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October 25, 2017

Removing Stones

“See this stone in the path? Now this one too, here in the picture on the same trail. . .”

I sat with half a dozen men, some a decade or more older than me. The hut we gathered in each week was roofed with long grass. The floor consisted of smooth, hardened dirt. A semicircle of dark benches carried our weight and were worn smooth, long sense having yielded up their last dangling splinter. It was Thursday and one of this week’s T.E.E. lessons focused on a visit Jesus had with a woman at a water well.

Mature, practical, sincere, the upcountry pastors and elders took in the illustration on the workbook’s open page. The image struck a chord. Two stumbling-stones, one representing male pride, the other, tribalism. The students had read the lesson’s introduction:

Here a woman of a different tribe met Jesus. Sometimes we let the division of tribes hinder God’s work. Male pride also hinders. These things are like big rocks in the pathway that make people stumble. In order to give the good news to the woman, Jesus overcame these two problems.

I reviewed the scene with the men.

“See the person Jesus found at the well. She not only was a woman. She also spoke with an accent. We know this because she was of a different tribe, another people.”

I look in the face of each man in our semi-circle.

“Can one of you describe this picture for us. Can you help the rest of us see what good thing Jesus wanted bring to the woman and what Jesus did to overcome two big problems so she could be helped.”

A pastor nodded. He launched in, reviewing the narrative, raising the matter of how women are often looked down upon, mistreated. The room was quiet. The pastor then spoke of hard issues related to tribalism, the challenges to go beyond it, as Jesus did.

“Can we trust the Lord is among us today? To help us to change?”

Heads nod. Confession is voiced by two or three. We pray.

Then go our ways, trusting him, friend of sinners, to lead.

October 27, 2017August 17, 2022

Just Do It

As a foreigner in a region where locals had rarely sighted a light-skinned person , I was learning the feeling of different.

During one season of discouragement, when my best efforts to connect with the Kuria seemed frail, I knelt on the concrete floor of a back room in our house. The prayer was brief, sincere, and seems as clear today as that morning I voiced it.

“God, please help these people know that I love them.”

In the silence an inner voice interrupted my pleadings. While it was kind, it was also direct, firm.

“Love them. You just love them.”

Just that. Simple and sparse, like a mail-order kit arriving without instructions.

How do I do this?

Years afterward a definition of Love crossed my path.

To will the good of another. I have yet to hear a phrase that, for me, better reflects the term.

I found myself in subsequent times revisiting the Bukuria scene. Going to my knees in blue jeans and t-shirt back then at that location fifteen hours’ drive from where Stanley met Livingstone under a Mango tree. I ponder again the response to my prayer on that day. Just love them

Gauging love, measuring its impact, seems not always easy.

***

“Mwalimu”.

Pastor Mwangi calling to me (‘Teacher’) lifted his textbook as in a gesture of devotion.

“Before you came with the teachings – before bringing us these Bible courses. . .” The pastor’s voice went low.

“. . back then, when on Saturdays I would prepare a sermon for my people on Sunday, I only knew to follow a certain way. I did not know another way.

“I would pray, close my eyes and open my Bible – letting it fall open where it would. Then, feeling the page, I let my finger go to a place there. Opening my eyes I looked at the place. The words there became my sermon scripture for Sunday.”

“It was all I knew”, he repeated. “I did not know another way.”

Pastor Mwangi concluded as if offering up a sacrament as well as a confession.

“Now I know the good way. Thank you for bringing this Bible School, this T.E.E. I feed my people now and they are helped.”

Mounting my motorcycle that afternoon, I turned toward home, warmed by a gratifying thought.

Thank you, Lord for your word, and for this means of sharing it here.

He (God) was willing the good of a tribal people hungry for truth and for him. And was letting me have a part – growing me in a small measure to care as he cares.

Just loving them. Together.

October 30, 2017October 30, 2017

Small Steps

Kristi Yamaguchi – not your average Yankee name. But America’s Olympian gold medalist in figure skating nailed it for people of all cultures with her take on ‘small steps’.

I learned to put 100 percent into what I’m doing. I learned about setting goals for myself, knowing where I want to be and taking small steps toward those goals. I learned about adversity and how to get past it.

