Babu Vern & Bibi Hilda in Tanzania: June 2023

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Dear Cherished Interested’s, June 27th, 2023

Hilda’s student, my first year Sunday service translator, and young man who I was adult for on his baptism and confirmation day is here. The Aunti now Mama of Hilda’s student is here. The Mama of three who does our laundry and cares for the house is here. A chicken was brought, dispatched, scalded, plucked, fried and half is now in a soup pot.

Us two guys are in the freshly cleaned living room. Three happy women are hovering over the soup pot communicating with sign, some English, much Swahili. Tanzanian praise music is blasting from the Bluetooth speaker. Blasting but not overwhelming eager human communication. Communication eager to hear and find ways to serve each-others’ needs.

One of Hilda’s stupid cats goes from one person after another to find a lap or hand or foot to rub on. The other stupid cat is patrolling outside in the gathering darkness.

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This last Sunday we sat in the back of Mulala church, with four young ladies from The Children’s Village, for the first service which was full and long as lots of little babies were baptized. One was a first born.

There was a ram brought as offering to buy the freedom of that precious little first born.

Third offering outside on the grass had me promising into the ear of Mchungaji Ombeni that whatever he needed to buy that offering ram would be provided, somehow. The ram is now named soup. I paid for it. I got to name it.

The ram is being cared for this week and next week between services, in addition to other offerings of meat promised by many eager others, Soup will become soup. Soup will be made of soup for the elders. So, after first service next week in Usa at the Cathedral, we are invited to partake of soup-soup as we walk to the Children’s Village for Sunday school and worship with the Mama’s.

Yesterday, after being required to teach from Sunday’s readings to visiting Evangelist, Mchungaji and other church staff, I hauled the visiting down off the hill with the bags of produce. Bags of produce that is most of what they earned for their time given here.

Our story brings questions everywhere. The trust is mind-blowing. We, Mchungaji Ombeni and I went back up the hill after leaving the visitors alongside the road waiting for what passes for a bus, with diesel fuel for his little truck in whatever containers we could scrounge and a small bag of fresh picked and shelled beans for Hilda from Ombeni’s farm plot.

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Sunday afternoon, after naming the ram soup and Sunday school and worship at The Children’s Village, we got invaded by five teens. They ate and danced. They ate and wiggled and listened to music. They ate until they couldn’t eat anymore.

Before they got gathered into the truck to be hauled back to where they belong they got together around tubs and washed all our dishes, pots and pans. Then they swept the house and porch all the while laughing and goofing and smiling. Mopping all the wet spots and messes up too.

Hilda and I remember our littles. We loved having the house full of them and their tag-a-longs.

Our littles are now raising their own. We pray that they have full houses too. We are thankful for the reminders coming into our house, wherever it is, filling our time with life. Eager happy life in spite of struggles. One of that gaggle of giggles is Hilda’s student, our baptism and confirmation son here with his, Aunti now Mama, to work around cooking chicken on real problems in these lives trusting us to come into our cold mountain house with two stupid cats.

Come and eat and dance. Come and eat and wiggle. Come and study. Come and fill tubs with water to clean our dishes and pots and pans. Come and blast Tanzanian Swahili praise music and communicate about deeply hard things trusting that something done today can make tomorrow a little better.

Hilda and I are weird. Ask our children. We aren’t biological family here anymore than we were biological family many places we have lived. Yet, we are a place where people can come and talk openly. Talk and pray and hope and cry and live more openly than many can with biological family.

Thank You for praying that we are a place free of judgement. Thank you for praying that we are given discernment; that if asked for and given is seen as trusted and valuable. That is God stuff. Your prayers do that!!

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Both stupid cats are inside now and with people. We have power for the moment so lights are on and studies with Hilda continue. Two women are huddled close to an electric heater on the floor at their stocking-ed feet. Swahili, fast and intense, working for those solutions that impoverished lives need for another tomorrow.

Lives are on the line. Yet, somehow, smiles and joy often win. Smiles and joy often win even in the absence of resource. Gratitude and diligence are the most strikingly beautiful of twins. They often are birthed into moments we get to see by powerful and faithful women of this place. They bring our daughters alive to us right here.

