Eleven years ago, Friday, we Celtic danced, Psalm-singed, and antique Rolls-Royced our way to matrimonial bliss. It was a unique day!! The photos are beautiful even if it’s not all the same as what I would choose today. I’m pretty amazed by my good taste at age eighteen and still incredibly thankful for my parents financial and emotional investment in making that day everything it was.

David and I celebrated our anniversary yesterday with a family morning (food, coffee, good books and a short movie) then Sarah came over to give us the afternoon off together. We drove an adventurous hour (read: mud, ruts and near unintended off-roading) to the Sempaya Park where we saw the “male” and “female” hot springs and cooked our eggs in the boiling sulfurous waters. Accompanied by a forest ranger, we stalked through the ancient jungled woods and nearly stepped on a brilliant green snake which she identified as a Mamba. Later we went off-trail to discover the pool at the bottom of a tall waterfall we have often glimpsed by the road. Nearby we passed a local man making charcoal from ancient hard wood trees felled to make room for the new electrical poles.

So yesterday was a day for seeing, for glimpsing new beauty and new danger. For remembering the old and the way that it makes for the new. For noticing the value that is lost in the process, sometimes. We followed a long walking bridge towards the second, larger hot spring. The bridge was made of split wood, spaced just far enough to create the illusion of the possibility of falling through. When I looked down I walked slowly, gingerly but when I looked ahead, around, up, I walked surely and with confidence. In reality I couldn’t fall.

We wrote our wedding vows ourselves and they are still intensely beautiful and excruciatingly commitment filled. Eleven years on we can even better see the depth of our hearts for each other, the fullness of our desires to see each other grow, and yet the complexity of loving each other well. What do we do when we fail to love well, when vows which were promises based on our best hopes and wishes are impossible to really keep?? And so we talk about what vows mean, what we do with our imperfect selves, how to relearn each other now amidst the struggles of parenting, ministry and life in rural East Africa.

I have a tendency to look down at the cracks (like in that bridge I mentioned above); to focus in on the fears, the potential failings, to panic. In my better moments I am a visionary; but that too comes with it’s own issues. I can see a better future reality but my fear of the cracks get in the way of reaching it all. That’s where I tend, but that’s not what I want. So instead, I will choose (again) to embrace the beauty and the danger, to embrace David, to embrace all the choices that have brought me to this point, to embrace today and tomorrow as well as yesterday, to embrace my children and my friendships. To embrace the challenges that I fear and the ones I can’t wait to overcome. I don’t know where we’re going or how the world we’ll get there but the bridge ahead beckons, and I’m keeping my eyes up. With David beside me, and God in and around me, NOTHING is insurmountable. After all, I’ve got the faith that can make a mountain JUMP!!

With thanks to former team mate Rick Gray who passed this on . . . . .
Here’s the link to an interview with the author Moyo that I spoke of in my last post. http://www.guernicamag.com/interviews/953/aiding_is_abetting/

Any thoughts??

Our dinner began with warm sodas, good worship music and a conversation centered around a new book by Zambian economist Dambisa Moyo in which she promotes ending all aid to Africa in the next five years. It was quite a conversation starter. I look forward even more to the school debate which will center around this topic on Friday.

As we gathered around the table an hour later to eat amazing beef cooked up by Asiimwe, I paused my heart in a moment of thankfulness for the incredible leadership team God has placed us within. This year’s experience of co-working with these six strong men and women has been an unforgettable one already. As we dug into our g-nut sauce and cabbage, and continued our conversation about aid to Africa (2 for, 4 strongly against and one quiet voice) we made it more personal. What about aid our school? What about the huge stack of 700 counter books (heavy duty notebooks) which are waiting in the bursar’s office for distribution to or Scholarship Students as part of the fees paid by their sponsors??

We have been asking many, MANY questions recently, so it was awfully nice to be able to ask them in community last night. As we continue to ponder the way forward for Christ School, we ponder what success looks like, what success we’ve had and where we’re likely to attain more success in future. We talk about sustainability and making the school more indigenous. We discuss how to safely bring aid in without creating corruption or damaging the local economy more. We face the hatred of a community that doesn’t like the way CSB has done things and we ask whether that hatred is to be lived with and confronted or whether it has an important message for us to hear.