Kristi packs six insights into this mini-paragraph. Spot them?

I find thoughts like these serve as little appetizers. For myself. Of hope, of vision. They seem something like echoes – God-thoughts.

I’ll never cut dance rhythms across a skating rink – smiling now at an amusing image.

But giving 100 percent toward something of worth, setting some goals, knowing where I’d like to be or what I’d like to become, spotting adversity and getting beyond it. Something about such things feels inviting. It stirs something in me, doesn’t it you? God-thoughts within our grasp. Worthy dreams to realize – moving there, a small step at a time.

So I run with purpose in every step. I am not just shadowboxing 1 Corinthians 9:26

November 1, 2017November 1, 2017

Mr. Buckley and Baby Scott

“And, Mommy, that’s Bohkeh and her sister, Rozi. There’s my friend Mwita with his uncle Chacha. . .HI Mwita, Hi Mzee Chacha!” Julie was leaning out the car window, waving.

It seemed our three-year-old social butterfly knew every name in the tribe. Was more than eager alerting them to her presence.

“Honey, we should get ready to leave for Nairobi. I’ve confirmed our room is still reserved at the Mennonite.” Ever the attentive planner, Ann was ready to get to the capital. Baby number two would be soon on its way and we needed a buffer period in the city to spare us a potentially hasty, six-hour delivery drive.

Of the city’s handful of guest houses, the Mennonite had become our favorite. We rolled up in our dingy-white Bug. The matron – Mrs. Hostetter, donning her small, white, circular head-piece – welcomed us. After a brief exchange, she excused herself with a smile, “Dinner is at 6:00. Enjoy your stay.”

***

“Jerry, we’d better get going.” Ann’s voice betrayed a familiar tone of two years earlier, signaling me to grab her small, shiny-red suitcase.

“OK, babe. Here we go!”

Late in the evening a nurse moved to my wife’s bedside.

“Mr. Buckley will be by to see you and your fine little boy, Mrs. Lout.”

This was a practice we still puzzle over. That it is only a fully-certified specialist who has his professional title elevated from ‘Doctor Buckley’ up to ‘Mr Buckley’. We were learning the British world of medicine, its language and meaning.

Mr. Buckley’s visits to Ann’s bedside were always gracious, informative, professional. In short, “spot on”.

In the Africa of the 1970’s and 80’s, post-delivery care for new mothers meant extended stays of bedrest. Several days after Scott Timothy came screaming from the womb, he and his mom left Nairobi Hospital. By then every nurse and several of the new moms had drawn him close.

We checked out and the four of us made the long drive back to our remote Kenya home. Only to return to Nairobi in three months, to the same hospital.

Ann must go under the surgeon’s knife. It was crucial.

November 3, 2017

Nairobi Heartbreak

I had shut the kerosene flow to the lanterns and, as typical on a Bukuria Mission night, we had fallen asleep by 11:00 p.m. and for an hour all was quiet. That changed.

Ann’s bursting cry of pain shocked me awake.

“Honey, what’s wrong, what is it?”

My dear wife, young and lovely – missionary mom to our toddler and our three-month infant – had bolted upright, seizing her midsection. The pain was searing. A few frightening moments and the surge of torture eased.

In a previous week Ann had already had a flare-up – similar to this, but not nearly so severe.

Soon as arrangements were made, our little foursome found our way out of Kuria-land, bound once more for Nairobi. Ann’s doctor in the capital had determined an inflamed gall bladder had likely been the culprit shooting torment through her abdomen.

Wearied by the trip of trailing behind smoke-belching buses and lorries at varying intervals along the two-lane road of the Great Rift Valley, we thankfully arrived at Mennonite Guest House. Ann would be admitted for surgery next morning. A day we would never forget.

November 20, 1974. As the hour-hand of the Nairobi hospital clock struck eight a.m. a Lufthansa 747 Jumbo Jet just 16 kilometers away, sped along a takeoff runway. The flight was to be the final segment of its Frankfurt – Nairobi – Johannesburg route. Seconds later, barely airborne, the aircraft dropped to earth. It’s tail broke apart. Fire spread to the fuselage when the left wing exploded.

