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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.

November 23, 2017

A Day of Thanksgiving

“Somebody from his home village sent it to him. Someone with a grudge. The envelope with that stuff inside came hand-delivered yesterday and he’s been like this since.”

I thought of the things that led up to this moment. ‘Curse updates’ don’t often happen in Oklahoma. But this thing seems really serious.

My friend, Jerry, had summoned the unusual parcel. We noticed the opened envelope bulged a bit. In it was a strange assortment – random, spooky things not fit for having around.

“Elements of a curse. It’s what this is. Whoever sent it to Omondi wasn’t playing games. They planned real physical and mental harm for him. Even death. Take a look at these bone fragments, the ashes mixed in, these bits of rock.”

We eyed the elements warily. Something became clear in those moments. The recipient of this “gift”, the young vocational student, knew he had been cursed. His fear was real. Omondi knew he could die at the hand of a power behind these items. Invisible but real, a terribly dark force – too strong to withstand.

Jerry and I stood silently, each in our own thoughts. Both of us anxious. Each of us sensed the other was praying, groping for guidance. How do you contend with this kind of thing? In another setting one could shrug it off as a game of foolish superstition. But we sensed this to be a full-on display of an evil presence, dispatched somehow to render harm. What could we do?

A thought had begun stirring in me. Pushing past a temptation to just ignore it, I turned to my friend.

“Jerry, would you mind if we try something?” He waited for me to go on. “Can someone bring matches? I think we need to urge this young man to resist, that he fight this thing in the power of Christ.”

Only partly-sure of my instinct, I continued. My confidence grew.

“I believe he needs to break this curse and we can be there, through it with him. We can pray. But I do think he needs to set these things on fire and destroy them. It will be his statement of God’s claim on his life. If he’s willing to, that is.” Jerry nodded.

As I had been speaking the words I knew I was out of my depth. I felt I may be trembling on the inside as much as Omondi was on the outside.

Matches were brought. We moved to an enclosure and sat on the floor, Jerry and I at either side of him.

After sharing Scripture with Omondi, affirming the goodness and the truth of Jesus and the power of his name, we asked him if he agreed with Jesus’ words. “Do you believe that God has power above all?”. He nodded slightly and we pressed ahead, inviting him to offer himself fully to Jesus Christ. Slowly, deliberately he voiced a prayer of surrender to God. My friend, Jerry and I, never let up calling on the Lord from our hearts. After a moment I looked into the young man’s eyes.

“Good. OK, now Omondi, do you renounce all witchcraft, any kind of it? Do you reject all spirit forces that oppose the Lord Jesus? Can you say that you do?” In a weak response he whispered yes. When asked one more time, he came back with an assertive “Yes”.

“OK”. I raised the envelope with its contents before him. Some apprehension seemed to play at his eyes. But his fear had lessened and my friend and I sensed Omondi was choosing freedom. We kept praying, “Help him, Lord Jesus. Be near.”

“Alright now, let’s light the match.”

At first his hand trembled with such intensity that I took his hand in mine and we gripped the match together. Thankful for his clear resolve to continue, we struck the match and lit the envelope and contents, Jerry and I voicing thanksgivings to Jesus the whole time. And a beautiful thing followed.

Witnessing the flame take over the elements, we felt a release of joy. The three of us came to our feet. Jerry and I called out in joy and conviction, praising the name of our Lord. Fear had left. Had left us all. Omondi’s head pain went away. Deliverance had come.

Afterwards, as we prepared to leave, the name of a pastor I knew from Omondi’s home area came to my mind. I sent a message to him. The two connected in coming days.

At the end of the day we were at peace. Wow.

The power of Christ had prevailed over raw evil. And two young – less-than-fearless – missionaries had been invited to take part. No wonder it’s called Good News.

We had witnessed the display on this day the authority of Christ’s name. A power greater than witchcraft, greater than fear and even death. The power of love.

It was a day of thanksgiving.

November 29, 2017

Hidden Limp

What about my demons?

Joining up with Jesus in chasing out the devil, invoking his name, watching a man set free from fear, maybe even death. This is living!

An other-worldly thrill comes on the heels of such triumph. But then, as with many of life’s highs, a larger reality finds a way of settling in. Troubling questions may follow.

What of my own demons?

