Monday was a very long one for David, begun by babysitting seven straight hours of computer exams for UNEBs. Due to a lack of printers (exactly one!) he arranged a special set-up for the exam to help students not to disrupt each other with their likely mistakes. Of course UNEB assumes that all schools in their developing country can afford a computer and printer for each computer studies student. Not so. The generator ran continuously all morning, giving us power despite the ongoing rain and mud standing thick around the UNEB rooms. David finally came home late in the day to grab some beans and rice and debrief for a few minutes before heading back to close the last exam at five.

As evening came, I prepared a simple dinner that the four of us enjoyed together, talking about our day and drawing our hearts back to home. Then David took the kids off to bed as my Monday night staff Bible study ladies began to gather. This was our final week in Captivating - chapter 12, “an invitation.” I had been delaying this final study with a sense of something better around the corner. When God orchestrated Barbara Ryan’s entrance into our group that “something better” became clear. She will help us close our last three study times.

So we gathered last night in response to the hand-written invitations I made out for each woman, to draw them in to the theme of His invitation. We reviewed the concepts of the book: the way God calls us to enter relationships, His Kingdom and the World. We talked about what holds us back, primarily fear. And that God is calling us to move past it, to share our true selves. Stasi writes in the book, “You have only one life to live. It would be best to live your own.” Words that we must hold close. The chapter closes with a description of the last scene in the movie The King and I where Anna, an English woman, is invited to dance by the King of Siam. She is afraid, of falling, of not knowing what to do. But in the end she responds because of what he says to her and his trust in his and her abilities. ” I am King, I will lead.” A profound statement from God too, that we can dance into the life He calls us to because He will never stop leading.

And then, in a moment of big personal risk, I told my story. The one that I normally edit for public consumption. The one that includes my losses and failures that I think many (especially here) won’t understand. As I prepared for the study praying for these friends to embrace intimacy and vulnerability, God revealed my own hiding heart. Of course I never think of it as hiding, I just don’t include the parts that they “wouldn’t understand.” But God revealed it as hiding yesterday and gently and surely talked me into sharing it all. I felt tremendous spiritual opposition throughout the day and especially the evening, but it served as catalyst for my willingness to share, knowing that Satan wouldn’t try to block something that wasn’t crucially important.

And I shared my fear too. My fear that they wouldn’t get it. That they would see me differently, lose respect for me. Fear that I am not what they hope me to be. And hope that in moving past this fear, they will respond and move past too. At Christ School we are people who live lives so intertwined, so closely in community yet rarely sharing many of the deepest and most influential parts of who we are. Barbara shared parts of her story too, most necessarily the last twenty years of caring for a severely disabled child, and let us in on a bit of God has grown her and changed her through it all.

So we ended our evening with hot drinks and sweet banana cake and chocolate cookies. With prayer and some tears. With hearts that have moved out some but haven’t escaped fear yet. I stand in amazement of what God has already done in this amazing group of woman and in me, through them. And I look forward to the next two weeks as Barbara leads us in studies about sexuality and purity as we close our year together. This has been an amazing journey and it’s not over yet.

Wednesday’s chapel was the last of our school year. A milestone for me as I feel the greatest spiritual oppression on Wednesdays leading up to and encompassing our chapel and cell groups. I dread it yet I know God is moving or Satan wouldn’t care.

Barbara and Skip Ryan shared on alcoholism, the scientific causes of addiction and how Jesus enters into our pain allowing us to turn to him instead of substances. It was really, really good. Barbara’s twenty minutes of talking about the “new frontiers” of science and the brain’s “plasticity” were met by fierce student concentration. “Clearly,” their faces said, ” This is educated and important information and I’m going to try hard to figure out what she’s talking about.” Staff was similarly engaged and caught even more of the science in her lesson, leading to new understanding for many, including me! Skip’s wrap up was a beautiful pointing to Jesus in a sermon full of humility and honesty.

Later in cell groups, the staff room and evening preps the phrase of the night was ” you are what you drink.” Skip referenced this as he talked about seeing drunks on the road in and out of Nyahuka (our little town center) daily. Seeing them lie on the side of the road in ridiculous poses. They are what they drink. What do you want to be? In response, the staff board was covered with a chalk-written list of drinks ranging from waragi (local brew) to porridge with staff members names written in next to “safe” items like water and milk. And at evening preps disruptive students were put in place by fellow students who called out ” you are what you drink.”