A tragic day in aviation history for the East Africa nation. No airplane mishap in Kenya has brought more fatalities. Fifty-nine of the 157 passengers and crew died, many others suffering injuries, some with severe burns. It was the first-ever 747 crash resulting in lives lost. The cause, insufficient air lift due to mechanical issues.

“We will reschedule you, Mrs. Lout, once we learn more. At present, our staff are on alert for arriving casualties.”

Remarkably, my wife was called in for her surgery the following morning. After the gall-bladder removal she was granted permission to have her nursing son join her in the private room.

Our prayers these days carried a range of emotion. Heaviness for the bereaved and the injured of Flt 540, relief and thankfulness our family could journey again soon. Back to our upcountry home.

November 7, 2017November 7, 2017

Sandbox Showdown

Before, this afternoon I had never laid eyes on a spitting cobra. Not up close, not uncaged out in the wild. And clearly, not mere steps from my children’s sand box where they often played.

The serpent measured seven feet.

“Mpiga, Mpiga (stone it, stone it)!” Twenty children’s excited voices shattered the mission station’s quiet. They had come upon the snake as they were heading home, taking a short cut across our unfenced property.

Swinging the back screen door open, I took in the spectacle from our veranda.

“Looks like the school kids got an enemy in their sights, hon.”

At this point the serpent hadn’t moved into my view. On the other hand, the eyes of the clamorous nine-to-twelve-year olds, had stayed fixed, tracing the cobra’s every fleeting move before them. The snake raced slithering through foot-high grass, barely ahead of the children’s hail of ammo – sticks and stones – raining down.

The moment the cobra enter our grounds, I shouted, “Rafel!” The muscular young day-laborer rushed toward my voice. Seeing the danger – to the children, to all of us – he raced with his panga to a nearby tree. In seconds a limb plopped to the ground. Rafel alighted. Slashing swiftly again and again, he soon displayed an impressive club – long enough to go after the snake while, hopefully, staying short of its notorious venom shower.

Although our own children were safely indoors with their mother, a chill went over me as I witnessed one of Africa’s most feared slithering creatures swing about to face Rafel and me. I shivered at the knowledge that Julie and Scott’s sandbox lay two meters away in the shade of our backyard Flame Tree.

The forebody of the snake rose thirty inches from the ground’s surface, spread wide its menacing hood and shot a toxic stream of spray, thankfully short of its targets – the workman and me. It then turned and, spotting a fractured entrance-way into an abandoned chicken coop, slithered inside.

With more anxiety than either Rafael or I cared to claim, we heaved the door aside. The cobra’s head once again swung our direction. The snake moved from the far end of the little coop directly toward us, its speed fueled by the panic that drives any creature feeling trapped. We dare not block its exit. . . that would be nuts, for sure.

On our back lawn once again – and once again by the sand box – the cobra struck a motionless pose. It was the split second Rafel needed to take aim. The thicker end of the African’s club crashed to the reptile’s head. The aim was exact and the snake lay still but for its long body writhing some seconds.

The cheering primary school kids quieted, gradually dispersed, moving the direction of their thatched and tin-roofed homes.

I took little interest in Cobras or their skins for now. My lengthy, salt-crusted curing plank would lie undisturbed this day. It was enough for me that our two-year-old and four-year-old were each well. That the four of us would dine together tonight. Safe and undisturbed.

November 9, 2017

Say What?

Street-preaching in the 70’s with my college peeps on San Antonio’s Houston Avenue left me stumped one Sunday afternoon.

A well-groomed young fellow, perhaps a businessman, approached after being assailed with a volley of ‘repent and get saved’ appeals.

“Excuse me”, he said courteously, “would you mind if I ask a question?”

I nodded agreement.

“Why are you guys so cynical?”

Lacking the depth needed to respond well, along with a nagging awareness I had no real idea what the term ‘cynical’ meant, I went defensive. . .

“No, we’re not cynical, we’re just trying to show people. . .”