After dinner we dug into peanut butter chocolate chip cookies (my secret weapon with staff!) and asked our friends to offer us feedback on the ideas that have come up in recent meetings: bringing in a Ugandan headmaster, becoming a government aided school, more comprehensive parental care from the “founding body.” (WHM) It was a long conversation and not a simple one. I think hearts begun to be heard and minds began to open to problems in new ways. I know mine did. Hearing from our African staff, many of whom have worked here for many years across changes in leadership and styles and many of whom have also worked in other church-led schools or government schools was incredibly helpful. For them, I think they have a mixture of satisfaction at their participation in this process and deep fear at the potential losses. Talking about our own need to leave Bundibugyo some day is nervous-making to them. And while they welcome the increased salaries that government aid would give them, they also fear the loss of control and vision that could easily come in too.

Questions, questions . . . And so few answers. We need prayers as a couple, as a leadership team, as partners with team leaders, and as field workers for the mission . . . For unity, collaboration, partnership, and true wisdom. Pray that we would find many other parts of this experience community-building, just as we found our time last night, because God is honored when our processes reflect real love in relationships even when the outcomes aren’t clear. Pray for us to listen well to each person who has wisdom to add and for God to supernaturally guide the way ahead. In the end, this is His school, His community of teachers, students and parents. Despite all our fears, all our doubts, all our unsures; He knows the way ahead.

Seems I may never get around to mentioning Sudan, so let me try, briefly . . . . .

Not so hot as we expected, Mundri was nevertheless dry and quite warm. Very flat and scrubby. Not nearly as beautiful as Bundibugyo. The people are calmer and friendlier in a real way. There was little to none of the rude behavior we see here in Bundi from children and overzealous visitors. The people, unsurprisingly, are gorgeous in their own African way.

Mooru is the language and I learned just a few words of greeting as we reached the market, the local primary school and the church during our week there. Mostly we spent our time holed up inside the Masso house, slurping up conversation and play time like the thirsty travelers we are.

Quinn and Gabriel spent about eight hours a day situated on a tarp outside with their basin of legos. They built, fought, and designed as we slowly rotated them out of the sun as it moved across the sky. Lots of drinking water is needed in Sudan, even more than here, so we would catch glimpses of our boys each time they flew inside on their winged, bare feet for a hearty glass of tepid water.

The girls did a LOT of art. Us moms joined in occasionally but mostly talked as we watched. Talked about marriage,kids, travel, future plans, all the things we think so obsessively about.

The Sudan team lives very communally, sharing a few buildings in a square compound ringed by reed fencing. Just outside, the community carries on life; I especially enjoyed watching the energetic manueverings of the disabled man next door who managed to accomplish much while on hands and knees! Each night a different team mate cooks dinner, a new way of living that greatly interested me! (Here in Bundibugyo us few mothers tend to cook for the rest of the team!) The team also shares the chores of living; latrine cleaning, sweeping, washing. Despite or perhaps because of the small compound and living quarters, there is a sense of family among the team that is very strong. The only downside was sharing a single shower among fifteen!

We brought home hibiscus flower tea, a staple in their market. It cooks up into a deep magenta color and tastes as sweet as juice when flavored with sugar. Their local brooms are made of sorghum stalks with the seeds still attached! They buy and sell millet, cassava, maize and beans as well as many greens. Fruits and other vegetables are more rare.
Several rivers stand in the Mundri area; murky, brown and threatening with cholera, river blindness and parasites. The boys fished but did not swim! We visited the Masso’s land where they hope to build team quarters by the end of the year and dreamed of a house where only bushy grasses and trees stand.

Lunches shared in one of the Episcopal church’s buildings gave us a flavor of emerging partners in Mundri. We ate beans and rice, pasta and beef, cooked to goodness by one of the local women. David also shared theological conversations under the mango tree.
Acacia made me promise to spread the word that their dog Chai is the sweetest puppy in the whole world and becoming better behaved every day.
Those are the highlights; come and see for yourself!

I will never forget Sudan; do you know why? Sudan is beautiful, bare, flat, scrubby and dry. I loved it because I felt at home. We walk down the streets every week day to lunch.

The Masso’s house was small and squished. Liana, Gaby and Acacia shared a room. They have a very tiny kitchen and a small dining room table. Their living room has some Moon chairs.

Mundri is an interesting place! The community has few taps. At the Arabic Restaurant they take pita bread from a box. At the market they sell tomato paste.

I really enjoyed Sudan because my friends were there.

Here in Uganda we say “well be back” rather than “well-come (welcome!) back.” Makes sense once you think about it. I have always imagined the phrase as welcome back but I think here it was imagined as well come back, or “come back well,” which is sort of an African way of speaking English.