As we prepare our calendar for the coming year we hope to include much more than we’ve managed this year in the way of life education; sexual education, financial education, relational education, etc. Pray for our wisdom as we seek to find the right time in the schedule, the right materials and the right teachers. Pray especially that God will bring in the special speakers He wants for these important topics and that we will learn truth while being drawn back to Jesus.

Sunday was the kind of deep rest that we all need once in a while. Skip preached at chapel in the morning, talking about giving God our all. His style contrasted and complemented beautifully with a young student who talked about sexual purity in passionate tones. As always, the students shone during their time of praise and worship, their hearts and bodies expressing joy and excitement with every movement.

We went home to hot monkey bread coming out of the oven and coffee with milk. A lazy Sunday breakfast. Visitors were few, time alone was plentiful. The sun had come out after days and days of rain and mud and the children spent the afternoon playing in their basins in bathing suits and slip-sliding on our tarp. I pulled from the fridge one perfect ripe watermelon carried home from Kampala and we sliced it into exact wedges and savored each amazing bite on our front steps in the heat of the sun. My soul drank up the day as my skin did the Vitamin-D-making rays. We played games, napped deeply without disruption and let our God meet us in some of the hurt.

Thank you for praying for us. Don’t stop.

We drove back from Kampala on Tuesday, took Wednesday to get resettled and back into the CSB routine and then life took back over. As usual there is no break in the constant dizzying action.

This week we learned that our food procurement officer has taken another full time job; meaning that our biggest cost and the one that is financially taking us down is less well-managed than we thought. Do we fire him? There are only a few weeks left in this term and it’s hard to procure without him. Pray for the emergency response to his failures that are endangering money we have already invested in food. And pray for wisdom about improved ways of buying next year. This is a make or break financial decision for the school.

We had a very serious bullying incident on our first day back, a strangling episode involving school uniform trousers and a bunk bed both of which we provide free for our students which somehow makes the whole thing feel worse. I hate that we are impotent to protect and care for them in so many ways. I’d love Christ School to be an oasis of utopia in the midst of the big bad world of Bundibugyo but it isn’t always so. We also received a letter from Senior 1 girls alleging bullying within the girls compound. A number of students were named and so we begin the process of trying to sort out the elusive truth with integrity. Some of these named girls are ones I have suspicions about but several are dear to my heart and I’m sad to hear that they may have mistreated their younger peers.

On Wednesday one of the staff came to me privately to talk about a marriage proposal. This is a very sticky and complicated situation and one that we had thought might be coming. In fact we gave some new rules in thw sexual harassment meeting last week that might bring this out of the woodwork. It worked! Now I am praying for the right words and attitude as I address this woman’s choices with boldness. I want the best for her and I hate to see her step into a bad situation but ultimately we must let our friends make their own choices and love them through the good, the bad and the ugly. Pray for wisdom.

In other sad news, we received confirmation today that the Senior 1 girl who turned up pregnant a month ago did abort while at home following her positive test at school. Our staff have been doing a good job with investigations and we feel fairly sure now of the man who impregnated her (thankfully not one of us) can be caught by police for what they term here “defilement” of a minor. We are sad for the loss of this baby, for this girl’s loss and for our failure to protect her well.

All of this goes on in the midst of the beginning of A-level exams, the closing of O-level exams, staff evaluation periods in preparation for the end of the year; meetings on discipline, academics and everything in between as we try to improve policies for the coming year. It’s a lot. But the official end of school is coming on November 21st, a week early in response to the food crisis. Pray that we end well; with courage and determination and a deep sense of our own weakness. Our first year running Christ School is almost over. But we dare not say that the hardest is behind us.

Okay, so you can see from the title that my attitude is lacking. We spent the last weekend traveling to 7 hours each way to Kampala, our capital city, for our scheduled two day “break” from the term and mostly to have Naomi’s tooth fixed. It wasn’t much of a break. However, I have MUCH to praise God for: we were able to travel to Kampala quickly, the roads were passable; David had a break in the UNEB exam schedule so I didn’t have to travel alone with the kids; we got to fit in a last minute visit with the Masso family who were just about to leave for Sudan but were still staying in Kampala; and most of all, Dr. Chapman, the American dentist had no-show appointments all morning on Monday so we got HIS services for 2 1/2 hours.

So that is some of the much I have to be thankful for. Many answers to prayer including the miraculous provision of Dr. Chapman. Having said that, it was a long 2 1/2 hours at the dentist with two shots, lots of blood, half a tooth gone and a a silver cap to end it all. Since this is our first experience with anything other than six month cleanings; it was a doozy of an introduction to pediatric dentistry.

