Dear Cherished Interested’s,                                                                                                     September 24^th 2024

Spoke with Hilda about 3:am as she was washing up after supper and heading for sleep.  Her day included checking up on young people watching out for her.  Two young people who work out at the Weld County Airport.  They are trying to fit in finishing high school while working the small restaurant there.  They work for a couple who are senior to both Hilda and I who run the kitchen, the young ones work front of house while ducking into the kitchen once in a while to help with piles of dishes. 

They message Hilda to check on her.  She went yesterday morning to check on them.   

Then off to a conservative Presbyterian church that no longer uses the Presbyterian name but calls itself a community church.  It was the eldest Presbyterian church in Greeley, over 100 years old.  Those folks have TZ missions connections already and Hilda has been there most Sundays since I left.  Who knows where or what when we are together again.  I am glad she has community that doesn’t look cross-eyed at her or runs away from communication that includes service so very far away right alongside their welcome of street people into worship and the fellowship hall.

I was wrong about the wall outside.  Only enough rock to become the base of the footing.  Then solid concrete block about 6 by 10 by 20 inches and about 2 meters tall.  Before the gentlemen got here to continue their work this morning, about a dozen monkeys in a troupe of all different sizes were lazing around here and strutting along the top of the wall there.  So there is now a rising monkey highway where once was shrub. 

About 4 to 10 dollars a day for sun-up to sun-down wall raising, depending upon age and responsibility for the mafundi, craftsmen.     

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Went to a predominantly European enclave, south of Usa River, where wealthier folks gather for a kind of tailgate market.  I went to check on my pharmacist who had no order to bring me but has had life stuff that he trusts me to talk with.  People needing him were waiting for him.  So I walked a little and ended up helping a Malawi-ian woman selling baked goods..  Laugh now.. I helped her for about half a second with her Swahili.  And she was grateful.. HAHA! 

So, my pharmacist is tending his customers having brought orders out from Arusha and as this is Africa, he is also free to guide those coming with medical or psychological troubles on what to try next.  As soon as one leaves another one comes for help. 

As I wait in the truck a young little mountain woman carrying a well fed white baby filling her arms, detours slightly from following the baby’s mother to come to my window.  There she propped her burden on one hip to take my hand with one of hers and call me by my mountain name. 

I don’t know which church.  She knew who I was and was pleased to drop her English and rattle on with me in super-simple Swahili-Meru.  Prayer was wanted.  Prayer was given.  I still don’t know what we talked about.  Comprehension has not been gifted me.  Can you believe that I am seen as safe?  That’s crazy and may be proof that I am not seen at all.  That may be proof of amazingly accepting hearts of folks for whom Hilda and I may have been the only white faces ever to be in their church.  While leaving with her white employer she turned steeply around placing her hand, fingers all spread open, on the car window at her side, to look me in the eye with a guarded expression.  I returned as best I could with my pale raised one.  She looked as long as she could.  You never know.  Prayer given.       

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The working people, guards from campus, send one of their number, one of the men, over at night while the wall is in process.  He walks through the working piles, turns to look into my window just once with a big thumbs up, then stops on or where the wall will be.  Moving around quietly some, but looking out away from the little house while hovering in front if it.  He is there until relieved.  They leave with daybreak.  No, I have never paid them anything.  Only shared the same printed message, with whoever is on duty, at the two gates to campus that the mama’s and children get each Sunday. 

Your prayer does this.  Thank you.

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The book of messages written from Tanzanian Lutheran Church lectionary in two languages is still in process but nearing completion.  I only have three lesser festivals for December to write.  Three more are already with Hilda for approval before moving on to the editor translators.  These messages are from the latest American Lutheran worship book, red, with readings as assigned there from the calendar therein.

Closing Africa house and returning to Hilda I pray will be easy, no matter how impossibly hard.   Deserting the loved ones there is extremely painful.  Perhaps, with today’s tech, it won’t be as complete a desertion as it was in the past.  We’ll see if there is interest here for connection in the face of perceived rejection. 

Long way to go, still..  Your prayer deeply sought for this work too.  Thank You.

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Keep our feet to the fire, please.  Thank You!

We may live dangerously, but we are alive.  Thank you for praying us the courage to live this way, if dangerously.  We don’t see it that way.

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You who read and pray and suffer along with us.  Please believe what we get to see.  Thank you for praying our strength and guidance for each moment with each face.   Folks like you are beyond precious. 

vwilliamson@sprynet.com

Really blessed while deeply under attack..  all of it is spiritual..  I wish I could teach that to everyone so they could truly know it.  I didn’t know it for far too long. 

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.

