. . . . In rural east Africa, a place I never imagined I would call home.
Check back with me tomorrow, but for now, I feel I could live here forever. It really is glorious in its third-world way. As usual we feel blessed to be here and constantly challenged by being here. We know for sure that God brought us here to change US as much as to help anyone else.
True listening is being willing to be changed by the other person. As I enter this year, I want that to be our entire posture, to listen with all that we are and to be willing to be changed by this culture, this people, and the God who created and sustains them. Much easier said than done. My American thoughts die hard . . . . But will yield to something so much bigger and better. I am so grateful, yet stubborn.
Grateful for and yet stubbornly opposed to:
A culture filled to the brim with languages; lubwisi, rotooro, lukonjo, kiswahili, english of course, and on and on. Imagine how our brains would develop as Americans if we had to learn even a second language fluently enough to read or converse in it. Yet this is also one of our difficulties as a culture here – the difficulty of no universally spoken language for business, etc.
A place where people love children yet have very low standards of care for them. And where many produce children as a status symbol, leading to children who have no hope of moving out of poverty. Yet people here are delighted by children in a really refreshing way.
A way of life that is rich in laughter. These Babwisi can laugh at anything. Sometimes I am disturbed to see them laugh at the fear of a small child, or even angry as they laugh at mine own children’s pain as they fall from a tree or off a bike. Yet the Babwisi have also taught me to laugh freely for the first time in my life, at every small thing. It is a gift.
A place of difficulty. One morning, we travel by motorcar and watch old women carrying huge piles of firewood on their backs, supported by reeds strapped around their foreheads. I marvel at them, bukali mani (strong women), so beautiful. Yet I ache for them, women who in our home culture would be relaxing into retirement are here still doing hard labor. A woman of about seventy showed up on my porch asking for some work so she could buy a mattress. I told her, appalled, that she most certainly could NOT work, at her age. We bought her a mattress . . . But she is only one of many, so many more who are workless, mattressless, and still struggling to carry water, food, and cook over firewood.
A culture which is fascinated by us white foreigners, but not in very healthy ways. I took a brief visit the other day, to a woman friend who I had heard was sick, I was bringing her a little box of juice and a prayer. As I traveled, pleased with myself for finding my way on the back jungle path rather than the main road, I was joined by a large parade of children, all singing and calling “muzungu” (white foreigner). They accompanied me through a slew of mud houses and communal living areas, past women cooking and waiting for their gerri cans to fill with water. I was doubled in laughter, all this, this grand parade, simply because of my skin. Somedays I can laugh, others I grit my teeth at the constancy of the dehumanization of being known only for my skin. Yet I am finally beginning to experience what is a daily reality for many people, some form of racism. I am grateful.
Please continue to pray with us. We enter a new stage of survival, as we begin to commit ourselves to full time ministry at Christ School this term (starting in February). Survival in intense ministry mode is a whole nother step of faith.
We’re here because, Jesus is ALWAYS ENOUGH,
David, Anenlise, Naomi and Quinn

A woman showed up on my porch this week, speaking English, already a surprise. Of all the women I know here, there are only about three that speak English well enough to converse with me beyond greeting. This is despite English being the official language of Uganda.
We sat in the kitube and talked. She was articulate, kind, and well dressed. She had hair beyond the shaved variety, meaning she had some means. I soon discovered that she had just graduated from teachers college and was looking for a primary teaching position. As many believe here that we will start a primary school, she had heard the word on the street and came to apply for a job at our school (nonexistent.)
What was really neat was discovering that she is one of the pioneer Christ School students. Esther, as I’ll call her ( not her real name), began Christ School in its’ very first year. She completed Senior 1 through Senior 4 (or S1-S4) and then took a break for a year before going on to teachers college.
Now she is back in Bundibugyo, to use her education. She is the reason we came. She is the hope for the future. Well trained, well educated, with integrity and a heart for the people, she will work to help the next generation “eradicate poverty” as they are fond of saying here.