Naomi is quite proud of her silver cap and wears it as a badge of honor. I am horrified, somehow taking the thing as proof of inadequate mothering though the dentist assures me there was little I could have done to prevent it. But Naomi, despite her good attitude, is having a very hard time with life. She cries a lot and wishes her life were different and is generally struggling to see the goodness of God right now. Night before last she had a truly terrifying nightmare which I see as direct attack from Satan. She has had a lot of loss in the last months and needs your prayers.
That’s right where I’m at too. Even though on the surface I have so little to complain about, somehow my heart is still unsure and tired and lonely. I had a chance this week to read The Shack on the advice of my counselor and as sent from a dear friend. What a gift that has been. I don’t dispute that the book is certainly controversial, but there is so much truth there that my heart needs reminding of. God is active, alive and deeply invested in me as well as the great big world that I worry about. I took an hour this morning to breath deeply, to finish The Shack and to let God seep a bit of that truth into my soul as I cried. I feel lighter now, still sore and weary but not quite as heavy as I did.

David is pondering a blog post he’d like to write, on the theme that running a Ugandan boarding school isn’t so much like the analogy he though of before: owning a 30 year old Italian car. It’s more like using a 30 year old Italian car on the moon. I’m hoping he finds the time to illuminate you all on the details.

Yesterday David turned 47. It was better than last year’s birthday when I was in the hospital have a six hour surgery; but not so so much better. From a Christ School standpoint, a doozy of a day. The morning started with a serious sexual harassment by a male staff to a female one - this was not an off-hand sexual remark but a serious invasion of bodily space. The woman handled it beautifully; reporting it to David immediately and sitting in on his meeting with the other party to make sure the truth was told. Sadly this incident involves one of our male staff that we DON’T usually worry about; a real boy-scout who has demonstrated a lot of leadership potential. When you feel sure that a large percentage of your staff is probably involved in sexual misconduct, you just can’t find proof; learning that one of the few you trusted is doing the same stuff is like having your feet knocked out from under you.

All of the doors at Christ School’s admin block have big signs stating ” CSB has a zero tolerance policy towards sexual harassment. This includes relationships between staff as well as staff to student and student to student.” This sign went up last year after a sexual harassment incident in which we learned that perhaps some of our staff aren’t really aware that fondling a coworker is inappropriate. It’s hard to know here; where the sexual lines are drawn in such different places. So Kevin (David’s predecessor) did training on sexuality in the workplace and the big signs went up. We are thankful for those signs now and thankful that for one woman they or something else gave her the courage to speak out when most women in this culture would have remained silent. It takes strong women to stop a vicious cycle of domination and sexual power-taking. We want to take women’s side but it has been very hard to do so without their cooperation. When the man can insist with the support of his coworkers that it was just a joke, the woman has to be pretty strong to say “no way” to those kinds of jokes.

We have yet to be sure what the outcome will be for this male staff member, but another one was sacked yesterday for his inappropriate student relationship. Since there was only half-hearted denial and no appeal to the Board there is a real confirmation of the solid evidence we found. He is supposed to leave today by noon and we are hopeful that he will go quietly. We are praying for the safety of the girl he was involved with as well as many others that he had approached.

And David got a written statement from a student informer who came out of the woodwork to explain to us what REALLY happened at the first day of UNEB exams. It is too late to punish students for cheating, for these particular ones their exams have already ended. But a note will go in to the UNEB officials invalidating their scores on certain exams and providing the phone number of the person who sold the information. Let’s hope the officials who receive our paperwork were not also involved in the process of corruption.

Late afternoon we discovered that Naomi has cracked a second tooth. The first one cracked in July and was repaired in August only to break again a week later (we hear the quality of the repairing cement sent to Africa is not so great). Now she has a large crater in one of her back molars which is causing her a lot of pain in addition to the front tooth which is still half missing. Poor, poor baby. We scheduled an emergency trip to Kampala tomorrow for dental appointments. Thankfully David has a four day break in UNEB exams and can accompany us which will make it so much more tolerable. I am fighting to try to get the only American dentist in Kampala to see Naomi on Monday morning. Pray that we find a dentist who is caring and compassionate and excellent and who can fix this without too much unnecessary pain and trauma. It’s hardship for our kids that makes life here the hardest - and I am wishing for our pediatric dentistry in Annapolis right now.

