Passover

8a.m.Good Friday.

They were out of school because it is Good Friday.  Man-Cub would say “It’s Good Friday because we are outta school”.  So they played to their hearts content in the glorious freedom of MK’s in Africa. 

5p.m.Passover. 

Tonight we got to participate in our first Passover dinner.  The kids watched Prince of Egypt and we are reading in a story bible about the Exodus.  It’s a different emphasis on the meaning of this day, but one I am glad to be connecting in the synapses of their heart and heads.  Freedom.  Deliverance.

7:30p.m.Two little kids falling asleep all over me at the church service tonight.  How am I going to get them home? Daktari was here with us a minute ago, but he was paged up to help a lady with pulmonary embolism who isn’t going to make it through the night.  Now the lights of the meeting room are dimming and the candles being extinguished and it’s raining- the blessed rain that makes such sweet melodies on these tin roofs.  How am I going to get these children home?

“I’m carrying you home baby”, I say as she feels the cold water from the sky hit her sweet little legs.  Two Kenyan defense forces security guards are patrolling the night with great big guns hanging around their necks.  They ask me “habari mtoto?”- How’s the child?  I tell them she’s just sleeping and thank them for their work here.  We appreciate them. 

I think about the Roman soldiers patrolling the night in Jerusalem, Mary and Jesus, the Pieta. We sang O Sacred Head Now Wounded up there in the meeting room on the hill, just inside the staff gate of the hospital. 

I think about Garissa, Kenya.  147 mothers wanting more than anything to carry their sons or daughters home from there. 147 fathers waiting more than watchmen wait for the morning to hear from a son or daughter that they will still be coming home.  These were the valedictorians, the top students in high school.  They have to work so, so hard to get to a university in Kenya.  Their families have worked unbelievably hard at raising funds to get a student through university in Kenya.  Now the families will be carrying them home for burial.

I cannot process this event.  I cannot fathom the shock and grief and outrage.  Writing helps.  But really I can only carry my babies home and be so thankful for their sleepies that keep them needing me.  Their little requests for water at night, for one more story and the contented sigh of well-entered rest inside the mosquito net keep my heart so thankful for them.  They have no idea.

10a.m.Tomorrow- we will get up and scramble around like crazy candy addicts searching for bright plastic eggs and try to connect it all somehow to Jesus. 

6a.m. Sunday- We will watch the sunrise over a big wooden cross and stand in its shadow to decorate it with flowers.  147 mothers and 147 fathers will stand in the shadow of the cross somewhere all over Kenya with their shock and grief and outrage, and they will be able to look up at the Father who saw His Son die for them.  And He will say “I’m carrying your baby home too”.  Lord, please.  Let them see that you are there.

Seasons

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Cattle being herded through the capital city streets, mountains of mangos for sale on tables piled high with big black avocados. A thin layer of dirt is veiling everything and a sun radiating brilliantly into the pollution of a city bursting at the seams.  Nairobi.  They are zooming past the industrial age and into technology and Chinese investments shaped like enormous concrete monoliths of Babel as they scrape skywards out of poverty. 

We go to the city once in a while to be away from the weight and nearness of tragedy in the hospital.  We go to buy chicken and cheese and coffee (mostly to buy coffee really).  Nairobi is exhausting in a different way so it relocates the normal stress and that is good enough to call it a “break”.  It is a changing place and gives us a change of pace.

Daktari is hard at work this Saturday morning where 50% of his patients live with HIV or die with AIDS, and the other 50% have heartbreaking illnesses too but are just more complicated to understand and impossible to deal with.   Sometimes all a person can do is to be there as the face of Love to the dying.  He doesn’t pretend anymore to be the face of hope.  But the Love of God is constant.

  In the cool dark of this morning, tropical birds call me to rise and get to the day’s work before the day gets to me, and a beautiful African song echoes up the hill from a nearby school.  This may be what it was like for Eve or Lucy or whoever at the dawn of time in Africa. Pure and perfect for a moment.

But today I’d rather listen to Alan Jackson.  He reminds me of where I come from.  Country music is a still life in a swirling world of changes.  It’s good to remember where you come from when you come from somewhere like my home.   The constant of home is in moms and dads and sisters and cousins who love us and in the churches who sent us out with love and generous prayers for our journey.  It is the strength of deep roots allowing us to branch out so far into this unexplainable, unpredictable and ruggedly beautiful place.

