“When I said ‘my foot is slipping’ Your love, oh Lord supported me.
When anxiety was great within me, Your consolation brought joy to my soul . . .
But the Lord has become my quiet circle And my God the rock which is my hiding place.”
From Psalm 94
This week I picked up what must be a really nasty viral crud. Two days of being almost completely out of it. After beginning with what I thought might be a bad case of dehydration on Sunday, I’m finally well enough to type and think clearly today.
Throughout this week I have become aware of God’s presence supporting me through people. Here in our culture, when you hear someone is sick . . . You go and visit them. That’s the first thing you do. In fact, I often see somewhat sick people just sitting right outside their door to make visiting nice and easy for those around them. I guess it makes sense in a culture with few forms of entertainment or occupation that don’t require activity.
Throughout this week, Dr. Jennifer included me in her daily rounds, an oasis of comfort in my semi-consciousness (despite the way you pulled on my neck, OW!). Meanwhile, every other American STAYED AWAY!!! Just as I am used to when living in the States, my privacy during my illness was respected. People exercised caution over their own health as well (by not exposing themselves). And by today, now that I am declared probably contagion free, MOST team people seem happy to greet me from a significant distance. On the Bundibugyan side of things, by the time my disease was heating up twenty women from my Bible study showed up in my sickroom, complete with newborn babes to sing with me and pray over me. Neighbors and other friends came too throughout the day to sit in silence nearby, greeting me and watching my clammy face and glazed eyes before praying and departing.
Gotta say, I’m digging the African visiting thing - though I appreciate the cultural traditions of my team. Because when you’re pretty seriously sick having people lay hands on you and pray for you is no small gift.

In the last several months we inherited a satellite radio from one of the other mission homes. For weeks now David has been trying to figure out how to get service, since Uganda is not listed as an eligible country. This past week David finally was able to register us with the satellite service and Saturday morning David installed the radio with Quinn’s expert help. Between our great ipod speakers and our God-given solar power (thank you God!) NPR soon blared out into the Ugandan sunshine, startling all of us. America, I forgot what you sound like.
For an hour we reimmersed into American culture, listening to countless rehashing of the tragic VT shooting that we had only read about on CNN headlines online. We flipped to a top 40 station where girls threw themselves at us over the airwaves; I forgot how explicit and sexual our music is. America, though I love you, I’m afraid you’re really not all that.
I’m surprised by how stressful I find most of the satellite radio. I am very thankful to have it, especially to have the opportunity to listen to news headline on BBC every few days - we even have access to BBC East Africa which I’m very excited about. But there really isn’t so much more we want to listen to, I don’t think. (There are actually only about five channels available to us anyway including two Arabic and one Asian.) Despite my exhaustion with my current ipod options (how MANY times can you listen to a song!!!) I’m not ready to keep the sat radio on. America, you need a little African simplicity.

Monday morning, the week before I am to leave for South Africa, I am at my village Women’s Bible Study; I have brought a friend today, the sweet woman you read about a few months ago, who lost her baby in birth. She doesn’t yet know Jesus; she rarely smiles.
I walk with her and daughter Olive through the town and amidst houses to reach our church’s property. There we join about twenty other women, all here to fellowship together and hear a Bible story.
We are going in chronological order now, through the Bible stories, hearing each one and searching for deeper truth in the words, in the concepts, in how they relate to our own lives.
Today we hear about Noah - even this story they have not yet heard . . . I cease to be surprised. I tell it with all the drama I can muster, with gestures, and African phrases and trying my very best to get into their culture with it. Not so hard, really, as Bible times are really so much more like here than like America.
As I am in conclusion, asking “thought questions,” we discuss what sin is, what made God want to destroy the whole earth, and was Noah a sinner?? Big questions with lots to talk about. I am excited to share how Jesus is our Ark. Our safe place to run to, for our lives to be saved, our hearts rescued from destruction. Yet how we have the choice to believe in faith that what God says is true (like Noah) or to laugh (like his many neighbors.) We discussed why we need Jesus.
“For just as through the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of one man, many will be made righteous. Romans 5:19
Only a few stories into the Bible and yet the truth is all there. What will we choose?
A book I am reading (”Seven Days of Prayer with Jesus”) describes our condition this way;
“Imagine all mankind hurtling along a mountain road in a bus. The bus is piloted by Adam and Eve. We begin to speed up. The brakes fail. Lurching back and forth we come to a sharp turn. We can’t make it. We break the concrete barrier and plunge down the cliff. With a terrible crash we slam to a halt. Inside is a mangled mess of broken bones, bleeding and scarred bodies. Everyone is crippled, torn and scarred by this fall, some worse than others.”
As I share the news with my women that I will soon be traveling, they ask me to bring back Bibles and I gladly promise to do so. Some of these women read Rotooro. I warn them that as holders of God’s word they have responsibility to use it! I speak into their lives, asking them to step into their roles as women in the church; to sing, to pray, to evangelize, to teach those around them.
And these women respond by reaching out to me. They surround me with their bodies, and their voices rise in song, the song of prayer. Then voice after voice joins together to pray me on my way . . . .they strengthen me with His strength and I am blessed. Tears streaming down my face, I thank them. God has answered another prayer. The prayer for women of faith here to embrace me as their own and teach me through His love.
God you are so good to me.

