Dear Cherished Interested’s, December 30th 2024
Hilda and I got our Christmas together. Happy New Year.
51 hours of travel and delays without any place to lift my
feet or sleep in any meaningful way, got us together near the baggage claim in Colorado
Springs Airport, very delayed, and very late Christmas Eve.
My carry on luggage has no wheels. I carry it.
So combined with my relative antiquity and degraded by the journey
energy, I am not the quickest nor first anywhere in an airport anymore. Still, upon my ears perceiving a familiar happy
squeak, my right hand joyfully dropped the soft-side fabric Tz homespun
suitcase to instead catch Hilda’s full speed arms-wide embrace of greeting. God is good!
We overnighted nearby and were welcomed by our eldest and
her family for a time together on Christmas Day. God does cool things. We traveled north over two hours to Greeley arriving
before dark.
The next morning we gathered at a small local restaurant
owned and operated by people who have adopted and included and watched over
Hilda for her four months living here alone.
God does cool things.
We ate, chatted around the busy-ness of family run business
and then tried to be effective finding common cords with standard ends that
would allow plugging computers into U.S. power.
Breakfast went great. No success
with the rest. We have made do for now. Then.. I got very sick.
I drove us back to the apartment but was done for nearly
four days. Hilda got sick a day or two
after me.
God does cool things.
We, together, had gotten time with children and grands. We, together, had shared time with loving local
caregiving people. Then, together, we
were isolated in a lonely high-rise apartment on an empty university campus too
sick to even try to find medical assistance.
And so took care of each other.
That is precisely how we started forty years ago. We were not anything but open and vulnerable
in our known faults and needs then. God
wanted us, together, isolated in that place again. God is Good!
Preparing ahead of time for reemergence into the often infantilizing
and abusively que-ed medical scheme we operate under here in America, I came
with antibiotics and over a month’s supply of medications, with scripts from an
official hospital and real African Doctors in case some bright eyed customs
stalwart wanted to relieve me of them.
We had appropriate antibiotics for our needs to help us
fight a respiratory onslaught that has put us both down, but, together.
You-all are my first work, this is my first coherent
construct. I pray it seems so for you.
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For those in America who have lovingly prayed for us, Hilda
and I will work something out as soon as money permits to hopefully share
something of those messages for and from Tanzania with you too. Please Pray for this as we do NOT want to
leave your amazing praying hearts out of any of it.
So, now that God has reset me by humbling me once again with
a near and severe health challenge, let me try to be an ambassador for Christ
and his people.
Where there is desperation like our nation has not seen in
any significant way since perhaps the 1930’s, though I contend we likely need
to go further back in time. Where the divorce
from Pharaoh-onic tyranny has been less than complete in attempt to be short-term
kind. There exists many unfortunate
relationships birthed of unrealistic presumption. Hence if your culture has been one of lies,
like nearly all of human history, there is no qualm to adamantly declare yes to
get the attention and business of anyone who looks like the departed
pharaoh. Lies are a means. Our culture too often fails as well. And we cannot build anything of any true
value on lies.
God’s Kingdom is different.
John records for us that Jesus explains to Pontius Pilot that Jesus came
into the world to testify to the truth.
This is why we are so hurt by lies.
Our leadership, Jesus, does not support nor testify to lies. God’s Kingdom, Heavenly culture, is built
upon truth. Relativists, like Pontius,
will respond likewise to Pontius. We get
to choose our leadership. Jesus or
Pontius, Truth or expedience.
I was nearly certain that I will never return to Africa
again in my life. 51 hours of travel and
delays, four days so completely physically humbled and isolated with Hilda, and
I am no longer certain of anything but God.
Whatever whenever however, God willing.
Characters along the way..
His middle name is Christian, but it is only a name and yet
a deep cultural expression that motivates this other old guy from Copenhagen
who has been walking the same mountain with the same people we have. I met him while waiting to leave Kilimanjaro. After the long flight to Doha we sat together
in that hub airport of Arabia and my old face and shared places and people let
him open in ways he hasn’t been able to.