The lame defense that followed, along with this polite gent’s quiet departure afterwards, left me troubled. And wondering. Along with uncovering the meaning of ‘cynical’, I pondered a nagging thought that day, and many days after.

Can I find ways of sharing my faith other than just lobbing gospel missiles at passersby? What if these are real people, much like myself – folks who want to get through their day and through their lives – in basically one piece. Some of them likely exist in bare survival mode. And, for a great many – if they are anything – they are sincere.

I came to learn the word cynical suggests “a disbelief in the sincerity of human motives”. I’ve been asking the Lord to help me ever since, wishing I could dial back the calendar – sit with the young man over a cup of chai.

Street evangelism – Open-air campaigns – Stadium events. Historically, such varying means of outreach have brought spiritual orphans into God’s family by the thousands. May they never go away.

And may an alternate response to the one I got way back when, somehow come to be the norm. . .

“Why are you guys so caring?”

November 11, 2017

On A Hot Tin Roof

Clueless as to its structural soundness, we crouched low and crawled on – upward, higher – atop the old church roof. Then came the loud crack of splintering wood.

Bukuria Mission Station rested near the top of a long sloping hill. Well before my wife and daughter and I moved there a student dormitory fashioned of sun-baked earth had got converted into a house of worship. After years of use and aging, the church roof’s mabati (corrugated iron sheets original to the structure) needed replacing.

Phil Harmon, my Canadian friend from Suna Mission 25 miles away, offered help. Phil was a gifted craftsman on many fronts. We donned our carpentry aprons and I followed his lead.

“How about we start here at this end and work our way to the front, eh?”

Armed with a claw hammer, I fell in behind him. Up the ladder we went. We began wresting old nails from the rafters, taking care then to pass the rusting metal sheets to workers waiting below.

“I guess this wood under us is OK – you know, sturdy enough, not too termite-eaten.”

Now and then throughout the morning we felt movement, first my friend, then myself – a slight tremble along the old trusses – our only support preventing us plummeting downwards. The roof would creak. We would freeze in place, sometimes with a hammer just-poised to extract the next nail. Then cautiously proceed with our task.

Finally, the roof’s surface was uncovered, it’s purlins denuded, leaving no trace of tin sheets anywhere.

Phil and I maneuvered to the building’s wall-plate at its west end. Standing on it, he reached down. With a gloved hand my friend casually flipped free a stubby piece of loosely-braced two-by-four. I will never forget what followed.

The whole network of roofing, hundreds and hundreds feet of rafter and truss, instantly gave way. At the frightful splintering sound of lumber suddenly breaking apart, our two African helpers below lurched to the side for safety. The crash unleashed a rumbling boom. Dust came billowing all around. My Canadian bud and I breathed relief seeing the workers yet standing – their bodies hugged to the walls – clearly shaken, but intact.

Powderpost beetles, we later discovered, had been dining on the church’s canopy a good while, devouring the lumber, riddling it throughout with tiny pinholes.

In the crash’s aftermath, standing poised atop the wall, we silently took in the splintered crisscross of rubbish scattered before us ten feet below. Essentially a pile of sawdust lay there, material upon which we had entrusted our weight most all morning. At last Phil turned my way, releasing a low chuckle.

“Looks like we’re spared taking apart the frame.”

“Yeah, and seems a guardian angel or two got in some overtime today.”

November 17, 2017

Megabites

“Safari Ants!”

We shot from either side of the bed – sheets, pillows, blanket flying – flailing through mosquito netting like flies exiting a flimsy spider web.

All was pitch black in the thatch roof hut. My wife and I had been asleep less than three hours when the miniature flesh-eating troops attacked. “Ouch!, Ah! Oh!! Ouch, Ahh!!”

“Where’s the torch, Jerry!?”

“I’m feeling for it down here. Keep moving about. Don’t stop moving!” I blindly surveyed the floor with my hands.

“Ah!”

The flashlight’s narrow beam cut through dark. We kept in motion, hopping about, reaching for our garments.

“Shake your stuff out before putting it on.”

“Right”. I danced into my jeans.