Last night the Christ School Storytelling Club began . . .
Fifteen brave students and one wonderful staff member joined me to try to figure out what this was all about. Change is always difficult, I would say even more so here than other places. A brand new club is change.
Friday nights bring Clubs at CSB. All of the students are assigned to clubs of their choices where they participate in such activities as technology, science, math, games, drama, and agriculture. In the boarding school environment, with no tvs or radios and few books or games; such a night is a highlight of the student’s lives and an important means to expand on their learning experiences in the classroom in tangible ways, as well as to built staff/student and healthy peer relationships.

The environment on campus at eight pm when we arrived was a busy hum of excitement and anticipation. Students milled and gathered in the meeting areas of the school, undetered by the complete darkness of the night. Lights in the classrooms (solar!) pulled us into our groups and we gathered. My group began with a cultural story from my own culture (Cinderella!!) and moved into an example of a Bible storytelling (Elijah and the false prophets), then on to objectives, plans and vision.
My aim with the storytelling club is to develop a group of students who can read a passage in the Bible and gather it into a story that comes alive, then take it out into the community and share it as a means of evangelism and discipleship. In the process the students will become more and more skilled at reading, understanding and interpreting the Bible for themselves. They’ll also gain a means of community outreach that will work anywhere at anytime, from a high level meeting with community officials (proverbs and sayings are commonly used here as a way to illustrate one’s point) to time around the fire with their families at meals. I hope and pray that we can build the skills they will need as influential individuals, as I help them learn how to partner with church and community leaders to bring their skills into the community in a sustainable and healthy way.
Imagine growing as a child in one of the poorest and most illiterate and malnutrived areas of Uganda, a place of hopelessness and desperation. Then imagine reaching the unreachable; education at the best school around, CSB. Imagine, once you arrive there, growing used to healthy food at every meal, a mattress and a bed of your own, speaking and learning all in English, and a newfound faith or a movement towards faith in the God who provided all of this. Then imagine traveling home to stay with your family during term breaks, once again eating simple, simple meals around a smoky fire, sleeping with many siblings on a mat or mattress on the dirt floor, being sent to dig in the garden or gather water each day, and returning into a nominal Christian, or a Muslim or animistic religious environment.
Many times when our students go out in the community they are considered arrogant, proud, or as I have heard said, “they think they are too big.” This is a direct result of the tremendous cross in cultures, their transition from village child to educated mover and shaker in the community. Once you are educated, it changes everything. Despite how or where you choose to live, you never give that away. Even more so, their faith.
I see storytelling as a means of bridging a little of that distance for both my students and their community. As students attempt to reenter the simplistic world of the more uneducated and particularly children and illiterate adults, they are coming to the level of their people. In a place where knowledge is controlled and distributed to those who are worthy and/or willing to pay, they are reaching past that to share freely with those in need. As they use local dialects they demonstrate that their heart languages remain the same as their people’s, despite their usual use of English for business and friendships. I pray that not only will their words tell of the love of a an all-seeing and all-knowing God, but their very actions will demonstrate that unconditional love.