So passed David’s birthday. The evening was a noticeable reprieve. Skip and Barb Ryan arrived from Kamapala by road - a pastor and his wife who are here to minister to us and the Babwisi for the next six weeks. They are full of joy and energy and refreshing to be around. Nathan also arrived, a two year short-termer who will work in nutrition and HIV/AIDs. We are so thrilled to have him here. Quinn has already begun to glom onto the new “guy.” So, after a brief team meeting, two mission houses were re-opened for use by the Ryans and Nathan and then we settled down to the serious business of pizza-eating, and celebrated David’s birthday with singing, chocolate chip cookies and a watching of an old Pink Panther movie. And so, all ended well.

Part of the UNEB exam process are invigilators - those teachers who act as exam monitors throughout the weeks of testing. Invigilators are drawn from local schools and must be qualified teachers who have been approved by UNEB and released by their school administration. We at Christ School join in doing our civic duty by providing the requested three teachers; Rosalyne, Mutombi and Godfrey all volunteered.

Our school takes a hit, though, with three teachers away. Senior 1 and 2 classrooms take advantage of their subject teachers being away to make more noise than usual and goof off whenever possible. We punish students mostly with “slashing” using the long scythe - like “slasher” to cut the long grass on the school compound, and over the last weeks of the exams there has been more slashing than usual as we react to the absence of teachers and the subsequent misbehavior of students.

Yet our teachers are in the community, doing good. The presence of Christ School teachers in the two other UNEB certified school’s in our district (imagine that, only three high schools in our entire district are certified schools which can take national exams) promotes a new level of care and honesty. We have a reputation, built over years of Kevin and Jd’s consistency, which says that corruption WILL be routed out when CSB’ers are around. That’s a good feeling. Especially when we see signs of corruption throughout the rest of the process, special favors asked and a special kind of friendship requested. Christ School is living up to it’s name, His name, when it promotes justice and mercy, here within our compound or in Bundibugyo at large.

And teachers come back from the other Bundibugyo high schools with stories that show us, despite our many shortcomings, how far ahead we are. We, at least, have provided all of the lab materials to allow students to do the practical parts of their exams - not all school’s have found the money. We don’t have students refusing to sit national exams because they’re ” not ready”, a horror story we heard from another school this year. And our Bunsen burners are held with actual lab equipment not sticks found in the schoolyard. Add to that our capacity to actually house and feed our boarding students and we realize how much we have to be thankful for.

Yesterday’s staff seminar dealt with the leadership topics of competence and courage. David linked the two, leading to the new insight for many that a sense of competence that can help us to have courage and that competence is built over time with patient trying. I was encouraged by the lively discussion among the staff members and the clear sense that they were thinking actively through these issues. Some said that confidence is something you are born with, while another said, in my favorite quote, “your heart is made up of a certain percentage of cowardice and a certain percentage of courage - you can change those percentages through your action.”

A less expected result of the morning’s talk was the revelation of evidence confirming our suspicions of inappropriate staff/student sexual relationships. A staff member came forward with this information that had been withheld out of fear stating, ” I haven’t felt okay since our talk about fear and courage this morning.” David had quoted that courage is not the absence of fear but the action in spite of it. For this one staff member, that teaching helped them to step forward in a move that promotes safety and health not only for one or two girls entangled in unhealthily coercive relationships but for a whole school and community of girls who have never been spoken up for.

Now we face the hard work, today, of confronting at least one male staff member with the evidence we have. The hard work of speaking the truth in love. And we must do this while praying that we are not motivated merely by justice but also by the desire for their repentance and seeking after Him. My heart is not there yet, so pray for me to move past thoughts of castration and have a heart aimed towards their spiritual rehabilitation.

Our big victory for the last week was two new successes in finding lower food prices. It seems small, but even working out the details of exactly how much maize flower costs per kikoppo (about two cups) on any given week isn’t simple. Last week we sent three different people to the market at three different times to buy one kikoppo each of about six staple foods. Each person came back with a different price. And each of those prices was different from the one we had paid through our purchaser that week. Corruption? Theft? Incompetence? Bad timing? Whatever creates that difference, it has to stop; a difference of only about 100 shillings (17 cents) per kicoppo on several of our staple foods totals up to an additional $200 loss EACH WEEK - do the math, on our skinny budget those small changes in price add up to almost an additional $1000/month.

Of course our purchaser buys our staples on another day in a different market in a second country (DRC) so that SHOULD greatly improve our chances at good prices. DRC is where local women trek on foot to buy rice or cassava flower to resell at higher prices in the market here. We are trying to cut out one of the middlemen. And this week, finally, it worked. Though it took David creating about fifteen different inventory, purchasing, and food-use forms to find out where the money was being lost through the channels it travels and babysitting our purchaser with the insistence that “if you can’t pay the price I’ve given you don’t buy at all.” A scary prospect when you realize that the food we’re buying needs to feed 400 people starting two days after market day. But we’re desperate, we’re bleeding badly due to these food prices and we frankly feel a bit scared.

