Dear Cherished Interested,

I make the claim that your Praying efforts make all the difference.

They do.

The plan was for us to be in Hilda’s house by the 3rd. Our plan, thankfully, was changed through the house not yet being ready.

Instead of laying down after moving on the 3rd, I laid down right where we have been laying down each evening since arriving in TZ but, after blooming a fever, chills, and other symptoms.

Thanks to yet another precious someone arriving literally two days before from Europe, we were given a Covid test kit. I tested positive for Covid Tuesday evening. Hilda did not test positive at that time but by Thursday evening developed symptomology parallel to my own.

Thankfully, I have been getting better as she has been taken ill so we have been able to trade places with me hovering and getting food from downstairs. Mrs. Ndosi’s staff have been checking on us. Mrs. Ndosi has been checking on us. All those amazing connections, including the new one arriving with test kits in her bags, you prayed us among have been checking on us.

So, it was not the right time for us to be setting up house in a different area just a few kilometers away with new neighbors.

We are supposed to be ill. We are supposed to be ill right now and right here so something good can be demonstrated through our need and vulnerability.

I remember watching my parents interact with medical professionals over the years I had them. Nearly every interaction included them using some of that time with the medical professional, time they would never have gotten were it not for some illness or injury in the family, to evaluate and invest listening and care into the life of that same medical professional.

That is part of why we all seem to face illnesses and traumas. So we can be given just a second or two here or there around our problem to address the fundamental precious humanity of those who dedicate at least a piece of their lives to serve us. Sometimes those seconds turn into minutes. I have experienced even longer times of use in the lives of care-givers who have let trust grow through my need and vulnerability into something deeper for them as well.

The blame seeking Jesus confronts in John Chapter 9 still blows through our relationships with each other and with our Creator. Blame seeking is a waste of time and energy, we are called to seek after the precious that God is doing in our many shortcomings.

Look out! Love might be shown, healing of things we might not have known were in need of healing might just start or rush to completion in an instant. Love might be shown and healing given not just to patient through care-giver but to care-giver through patient.

As much as I despise being weakened away from my plans, there may be more important plans afoot for us and those around us. Let God be God. Then point it out so that any of my baby boomer whininess can collapse and be as nothing under the beauty of it all.

The beauty of God living in the care-giving hearts of others. The beauty of God living in the care-giving hearts of ourselves. Let it out because the exercise of those things in and among weakness and vulnerability builds strengths that outlast our here and now. It builds relationships that are strong for our work together in this precious here and now too. Paul in both of his Corinthian Letters shares profoundly about weakness for us to follow.

The weakness chosen by our Creator and Savior birthed by human mother, crucified by mere human authorities that are now millennia dust.

The endless strength in the vulnerability remains.

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I promised our son that I would try to write about some of the amazing people your praying has pulled and kept us among. I believe the concern he now shares with many who love us has to do with our ability to find a path for returning physical health.

Well firstly we are blessed to have each other. We have an each other that we both actually like and are comfortable being uncomfortable in. Knowing that even if the rest of humanity were swept home to God before the end of this sentence, If we were either two or one of us left here, even then we would not be alone.

Tanzania is not America. There are some freedoms here that have been destroyed by a legal system at home that is required to measure losses and assign blames.

Without the oppressive liability avoidance scheming birthed from our system, we have found a local Tanzanian pharmacist who sells you nothing.

Nothing, that is, without first knowing and understanding your medical background, current symptomology, what you have already done with and for your symptoms, and your own level of ability, and of those around you, to monitor and care for your illness.

Only then comes prescribing, dispensing, and directing the use of medications all provided by a pharmacist who seems to have instantaneous recall of every article of medical information, every pharmacological catalogue, every medical or pharmacological periodical either historical or from the very mornings eager study.

We are blessed. This pharmacist would be wasted in America as exercising the gift present in that empathetic brilliance for the sake of others would be denied there.

Tanzania has too few resources to tie a pharmacist’s hands like we do so many of our well trained and gifted folks at home. This is a type of freedom I remember living among yet realize my children may only know our current system.

So, no, we do not have to go to a medical doctor to find a pathway way back to physical health if we demonstrate self-awareness, knowledge, and competence in what confronts us. So far we have and do.

Where medical doctors are few and exceedingly pressed with caseload our personal responsibility for ourselves is required to allow them to care where self-care cannot suffice. This too is a freedom I remember living yet realize my children likely do not.

This un-denied freedom of self-responsibility which we have found here is so community minded that ones’ responsibility for oneself flows seamlessly into ones’ responsibility for family, friend, neighbor, tribe, nation, guest, stranger all predicated upon ones’ ability and inclination.

This too is familiar..

Here it can be seen in Pastors who remove young women from trafficking situations.

Pastors who turn out their pockets quietly out of sight of the world for something to give the infirmed, widowed, alone driven to their door. Strangers who empty their purses of what little was therein for others unknown to them.

Ministries started, food taken, risks lived.

Risks lived all free from knowing the fear of having to check to see if our churches insurance policy is up to date and covers our activities.. activities often demanded in the moment..

I remember the freedom to walk into the horror another person is facing. We did that working in the woods for anyone else there. Even if they hated us out of the woods, we were all they had when things went wrong in the woods.

That is what Jesus does for me.. That familiar, that close, that risky.

No wonder those who can call. No wonder they approach, even without masks, some throwing their arms around us.

They are gifted and capable. Young and old alike they have lived uninsulated from hardship pain and want, know what those things are, and have never known the fear of being wealthy enough to avoid consequences.

Consequences that none could afford to pay. That economy, that bargain, that gamble, does not exist in any meaningful way here.

I’m stuck. Everything points to God and Jesus. Jesus, who pays the consequences for all our consequences. Even those consequences we can’t take to a medical doctor or buy insurance for.

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What to Pray..

Whatever is on your heart and mind for us –

Our prior requests –

Gratitude and Grace for and from all I may offend with my imperfect mirror –

For each of you in your situations –

Gratitude for you too –

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 -