Dear Cherished Interested,

What to report and what to leave out?

Friends, I am still very much my self. Hilda laughed at my response a couple hours ago when she said she was so very comfortable and relaxed. My response was that I did not think that I had made any progress on finding a venue for my non-traditional education yet. We have been here eight days, a week and one day.

You see, we aren’t fluent in Swahili yet.., what’s the matter with me?!

God has given us local friends who are though. Local friends who already trust us enough to let us teach and accompany their thirty or so children of desperate circumstance to places out near the bush. Places this older guy maybe shouldn’t go but can’t help himself.

Saturday was a rare road trip to let the littles see and hear about things that belong to their history as Tanzanians. Troubled hard background or not, this is good.

After going down and then coming out we were told that there were three hundred steps. These were not uniform nor were they shallow but deep inconsistent steps swaddled in mud. Hilda slipped three times going down and I was able to catch her each time. I sat on a rock at the bottom and let my lungs burn.

We had travelled about three hours towards MT Kilimanjaro and were now in the bottom of a gorge looking up at a sixty-five meter (213 feet) tall waterfall of glacial melt run-off from Kili. The littles and their keepers splashed and played in the pool at the bottom.

On our rock was a good place to be as it let those cautious little ones from difficult situations walk over and look, then leave, then return, then leave, each time getting a patient no-tooth smile. After a bit, both Hilda and I started to gather shoes. We had become a safe place for them to come, leave their shoes, then return to the water to go in a little further with bare feet.

One brave little fellow who doesn’t yet speak, in spite of his size, crawled up behind me on the rock using me so carefully as a hand hold to leave his shoes high and dry on the rock behind. Then he leaned over my shoulder to stare at my face for a little while before scurrying down and back over to the water.

These are hard cases. Littles who haven’t had consistent nutrition so you can’t estimate their age by their size. Some have seen horrible abuse so you simply cannot expect them to trust as children blessed with capable stable loving environments so freely do. What is amazing is that they are able to learn to interact in spite of what led them to be swept into the care of this non-profit full of loving local folks empowered by willing extra-nationals.

Time came to climb out of the gorge by means of those three hundred treacherous steps. I was the last up. My legs and new knee were not the problem. My lungs scarred by pulmonary emboli back in 2008 were. So I stopped often, sat down and waited for my blood to re-oxygenate too many times to count. Each time the head-man of the trip, 27 years old and soon to marry, and one other young guide stopped to sit and wait patiently with me.

We discussed among other things: how the littles were praying for me, how worry, fear, complaining and judging others were all a complete waste of time and energy, that discernment is different from judging and discernment is a gift, and marriage. You see with a Tanzanian median population age of about 17 or so, Hilda and I being married for 36 years makes an impression. I am glad to say a good impression.

When we started our climb up and out this steep switch-backing muddy stair, debris from the others passage up made its way down through the thick lush brush to rain some on those waiting for my respiration to recover. Yes, steep is an effective if pale descriptor of the climb. Oh yes, Hilda made it to the top well before me having been helped the whole way by another guide. My final stop below the top let me look up to see Hilda and a bunch of littles looking down expectantly.

For those who know me and perhaps even travelled with me in the past, yes.. “are you Father Christmas?” ..was asked by one bright young one who hovered finding me comfortable and this was asked in English. All I could do was say that I am a friend of Father Christmas and that the young one can be too. Grandparents and parents aplenty are friends of Father Christmas aren’t they?

We then visited caves nearby that were dug by hand in the 17th century by the Chagga Tribe enabling the entire tribe and their animals to hide from Maasai raiders coming up the mountain during times of drought. Ingenious…

One more note about the littles getting comfortable with Hilda and I. Hilda was handed one little girls precious notebook for safekeeping while we were at the waterfall. We did not gather as many shoes as did the Momma’s herding and seated with us, but those gathered shoes led to lunchtime at the caves with Hilda, the caregivers, the littles and I in a circle. In that lunch circle many of the littles chose to bring me their bottles of water to open for them.

This, I think, is a great segue. Time. Time I don’t believe I have. Time and taking it anyway. Time to let any of Gods kids of any age get comfortable whatever it takes for them to get comfortable. So that they will bring you something they need to have opened up for them. Water is essential for life. Jesus opened up to us living water. Living water is essential for life eternal.