And as food prices continue to rise, we make our budget for next year, finding, against all odds, some way to balance it given the giving for this year. But we wonder what giving will look like next year, due to the American economic crisis. And we wonder how to recover from this past year of food prices. What does faith look like for us, right now? What do you do when you have a responsibility to 400 people 24/7 and the money just isn’t there? When we look back at our choices do we see unanswered faith or hopeful presumption? Do we see God not responding to our prayers and requests for funding or do we see us not being faithful enough to risk asking? I’m asking a lot of hard questions of God right now; and so far I haven’t gotten very far. Running a challenging ministry in a challenging place is hard enough when the money comes in; without it there is a sense of desperation, loss, fear and hopelessness. So we ask God again and again, what does faith look like right now and how can You grow ours.

And in case I haven’t been faithful enough to risk asking; PLEASE consider giving a monthly gift in ANY amount to Christ School Gifts of $50/month add up to $600/year, a huge help in our budget. It would only take giving of another $1000/month to make up the deficit in our budget.

My friend Amy wrote and gave me the perfect word picture for what I’ve been feeling lately. It’s that sense you get when you’re into the ocean just a little too far and the waves are big and they just keep knocking you over and pulling you under and swirling you around till you don’t know which way is up. And just when you find North and manage to stand up, you get hit by the next one and you’re down again. That’s how I feel right now. Of course it’s a limited perspective, I’m sure God’s grinning, but still, it’s one of those months - just feels like a water-view all day long.

Events? Well, today was our Padre Pio day, so back we trooped to the local primary school for more punishing hours of copying English sentences into our notebooks over and over and over. Not me, of course. I was sitting just around the corner in my ” mobile office” - yes, really, my car. The kids’ school chaperone isn’t doing the most wonderful job of really supervising the kids (you know there’s a problem when they are being regularly petted by their fellow students anytime the teacher’s not around which is about six times per hour). So there I sit, nearby, in my car, trying to give the illusion that I’m NOT there while still BEING there. I brought along my laptop, about a zillion letters for sponsor families of our orphans (all needing reading, sealing, stamping, addressing), and a book on educational philosophy. And I read, worked on spreadsheets for agriculture and worked my way through the pile of letters.

Being a muzungu, of course, I’m so NOT subtle sitting there in my huge all-terrain vehicle in the middle of Kanmphono - the slums of Nyhahuku. Inevitably I soon attracted the attention of one of Nyhuka’s resident crazy-people. Drawn by my presence, he entered the school yard and began his ritual acts around the campus. He approached Naomi and Quinn’s class and did some ritual acts there too then headed back to sit guard by my car while I continued my work - crazy people are remarkably drawn to our skin color. All was well until some teachers from the school noticed him circling my car and yelling about killing the Ugandan president (yep, they’re ON it.) When they politely asked him to leave he started screaming that I was his wife and he wasn’t going anywhere, then he picked up two BIG rocks (like cantalope sized) and began threatening to throw them at me. He stalked around angrily for the next thirty minutes while I discussed demon possession with the Catholic priest who had come over to mention that I had really gotten the guy excited (”perhaps his demon senses the Spirit of God within you” he said). I decided I would try my demon -intervention another day (yes, I will, later this week) and hung tight until the guy finally left.

Arriving home the kids played, thrilled to be done with Ugandan school, while I headed off to chapel and more interactions with my surly cell group - I somehow got all of the most troubled girls in the school in my group and don’t seem to be getting through to them. Then off to print orphan letters, organize books in and out of the library, visit Christ School neighbors and talk about difficult issues with some.

So what feels so beach-front about it all? Hard to say. Perhaps it’s a lack of faith, a lack of seeing the future, of understanding how all these little events make up a life that will impact eternity. Perhaps it’s the moments when we break up student theft rings, when we face potential cheating scandals, when our food costs go up yet AGAIN, when girls indecently expose themselves and laugh, when a rat eats through a month of Christ School receipts in the office drawer . . . . . Perhaps it’s those moments that make the others feel harder and less worthwhile. And since they just keep coming in such succession (all these an more within the last week) it feels a little too intense. So pray that we would focus on the beautiful view and not forget to BREATH whenever possible.