The strength of constant love at home is allowing our children to exhilarate in their free-range lifestyle here.  They climb to breathtaking heights in trees.  They soar in the green meadows.  Like Kenya, they too are zooming through developmental years, growing taller and more angular with each new morning.   Their dirty feet signify a good day’s work and the thorns remind them of their vulnerability.  They are learning what it means to be at the mercy of the rains and the Maker of the Rains.  We take them to the river to watch the water levels fall and rise.  And to pray.

Like Kenya and our kids, our seasons are changing.  Rains have come like an Amazing Grace on a tin roof.  We are in the 4^th quarter of our 2 year term. Hope is perched mid-summer on the calendar for that mythical land called home.  But changes come to us all and home will be changed, as we will be changed.  Yet Love remains the constant.  And since it’s Saturday, I’ll just sit still and listen to Alan Jackson for a while.

A Little Journey to Rwanda

 It has been long since we last wrote an update, and I wanted to write a short story to reconnect us.

The first week in February I (Mike) took a trip to Rwanda to visit some Australian friends, the Walkers, who work in an Internal Medicine residency training program, and to teach a few lectures at the University of Rwanda Medical School.

It was a deeply refreshing and stimulating experience, the family hosting me was extraordinarily hospitable and gracious.  The training program is taught at a very high level of medical expertise.  And I didn't have to make any life or death decisions for a whole week.  It was something of a nerd's vacation.

Pictured here are some images from a hiking trip into the surrounding volcanic mountain ranges (no gorillas, we were on the southern end of Rwanda).  And below are some still shots of an immunology drama which I dreamed up to illustrate the cellular immune response to infection.  It's a 4 part drama of cellular warfare, good guys (immune cells) vs. bad guys (bacteria/viruses), with various weaponry (antibiotics).  These residents have knowledge and curiosity at a deep level of medicine.  They challenged my teaching ability and encouraged me deeply that they are the bright hope of medicine in Africa.

Born Free

Sometimes it's no wonder that missionaries end up a little awkward after enduring so many awkward moments in this life uncommon.  But I really do love how my own quirks jive so (seemingly) well in Kenyan culture.  For instance, I will never be accused of being type A but that's okay here.  Because if I make plans, things fall apart.  If I just roll with it as it happens, my creativity breathes and things tend to happen that we never expected but are grateful for by the end of the day.  I deeply love that aspect of our life in Kenya. 

Last week we were honored guests (read: token white people) at a passing out party. What the heck is a passing out party you ask? It is when a boy goes through initiation rites and passes out of childhood and into young manhood and then he comes back home for a celebration.   There was a party tent and a sound system and we were asked to make several speeches.  Fortunately for us, our kids love to hear themselves on a microphone and they even sang 2 solos as part of the circus act (Please consider paying for their therapy when we reintegrate into mainstream society).  If you know the Man-Cub, you may have guessed that he sang his favorite song "Go Tell it on the Mountain".  But the Little Miss, she sings her own music. 

Today Little Miss has left "free" and graduated to four.  She can actually pronounce "three" now that it comes to a close all too soon.  But she will always be free.  Her spirit is singing her own song- passionate- imaginative- and free as the wind blows.  She loves the original Elsa- the lioness that was "Born Free".  

Four years ago Little Miss was born as the darkest night in some 600 years ended and turned into light.  It was a full moon that was totally eclipsed on the winter solstice.  And she tore into this world like a rocket ablaze with love and joy and strong feelings whichever way they go. Never did a baby scream as loud as that child on the beautiful marvelous night she was born.  I remember how strangely empty inside I felt after her entry into the world.  Though I held her in my arms it was already an act of separation.  She came as a gift that I couldn't keep to myself.  

A wise person once said that we know God best in our missing Him.  

Beautiful, surprising, passionate zeal for life.  She has helped us to know God better from day one.

 

Advent

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I usually do my best thinking on scraps of worthless paper.  This faded folded piece of red construction paper was tucked in my purse one day a while back when I was taking a lady to the hospital.  Jotting down my observations back then, this is what I pull out today:

A 2^nd hand McDonalds uniform shirt delights and even entices me in the emergency room (called “casualty” here).  A Maasai woman in spectacular bling bling of beads and shiny silver on age old stretched out ear lobes, shaven head, black wrinkled skin like tar-pits swallowing an old dinosaur.  Who will save us from this body of death?