Two times those with us pointed out the community across the gorge from those stairs as where the first German Lutheran Missionaries came to Kilimanjaro, the first missionaries to what would become Tanzania. Somehow, without us being obvious, without wearing our crosses or having Swahili on the tips of our tongues, those in our company knew.

They knew that we were connected to that legacy, a mission legacy for this part of the world that the locals in our company hold near and dear for themselves and their nation.

Friends this world is unimaginable without that legacy, however imperfect. That is a legacy of love, Jesus Christ’s love for Gods own precious children, Gods own precious broken, striving to grow, thirsty, curious littles. I hope to always remember one solid little fellow, another one who did not yet speak in spite of his size, who had the right idea about opening that water bottle only it is tricky if you turn it the wrong way. I was so proud of his effort and even prouder when wordlessly he approached with his bottle, its cap all gouged with tooth marks, to hand it to me to find a way to open it.

The challenge for us who think we have the bottle open is that if we do, is that really all there is? No, this world needs us to respect and support that legacy of God’s love through His Son. Through Jesus’ churches and their people. Through the churches people from one to another, opening water, living water given by Jesus Christ because eternity is a long time without all of God’s littles and their stories to fill it with.

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Now what to pray about.. We could not have known what we have so amazingly been pulled into. Keep it up! I will strive to take the time, each and every moment. You keep throwing us at God’s love work. Love work that can be physically hard, but spiritually humbling and joyful.

And imagine seeing that love work, that love legacy in the work of a non-profit and not a church... God will find and send the willing, if not approved…

Some of you know my personal story about how we got here. How I was a candidate for Pastoral Ministry training with a North American flavor of the Lutheran Church. How the affirmation of the call on my life into pastoral ministry seemed unanimous among a committee of ordained leaders of that North American Lutheran flavor.

Yet, when I stressed that my call included being trained for ministry among the worlds impoverished and under the authority of a sister Lutheran Church here in Tanzania, a sister church that is one of the fastest growing churches on the planet, I was literally written off in a short paragraph as being too stubborn.

That tendency of those comfortable with their authority, what they know, to fear a change is problematic. That tendency to fear a different way, fear those birth-pangs of tomorrows love work of God happening without their direction and control, lives not only in North America but here in Tanzania too.

So far I have had one very unfortunate meeting with a leading steward of the Theology program at Tumaini University, Makumira. A university known for producing hymns found in three generations of Lutheran worship books in North America. A University known for producing pastors serving throughout sub-saharan Africa. Known for producing Pastors and other leaders who are being used to witness and participate in the growth of this one ..of the fastest growing churches on the planet.

Tomorrow’s church can’t look like todays church. Tomorrow’s human issues of brokenness and thirst for truth will be the same but the context of tomorrow’s world will be different.

Praying to the Lord of the harvest to send workers and then calling those willing to up-end their lives in order to grow into their call outside a familiar comfortable box of limited thinking too stubborn to be trusted for training into their call .. is schizophrenic. I have found it sad, deeply sad at best. I have also experienced it as yet another spiritual attack levied unintentionally by those caught up into a machine ..we call church.

We are all caught up into something that others must pray us into the company of Jesus for, so we may find forgiveness, healing, freedom, true living waters of God’s love.

Among my many crosses is the work-ahol-ism that has left my still young grandfathers body broken, battered and challenged. So what. I have your love empowered faith filled cords of prayer pulling me, pulling us, into God’s love work one face, one precious beloved face at a time.

I promise that by the help of God. That by the help of God laughing at me through Hilda. That we both will stubbornly sit on our stone and let shoes gather at our feet so others can find their way ever deeper into the water. Maybe then they will trust us to open up some living water for them, with the church of God’s people in service to God’s love work through Jesus.

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Please pray also that the church machine which is itself full of precious and loved people of God, shed some fear. Fear of The Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but only the beginning. Fear of change is a waste of time energy and too often tremendous opportunity.

Please pray also, that in spite of my deeply knowing that I am unqualified by lack of approved education and likely stubborn temperament, that I stay stubborn and seeking after all of them. The ones who don’t know the eternal quenching of the living water, and those who fear their machine changing, more, than precious others going thirsty.

Thank you, Thank You, Thank You.. Prayers, your prayer, makes all the difference..

Vern W

May Life be as Music to your Heart - May Music be as Heart to your Life 

- May Heart be as Life to your Music -