Dear Cherished Interested’s, November 4th & 11th 2024
I had been disheartened when delivering a message to the
guard station I pass when travelling to and from the Secondary School on
Friday. Two weeks of prior messages were
laying on the ground in the mud. So I
asked the only guard on site if he wanted the message for Sunday, he bent
collecting the prior messages from the mud and nodded verbalizing an
affirmative, so it was placed in his hand.
On the way to church, dawn just breaking, I stopped at the
small gate to the university and hopped out.
Two young guards came out smiling and I folded the message open to the
beginning of the Swahili, handing it to the elder of the two. As I was getting back into the truck and
fastening my seatbelt, I heard the older guard reciting the Swahili message to
the younger guard. Cool..
Another copy dropped off at the main university gate for the
invisible hands there. Beautiful open
smile from the woman on duty. Cool..
Yesterday, Sunday was men’s day for running service(s). Four or five at the Cathedral alone. The Pastors were all away. The last Pastor who had come to start things,
leaving, as I arrived for English Service about half an hour early.
I was directed by the men officiating the English service to
read the Psalm at beginning of service.
Then as a young elder with several young children started his sermon for
the people, I was asked to stand and define what family is. This before what turned out to be a challenge
to fathers, to be fathers, to not give up, to not shirk, to hold on knowing that
God wants fathers to love. To lead in
love in ways that point to what God does to bring us into eternal family. Not bad for a group of us men..
Before service started, there was an ity-bity sitting with
her mama in front of me who turned around in total shock. She looked at me and I smiled back. That was a mistake. She couldn’t crawl into her mother’s arms
fast enough, just a wailing in fear. I walked
forward and got a couple worship books handing one to the shaking, crying one’s
mother and another to a young lady sitting in the same pew as me. Her mother and siblings directly behind her.
As the services were all laity-led, one service and
officiants would be departing and another would be in the wings gathered and
ready to lead the next service in the Cathedral space. While leaving, I was facing that next group
of officiants walking to enter from the front of the church. Faces
from up the mountain, had come down to join the work. Faces that saw me and stopped processing to
smile huge and greet me shaking hands and speak to me in the little bit of Meru
they knew I could share with them. The
stodgier strait-faced attendants of the Cathedral proper shocked that the white
guy who chose to worship among them for years now, would be greeted in their
mother tongue in such overtly accepting and loving ways by those coming down to
help.
It became open laughter and a moment of challenge accepted
with smiles of happiness and smiles of chagrin all around. The Mountain men calling me their Meru given
name for me, joyfully receiving blessing from me in that briefly shared
language, and then still laughing, processing in a jog to worship leaving the
more proper-practiced to catch up, also laughing.
That’s cool.
A little way along the track, alley, to the house, another
ity-bity all by himself next to where motorcycles and other vehicles pass,
stretched as high with his waving hand as he could to say high to the hairy
thing from up near the end of their dirt track.
This is something you have done by praying too. Thank you
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Friday I collected a young husband and father who had come
and found me for help. A contemporary
young Maasai Mchungaji looking every part the developed world person trusting
me to help him do something that took time and fuel but no cash. We
are out of cash. We left everything that
was ours to leave with God’s growing family here. We have also left everything you have trusted
to us. Thank you for that trust. In order to get Hilda safely situated in
Colorado we had to borrow money again, like young people.
We left with daybreak heading for the bush community
Maroroni, south of both Maji Ya Chai and Kikatiti. It only takes a moment after turning off the
blacktop of the big road out to the National Parks to be rolling over cobbles
and dust rubbed loose from gouges and ruts from rainy season washouts. Tracks, not roads.
Children are everywhere.
Most little primary students pack jugs to collect water to and from
school. That and the firewood they work
together to gather both ways to take home too. People
still believe in life here. People still
regard children as blessing even as those children have what may be seen as
inconceivably hard lives from our home cultural perspective. I grew
up on family farm, learning mechanized farming from the generation who had
stopped using horses and brought the first tractors onto the farm to roughly
coincide with the World War 2 effort to feed half of the world’s Army’s and
shattered civilian populations around the globe.
My world did not make logical sense to my classmates growing
up, let alone my children, but my eyes included training by people born in the
1800’s. That has been extremely valuable
here.
We carefully got around or through flocks / herds of goats
and cattle, lean large eared donkeys laden with a hundred liters of water or
more apiece among nearly everything else possible here. One donkey cart full of older children going
to secondary school, beyond logical capacity with people jumping off or running
up behind to jump on. Two jersey cow
sized donkeys doing all the work with no reins of any kind, only long whip-ended
stick from the eldest boy perched on the cart front.
We gathered this young pastor’s spouse and infant daughter
from his parent’s home, after sharing cups of Chai. This young mother had nearly not survived
childbirth. This infant girl had nearly
not survived her coming into the world.
Both mother with surgical incisions impeding every step, every move, and
infant daughter got into the back seat of the truck with a living angel. A Maasai mother-in-law who guarded, attended
and facilitated silently with huge smile of affirmation every step of her
daughter-in-law. I had brought Tylenol
with me so that young mother had taken two about 15 minutes before trying to
climb into the truck. This was the first
and only pain management she has had.
An hour later they were together at Hospital. Wonderful news is that they are both doing
extremely well. Good news is that they
are safely back home having survived the trip out of the bush and back. The best news is that mother-in-law. Strong, determined, joyful, infinitely loving
of a young daughter given her by her son.
We
stopped at the market day in Kikatiti on the way home, both she and that young
pastor went off to collect supplies to the bed of the truck. When we got them home the loose ndizi,
plantain, in the bed of the truck needed gathering and this grandmother took
off like the wind, leaping around like those young secondary students earlier
in the day, gathering buckets from around the homestead for filling without
missing a single step of her daughter-in-law.
I was fed Loshoro, cold gruel of sour milk and puffed
swollen, not popped, corn kernels, before I was allowed to take that young
father back to university. Even the
stick figure cats and kittens were unafraid of the people in that home who
shared that gruel with them.
One of the better fed village cats just ran by through the
razor wire on top of the wall outside being chased by a monkey. Here, in town, both monkeys and cats get
kicked and stones thrown at them. It was
wonderful to get back into the bush where living things are included as they
can be.
Your prayer does things like this too. Thank you.
------------------------------------
Plan for Tuesday is to take what we have managed to
translate and go visit local print shops.
God has to do this too. Pray
Hilda and I can afford this even here, no way in America. Thank you.
First snow hit the ground around the campus in Greeley this
weekend. I have to get back to Hilda.
Closing Africa house and returning to Hilda I pray will be
easy, no matter how impossibly hard. Deserting the loved ones there/here 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.
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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