The only problem is finding a job. Of the Christ School students in her class, one other also went to teachers college. She has already given up on finding a job for now, and is instead driving a bota-bota ( a motorcycle taxi) up and down from Nyahuka to Bundibugyo. This saddens and frustrates me enormously. The economic system here simply stinks. Right now they have sealed the primary schools from accepting any more teachers, even though the ones they have often don’t show up for school or leave hours early without notice or reason. Now a very capable teacher will struggle to find any work at all, while the students she should and could be helping will continue to lack education because of the poor quality of their current teachers.
There is a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness when the education we’re giving seems to offer negligible help of actually attaining work that could make a difference. We must have really long term vision. Someday I pray that our students here at Christ will make a difference in the way things run, at the systems level. I hope because of them the whole structure of things will improve in ways that help everyone. I hope that even for those who never find good work, their education will help them to make wise choices, and be good leaders in their community. Because of what they have learned and experienced, I hope they will make better citizens, husbands and wives and parents. Please pray for our students and for God’s kingdom coming in Uganda.

Today a box arrived from Miss Patti. I first met Miss Patti about two months ago when I received two beautiful, long handwritten letters from an unknown return address, hers. She explained that someone had passed on hard copies of the blog and she had been reading them avidly and praying for us and others here. I cried all through those two letters, amazed at God’s love, provision and unity through connecting our hearts and lives.
Miss Patti’s box was beautiful. Filled to the brim with true American Christmas-wrapped packages. She took so much time and care with it all. I loved her indications, most packages were for “Annelise’s Boys” and “Annelise’s Girls” – my new ugandan children here . . . . But Naomi and Quinn scored as well, with a beautiful Noah’s Ark playset that they are using avidly. I loved their comment, “this toy is for the rainy season!!”
Daniel and “baby-Daniel” received packages as well. And again, I cry. How amazing is God’s family, God’s love, God’s presence. My dear friend, Daniel, receiving a package from a woman neither of us has ever met, simply because she is touched, like me, by what he is doing here. Thankful that he has accepted grace, an invitation to be beautiful.
And Miss Patti, so have you. Thank you for adding to the beauty by your care for us. You have touched our hearts and lives today and always. I know someday soon we will meet, either here or in His presence, my dear sister in Jesus. You are telling the story too. Thank you.

The evening is getting on . . . And dinner is getting later. Precious moments with Naomi and Quinn, wrapping up outdoor play and helping them bathe have made us late tonight. I am in a flurry of cooking, trying to get date bread into the oven to serve as dessert, still chopping my salad and also tossing my fajita meat and veggies in the pan. The house is a mixture of darkness and light as we minimized our solar power expenditures to those areas most needing brightness. Kids are crazy, clean and cozy in jammies, hungry for their dinner. And the house is beginning to fill more as people arrive for dinner. . . . Two team mates and four local friends. It is 7:30 now.
The kitube is filling too . . . From my kitchen window, I hear cries, hungry and desperate cries. A five month old baby girl has come with an aunt and grandmother. Yesterday her mom died, now she’s hungry. These cries are different, piercing. This small soul is confused, lonely, and most of all empty.
And I can see that the mamma of this child loved her well, she has earrings, a beautiful hat, the signs here of a mother who wants her daughter to be beautiful, treasured, precious. My heart aches for their separation.
They tell me in Lubwisi that since yesterday’s death, the grandmother has been trying to breastfeed the baby, but with no success. They want to know how to keep the baby alive. I ask if the baby is sucking nicely and ask them to show me. Sometimes people don’t believe that a grandmother can relactate (produce milk again after not nursing for a long time), or don’t want to bother. This baby latches right on and stops crying, sucking well and finally falling asleep. I have good hope. Her satisfaction means there is already probably some small milk coming. She will be okay.
I bring them out Nido, a can of powdered milk, with instructions not to use it much, only if the baby seems really desperate for food. She must keep sucking often to bring back the grandmother’s milk. In the long run, this family among many others can never afford Nido, neither is it best for the baby’s health. Instead this baby must suffer through some hunger and lack for her long term good. Cruel truth.
I sit down on the ledge of our kitube’s built in seating. Now, “after hours”, I am in my muzungu clothing; worn jeans, a cozy shirt sent from home and of course the requisite african print apron for cooking in. This is no time to worry about modesty. A baby’s life is waiting. I place my hands on the baby’s head and say “we pray”.