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

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 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

Dear Cherished Interested’s,                                                                                           September 11^th 2024

I know and remember what today is.  I grew up with some of the survivors, and some who didn’t. 

Please, Prayer is life..  Life is worth Prayer..

Hilda is busy.  We communicate two or three times a day.  I work while she sleeps in Colorado.  She works while I sleep in Tanzania.  I am happy to be awakened as she gets a lunch break and again as she heads to bed.  A habit of communicating for communication’s sake that started before we were married continues.  The ability to communicate just as freely as we seemingly can, just twenty years after coming here without her and with no way to communicate at all, is mind blowing but only because I choose not to forget the before that today is built upon.                                                  

I pray that without being in the same room of the same house in the same region of the same country, same hemisphere, same day..  that I may still speak truthfully of her precious story too.

She is in her Apartment on the University of Northern Colorado, UNC, campus when not at work.

She has people checking on her throughout her week at school and out in the public.  They are not from any church, except for one contact by a local retired Pastor and wife. 

She has a fridge with leftover food from a catering event one local restaurant owner made sure she got.  People who have given their phone number to her, like three older guys from where I had to get a vehicle for her, as mass transit doesn’t run early enough to get her to school on time.

Our silly story brings out tremendous heart from unexpected places.  She is starting over financially without me, but she is not starting over alone.

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Technology is great when it works, HAHA!  Access cards made with our faces as our Campus ID’s for UNC, University of Northern Colorado, even as replaced yesterday, still do not work to provide access into Lawrenson Hall where Hilda has an Apartment up on 16 looking west to the continental divide.  The building staff provide generic access cards that do work so Hilda can come and go as she needs. 

People taking extra steps to fill the failing of technology.  People are still needed.

Student comportment.  Like the culture that surrounds them, the children in Hilda’s classes are nearly universally ignorant of their overwhelming blessings.  Nor do they care to consider considering, those blessings.  A new school, with new tech, with supplies specifically for teaching them.  The oldest of these students are in 8^th grade.  Behavior to allow teaching is what Hilda spends most of her time teaching.  When there is a football or other game, for eighth graders or younger?, behavior degrades further with the distraction to education.            

This in continual contrast to the students where I am still, for a little longer, getting messages delivered. 

Last Friday I took one of my editor-translators and instead of walking, drove to the church secondary school in Makumira, which was built in the 1970’s.  This driving so that precious one, like her partner in helping me, can have a chance to drive the stupid little truck for a short way along the track where it is possible for a learner to do so. 

As we were passing the gardens maintained by the students to help feed themselves and staff, quickly two young women ran to the open truck window to greet my companion and stare into my eyes with truly open joy and love.. to ask all about Hilda, their hands still full of weeds or fresh vegetables gathered for dining hall meal prep.

These students close here, are fortunate and they know it.  They attend a church boarding school with a head master of reserved physical stature but whose heart and drive for his students seems endlessly energetic and taller than any building on campus. 

Unlike government schools, there is no caning nor striking of any student.  School uniforms would be seen as less than ideal in Greeley, but they are present here to allow young minds to focus not so overwhelmingly on appearance and more on each other and the learning they strive after with each other.  In a indescribably materially deprived environment that too, does not receive much care to consider considering.  Still, I do not receive snarky self-important arrogance from anyone but truly open joy and love.. and sincere longing after Hilda.

But that and many truths like it are things eyes full of material things seem endlessly unable to see. 

I wonder what logs are in my developed world eyes, ears and thinking that have kept me blind to things I am still unaware of. 

There is singing on campus.  Where I am not welcome without bribery to pave the way.  The roots of life here are getting loosened..  it is painful, but obedience doesn’t have to be easy.    

There has been drama that Hilda would have attended since my return.  The upshot has been conversation into that drama, naming and addressing it as drama, and then by adding another precious one in need to come, shop for, and prepare food three days a week.  That food to feed this little team of now four locals helping one foreign national seven days a week, as they are present.    

I come from a background of no excuses.  This brings me close to many living here and struggling knowing they are the only worldly hope for family to eat this morning, this evening, and maybe tomorrow.  This background built in me from the loving efforts to raise the young me made by those who survived global economic depression and war, and principally one of their parents from the 1890’s.

Is it any wonder that younger people nearly everywhere don’t get me?  The roots of life here are getting loosened..  it is painful, but obedience doesn’t have to be easy. 

A mother and pregnant daughter acquaintance of Hilda came last week to ask me to take the pregnant daughter and the child, after it is born, with me to America as I return to Hilda.  I had to explain that if it weren’t for the helpful, open, and diligently willing officials at the airport, after travelling all the way back here, whom I could speak with face to face, that I would have been denied re-entry into TZ. 

