Dear Cherished Interested’s,

Actually this is August 1st, Monday. Apologies for being slow. Computer issues, power issues, busy-ness issues. I am grateful to a New Zealander, from home, for help with my computer.

I wrote to a dear mentor, and the Pastor of much of our children’s growing up, about a difficult topic. I will name the topic, extortion. Some may prefer a different terminology. It is part of the background everywhere we turn here and can be seen as needs, often very real needs, propelling people to pursue us, Hilda and I, as potential cash.

Saturday was typical busy with Hilda diligently helping with the community wide educational support program up at The Children’s Village. She had a spontaneous story-time Saturday morning too for about 150 children and she found a book and read it to them herself. Then down early in the afternoon for food and rest. Then back up late in the day for Zoom story-time with readers from other places around the globe reading a book live to the children in residential care here.

Upon returning to Silverleaf Academy in the growing dusk after Saturday’s busy-ness we were met by someone. Someone none of you will ever know, whom we have tried to help in the recent past. Someone who is able to talk a way onto the campus and to the little house Hilda has to use.

Nothing, however, is ever the fault of this unfortunate one. Instead, it is always the fault of other people or misfortunes. We fed this dear one. We listened to this dear one. We forgave what help had been given earlier as a loan. We emptied the refrigerator into two sacks for the children of the dear one. We then said no. No, to anymore cash.

One of the things Hilda and I must stay aware of is the fact that in order to come and strive here, as we believe we are supposed to, we had to sell our home in WA State. No more mortgage, no more debt, no more property taxes, no more community association dues. That is what helps us get from moment to moment here. If we tell that to someone coming to us for help and they do not hear it, do not respect it, then we are not seen by them as people. Especially, if that dear one coming for help has a home.

Hilda and I understand need verses want having skated thin financial ice our whole lives together. We understand those things in the context of where we are from, North America. This is a different place with so much real need at every turn we could be used up in no time.

Like home, those facing the deepest real need are often the ones least likely to ask for any help. It is then good to have relationships with folks, local folks who know situations both seen and unseen. This is often the women. Women who take the world on their shoulders for each other and those children who have no one. We are not dead to the unresponsive face drawn thin and gaunt accompanying a person struggling for the next step. We cannot help them all. This is hard work.

We had given those sacks from our refrigerator to the dear one as they had left and we did something we loathe to do. We shut and locked the door. Then we sat during our Saturday evening time of resting, in preparation for Sunday’s big busy push, and talked and prayed that we had done rightly.

You see, living in trust takes trust even in the face of failure, real or perceived. We were quiet and listening in our thoughts anguishing in no small way about the possibility of missing an opportunity to be doing what is most right. In this place of no public safety nets, questionable nutrition, limited and costly education, lives are dependent upon doing what is most right. We cannot help them all. This is hard.

Then there was a knock at the locked door.

We have been sharing our spare bedroom with a very young cook who is on-site to help feed about 24 visitors form America and the UK. She had gotten word that her father had been taken to hospital. The local mother she is working with to keep this clump of visitors fed is one of those relationships that knows the seen and much of the unseen stories. She sent this deeply concerned young woman to us in the middle of their combined heavy work.

In came this cook and straight to Hilda. Hilda doesn’t have much Swahili. Hilda speaks fluent mom. The cook knows English well, if not proficiently. Hilda told our young roommate that she was not traveling on a motorcycle for hire to the hospital to see her father. Hilda turned to me and together we said to give me a minute to get my boots on, that I will take her.

I want to point out in these events piled upon each other that Hilda and I were praying that we had done the most right thing by turning away one with a story. One who did not see Hilda and I as people. One whose story, as checked through local women today, has proven to be false.

We closed the door and locked it on an extortion. God sent another to knock. God sent another with a real need. One who simply wanted us to know that she might not get back from the hospital and not to expect her coming in even late, if at all. Hilda knows the danger of local motorcycle taxis and injury and deaths are common, especially after dark. This real need came. This real need came not expecting anything just knowing that we would worry if she did not arrive for her bed as normal.