I had met Christ dramatically in my youth. His presence flooding over and through me, wave on wave, at my Yes to a simple invitation voiced by a real estate agent – “Would you like more of Jesus?”

God had kept me from the prison of an iron lung, had brought my useless, polio-smitten legs to life.

His relentless Spirit had, later on, chased after me and my rebellious teen heart. Such love at work had melted me to brokenness and restored me to my family.

And, wonder of wonders, he brought to me my most prized treasure, an inside/outside beauty from the Big Sky state of Montana. It had been Ann who waited with Jerry’s wife for us two men to complete our deliverance ministry assignment with a traumatized African youth.

And even a call to Christian service. Overseas, no less.

Yet.

My secret held on. And its attending darkness.

The night Lawrence violated me in my pre-puberty childhood had set the stage for compounded issues fueled by shame. Through wrongful, impure ways I had gotten exposed to sexuality. This set in motion desires I knew to be wrong.. Repeated cycles of guilt-inducing thoughts and behaviors naturally followed. Behaviors I knew to be wrong but which plagued me regardless how I tried to resist. And try I did.

So, while on the one hand my life was marked by blessings nearly too good to be true, I struggled deeply with periodic bouts of distress over crippling addictions.

Crippled. A missionary with a limp.

December 6, 2017

Prevailing Mercy

Struggles and questionings aside, the call to serve helped anchor me. I believed the Lord had work for me to do and I pressed ahead, knowing he loved me, that he was after my best, regardless. Even as I wrestled with a sense of unworthiness and the feeling at times I was a junky heap of damaged goods, the assurance of his care sustained me. I knew who deserved credit. Not me, that was for certain.

So where some useful cause might arise – sponsoring a student, leading a class, encouraging a co-laborer (of my own culture or another) – I felt at home there. The discordant clamorings of unhealthy desire quieted for me most in such times. Times I poured out my energies, my prayers for others.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise*. The ancient passage consoled me again and again through my bitter-sweet years. Laying my wounded heart before him was all I knew to do. Turning myself over to his mercy, repeatedly, sincerely. All that the Father gives me shall come to me; and he that comes to me I will in no wise cast out*. Rehearsing such verses before him tethered me. His Mercy remained a constant. Ever meeting me in my places of brokenness, never condemning while never at the same time ‘giving me a pass’.

Regret – shame – contrition – repentance – thanksgiving. The cycles continued, ending every time at the door of mercy. Mercy from one nearer than a brother. Jesus. Friend of sinners.

My theme verse may well have read something like the following.

“I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. . . It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. . .” (Romans 7, the Message)

Notions of dodging responsibility, passing the buck, excusing my wrongs held no attraction. I knew what disobedience felt like, knew wrong-doing, wrong-thinking, wrong-fantasizing when it entered the neighborhood. Like a drug-detecting dog, my conscience picked up transgression’s scent. The buck stopped with me.

Those times in Christian culture were such that few religious communities – wherever found – seemed able to walk with their people through the mine fields of sexual brokenness. There were likely more caregivers available than we knew. That was the part of the problem. They weren’t known.

Occasionally through my overseas years a handful of struggling men would surface, gravitating together for encouragement and prayer. I linked up with such a group for a season. The effort was commendable as far as it went. Yet, although we did not intend to purposefully avoid certain topics – like sexual purity – we did. Each of us lived in Africa where wild game abounded, yet we always managed to ignore the elephant always in the room.

A day would eventually come when Missions agencies, church councils and team leaders would, in compassion, open doors that had been long shut to needful conversation. To counsel, to pray with the broken and their spouses. During the times we were in, however, many in Christian service simply did the best they could to forge ahead. Pretty much in silence, managing demons. Some, myself included, muddled along for years. The Holy Spirit graciously watched over our wounded, transgressing, saved-yet-fractured souls. We mercifully made it through without falling as casualties. We brought with us some scars, no question, yet still moving forward. Limping with rays of hope, our marriage companions often our greatest source of strength.

For other men, their suffering goes on undisclosed, unaddressed, even today. Their pain real, their wounds deep, shame binds them and replays a false narrative in their mind. . . there is no place to turn.

May these gain help. Through the Friend. Through His children, his wounded healers.

Like those I would one day find.

December 10, 2017December 10, 2017

Desire

Desire comes with being human.