Crowded, quiet, curious, stares at the white lady.  Yes, even I have a body of death too.  We are bound by corruption inherited through our cells and genes and traditions and systemic oppressions. 

Daktari has been blazing bright in his work.  He is alone now.  And the suffering of his patients day after day after day has taken a toll.  He calls them the 20-20-20 club.  The 20 yr old woman with a CD-4 count of 20 (advanced AIDS) and she is typically 20 weeks pregnant: they come in frequently and do poorly.

Who will save us from this soul crushing fatalism that is life in Africa?

Mama said there’d be days like this.

And even Jesus said in this world we’d have trouble.  But here’s one thing that’s True too:  He will never leave us.  So we don’t give up on Him.

Now you know how to pray for us I hope.   I promise to be more merry and bright in the next post.  Watch for it.  Wait for it.  Don’t give up on me either.

November

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I love America. 

I love drinking tap water.

I love living in a Norman Rockwell. Or a Grandma Moses.

I love seasons in America.  Pumpkin season hits us with irony.  For one, we don’t do Halloween and two, just a few weeks ago in Kenya a nameless family member in Daktari’s house requested that we “take a break” from eating pumpkins for a while.  We eat them as vegetables in Kenya.  Not lattes.  We also eat a lot of cabbage.

At least there is no cabbage flavor craze in America too. 

I love Americans. I know how to navigate expected cultural norms and behaviors.  I can read people here  (Not that it takes a rocket scientist to read what many Americans are thinking).   Living cross culturally allows one to engage extra neurons at all times just trying to understand what’s going on.  It’s nice to relax that muscle a little and just sit back to enjoy the show-

Leaves blowing and long shadows, the slanted light at noon and where daylight is unnaturally shortened in one fell swoop of mass confusion called “fall back”.  Even the crickets seem to disoriented as to what time to chirp. Our life on the equator doesn’t get this same kind of seasonal drama and beauty.  We do get beauty, and drama, and seasons of wet or dry, but not this concoction of October in East Tennessee.   Fall used to make me kind of depressive and feeling like something good was going away too fast, but this time it just looks golden.

We have been in the US so that daktari could take an infectious diseases board exam. 

As he studied for it, I made an important non-medical discovery:

My discontent will not be bound by continents.  As a traveler who has lived overseas, there will be dings and dents in my shell wherever I go. In our home culture I carry traits from my host culture, and in my host culture we carry our home culture more than we can even realize.   That might explain why they say that missionaries are most content when they are on the airplane.

Recently we were walking in a pasture at our family’s farm when Little Miss told me “I don’t want to go in there cause there’s cow p**p there”.  Ah ha.  She too will always have an element of discontent.  Perhaps St. Paul learned the secret to being content whatever the circumstances, but I my friends, I have mastered the mad skill of discontent no matter how golden the circumstances.   Walking in fields of gold, Canaan land, our Nahala.  Then bam! Cow poop.  There’s a lot of optimists in the Daktari farm family and they’d say “ah, smells like money”.  There’s a lot of realist in me and I say “Well, it does happen”.

In Kenya I long for things at "home" in America and in America, things aren't all that perfect either, come to find out.

The struggle is to see Beauty that is right in front of us but hidden from view.   

In Kenya, when we go on safari, I always pray for open eyes to see the wonder and beauty of creation, alert to the intricacies.  Sometimes we find the most beautiful bird in all the world perched on bare branches against the sky- the Lilac Breasted Roller.  Sometimes we find a pride of lions camouflaged in the tall grass right beneath our feet.  You don’t see these things by default because only grace will allow it.  And if I pray for eyes to see what beauty God has for me each day, I end up surprised at the amazing interactions with people that I get to have.  In Kenya, a day without relating to people is like a day un-lived.  There is amazing beauty in relationships.

But Beauty is not my natural bent either.  I have to request the grace to find it.  The contrary nature of my heart is not contrite usually.  I am trained to think “yeah, but” as a pre-fix on my responses. Ever since that Fall in the Garden, I've got snake venom in my eye.  I tend to see the bad over the good.  And I have the dastardly pride to feel superior for my critical viewpoint.  Yes, I’m a flop in many departments of my soul. 