Now that I’ve thoroughly confused you . . . . This was a week of well be back’s for us. After arriving home a little over a week ago and being “well be back”‘d by enthusiastic friends and well wishers ourselves, we jumped right into welcoming others as staff arrived over Saturday and Sunday in time for students to arrive on Monday of last week. I personally welcomed back a great many students as I was in charge of girls admissions at the gate. My first time in this role (there were few female staff around!!) it involved about five hectic hours of checking through student luggage for contraband such as too-short skirts, cell phones and illegal meds. Yes, this was how I said welcome: ” well be back and I am confiscating those high heeled shoes!”

We also welcomed girls back with mandatory pregnancy tests for the first time ever. This after having three girls show up pregnant a few weeks into our last term. The program seemed to go well and was accepted by students and parents. Staff enthusiastically thanked us for taking this initiative.

Several staff did not return, one woman that was a sort of toxic influence after her beau was sacked last year and another new male staff who didn’t seem to be holding up his end of the contract. It’s always hard to see people leave the team but we welcomed some new ones as well. Most exciting to me is our new librarian who is an amazing gift to the school: mature, a degree holder in library science, a woman(!), bright and cooperative. Wow. Praise God with us. One of our weakest areas is that the “reading culture” of the school is quite poor. We are hopeful that Justine will help us coordinate improvements to supporting students and staff in the use of books and reference materials, so important in a culture where students do not own their own copies of books.

In the welcome backs I have been trying to make time to push to the next level in some of these relationships. Confronting my (new?) fear of honesty and the pain that comes with it, I have tended to leave well enough alone. If the staff member doesn’t welcome my relationship I haven’t pursued so much. But I feel God pushing me to love deeper, to love despite the pain. So pray for me especially as I pursue one of our female staff who seems angry with me and has since the beginning of the year. And pray as I advise another staff member who has trouble controlling his tongue!! Pray most of all for wisdom about how much of myself is wise to share with those I am in community with here. I want to dive in, but I am afraid.

I am also exhausted; physical exhaustion is often one of my signs of emotional and spiritual exhaustion. This week I have welcomed back routine; morning exercise and extended time with God. It feels so good; pray for me to be able to wake up each day and have this time with Him.

“When the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be cancelled.” 1 Corinthians 13:10 from The Message

All my incompletes cancelled, what a day that will be. As I continue to walk brokenly in relationships . . . . Relationships with God, with myself, with team mates and co-workers and family and friends . . . . I long for the day when all my incompletes will be cancelled, when the Complete arrives.

Right now I feel very fully what the Message says, that we “don’t see things clearly, we’re squinting through a fog, peering through a mist.” I can see some of the issues (my own and others), I can begin to see some wrongs that need righting, some that need forgiving, some ways I have agreed with the Enemy and hurt those I love. But I long for the day when, ” the weather clears and the sun shines bright!” When I can love others well, perfectly even, because He has perfected me. And when I can be truly known without danger, without regret, without such fear or loss or disappointments.

But until then, we do three things, “trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly.” God help me: I am trusting, I do hope, but my love fails greatly in it’s extravagance when I fear. “Complete”, won’t you arrive? If it’s not your time to arrive in this world, then arrive in my heart in new and needed ways. Come, Complete One with your extravagant love and help me in all my incompleteness to be just enough for what and who you call me to live with . . . . and to love.

“Go after love as if your life depends on it, because it does. Give yourselves to the gifts God gives to you.” 1 Cor. 14:1 What would that look like right now for you, and for me???

I wake briefly in the early morn of my birthday, not long after the real hour of my birth, 4 am if I remember correctly. It is now 5 am in Mundri, South Sudan, and a beautifully full moon is setting directly over Kim’s tukul. I view it through my tent window. It is so beautiful I want to snap a photo but instead I drift back to sleep.

David wakes me again a few hours later with a “good morning beautiful”, a cup of coffee and the flowers of a Flamboyant Tree: absolutely, incredibly gorgeous. I get my gift from Naomi over breakfast, an African Woman magazine. We will later pore through it together and admire fancy dresses and laugh at silly platform shoes. She has also bought me a beautiful gift bag and gift card and written a precious message from ” your sweetie-pie Naomi.”

Surrounded by the Mundri team, I spend most of my morning doing art with the little girls and reading a new book about a spiritual quest in three different countries before Michael offers me the chance of a motorcycling lesson. I am ecstatic but nervous; and I wonder again at how little confidence I have in myself these days. I spend an hour with Michael and Kyle, falling off the motorcycle once but successfully learning how to shift, start and stop, balance and turn. The bike is heavy, I am slow, but it’s a step towards my dream of owning my own bike and putting around Nyahuka town on it!