“Seek the peace and prosperity of the place to which I carried you . . . . Pray to the Lord for it because if it prospers you too will prosper. . . Then you will call upon me and I will listen to you.” Jeremiah 29:7
Christ School staff are refreshing fellowship and companionship for us here. Even as we seek to serve, disciple, mature and love them; we are are served, discipled, matured and loved BY them. So many Christ School staff have come to us from other parts of Uganda, missionaries in their own country. Often their stories are similar in that when they first heard about the school here their reaction was to recoil, “Bundibugyo!”. This is a place that no one wants to come. Yet they HAVE come. They have come in response to God’s call on their hears to a strange land within their own nation. They have come to serve their country’s neediest children. They have come to serve the King. Some are more aware than others that they are on God’s mission, part of God’s project; but His plans are being worked out in every single one of us.
This doesn’t mean that Christ School staff are sold out on this project all the time. Just like everyone, our staff goes through a lot of soul searching, doubt and wondering, especially when times get tougher. That is why I love the verse above and the shared message it has both for me and for our staff at Christ School.
“Seek the peace and prosperity of the place to which I carried you . . . Pray to the Lord for it because if it prospers you too will prosper . . . ”
Would you join us in praying for the peace and prosperity of Bundibugyo? For peace and prosperity in our student’s and staff’s lives? For God’s kingdom coming here? Psalm 72 says, “the mountains will bring prosperity to the people.” As a Bundi-dweller I have to love that concept. Here we revel in the beauty of the mountains, yet their very physical presence has blocked, literally and figuratively, progress and economic growth in this place. Yet He who only speaks truth says that the mountains will bring prosperity to the people. He is the one who turns every evil to good.
Psalm 72 goes on; “He will deliver the needy who cry out, the hurting who have no one to help. He will take pity on the week and the needy and save them from death. He will rescue them from oppression and violence, for precious is their blood in His sight.”
This IS Bundibugyo; a place of neediness crying out, a place of hurting with little help. Our classrooms are filled with those who have grown with oppression and violence; war, abuse, hunger, disease, and death. I am perhaps beginning to grow used to the suffering in their stories, but God has not grown used to it.
In Isaiah 58:6-12 God says; “Is this not the fast I have chosen for you; to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter.”
We are privileged, blessed, honored to work with students and even staff who have grown up held in chains of injustice, and imprisoned in oppression. They come to us hungry and as poor wanderers. We feed them nutritious food and offer them mattresses and mosquito nets. But greater still we offer them the Bread of Life. We do this because we too have been freed from a captivity.
Isaiah 58 continues in pure encouragement both to us here and to you supporting us there, breaking oppression and injustice in East Africa through prayers and finances;
“then your light will break forth like the dawn and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help and he will say Here am I . . Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins and will raise up the age old foundations ; you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls, Restorer of Streets with Dwellings.”

We are overwhelmed by your love toward us!! The cards, phone calls, packages, emails and blog responses; not to mention all the prayers that you send up that we have faith but not sight for . . . . . We are amazed by God’s abundance towards us through you. I don’t think we have any needs that are not met. When I think about what we might still need, it is hard not to think of only what we have already been given and the amazing ways God has provided the things that we wanted. He loves to give good gifts!
Because of this, I am shutting down the care package wish list, at least for the present time. I still hope some of you will send packages. We love to get mail from the outside world. The children, especially have been so abundantly blessed by the way God has replaced many of the things they gave up through your generosity. Receiving Christmas gifts from faces you’ve never seen heightens your awareness of God’s presence and provision. What we mostly want and need is the care and love that your packages demonstrate to us. When you send a package for the nationals, we will continue to distribute those. (Let me suggest that things such as clothes can be sent much more cheaply via surface mail.) But it is impossible for us to ask for things at this point. We have learned how to obtain a lot of things “locally” (in the city) and have learned to live without others.
We WILL begin asking, unhesitatingly and forwardly, for our 350 children at Christ School. We are amazed by the way small money can do big things for these kids. And we are more and more convinced that the secondary school model is unparalleled in it’s ability to fulfill our World Harvest mission to teach, heal and equip nationals. We are blessed and thankful to be a part of this ministry; to be able to impact so many at this crucial life stage. We are asking you to prayerfully consider how God is asking you to become a Christ School supporter. As you will soon see, we need support in all kinds of ways; everything from regular monthly donations to one time small or large gifts for mosquito nets, textbooks, uniforms, mattresses. We need sponsors for orphans and math tournaments and football competitions. Christ School is our calling here and we are welcoming you aboard for the journey.
Because of our incredible support situation (half of our support comes through our government pension and half through our sending church - WOW!), many of you have given an initial one time gift but we have not needed your monthly support. Now we are opening the door to a really beautiful way for you to be involved on an ongoing basis with what we are doing in Uganda. And truthfully, the need is so high and the rewards so great. You will be amazed by what is done for so many with so little.
We are trusting God’s provision for our school, just as He has provided so abundantly for us. Keep praying for us and thank God for our needs so fully met; and please begin thinking and praying about how you will financially be able to support Christ School in big or small ways. We are asking you to see supporting our school as the very best way to support us; we are asking you to transfer some of that hands-on, tangible love to Christ School. We are asking you to take a leap of faith from a person you know to a school you don’t yet know and trust that God is there and His voice is the one asking . . .