But here’s the Good News:  God loves me.  And my heart is being wooed by this persistent Love that is not shocked by my failings nor jaded by my weak recoveries.  I believe that God is neither naïve nor jaded and still chooses to love me.  That is grace.  That is why we are returning back to Africa this week, neither (too) naïve nor jaded (quite yet), and profoundly trusting in God’s love for us to be enough. 

And out of that grace, contentment is born in all circumstances. 

We fly out Nov.14.

Daktari Kids on One Year

saying goodbye last year

Good goodbyes help us make good hellos.

One year ago yesterday we flew away from the homeland.  Everything was awesome.  Until Man-Cub realized this was good bye.  A cousin and grandparents stood there in the new E concourse at the world's best airport watching as we approached the x ray and metal detector  and his heart broke out like a cup of pocket change.  Then we were all in tears.  They waved until we were out of sight. 

And a big metal bird carried us away to the land of our sojourn. 

Man-Cub and Little Miss "Free years old" have been thriving though.  There have been lots of changes and developments in their tender little hearts over the past year.  And (just) one broken arm and two lost teeth.

As they flip and jump off of "Mt. Ever-blanket" on the couch, I conduct a little interview on this past year in Kenya. 
Man-Cub, how long have you been in Kenya?  a year.
How old are you now?  6.  That's sita in Kiswahili.
What is your school like?  I am in first grade.  4 kids in my class.  "Aunt" Erin is our teacher.  She's my best buddy Cooper's mom.
Where is your school?  In somebody's basement, that is the Chupp's house.
How do you get to school?  Walk.  About 30 meters or so.

What do you like about Kenya?
Man-Cub:There is a lot of space to run.  There are some of the same things here like tractors, trucks, and milkshakes and bananas.  But the bananas are sweeter.

Little Miss what do you like in Kenya? Horses!  Horseback riding! And I saw a camel once in Nairobi.  There was nobody on it.  We were in the car but I wanted to ride it.
What else? Books.  Peter-Pan.  Tinkerbell. 
Okay.  What fun things do you do here? Play with Ellie.

What does your dad do?  Go to work.  Eat lunch.  And heal the people.
 Who heals people, Little Miss?  Jesus.
What does Jesus want us to do?  Be kind.

Man-Cub, what is your favorite thing to do here?  Play.
How often do you go outside? Everyday for five hours at least.  We go in the car about once a week.
What do your mom and dad do? Computer work.  And talk to people.
Oh, I see.
What did you do yesterday morning?  We went to a robber boy's house.  He's 7.  His nickname was Osama.  His real name though is Emmanuel.  We talked to him and gave him forgiveness and a Bible.  We told him to call himself Emmanuel.
Anything else? We told him God loves him.  And God is with us.
Were you glad you did that?  Yea.  Cause that's our job to do that cause we are missionaries.

What is something difficult for you here? Something that is difficult is I have to make new friends and leave the others in America.
Is there anything you don't like about Kenya? That there's not many toys to buy cause they break too easily.
Oh, do you think you might run out of toys? nnnn...(laughing) no!
Tell me, where are you going in October? WE ARE GOING TO AMERICA for 2 weeks!
That sounds great. Is your dad taking his Infectious Diseases board exam? Yes.       


So thanks everyone, for praying us through this first year.  We do depend so much on the God Who Hears our prayers.  Please continue to lift us up for protection, mercy, and that the Gospel will be known.  Here is a prayer called "Eli's Song" that was written by Rich Mullins. You can pray it for these kids.  Especially for Emmanuel across the river.

O Eli
There's a sanctity in your innocence

A certain beauty and no uncertain strength
That brings me to the faith
I don't know if I
If I am climbing to or falling in

But it comes like grace from your tiny hands
When I hold you in mine
And I pray that the eyes
Of your heart

Shine bright
With the hope to which you're called
And may you know with all the saints
The height, the depth, the width, and the length

Of the love of God
O Eli
There's a joy in your sweet abandon
Like the cowgirl ballerina

Leaves that ride
The wild and holy bucking wind that the sky
Sent through you to blow away these walls I've built
That leave me free to be a child

And I pray that the eyes
Of your heart
Shine bright
With the hope to which you're called

And may you know with all the saints
The height, the depth, the width, and the length
Of the love of God
O Eli

There's a joy in your sweet abandon
Like the cowgirl ballerina
Leaves that ride
The wild and holy bucking wind that the sky .

  

The missionary kids first day of school. Cinderella is in preschool.