Dear Cherished Interested’s,                                                                                         February 22nd, 2023

For Ash Wednesday -

Her Maasai assistant wanted to know if I remembered any Maa.  Only one word, Lengai.  “Lengai ni Mungu” she joyfully, laughingly, told Daktari.  Lengai is Mungu is God. 

They now know us and like us and even enjoy us.  Remembering that one word of her assistant’s mother tongue while face down stripped to the waist in her simple surgical suite gave both of these angel’s smiles.  Yes, you can hear smiles even in different languages. 

Skin Surgery went well Tuesday, yesterday.  Clean facility and young Daktari, a Mama of three, the youngest two are twins.  She and her assistant wanted me to pray for the procedure before we started.  She also asked Hilda and I to keep praying for her as two infants and a toddler means nearly no sleep. 

The active invocation, willing wanting inclusion, of God into the work of their day is just cool.  It lifted tiredness along with spirits. 

We had a good conversation while Daktari dug, cut and stitched.  We talked about other scars they could see.  We talked about how one would get scarring like that.  We talked about working in the woods.  We talked about other traumas and the tricks you can play on your body to keep it working even when broken enabling yourself to get out of the bush and to the truck miles away.  Then you can go start working on not being broken. 

Hilda stood in the doorway holding the door close and speaking into the shared veracity of our crazy life together.  This taught much about a character allowing her to be here striving too.  Everything is fine.  Just some stupid skin things needing to go away before they get out of control.  Hilda insisted, found a way and made it happen.  We now have more people who like and want us in their lives. 

We are to meet the Gastroenterologist because he preaches too and we must meet his wife because of women’s bible studies she does all the time.  Stitches out in ten days.  Maybe then.  

For family who know much about how I have become less than physically perfect through the years, this means I now have access to an older and very well experienced Gastroenterologist.  This too is a good thing.  We are ultimately focused on self-care first, and ever, as medical professionals are few here facing desperate need beyond small stuff. 

While going to the truck to leave, a well-dressed young woman approached The Cross hanging around my neck and asked permission of me to come to the truck and talk with Hilda and I.  This is but one type of need that we have in front of us all the time.  This is polite.  This is educated.  This is put together. 

This is a mother of children also caring for her mother.  Between Covid and the overlong and continuing economic downturn her work in tourism has been gone for a long time.  Her asking to speak with Mama/Hilda and her demeanor meant that she has avoided prostitution so far.  All she wants is a job.  Any job that won’t make her sick and unable to care for those she strives to. 

Like the angels inside who took care of me, happy for work, this angel outside only wants a chance to work.  With work comes chance to feed children and her mother.  Do we know that all the children in her home are hers?  Do we know where the father is or are?  No.  She may simply be the only one left alive of her generation to strive in their care.  Like others we know, this polite, proud, capable one may be the aunt who managed the funerals and brought the little ones home with her, now her mother too. 

No good ending here.  We had to explain that we are self-funded missionaries and had no jobs.  Hilda wrote some numbers of local contacts down on a piece of paper for her but..  I wonder whether that angel has a phone any more, let alone one with minutes(air time) left.  Our contacts are no better off than we.  Pray connection and diligence pays off for this brave angel.  Please. 

The raised chin, the gratitude for us listening, and the tears she did not want us to see but could not keep from coming are truth telling of life for most here.  I pray for this angel, whose name I do not know, more than our new friends.  We aren’t dead inside.

My nature, our natures are deeply hurt by her plight but she did not want any money.  She is all those things listed above and money she knows is not durable nor lasting.  Her responsibilities demand more.  Her human dignity deserves more even as that dignity suffers to seek failed hope in such as us.    

She is an angel no doubt because she spares nothing of herself to maintain and cherish life.  We all know someone like that who came from heaven too. 

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For Ash Wednesday -

He is six years old.  His eyes track together some of the time but not all.  When he struggles to breathe, he can cough, so you quickly elevate his back and head and turn him so his airway can clear.  Speech has not developed.  His mouth works well enough to consume soft foods.  He can also turn and lift his head some to track voices and look up at you if you are the one holding him.  Otherwise, nothing of a voluntary nature works at all beneath his neck. 

How do I explain this kind of need?  Dare I try to explain this kind of need?  Let me put fear of offending aside once more and try. 

He lives at Moses Confort Home, no not a misspelling.  That is what the little English paper connected with this place has printed on it.  No international funding here.  No fancy boards of well off people controlling any money.  The wise and cagey angel grandmother in charge here took what little we left in her hand last time I was there and found recycled tin sheeting to start putting roof over where she and the littles live.  One family donated bunk-beds recently too.  About sixty or so littles live here.

He, this broken little boy of no hope and honestly no visible future here, is one of that sixty or so.  She will not give up on hm.  She spares nothing of herself to maintain and cherish life.  Neither do her neighbors.  Women with children and responsibilities of their own come day and night to hold this broken child who is dead without them. 

