Dust & Ashes, Cloud & Fire

 Today, Ash Wednesday, begins the season of Lent, a 40-day attention to our mortality. God knows we gravitate towards denial. Towards comfort, health, wealth, ease, youth . . . all good things but stale centers to a life purpose. Humanity that denies mortality risks a selfish, world-destroying grab. Whereas a life lived in the boundaries of mortality clarifies the great commandments, loving God and loving neighbor as central seeds that blossom into true joy. 

Even Jesus lived for a defined journey on earth, that ended with the cross.

A helpful exercise to stem our self-promoting greedy slide away from love is to intentionally mark the 40 days with habits of discipline, with a voluntary fast from something good.

In 2025, we are "giving up" our last 31+ years of normal life for Lent. Scott was diagnosed just over a month ago with metastatic Stage-IV prostate cancer, spread into lymph nodes through his abdomen and looking dangerously aggressive on biopsy. We scrambled to get into expert care given his advanced disease and relatively young age, which as missionary workers means leaving behind for now our home, our work, our community, our day-to-day life, in Africa and relocating for an indefinite period within range of medicine and testing and care. Dust and ashes mark this day, and this year for us. He began his first injection two weeks ago, but we see the months and hopefully years stretching ahead dimly, holding onto sober reality and faithful hope at the same time.

Dust and ashes are the residue of drought and fire, a reminder that our shiniest works have a temporal vulnerability. 

Dust and ashes keep us humble, realistic, grounded. 

But dust and ashes are not the end of the story. We have needed the 40 days from late January into March to re-orient our life from East and Central African edges of good hard work, to supporting all that through others' hands as we continue at distance.

This lent we've moved from resident in Bundibugyo focused on CSB, team, BundiNutrition, church, Bible translation and more . . . .  to resident in America working by internet. From on-continent hourly investment in our Area's holistic cadre of 80 workers, and many more partners, immersed in education, Bible, medicine, youth, sports, arts, business, residency programs, research, film, the myriad of ways that we inch good towards overcoming evil, to doing all that a step removed. From hands-on presence, to mentoring and writing and zooming. From an equatorial yard of palms and mangoes and banana trees where we have a half dozen visitors any given morning chattering in Lubwisi, to bleakly cold days with hours at a computer. And from an unseen horizon of aging and retirement to one that catapulted us into cancer care. From mortality in the unseen background to mortality as a present reality.

By faith we know: Dust will be reformed by resurrecting rain; ashes fall but leave behind a tested core that can't be consumed by fire. 

God chose the cloud and fire to represent his presence in the wilderness. As we walk into the next 40 days and the wilderness beyond, join us in praying we would see God's presence. That the obscure cloud of how-long, how-much, would shine with the glory of his mercy. That the night of our sorrow would be lit by the fire of his truth.

The path to care at Hopkins, the path to Jesus' hard call on our lives.

And pray for our Area, our work that continues, that is not all dust and ash. So many wonderful people 10-30 years younger than we are, doing way more than we could and way better. We are still team Serge. Cancer is part of our story for now, but not the whole story, so we will try to keep the complex story lines going here.

Breaking meager loaves to feed thousands: LET'S FILL THE GAP

Dear person who cares about kids in Bundibugyo . . . 

Compassion moved Jesus to break bread on the wilderness mountainsides where crowds had flocked to his teaching and healing, attracted to his promising presence that upended their status as marginalized labourers in an occupied territory. Five loaves and two fish became more than enough, because the abundance of Jesus' love multiplied the meager human contributions. In February 2025, we are asking once again for your loaves and fish, that God can abundantly transform.

In 2024, we broke and distributed all your gifts to treat 1,138 malnourished children. 80% were cured, 12% continue into 2025, and 8% did not respond or dropped out. You also fed 75 mothers of premature or sick babies so that they could care for their infants in NICU, and 4 surrogate breast-feeding women. 78 children admitted for severe malnutrition were assisted with antibiotics and antimalarials, in addition to the program strengthening general ward capacity. Every week our team shared Bible stories and prayer and nutrition education at the hospitals, and over the year followed up a sample of 80 discharged patients in 9 sub-counties all over Bundibugyo. They found 80 out of 80 had NOT relapsed, and documented average additional weight gain of 2.7 kg and growth of 8 cm (6 pounds, 3 inches) at home thanks to gardens and hope. You did this with a budget of $42 per child whose life was transformed. . . that's less than a dollar a day over 9 weeks to fund the locally sourced therapeutic peanut/soy/moringa leaf paste we make, and all the medicine, transport, and salaries. 

Feeding hungry children is both morally just, and shockingly cost effective. These kids will contribute to their families and communities for decades, and their health and peace provides a visible assurance of God's awareness of these families' needs.

Our entire Area, and all our Uganda colleagues, are reeling from this week's abrupt cut-offs of American aid, with HIV clinics and the bigger nutrition programs suspending care indefinitely. Our 2025 need will likely exceed the thousand patients we budget for. PLEASE forward this to any friends who might be interested in partnership with BundiNutrition (link here). We know that God's people take Matthew 25 seriously, and want to feed and clothe and visit the hungry, the poor, the alien. This is a solid opportunity to bridge gaps left as USAID withdraws.

Gratefully and expectantly,

Dr. Jennifer for Bwampu, Ivan, and Clovis,  and all the BundiNutrition team

PS This was the letter we sent to our mailing list of people who had donated recently . . . grateful for the kind giving, and grieving the chaos left as other programs that had commitments and funding were summarily stopped. Please share this link and spread the word. As a bonus, enjoy this article written by me, photos by Scott, published a couple months ago in Christianity Today's Globe issue.