“Daddy-God, Babba-Rohanga, thank you that you say you are a father to those who have lost their mommy’s and daddy’s, thank you that you know everything about this child; her name (which is often forgotten after the death of parents), and all that she is. And You have a plan for her life. Please comfort her, hold her. Thank you for her grandmother who is willing to struggle to make her okay. Please help her milk to come in well and for this baby to grow strong and healthy. We trust You with her life, and ask that you would help her also to trust you. In the powerful name of Jesus, Amina.”
We say our goodbyes, the baby again beginning to cry as they disturb her from the breast. They will return, so we can see how the baby is coming. They will visit the health center and nutrition program, for weighing and checking in. The move off into the darkness and I move towards the light in our home, towards dinner, fellowship, and good food.
This is grace; an invitation to be beautiful. A moment of exquisite beauty has just surrounded us. A moment of response to God’s call on my heart and the needs of the world. A moment when someone reached out to me, relationally, in need, and touched me and taught me as they did. I am profoundly grateful; for beautiful darkness, for God’s incredible light, for the cries silenced by sucking, for an aged women, offering her tired breasts to once again sustain life, for the young girl who brought these women and translated for me because she knew help was here. I am grateful to be a part of this story, however small. God is making himself known.
Sara Groves song, Add to the Beauty, says;
“We come with beautiful secrets, We come with purpose, it’s written on our hearts, it’s written on our souls. We come to every morning With possibilities only we can hold. Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces, calling out the best of who we are. And I want to add to the beauty, To tell a a better story Shine with a light, that’s burning up inside.
It comes in small inspirations, It brings redemption to life and work. It comes in loving community, It comes in helping a soul find it’s worth. Redemption comes in strange places, small spaces, Calling out the best of who we are. And I want to add to the beauty, To tell a better story, Shine with the light That’s burning up inside.
And this is grace. . . An invitation to be beautiful. And this is grace . . . . An invitation.”
And you too are invited. No matter where you are, or what you are called to, however mundane. You too are invited by God’s grace to be beautiful. To step into the purpose written on your heart and soul, to share the possibilities only your heart can hold, to add to the beauty, tell a better story in the ways that only you can. Join me.

Saturday, I find myself at the bottom of a very very steep and quite slipper slope, grasping with all my might to the roots of fragile spear grasses, and hoping that they will hold my weight long enough for me to hoist myself one step higher. And wondering, why did I decide to do this today??
The beauty of Uganda is sustaining. We are privileged to live only about 20 minutes from Ngite, an enormous 270 foot waterfall that provides the clean water that our engineer, Michael Masso, pipes in to serve our local villages. Once you drive those twenty minutes, to reach Ngite you must make a steep climb up a short hill, then around some ledges until you catch sight of the waterfall. Now we are at a height about one quarter way up the falls and the spray manages to reach our faces though we are still some distance. We pause to make sure everyone is together, then start descending what is once again a steep and slippery path to the pool at the bottom of the fall.
We dive in to the icy water – I am fully clothed. Though I wore pants for this excursion, fearing for my legs in a skirt on the rough jungly path, I am certainly not comfortable to wear a bathing suit around Ugandans. And some are with us today. The water is not deep, chest-high in the deepest parts. The floor of the pool is covered with sharp slippery rocks and I am thankful for my Keens, waterproof and lightweight. They quickly fill with sand from the power of the falls and I feel leadfooted. This will serve as ballast. Directly under the fall there are several wonderful seating spots, where I place myself against the rocks and throw my head back to feel the incredible power of the water falling such a distance. After months of our seriously wimpy water pressure at home, this is heaven. I should have brought shampoo!!
We dive and splash and play for some minutes, enjoying the glory of God’s creation. The roar and pull of the water is loud enough to drown out our voices and our thoughts. What bliss.
Now as we ascend back up the steep slope after rinsing sand out of shoes and mud from our clothing, I find myself once again challenged by the height combined with steep and narrow ledges. I am pushing to keep up with others and comparing myself with them. Wondering what they think of me. I catch sight of my orange Keens, soaking, muddy and think “if only I shoes with better traction I would be quicker!”