This visit it was my turn and with the lifting of my arms one of those local mothers trusted enough to put him there.  She watched for only a few minutes then left to go back to what awaits her at her home.    

I had been asked to help a young couple look for service opportunities for the young bride, married this very same Monday.  They have known each other for years.  He is Tanzanian.  She is a farm girl from outside Portland.  We met them last year and have not seen them since.  He contacted me for help just before the weekend when we are super-busy and so they spent Monday, their wedding day, in my truck going to places we have learned about. 

My whiteness and presumed wealth gets us through the door.  Then his native language and resilient and deeply sincere Christ-centered character got them willing acceptance, shown around, and invitation to participate.   He might also be seen as a little angry, a little reserved and slow to trust, a little judgmental. 

I think he has a right.  This young husband is someone who has never shut his eyes to any of it.  He has consistently been denied entry into the U.S. because of his gender and place of origin so he can visit his fiancée’s parents and family.  After years, they sent her to return alone to Africa with their blessing. 

I get to see this couple on their wedding day, not her parents nor her four siblings, nor her nieces and nephews.  I am a witness to something.  I am a witness to something sincere, beautiful, and sacrificed for.  I get to see their lives and life together and how it is treated in this time and place.

I share that with you.  By God’s grace I will share that with her parents and siblings and those connected and interested someday.  Maybe in forever.  I may be a witness of them and how they live and who they are in forever.  I am a witness right now for them with each of you.

I sat on the simple bench next to them rocking that broken six year old that the local angels would never give up on, day and night now for over six years.  We worked together, he and I, to get his airway clear as we rocked.  His eyes tracked together to my face, my large hairy white face.  He was not afraid when focus came for him.  He was grateful. 

We rocked as the newlywed couple talked with the brave angel local ones.  We rocked, they talked.  I, as witness, to this time and place.  This grateful hopelessly broken little man fearlessly watching and listening, witnessing too. 

We are right about God you know.  For some indescribably loving reason God has given us God’s face, and forever is the plan for us.  Forever starts right now.  In a world so comfortable with death and death seeking on so many levels, literal, and so inventing of new levels to inflict death on, here is another life the angels in poverty would not, do not, will not, give up on. 

One six decades, one six years, both watching, both listening, both serving as witness to what people chose, choose.  As able we witness for today.  As able we witness for tomorrow, for forever.  Life is not inconvenience.  Life is worth the effort, the struggle, the loss of idolatry to our plans. 

That rocking, hopelessly broken, little man was grateful, comfortable, and fearlessly chose to fall asleep.  He was still asleep when I set him in the awaiting Manger of arms outstretched by another man, a local man, there to receive him for a time.  Proof that life is worth sacrifice. 

That hopelessly broken little man will have much to teach about love whenever he comes to speak his testimony, wherever he speaks, to whoever his grateful speech is given. 

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This is but one type of need that we have in front of us all the time.  She of the unwilling tears, that will not be refused their expression, is an angel no doubt because she spares nothing of herself to maintain and cherish life.  That rocking, hopelessly broken, little man was grateful, comfortable, and fearlessly chose to fall asleep.  He was still asleep when I set him in the awaiting Manger of arms outstretched by another man, a local man, there to receive him for a time.  Proof that life is worth sacrifice. 

Witness to angels right here who we get to see.  We all know someone like them who came from heaven too. 

Keep it up..  It is indescribably hard..  It is beyond humbling..  It is vital, beautiful, and true..  thank you..

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WE don’t fit the expected boxes..  The local folks have decided to either love us or hate us for that.  The ones who love us seem to be winning..  I think your praying has been a huge part in that.  God is listening, watching..  laughing some too?? 

Thank You for that.

Also please Pray for:

..  Except for perhaps needing to drive to Kenya to cross the border and re-enter TZ every 90 days, the Visa stamp in our passports indicates current until 2024.  Thank You!

Gratitude..

Gratitude for our time in the Pacific Northwest and over to Colorado for those dear children and grandchildren who miss us and whom we are overjoyed to have had our precious time with.

Makumira Secondary School, my brilliant helper Elisha’s school, is looking to share stories and partner in some way with a foreign school, Great leaders, teachers, students, programs, strong backs, minds, and hearts –

Moses Confort Home / Upendo School / Blue Sky School  -

Imbasenny school is one of two schools run by a Mchungaji here.  He requests prayer for Imbasenny school as that school has no external support and parents school fees fall short of what the job takes.

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

Our armed forces families, our leadership, our people, whole world round, all of God’s kids -

All the tough and blessing expressed above –

The love of folks –

Whatever is on your hearts and minds for us –

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..  –

Us is not only Hilda and I but a growing circle of local folks.  Please imagine them too as you pray for ‘us’. -

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..

If we should ever cross your mind, even if we are strange and confusing, just grunt, crumple us up and throw us at God.  That is where we need to be.. 

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