Our sons are alive in the same way right here with us too.

Our grandchildren are seen alive in the faces everywhere we walk.

We have wealthy moments here where expectations are broken enough .. to leave room.

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From last time…

I cannot describe the spiritual attacks we have been facing as the time hopefully approaches (coming soon we hope.. a loving representative of ours is engaged with University staff working our process for us so cultural and linguistic issues are sidestepped without more financial outlay on our part ) when we, ourselves, will engage with the University again.

We now have a calendar of University Enrollment process days and verbal assurance that I will be attending theological studies in September. I continue to breathe. I’m not holding it.

Relationships here on the ground in addition to my imperfections and mistakes are being used to try to drive us away from our striving. Each day is a sincere struggle. Hopefully that means we’re on the right track. Please pray for those around us. Please pray for the local faces which fearlessly now smile and greet us as we walk.

Please keep crumpling us up and throwing us at God. That is where we need to be. God will sort us out.

One day at a time. Just like how you each live. Just one day at a time.

Thank you, each of you.

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What to Pray for:

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..

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 –

For our health to stay ahead of whatever is before us –

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 each and every one of you –

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

Prayers, Your Prayer, Even your groaning prayers 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

Monday, June 5, 2023

Dear Cherished Interested’s, June 5th, 2023

After a late Saturday night request for a specific message about The Holy Trinity, I preached at the Cathedral in Usa River for the 7:00 morning English service yesterday. Smiling folks came to tell me that it went well. Amazing.. Always a struggle for me with confidence and I am deeply thankful that I am not alone when preaching. Still, this is something I do because I have to. Wanting to preach, wanting to be up front, is not part of it at all.

Paul is imprisoned when he writes: Philippians 1 “ ¹⁴And my being in prison has given most of the believers more confidence in the Lord, so that they grow bolder all the time to preach the message^[a] fearlessly. ¹⁵Of course some of them preach Christ because they are jealous and quarrelsome, but others from genuine good will. ¹⁶These do so from love, because they know that God has given me the work of defending the gospel. ¹⁷The others do not proclaim Christ sincerely, but from a spirit of selfish ambition; they think that they will make more trouble for me while I am in prison. ¹⁸It does not matter! I am happy about it—just so Christ is preached in every way possible, whether from wrong or right motives. And I will continue to be happy,..”

This position, this understanding, this expression of faith by Paul has become ever more central to my encountering how Jesus is preached and people are served everywhere; including here where at times we share very little in common.

Later last week I was asked to attend another special prayer service up on the mountain. As I walked into the rectory with Mchungaji(pastor I traveled and served with) and sat with the others gathered to run and serve the community through this service, I noticed among the accumulating ever more familiar faces, the face of a special pastor on this mountain. He is respected by the others. He is requested for special prayer services like this. He has gifts of rare perception. He has inside a kind of hard love that is so deep and powerful that it is willing to face anything.

This prayer service is 90 percent music and dance then comes simple direct preaching. The kind that allows those who fear the worst to come forward, run away, run back, then enter struggle to find peace they long for.

How do I write about possession? How do I write about those who fear it and face it?

I would like to start with love that is so deep and powerful that it is willing to face anything. Reputation of that love follows this older pastor who has had me in attendance now for two of these services high up on this mountain where fancy visitors don’t go and are never asked to. I have been taken there and into that fear and the face of it.

I sat listening to language I did not know watching the pain and struggle that accompany the fear of what is faced. My job was obvious. I was there to pray. That is what I did.

As the struggling precious ones shook and dropped and wracked. I prayed. As others flew from their seats to keep the thrashing ones from hurting themselves or others, as women attended women safeguarding their modesty. I prayed.

The long line of women coming into and through the church to the front where prayer, laying on of hands, and groups of helpers worked with each precious one trying to come back to themselves, eventually stopped coming.

That gruff old beloved and deeply loving pastor was done. He did something that I did not expect.

After putting down his microphone, he came and sat next to me. Then he turned to look me in the eye with such gratitude and thankfulness. He knew that praying silently was what I had been doing. He chose to be thankful to this stranger who has been brought now to two of these services for the desperate. He knew that I was not there to judge.