That even into the last hour before leaving Hilda in a parking lot in Colorado, I had been denied an honest entry visa into TZ by the on-line greater authority with endless demands for more documents that do not exist, more photos of my photos, and this after already accepting the required fees.  The roots of life here are getting loosened..  it is painful, yet obedience doesn’t have to be easy.

That young pregnant woman and her mother were unaware that as TZ treats people invisible to them on-line, except for money, so does our blessed nation at home, for good or ill. 

I have not heard from that desperate mother, and her mother since that visit.  I cannot willingly contribute to any culture of lies so I made no promises about anything after explaining the seeming impossibility of transporting Tanzanian citizens to the United States only on my own authority.  The roots of life here are getting loosened..  it is painful, yet obedience doesn’t have to be easy.

A broken down old logger, farmer, and garbage man daring to write about God?  Arrogance?  Or, proof?  Proof that God is in it, as no church or appropriate acceptable church sanctioned education can take credit for itself? 

I find that except for delivering messages to children, Sunday worship at the Cathedral and shopping on Saturday for the week, I may be hiding out here in the house working diligently to write my way through the last half of the church year’s lesser festivals for inclusion in a book that addresses no immediate needs.  No immediate life building, sustaining, maintaining needs yet may be the best and only work that can come through me for any willing to consider considering.  

Consider considering eternal blessings and truthful assured promises by.. living ultimate authority.  Not national authority.  Not cultural authority.  Not temporally confined familial authority.  Not church authority.  Living ultimate authority.

There is a conversation surrounding children that defines teaching about God that seems to forsake empty stomachs and wasted minds as child abuse.  That those who raise their children in faith for faith in God are in fact abusers of those children. 

But, what is more abusive?  Leaving God’s children ignorant of forever so they never discover ultimate authority and eternal value of faith with it?  Or, letting faith put the work, whatever that work may be before you and then shutting up and doing it.  Having faith that even one moment of an infant in the arms of a mother or grandmother, lets that infant see in the living image of God before them, questions and fulfilled promises that last longer than any lifetime on this earth.

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Even as I hideout here working in this scribal endeavor, the hideout itself is torn open.  The living barrier all around the short row of little houses is being torn out by hand.  There are about eight workers outside all calling to each other as ‘brother’ diligently doing work that for them is blessing.  Blessing even as work like this could be done by me alone and in shorter time in the states with an excavator.  But that does not exist for regular folks here.  So machete and pick, shovel and sweat.  I’ve done that too in my ridiculous life of ridiculous ideas and doings.

The living wall is to be replaced with a rock one, a well footed barrier to animals both human and non-human, except for the ones who walk or climb on or over walls.  The landlord, another old one like me, who can usually be seen struggling to walk from campus to his property behind this little row of houses, was here yesterday standing up straight his eyes alight and eager with joy on a face normally strained.  His long suffering plans are coming together well.  I don’t think they are entirely plans that are his alone, not with that joyful expression on a brother’s face.

Shhh..  don’t tell anyone.. Even as campus authorities deny and slander, campus security who have been getting the same messages as the children a couple kilometers away, have promised landlord that they will watch out for his tenants while the hideout is torn open.  Torn open to let complete desperation that America no longer knows in any meaningful way at all, walk in to where they can see something that people have made in an attempt to bring order to a few square meters.

Order or Chaos, one step apart.  I’m not insisting stepping which way takes you to or from chaos or order, just that, here it is.  Just like for my beloved home culture and people a world away only it seems there, a world away, there is not care to consider considering it.  

Obedience is hard.  But, Hilda is smiling..

Your prayer again.  Thank you.

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

The book of messages written from Tanzanian Lutheran Church lectionary in two languages is still in process but nearing completion. 

Closing Africa house and returning to Hilda I pray will be easy, no matter how impossibly hard.   Deserting the loved ones there is extremely painful.  Perhaps, with today’s tech, it won’t be as complete a desertion as it was in the past.  We’ll see if there is interest here for connection in the face of perceived rejection. 

Long way to go, still..  Your prayer deeply sought for this work too.  Thank You.

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

Keep our feet to the fire, please.  Thank You!

We may live dangerously, but we are alive.  Thank you for praying us the courage to live this way, if dangerously.  We don’t see it that way.

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

You who read and pray and suffer along with us.  Please believe what we get to see.  Thank you for praying our strength and guidance for each moment with each face.   Folks like you are beyond precious. 

vwilliamson@sprynet.com

Really blessed while deeply under attack..  all of it is spiritual..  I wish I could teach that to everyone so they could truly know it.  I didn’t know it for far too long. 

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.

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

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 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