The joy in serving real need was found in the faces of Aunt, Uncle and Mom of the young cook. Father is now wheelchair bound struggling with blood sugar and an apparent stroke. NO one asked me for money. No one asked me to pray. Pray we did.

I would not take the cook back to her work until she hugged her mother and her father. That was the right thing to do. That is not a wealthy home. But it is a beautiful home. All the little children were comfortable watching the evening’s troubles and a family coming together. Then comfortable to fist bump the big hairy white man as he took their young Aunti out into the dark night and back to work.

It is your Prayer that keeps us close with The Spirit so we have any chance to doing anything rightly.

We as Americans can feel bled dry by a dangerous world that our sons get sent into to die for, by a hungry world that has made our agriculture the most efficient the world has ever seen. We cannot help them all. This is hard. Extortion is in that mess too. Hilda and I want no part of that.

We write and share because we are in need of prayer. And we know it. Trying to be empty enough after a lifetime being the ones full of solutions is not always my way. Staying out of the way so God can bless. Sometimes with, even such as us, in the mess.

Going to get this off right away before we lose connectivity and power.

Please forgive also the spelling and grammatical errors.

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Also please continue to Pray for:

Gratitude for travelling mercies given for critical persons connected with the work here, they are safely where they need to be.

Makumira Secondary School looking to share stories and partner in some way with a foreign school, Great leaders, teachers, students, programs, strong backs, minds, and hearts –

Hilda’s invisibility to those who can only see their own authority –

Sorry, still my Visa situation (another 3 month extension for us both granted!) -

Our armed forces families, our leadership, our people, whole world round, all of Gods kids -

All the tough and blessing expressed above –

The love of folks –

Whatever is on your hearts and minds for us –

For our children and grand-children who miss us.. we miss them too..

I continue to be under much harsh spiritual attack concerning my sense of self-worth and those many things I have yet to get to, please, only as you are comfortable, remember me, indeed us.. the world doesn’t like what we are doing out of love we don’t own.. yet have none the less -

For our health to stay ahead of whatever is before us, for us to let our health fail so others can shine –

For a way for us to invest with our experience and even financially in support of local industrious people so we can afford to stay and continue to make a difference one face at a time –

For those who have braved the donate button to discover Kajun Crofton, our daughter who helps getting each one of your donations to us and every blogpost to where you can read it –

For you who find other ways to uplift and support us -

For each and every one of you –

Each and every one of your prayers, your precious conversations with God –

Prayers, Your Prayer, skipping stone and even groaning prayers make 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 -

Dear Cherished Interested’s,

It could be heard in their voices as they walked to the truck. Our two Sunday school and text study helpers were not bickering with nor challenging each other as teenage siblings do. They sounded like they were walking on air while congratulating each other in amazement. They had done well and they were walking in the glow of that. That was Sunday morning.

This is Tuesday morning and it is raining very well. Unlike the common electrical affliction of low or partial voltage shorting across somewhere that leaves light bulbs glowing dull even when switched off, there has been no voltage at all through most of the night. I am writing on battery.

This morning Hilda has decided to stay home. Not stopped by a respiratory bug which I have shared on to her, she intends to work from here as power and internet access allow. The rain is falling well on the big banana leaves outside and a local monkey troupe is calmly occupying a large tree in the back corner of the property behind the house. Their activity level muted against the precipitation.

The grandfather who lived long enough for me to know him had a home in Florida. Nana and Papa had grapefruit and orange trees. The boy scouts there would have work-party-fund-raisers in which they would pick everyone’s ripe fruit for them, box it up, and even ship some as directed. We would get at least one box on the farm. Those oranges predated the ones that have been selected for since. They were thin-skinned and mottled in color with lots of discolorations. Those visual imperfections had no bearing upon the quality and value of the fruit. That is the type of orange we get here. That is a perfect breakfast when fighting a respiratory bug. Not overly sweet and with enough of an acid bite to take the soreness out of the swollen tissues of the mouth and throat.