The moment I launched as a newborn – right from the birth canal – I fought for air. Nothing going forward in life would ever trump the urgency of this one desire. Once my hunger for oxygen was met and my lungs were assured that there was more on the way, a second desire was born. I craved food.

And once I gulped in my first samplings of milk – catching it’s flavor and texture – my infant body had no problem calling for seconds. And anytime the beverage I craved for thereafter was out of reach, I knew it. No one needed to convince me. Like James Dashner wrote*.

“I felt her absence. It was like waking up one day with no teeth in your mouth. you wouldn’t need to run to the mirror to know they were gone”

I write this sitting in a bagel shop next to a couple making conversation.

“What would you say is your passion?” she asked.

The guy’s response sounded muffled due to the Christmas music streaming through my ear buds. That didn’t matter. Her question, though, did matter. It matters to us all, What would you say is your passion?

Of the many desires, hungers, passions that surface in our lives, none trumps something we might call the desire of the heart. We may come to know what it is our heart desires or we may not know.

But every heart desires one thing in common, a thing that is not tangible. Something deep. Grand and even eternal. What we so hunger is real – the most real thing ever – even though it could seem elusive.

We yearn for eternity. And the Being behind it. C. S. Lewis gives us an insight,

If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world.

Desirables on this planet crowd the avenues of our lives, forming an endless parade. We feel the magnetic pull toward some attractions more than others. A few may inspire and energize us. We sample the object we’re drawn to and it feels right. An appetite, or desire, can carry such a pull that sensory language must be employed to capture its power. Athletes savor the taste of victory or suffer a bitter defeat.

My Norwegian friend, Oddvar Naustvik found a stirring of desire and nurtured it. Oddvar wanted to successfully compete in an iron-man triathlon.

Another friend, Robello Samuel of India, pursued his desire – to gain expertise in the field of drilling wells.

From the time Cody Stinnett could tap his foot to the rhythm of music he yearned to excel as a percussionist.

Still another friend, young Elizabeth Miles, longed to tackle and master a language.

Each desire is lofty, some even noble. How attractive still is the hungering after ‘another world’, as Lewis suggests. The world for which we’re most rightly suited.

Such desire is withheld from noone. Curious thought. The sensory language of scripture invites,

Taste and see.

December 19, 2017December 19, 2017

Redeeming Pain

The mission doctor drew his penlight back from my little girl’s ear and sent me a sympathetic look.

His voice betrayed a strong Dutch accent, “The infection is bad.”

The young doc had recently been assigned to Ombo clinic, a Catholic mission outpost in Migori village. I had brought our three-year-old Julie in this morning, hoping to remedy her nonstop earache. Julie had sat astride my dirt bike’s gas tank the twenty mile ride in. Was it wise exposing her head – especially her ears – to the breeze out there? A little late to ponder that, I thought.

The physician reached for a sharp-pointed instrument I had no interest seeing.

“I need to pierce the ear drum and you will want to hold her firm.”

What followed was one of the necessary and least welcome assignments presented parents of young children all down through the ages. How to explain the act of heaping pain on top of pain – at the hands of the white-coated man whose job was to bring pain’s relief – and at the hands of daddy, nearest thing to hero in the room?

Why daddy? Why do you help this man hurt me? My daughter’s distressed eyes silently begged the answer more strongly than her voice ever could.

I swallowed hard, the fear inside me rising from the insecurity of my youthful fatherhood. I’ve never gotten schooled in this thing going on here. I hoped my voice – it’s ok, sweetheart, it’ll be okay soon – offered some kind of comfort, assurance that all would be well. Indeed, my greater struggle came from within rather than from the physical act of imprisoning my princess in this smothering hold.

Mercifully, the sharp pierce of the surgeon’s device came and went quickly. Julie’s sudden cry cut through the lab facility, echoing harshly in the uncarpeted, brick-walled room. The whimpers soon trailed off and she grew calmer. I rocked her slowly back and forth. The infectious throbbing went away, the pounding pain gone. Her tense body relaxed. She quieted.

Years afterward, the visit to Ombo Clinic prompted me to reflect.

Of God’s most-recognized titles, ‘Father’ must rank the highest.

Thank you Lord that, when I least understand you or your actions, your care and wisdom and presence get me past my confusion and pain. Eventually.

Every time.