I love this hard old mountain pastor because as he viewed that long line of fearful women coming seeking peace within themselves, his spoken question was.. “Where are all the men?” This is a universal heartache for pastors here.

Without the men seeking peace, the women return to situations that are unimproved. Part of the greater prayer then is that the women return to their situations as improved people in themselves. These desperate become missionaries into desperate situations that they cannot flee.

There were still two struggling and writhing ones after the church cleared. The old pastor was spent and was taken to rest. Two groups of us stayed with the remaining two who were carried flailing and straining from church to the rectory where table and chairs were pushed without concern out of the way so those lost from themselves could be laid safely on the floor.

Precious bibles were literally thrown across the room to land on that table shoved out of the way. Small yet powerful writhing women were throwing four to six people around at a time. I came into the room set my bible among those others that had landed on the table and without thinking put my glasses that I do need to see, on top of my bible. Afterword I understood that not having glasses safeguarded all around me as they were not on my face to be taken in the thrashing and struggle.

Silent prayer like I’ve had drawn out of me before in bush Alaska as well as here was all my mind and heart were focused on. My hands are attached to the rest of me which is at times a gift of tremendous weight. My hands were able to contain the right hand of one of these precious struggling women who came for help.

She came for help and everyone there was willing to do anything, including throwing expensive tables and chairs out of the way and pitching precious expensive prized bibles through the air, so their hands were immediately free to safeguard as they strove to bring that help.

The one whose hand was now in mine was no longer able to throw anyone around with that hand. We prayed, we safeguarded, she returned in time peacefully to herself. Her wet eyes opened and looked fearlessly into mine and after a time pulled my hand to find her way shakily onto her feet. Immediately we got her to a chair.

In about half a minute she was talking normally again with Mchungaji. Mchungaji who did not judge her but simply smiled hugely at her success. He then translated introduction and told me she had a young child. He translated my thanks to her for her hard work as a mother to that precious child. She stood, squared her shoulders, and was able to walk home before we left.

The last struggling one was taken by about eight people to a dark office in the rectory as Mchungaji and I were leaving. Those loving people will not leave her even if it takes all night and into the next day. Love doesn’t judge. Love doesn’t give up either.

This is something I pray can be re-learned more broadly.

The desperation and situations lived among the most impoverished people have analogs among the lives of people like you and me. People who have rare moments of insecurity can learn from people who have only moments of insecurity.

My time in bush Alaska is alive here. My time among we who have only rare moments of insecurity is alive here. This is what shepherds’ do. Protect the vulnerable and battle what seeks to consume and destroy them.

Faith is academic and vociferous. Faith at times needs to be uncompromising.

Faith as love is also quiet, strong and in motion willing to give time, hands, protection and prayer. Faith as love leaves room for hope. Faith as love leaves room for God to be God. Faith as love does not seek to be God, judge, condemnation or self-righteous source of shunning.

That can happen among people here like it does everywhere. However those shepherding, these moments of pleading with God for those desperate enough to be vulnerable in their need, also live lives with only moments of insecurity. This empathy builds wisdom many elsewhere never find. Wisdom that lets breathtaking good come in hard moments like these that too many ignore and run from.

Love doesn’t judge. Love doesn’t give up either.

Yes, an older term is used here. Witchcraft. Mostly women coming to seek help in reclaiming themselves from the destruction of situations that don’t change so, they have to find the strength to be the change themselves. Here witches are never burned. Here they self-identify and come among people who will do anything to help.

Love doesn’t judge. Love doesn’t give up either. Everyone goes back to doing the best they can the next day. They go together.

How do I know that these events are sincere and un-staged? I was the only white person trusted to be there. I may be the only white person many know. I am the only white person many of the children have ever seen and they cannot hide that. Not one person asked this white man for anything. The ones wanting me there knew I would pray. No one wanted any money.

Thank You for any discomfort this report may bring for any of you reading. Your willingness to face that discomfort is beautiful. Thank you for your prayer. It really does matter more than anything else.