Nyahuka Market is quite a place. Heading down the road from our village, you reach Nyahuka town, just past Christ School. For me as and American, I imagine it all one big village, but the locals are clear that Nyahuka is a town and we live in one of several villages around it. The market has all kinds of foods; meat and smelly dried fish, beans, bananas, g-nuts, all kinds of fruits and veggies.
Then there is the used clothing market. On Saturdays, the big market day in Nyahuka, the used clothing market comes out and there are venders up and down selling clothing brought from Kampala, most off of Goodwill type bags and boxes sent overseas. You can find some real steals there as I recently discovered. Me and few team friends headed down there last week searching for appropriate costumes for Naomi’s princess party (all gals MUST come in costume!). We came away with some wonderful stuff. I think the pictures might speak for themselves.
Also for the party, we decorated our kitubi (greeting house, sort of like a gazebo) as Castle Kitube with penants and banners and balloons. We greeted arriving royalty there and pampered the little princess with makeup, hair and nail treatments. Then we recreated princess stories with dramas (one of Naomi’s favorite things) and then ate soup and cake and finished up with gifts.
It was a truly sparkling day, especially for Naomi. As we both said, the best birthday yet.

Today our firstborn turns seven. I realized with a start, as she proudly announced her new age this morning, that I never imagined her turning seven. I imagined her turning six and starting first grade; I imagined her turning one and walking, turning two and talking. But I never dreamed beyond six years old - she has done the unthinkable, graduated on to childhood from her young years with me.
Naomi is sweet and sassy, precious and prickly, delightful and demanding, fun-loving yet fearful, precociously wise and intuitive and verbal and an old, old soul. From the day of her birth Naomi has been a painful joy both to herself and to those of us close to her. It’s not easy being deeply aware of yourself and others and trying to walk through life that way. Yet she has coped with a tenderness and perseverance that often bring me to tears. Inside that amazingly wonderful little body and behind that winsome face lies a precious treasure of a soul . . . One unlike any the world has seen. I don’t know what your life will bring, baby girl, but it will be amazing for all around you to see.
Naomi loves colors of all kinds and beauty in patterns and shapes. She is an artist at heart and draws people and animals with the most beatific faces and smiles you’ve ever seen - they make you laugh in delight. Now she is writing stories about events real and imagined and the conversations and word pictures are wonderful. She is in a stage of trying, learning, growing; bikes, swimming, writing, reading, jump roping, cross country running, learning to fall asleep by herself. She has a great list of to-be-accomplished’s that she works on when she can even as she continues to expand on the things she has already begun. Friendships are paramount; Her soul mates from the States; Rebecca and Hayley are never far from her mind. But here she is growing new friendships too with Liana and Louisa and Rebecca and Daniel - who she trusts as she has trusted few others in her life. Naomi loves languages, places, and travel. She loves math and history and Bible. She loves her brother fiercely and truly. She loves to be held and snuggled, but only on her own terms.. She loves to be listened to. She loves gifts.
Naomi, your name means sweetness and how well it suits you. We are thankful each day for your wonderfully unique spirit, for the joy with which you face the challenges of your days and for the angst that also accompanies you. We love watching you learn and grow and are certain of nothing more than that you are perfectly yourself - the you God made you to be. We rejoice in that and in you. Happy Seventh Birthday, Sweetness. May God fill you with joy.