What an apt metaphor for the way we live our lives. No matter the life situation, how steep our slope, how slippery, how muddy; we must needs compare ourselves with others and find either us or them lacking.
I was grateful to meditate for the rest of the climb, each time I caught sight of those orange Keens, that each of us faces our own challenges in life. We can compare our situations, but even though our situations are the same, each of us will encounter them differently. In the climb we all have different heights, different leg lengths, different body weights, different centers of gravity. We have different shoes, different pants, and different amounts of food and water having supplied our bodies. In our lives it is the same. None of us faces any situation alike. Each of us comes to it with unique challenges and unique gifts. We have only one life to live, our own.

” Real listening is being willing to let the other person change you. ”
I read this quote today, from some obscure “celebrity”. But it really hit home. I couldn’t agree more . . .real listening is being willing to let the other person change you.
How willing am I?
I am struck these days by the complete self-orientation of my heart. Self-preservation, self-protection, self-care . . . These are the heart of who I am. Jesus came to be served and to give His life as a ransom for many. I am still looking for someone to serve me.
What lessons am I learning here? I am learning how to be wary, cynical, distrusting. I am learning to ask hard questions catching people off balance so they tell the truth without meaning to. I am learning how to check and double check every letter, every paper and every story for accuracy. I am learning that though I may not have anything else to offer, people will come to me for money no matter what.
It’s a difficult thing because the way I look at it, people here use me mercilessly. But when you take a harder look at trying to understand cultural issues as relates to relationship, I find that here, the exchange of money solidifies relationship. Whereas to me, asking a friend for money is something you just don’t do.
Some days I may see person after person, each coming to “greet” . . . . As well as request money, food, uniforms, etc. Though I want to give generously and love people through a meeting of their physical needs we have also found that many people abuse our generosity by avoiding work, failing to feed their kids, or not bothering to use their own money for necessities because they know we’ll give them more. I become more hard hearted out of my own compassion, because I want to see the long term good of these people, rather than their short term gain at the expense of their family. Then I go back and question both my hard heartedness and my compassion. How should I be responding? What does love look like right here, right now for this person? Holy Spirit, HELP!
I must start from a viewpoint that says neither you nor I nor any one holds a monopoly on truth and a right way of living. Only God holds truth – and God’s way of living is the right way. That may just sound like semantics, because of course we must all apply what God says about living to our own situations. But for me, that reminds me that to say someone else’s way of doing things is wrong is something I mustn’t say without very careful consideration. I must be willing to listen to their lives, hearts, actions in such a way that I am willing to see change in myself rather than change in them.
David shared with me a small epiphany he had the other day . . . As we like to say ” a blinding flash of the obvious.” Feeling annoyed, impatient and frustrated once again at the constant demands of people, he realized on his way to a missionary home, to ask for something, that we really aren’t any different. Most times we go to people to ask for something, and most times we go to God with a request as well. And even more importantly, he realized that asking for something is really a very relational thing to do. Holding out empty hands is a beautiful picture of what God’s grace is all about. In a way, God created us to come to Him with our needs, so probably that is what he created us as a common humanity to do as well – to share and meet needs. Pray for me to listen with my heart, and to be willing to be changed.

I awake in the pitch blackness that is our nights here . . . Though the moon is shining bright and the sky is a wonderland of stars, there is NO ambient lighting from artificial sources. We see as God first allowed humans to see, in dusky barelight. It is enough.
The rain pounding on our sheet metal roof has woken me, the sound is deafening, and I think of our clothes hanging out on the line, rained on for the second night. Mold. Yuk. Where is that dry season we’re supposed to be having? Then, remembering the two foot long snake that crossed the path in front of me yesterday, I am thankful for the rain. The hot, dry weather draws out the snakes.
I sit outside still in darkness, cuddling Jessy, our two month old puppy. She was getting wet in the driving rain that was soaking half of our covered porch. She is beside herself with joy at this unexpected night time attention – her moans and growls of happiness make me laugh, freely, lightly. Thank you, Babwisi people, for teaching me to laugh.