I’ve had this bug since last week, going into town for meds Friday afternoon. Saturday was a push as Hilda’s driver needed to get her up to The Children’s Village so she can teach. Then back down to the big road for a meeting while she was teaching. Then back to the Silverleaf Academy house where important things were locked up for others who were coming to disperse them Saturday. Then back up to The Children’s Village to collect Hilda and take her home for a few minutes rest and a bite to eat. Then back up to The Children’s Village for on-line live Storytime. Then a birthday party. Then, well after dark, take a couple folks across the mountain to 2 mountain lodge where they were staying. Then finally home to sleep.

Sunday I had no voice. Sunday we slept in and missed the 7:am English Service at the Cathedral. I wasn’t scheduled to preach but I need worship as much as anyone else. We collected our helpers, two local born teenage siblings of adoption, from up on the mountain, took them to the house and as Hilda stuffed them with breakfast they read aloud my message/text study for the Children’s Village Mama’s.

We selected which scheduled verse of the Psalm was to be the start for the Sunday School and we discussed that.

When the time came I drove to the dining hall on campus and stayed in the truck. Hilda and the boys handled the whole thing. From outside in the truck I could hear the boarding students singing the praise songs they have inside them, the songs Hilda has taught them for each day of the creation story in Genesis, and even the prayer setting I wrote years ago and have been singing in blessing over them. They boys had forgotten some of the words but were well supported by the boarding students who remembered every word and each note.

Then up the mountain to The Children’s Village where they did Sunday School with the Children there. These are children these two siblings have known and shared life with for their whole lives.

Then the two siblings read out my message in English while translating it into Swahili on the fly without me. This they did while leaving room for the Mama’s to read the scheduled scriptures out for each other. This they did around singing hymns, these Mama’s who have known these two siblings their entire lives here on the mountain.

When I heard our helpers so completely removed from teenage competition mode as they came out to the truck afterword, I knew I had to brag on what losing my voice let happen. I don’t need to be part of it. It is so cool to see that worship happens with or without us. That Worship is now becoming normative for two local born geniuses and those other children they have been made a family into and among. Survival is still central for so many. Survival with hope.. hope through worship.. worship in gratitude.. wow! Wow, Wow, Wow..

We didn’t come here to do this. We simply came. This has all come out of others asking us to do what we have been asked to do. Local folks wanting us for things we did not plan.

Your Prayer makes all the difference.

----------------------------------------

Also please continue to Pray for:

Makumira Secondary School looking to share stories and partner in some way with a foreign school, Great leaders, teachers, students, programs, strong backs, minds, and hearts –

Hilda’s invisibility to those who can only see their own authority –

Sorry, still my Visa situation (another 3 month extension for us both in the works hopefully!) -

Our armed forces families, our leadership, our people, whole world round, all of Gods kids -

All the tough and blessing expressed above –

The love of folks –

Whatever is on your hearts and minds for us –

For our children and grand-children who miss us.. we miss them too..

I continue to be under much harsh spiritual attack concerning my sense of self-worth and those many things I have yet to get to, please, only as you are comfortable, remember me, indeed us.. the world doesn’t like what we are doing out of love we don’t own.. yet have none the less -

For our health to stay ahead of whatever is before us, for us to let our health fail so others can shine –

For a way for us to invest with our experience and even financially in support of local industrious people so we can afford to stay and continue to make a difference one face at a time –

For those who have braved the donate button to discover Kajun Crofton, our daughter who helps getting each one of your donations to us and every blogpost to where you can read it –

For you who find other ways to uplift and support us -

For each and every one of you –

Each and every one of your prayers, your precious conversations with God –

Prayers, Your Prayer, skipping stone and even groaning prayers make 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 -