Unlatching the door, we scurried outside and up the incline to the entrance of our host’s main house. Answering our tap-tap at the metal door, our Mennonite friends ushered us in. “Sorry guys, some visitors chased us out. Otherwise the new guest hut is perfect!”

“Sharon,” Ann raced her fingers every direction through her hair “They’re up here, biting my head”. Sharon Stutzman sprang to action under the light of a kerosene lamp. Relief came.

The aggressive, flesh-eating creatures – called by some, safari ants, by others army ants or fire ants – showed up at the start of every rainy season. Moving about as if commanded by army generals, they advance to places where meat is found – human, animal, insect, reptile. They are not choosy.

Will and Florence Burnham, an older English couple, served with us at Bukuria. Will chuckled during one of our visits over tea, recalling his bullet-speed moves a year or so earlier when he shed a pair of trousers along some grassy trail.

“Lucky the grass was high, letting me keep some dignity. . . and, you know”, he added in a rich Liverpool accent, “when they bite, they hang on for dear life. They won’t drop away with a simple brush-off. Aye, you must pick them off, one-by-one!”

Experiments led me over time to an effective means of blocking the invaders. Pouring a light trail of paraffin (kerosene) along the outside base of the mission house usually held them at bay.

We learned of one clever family who would simply vacate their place a couple days – lodging with friends a distance away as the ants took over their home. Always on the march for more cuisine, Safari Ants don’t linger after a good house-scouring.

Roaches – rats – centipedes – scorpions. . . beware.

November 20, 2017

World of Spirits

Spirits. Good. Evil.

What is this thing, this world of spirits? How real is the unseen world? Do invisible personalities carry influence, power with people – sometimes over them?

I pondered the questions off-and-on. Growing up in the Pentecostal tradition, I had heard things about the spirit-world referenced plenty of times. Demon-oppression – Spiritual warfare – Deliverance ministry, and the like. My understanding was limited but the idea seemed reasonably simple.

Those good, powerfully strong beings of the angel variety represented God’s good presence at work in the world. By contrast, dark, evil, destructive forces issued from the kingdom of Satan, God’s biggest adversary. These dark beings were real and to be taken as seriously as angels. Teachers of scripture and the bible itself had shined light on the subject. That, though God himself is supreme, having no rival, no equal, much of humanity suffers in some measure under the deceiver, the accuser. This view, with plenty of Bible to commend, had informed much of my belief on the issue of spirit beings.

For me, it was also personal. I had sometimes sensed a a thing that felt like a dark, eerie presence. Not often but enough to trouble me, leaving me unsettled and sometimes fearful.

Living now in deep Africa, I discovered something I had long heard. The world at large – outside North American, European and other Western cultures – needed no persuading whether the spirit world existed. They required no convincing if spirit beings might play a role in living, breathing human beings.

First-hand encounters with witchcraft jarred me out of any guesswork about the matter.

I was enjoying lunch at the home of a missionary friend – another Jerry – in Southwestern Kenya. Jerry taught in a vocational school. The tribal people of the region had generations-long histories featuring spirit powers they knew to be evil. Placing curses on people was as common in some areas as the presence of moisture was common to a rainy season. Divination, witchcraft and the like, saw powerful spirit influences, fueled by fear.

A youth on a bicycle sped toward the house where we were. He came from the school’s direction a mile away.

“Mr. Jerry, Mr. Jerry!”

My friend set his tea cup down and moved outside.

After a brief visit with the boy, my host called up, “A student at the school is in trouble. Want to come with me?”

We set off on the ragged road – hardly more than a foot path. Less than five minutes the car jostled to a stop.

A tall, robust-looking youth sat on an outcropping of rock – one common to the area, rising about four feet out of the ground. In every way the student looked like, from a distance, a fine specimen of health. Except, that is, for his demeanor. And the trembling hands. His eyes shifted repeatedly away from direct contact. They seemed dark, fearful. He held his head as in a vice – sandwiched in a tight grip between the palms of his two large hands.

Missionary Jerry gently questioned the boy and one or two friends. He summarized the problem as best he could. The boy suffered an overpowering head-throb. It pulsed with searing pain. Indeed, he looked tortured.

But the pain’s source was not biological. Not really.