Dear Cherished Interested’s, September 11th 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 8th
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.
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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.
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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.
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.
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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 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
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