July 2018 – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

July 3, 2018July 2, 2018

Prized Care

The mission pastor once asked my wife to preach for an upcoming Sunday service. But only once.

William Moseti, a man of little schooling, yet displaying qualities people admire in a leader. Kindness, humility, wisdom, a warm-hearted chuckle behind a ready smile. Pastor Moseti had assigned our firstborn child a nickname.

Two-year-old Julie, abounding in energy, woke up each morning with a zest for life. In her often-excited moments, she could get loud and, to Pastor William, the label, “Duka-la-kelele” (the noise store) fit perfectly. Some weeks went by.

“Mama Julie”, Pastor William greeted Ann as they crossed paths on the mission station, “you must give the sermon this Sunday at the church.”

Most of us remember times when we wished we had thought of the just-right response to a remark.

“Sure, Pastor”, Ann smiled. “I’ll be glad to. . . but only if you will watch Duka-la-kelele for me while I speak.” When service time came, William happily took up his preaching spot at the mission pulpit.

Tending to the cares of little ones under their charge, young mothers across the globe rival the world’s strongest endurance athletes. In addition to making do with rationed bathing water during dry seasons while attending to cloth-diapered babies, Ann rushed to the aid of each child wherever a crisis, big or small, broke out.

When toddler Scott got suddenly run over by a motorcycle steered by a Biker-wannabe. . . her teenaged boyfriend the self-appointed driving coach.
When five-year-old Amy careened to the gravelly playground face-first from a towering sliding board’s highest perch, leaving her poor face battered and momentarily rearranged.
Through a long night vigil at Julie’s bedside during an especially painful ear infection.

Our family’s bouts with everything from food poisoning to parasites to malaria – and any number of other afflictions – were regularly met with Ann’s prompt, skilled, and prayerful action. A pithy verse from a book of poetry beckons a response we gratefully offer,

“Honor her for all that her hands have done,
let her works bring her praise at the city gate.”

Proverbs 31.31

July 11, 2018

Foreboding

Considering the severe hardships missionaries have encountered through the centuries, our valley of 1984 could seem trite by comparison. For us it was raw pain.

What just happened?

The question had us reeling as my wife and I made our way back from Dallas to our temporary residence in East Texas – Carthage, where our family was part way through our stateside furlough.

Ann and I had served in East Africa 12 years up to this point. We had just been broadsided by news that we may be ‘disinvited’ to return to our post. The past six years had been among the richest of our lives to date. Amy, our cheery third-born, had been added to our family a year ago. Her siblings, Julie and Scott, were content as ever – growing friendships, learning, thriving. The Extension Training I had brought to the region and was overseeing had expanded and, by every account, was cherished by those it served.

“You need to fly to Nairobi, Jerry. I think it’s necessary for you to clear the air with what’s going on with you and the Kenyan leadership.”

The senior-most American leader in the Africa work, sitting opposite us now, offered his opinion in a near mater-of-fact voice. Yet, his manner conveyed an ominous urgency. “You need to meet with the Council face-to-face to get this resolved.”

We left the Dallas restaurant having barely touched our salads, both of us bewildered. After a few silent miles, Ann spoke. “What was that about. . . Get what resolved, Jerry?” Ann’s words echoed my own upside-down ponderings. What is happening. . . what?

As the Dallas bombshell news began seeping its way into our souls, Ann and I were reminded of a hint of something just a few days earlier. A co-worker and friend had phoned us from Kenya, feeling compelled to connect. He shared of some fuzzy word going around that Missionary Lout was possibly in trouble. But no details accompanied the reports. All he’d heard were guesses, conjectures. No one was defining what seemed to be afoot.

St. John of the Cross – a Christian mystic of long ago – spoke once of ‘the dark night of the soul’. The dark had started descending. Soon I would board a plane to cross the world, not knowing why.

July 18, 2018

The Unknowing

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience,

but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to

rouse a deaf world.” – C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

***

What awaits me down there, really?

A few minutes earlier, as the great aircraft began its descent to Nairobi’s mile-high runway, I had drawn the Navy-blue passenger blanket away from my head and shoulders. The covering had served to conceal a stubborn trickle of tears that had persisted these past minutes.

Inside I knew I had not come to this place entirely on my own. . . knew that God had journeyed together with Ann and me from the outset along this sudden bewildering trail, a pathway ending who knew where? Still, I could not recall in my lifetime bearing such a sense of ‘aloneness’. I sat in a cloister of fellow passengers gazing out the plane’s window onto a land beneath of fifteen million inhabitants. It didn’t matter. Alone is alone regardless the surroundings.

Lord, I do need your presence. Be near me these coming days.

My tired mind went over again the sequence of events these past weeks.

So what is the missing piece, where is the accusation, what is the scandal. . . Is there one? Why would I be disinvited to serve in this land, among this people we’ve grown to care so deeply about?

The grand ball of sun had for an hour been inching its way above the Indian Ocean 200 miles eastward, its revealing light stretching inland, drenching the Nairobi Game Park that lay near the capital city’s airport at the city’s edge. I well knew that giraffe, zebra, antelope and the occasional pride of lion had long wakened to the sun’s encroaching blaze, their animal senses already on high alert. Knew this even as I detected my own protective instincts rising.

Certainly, as with all long-term residents coming from an outside culture, I had made my share of goofs, mis-pronouncing language, klutzy embarrassments that locals regularly let slide. In the end though, search for it as I might, no complaint of my violating any cultural, moral or religious code came to my mind.

Thuh-THUMP. The plane touched down and her sturdy tires soon moved us toward the mobile stairways for our exit.

I was “home”, where I had first landed a dozen years ago. But this was different. . . the first time in my overseas travels without my dear wife. She and our children, thousands of miles distance, would await word of my safe arrival. I felt the sense of aloneness threaten me again. Mercifully, a flight attendant’s voice sounded in a microphone.

“Please take care leaving, ladies and gentlemen, that you remember your carry-on items. And mind the steps as you move down to the tarmac.”

Stepping outside and onto the stairway platform, carry-on in hand, I paused a moment and drank in the Africa air. Then, trailing a chatty group of tourists toward the tarmac below I stole a further look across the Kenya landscape.

How much longer will this be our home?