Global, tangible, contemporary ... what the prophets saw, and we see

 Week 3 of Advent took us to Isaiah and John the Baptist, two prophetic voices sent to prepare the way for the Messiah. Like most American Christians I think, we visualise the "salvation" the prophets preach as an appeal to the individual to shape up, and we think of that shaping up as a spiritual matter of inner belief, that matters mostly for an after-death dichotomy of eternity. Individual, spiritual, future . . . sort of an optional self-help program that can be indefinitely delayed. 

So it was a refreshing wake-up to be reading long portions of Isaiah this season (check out chapter 35) and also study the no-holds-barred words of John the Baptist. These messages paint elaborate pictures of hope, and don't mince words calling out anything that stands in the way. Their visions include the entire world, people of many languages and social classes streaming towards the mountain of God, forming a new community. The transformation they call for is practical, tangible, physical, tasteable. And while we live between the times of Jesus' incarnation into humanity and full enthronement over the universe, the all-things-new power of healing has already begun. Global, tangible, contemporary wonders fill the pages.

If Isaiah and John were looking at Bundibugyo, here are a few images of the week that they might have described.

BundiNutrition served 1178 kids in malnourished kids in 2023, with 80% improved enough to exit the program after 9 weeks of care. And we fed mothers of prematures and surrogate breast feeders, and supported clinical care and education. We're calling this global because donors from one side of the world plus dedicated workers from the other side combine efforts to shine light into the darkness of hunger, and fill kids with ground nuts and soya and vitamins and love. Entire cost of food and medicine and staff is $40/kid .. . pretty efficient for 9 weeks of feeding and care. So in spite of the heart-breaking financial mismanagement we experienced in other parts of the mission this year, BundiNutrition still managed tangible, real-time good. 

Bwampu has done an excellent job managing this program! 

End-of-year means budgets and contracts and untangling the losses, so the team Finance Committee (these three plus me) have been putting in some long hours.

Quick glimpse of new patients on Friday, why all the budgets and recored matter.

Our Executive Leadership of Serge traveled to Burundi to sign the new MOU we had earlier gone there to negotiate with our partners. . . .and this is definitely a global, tangible, and immediate blessing to the world. In the first decade our team and this hospital treated 300,000 patients and performed 30,000 surgeries. We are so grateful for the McLaughlins and Alyssa (pictured below) and the entire enterprise.

Lastly a few smaller celebrations. We spent a morning with a very impressively professional epidemiological public health team investigating a potential viral cause to some clusters of neurologic symptoms.

And engaging team kids in Advent and Christmas does my heart good.

A huge blessing for Bundibugyo is that BundiWater project has almost completed 5 km of pipe laying in Mabere, and this week Josh's team succeeded in a ferrocement design for pressure break tanks along the pipeline.

Just a glimpse of some of the many people we are thankful for, Zawadi and Abel.

And finally, seasonal shopping in Bundibugyo means buying vanilla beans seen drying out in front of dukas (look closely for Scott improvising a weighing scale with a water bottle and a tire iron).

We bought vanilla and sold chocolate . . the final pictures are of our few cocoa trees and the pods and beans we harvested today. Merry Christmas!