Back for a lunch of sandwiches and an afternoon of girl-talk with Larissa. My soul lightens as I share burdens long unspoken. We talk about the complications of monogamy and the difficulties of labeling among other interesting topics. I am renewed.

As evening comes, rain threatens against the severe, dry heat and a few big drops even fall. We pull bikes under cover and throw clothes from the lines inside relishing the cool winds and the heavy breezes. Lightening flashes across the sky. We head out with umbrellas and rain coats to visit a restaurant of sorts in Mundri town. Just a few minutes walk down a dirt road to a small dim room with shaky tables. The food is good: Egyptian/Arabic fare – a rich red meat sauce and a cinnamony lentil soupu that we sop up with soft chewy pita. Canned soda off the shelves and blaring African music completes our ambience. I am content.

Back home for orange cake, twice-baked in sun and charcoal ovens until the proper heat was reached. Presents of books and jewels, a basket and a shirt. Most precious of all, home made art and poetry from my husband and son. Hugs all ’round.

At twenty-nine I feel far less sure of myself than I expected. far younger and less experienced. Far more ignorant and far less educated. For the first time I begin to realize that time is passing quickly, and renew my determination that life must be savored; the marrow sucked out. I cling to relationships as my grounding love, force, value. Yet I must face my inadequacy to love others well, my failures in relationship, the many ways I have disappointed and neglected those I most want to cherish. Most of all I am called back to the One who always waits for me, who is never disappointed but sometimes lonely for me. I have so many wishes, dreams, hopes and plans. And at the center of all those longings, He will meet me.

One of the areas I’m developing at CSB is our CA process. The process of continually assessing each student in many ways is the most urgent and personal to me . . . . Some students who we have lost to poor grades or behaviors could have been saved had we noticed them earlier, counseled them, helped them. There “failing” our system is really a sign of our system’s failure, of my personal failure, to care about students as individuals and to help staff treat them as such. The loss of one boy Businge, drives me forward in this work. Perhaps I fool myself, but I wish to believe that he could have been rescued from the choices he made. At least I wish we had tried harder.

And so, I develop forms, methods, and reviews for assessing students via teachers, dorm parents, student leaders and others at the end of Term 1. But equally important this term, ” continuous assessment” is just jargon reminding us of the need to assess far more than students. In fact David and I have been overwhelmed by the need to assess staff, programs, student leaders, facilities . . . . A few weeks ago we worked hard on reviews with each staff, talking about their areas of authority and responsibility, about what has improved and what still can. Then we face decisions of what we will keep moving forward on and what we will let go of. This process allows us to make plans to start Term 2 at the next level of development.

But what about the school as a whole? There is also an overall assessment of our work in ministry at Christ School. Assessment of ourselves, assessment of the project, assessment of the work as a team. Thankfully we decided as a team to have quarterly reviews of our ministries this year, so a few weeks ago we spent several hours talking about these same issues in bigger terms. It’s a helpful and thoughtful process to prepare for these meetings, to think about the work others do, to pray it through together, to be reminded that we are partners in a broad and diverse work.

We personally shared with our team the directions we feel God leading us personally and Christ School broadly. We will share a different version of this with our leadership team as they return. And a much more simple version to the staff as whole. Though there are many unanswered questions in our minds and hearts we feel God moving us forward in healthy ways.

We hope to leave this afternoon for our week and a half away. First we have to pack, close the house and load up all the things that are supposed to make it to Kampala (some of that decade of accumulation!) It feels daunting but the kids are eager to be off so maybe we’ll make it out today.

CSB Girls football team plays their first tournament match today at 11 am in Fort Portal. We won’t make it in time to see that game, but should see at least one game tomorrow. We will spend our first two nights in Fort Portal. On Tuesday afternoon we’ll head on to Kampala where we’ll begin errands there before flying out Thursday for Southern Sudan!! We will spend four full days with our new WHM Sudan team and most importantly with Naomi and Quinn’s friends Liana and Gabriel. None of the kids can wait!! It is very hot in Sudan, not my favorite thing, but I know we’re going to have a blast.

We’ll spend another day or two in Kampala on the return end before heading back here a week from Friday, just in time to greet the teachers with more beginning of term briefings. Students will return on Monday.

My expectations are low for this to be very restful. But I do hope that it will be restorative in many ways: new sights to see, new foods to eat, talking with friends, dreaming new dreams, and letting our minds wander far from CSB. Pray for us.