The rain churns and gurgles and I hear it flowing down noisily into our water barrel. The water lines here have been having some momentary issues, and I am more grateful than I’ve been before for our access to clean water to drink and abundant stored water for bathing, cooking and cleaning. Meanwhile, those who travel to and from Congo must carry water in fear that the taps they find along the way will be empty or unsafe.
And what about food? There is speculation that there will be a serious food shortage in this region within the next few years. The most valuable cash crop here is cocoa, which takes three years to mature to begin production. So many people are investing into cocoa, that many believe soon we won’t have enough food produced to feed our local people. Even right now, much of our food comes in from Congo, or in the case of vegetables, eggs – from over the mountain. It’s hard to make any money selling carrots and rice, and since the culture is moving farther and farther away from subsistence tribal economy, people need to find a way to make money.
As a World Harvest Mission team, our purpose is to “lay down our lives to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ through teaching, healing and equipping”. We are primarily a holistic ministry team – meaning that we focus on lifestyle evangelism through meeting of felt-needs rather than on overt and specific pastoring, evangelism and church planting. The going is slow anyway you approach it. We know that Jesus Christ has the power and authority to transform both individual lives and entire cultures . . . We wait on Him.
I feel anger towards the suffering I see around me. Children who come to my yard every day skinny, malnutrived and not able to run or think well. How to help in those cases where the parents are not really interested in caring for the children?? I can give some small daily food to the children, but really they need a complete change in diet, in access to food, medicine and water. They need bandages for their wounds so they don’t turn into huge, tropical ulcers. They need, most of all, to be told they are loved, precious, valuable. That their circumstances are what they are, but that they can still be children of the King. My heart aches for them and revolts at the impotence of my own reactions. Even here, we can feel what difference do I make?? My anger and sadness does nothing help them, nothing to suage their pain.
God, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth . . . . Have mercy, God. We know you do have mercy, help us to trust your plan for this broken world and the perfect fulfillment of your timing.

All day long in the “garden” that our kitchen window overlooks, we hear the sound of clapping. Agnes and Akolimpe are “watching” their rice. Though Agnes and Akolimpe claim to be in their eighties (and it’s believable) they still work fulltime at subsistence. That’s the thing about subsistence, it has a way of not being there for you when you need it most.
So, over the weeks/months, Agnes and Akolimpe help to slash and clear their garden space, remove weeds, and plant rice. We watch it all eagerly from our yard and window. To every part there is a method. Now, as the rice reaches maturity over the last several weeks, looking every bit like tall weedy grass, they must watch it closely to prevent its’ theft by the bird and the rat. So, from sunup to sundown you will find one or both, sitting in their little makeshift banana leaf shelter, or walking up and down among the rice clapping and throwing rocks.
They take meals in that little shelter, about the size of a hall closet, and rest there when their old bones need a break from the walking and throwing. These elderly people are unbelievable. I can still remember the day that David arrived home from a visit next door to say incredulously ” do you realize that Akolimpe has six pack abs?!”
A few days ago we walked the little garden path beyond our fence to join them in the muchelle (rice). “Tulli mu!”( you’re welcome) they said, astonished by our wonder at something so ordinary as rice. For those of you, like us, who have always assumed that rice was a) only grown in Asia in bogs or b) manufactured in cities – we want to share . . . Rice is grown and harvested like any other grain. The mature plant is tall, skinny and looks like a weaker version of corn. It has long strands of seed heads, filled with the little grains of rice. You watch for these seed heads to become brown and then pluck them to harvest. After this you must remove the seed heads from the strands, dry them, beat them, and clean them, before selling them.
We all enjoyed the chance to pick rice and the added cultural experience of observing Akolimpe in his garden with some of his many grandchildren. Most enlightening was watching them relate. They disrespected him by running through the rice, endangering the mature heads which fall when jostled, wasting precious food. Consequences for bad behavior here seem to be limited in creative possibilities. Akolimpe simply threw his fist sized rocks at the kids.
The little garden path

harvesting rice
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