The children call him ‘father who wants our freedom’.
He boldly walks to every school in that region looking for
and confronting any signs of corporal punishment. He has cases before several layers of the
local judiciary and now high court which have consistently show manipulation
and disregard.
Safely with me he was able to be simply a human child of God
once again. His body too, is old and
broken but his eyes are full hard steel.
The details of what he has witnessed, uncovered and confronted are not
necessary to share but what is, is, his complete refusal to quit. He simply says that he cannot. He tells me that he knows that I cannot quit
either.
His cause is righteous, even as he may never trust the
church. His dedication to children, the vulnerable
responsible for building tomorrow, is righteous even as it may come from
empathy of shared trauma.
That is a massive failed human broken mess beating the weak
as they themselves had once been beaten.
The answer is Jesus. But if God’s
disciples refuse to move outside their comfort of familiar wounding’s found in
consumeristic expression and individual identity seeking, then God will and does
use any willing. However they are motivated. However incomplete or narrow their
approach. Even if God does not receive the
credit. God loves that much.
Please Pray for Nicholai.
He is willing to go to jail for children, confront immigration, that
hounded me too, for children, even die for children. Sounds like Jesus to me.. maybe not the church. Please Pray.
Sat next to a blonde white American sitting across the isle
from his wife from India. They were
returning from visiting family in India with their six beautiful children,
about 12 – 1 years old. Not a smart
phone nor computer screen among them.
They were the quietest children and family on the plane.. for 16
hours.
Good affirming conversation for that mother and father who
were obviously expecting judgement from me.
They home school. I can’t blame them. They now live in Texas where they can do lots
of things together as a family, most of those things productive things like
growing food and raising specialty flower stock. Even kids with kids of their own may need
affirmation from an old face, even one with a crucifix hanging beneath it.
Arab Doha has only been a deeply welcoming and civil hub
airport. Very busy. But indescribably more humane than Dallas.
Carlos Danger. Yes,
that is the name. I don’t know if he is
a character beyond looking every bit like a critical technician on a car racing
team, but his doctorates include law and economics. Universities taught at, including south America
and Europe? I truly don’t listen to
stuff like that. His visible persona is
a challenge to be left alone until he decides to ask questions and challenge. Then open up.
Then trust. Then open up more.
I got challenged. I
challenged back, hopefully with eternal things.
Cool.
There are a few more but that’s enough. Even in motion around the world God uses us.
Your prayer does things like this too. Please believe that.. Thank you.
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Closing Africa house will be happening mostly without
me. Stuff doesn’t matter except for what
deaths big or small it may allow others to strive after overcoming. This is still a place of tremendous premature
death. Right alongside still being a
place of tremendous life, including human life.
The two most overt miracles went to the airport with me
along with our two translators. Four
ladies across the back seat of that stupid little truck. Two Lutheran, Two Pentecostal, from four different
language and tribal groups. Three with
University degrees, two working on multiple degrees. As the sun was coming up it was quiet back
there and Mchungaji Daktari riding shotgun, turned to look. Amazed he turned forward to say, ‘They are all
crying.’
They had lost Hilda, they were now losing me. I relented upon getting out and yielded to
what those truly beautiful Godly precious African Women needed. They grabbed and threw my gear onto a cart which
the Pastor in training herself proudly pushed into the terminal for me.
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.
The gap is huge. Inconceivably
huge. Even when seen, lived and
encountered.
Perhaps having served here within the slaveries broken
humanity builds for themselves here, will allow us to better serve even within
my hyper-independent family, blindly fearful, self-servingly defiant, family of
all kinds wherever we are.
Going to rest for a while.
Christ’s Peace ever. Thank You.
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Keep our feet to the fire, please. Thank You!
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.
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
