostly absent for various reasons, the blood supply had trickled to zero whence we all realized that the person in charge of documenting and ordering had stopped doing so due to a personal family member with illness that took away his full attention, the oxygen cylinders had not been exchanged since emptying, and the night staff had run out of essential meds.  And on and on it goes. Dr. Isaiah, one of our Kule scholars, was with me and what a life-saver--he ran and got one of the only two units of blood left (both group B, but 2/5 kids in shock were group B !), made sure IV's were in, pushed malaria meds, talked to patients. Dr. Ammon found an ambulance from a smaller health center willing to take the closest-to-death child to Fort Portal if I paid for fuel, and thankfully Scott had handed me some money so I did. Jessie found a guy with a wrench to work on the oxygen cylinders.  I kept plowing through the ward, found a child with a probable brain tumor, two with mysterious hepatitis quite ill, and while some horribly infected lesions were improving one was probably entering bone, a six-year-old with TB. If ampicillin, artemether, or abscess drainage can save your life, Bundibugyo is the right place.  For everyone else, it's stressful. There are a thousand things that need to be improved, and yet every day I am there I just try to keep my head above water. Again, feeling inadequate.

Highlight of the week: the hand-carts that Rhett got donated and Marc cleared tediously through customs were finally here, and distributed to people who have been crawling on the ground their whole life since polio.

Area--yes, we are still supporting our teams across East and Central Africa. Between travel and moving and the last two months of the 20-year celebration, the language intensive, the Bible Storying week of seminars, doubling our team size . . well, our attention has been thin. Ebola has finally started to taper off in the DRC. Building projects are marching on in Burundi. Kids are being taught and coached and mentored all over the region. Our emerging Malawi team leaders made another vision trip with potential partners. Our Ugandan NGO registration was updated and our Kenyan company forms are still in limbo. Some under-the-wire visa pressure had a happy ending, and many others are still in question. Our apprentices from Uganda and Kenya will meet up on Monday for a prayer trip to Litein.

Tomorrow my mom and sister will represent at a funeral I hate to miss. We will be here plugging along, doing a lot of things marginally, wresting a tad more order out of chaos around us, and praying for a new season of God's presence and grace.