Tag: Kilimanjaro

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Subtle Signals

How can three simple letters buried on a page inside a modest publication signal a life-altering shift in a person’s journey – into a future set to unfold some nine thousand miles away? And, in ‘spaces’ unlike any lived in before?

(*correction, ISI is not three letters, only two. One of them just gets more press!)

When big shifts occur in a person’s life, we sometimes find ourselves transported into new and different zones. They could be occupational or geographical or whatever. We might respond to any of these shifts with feelings of excitement, trepidation, enthusiasm or awe. The shift in my case included a physical relocation. My feelings tended to signal puzzlement.

If we could reduce to a single word the big turning points in our lives the term threshold might fit well.

Threshold – a place of beginning, a doorway, or brink.

At the time of spotting the letters, I S I, on the page of the quarterly publication those years ago, I could never have imagined their import. After all, the offices of International Students Inc were sat nestled in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. My home lay in the foothills of Mt Kilimanjaro.

Beyond the range of my understanding, a hint at an approaching shift with life-altering turns was signaling from that one page of the Evangelical Missions Quarterly lying open atop a small table before me.

Setting the magazine aside, my thoughts pivoted.

Dad had fallen gravely ill in Oklahoma. I had a plane to catch.

©2023 Jerry Lout

 

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Extra Descriptive

Denny tilted sideways in the aircraft seat just enough that I could catch his voice above the engine hum. His message brought sweat to my palms.

The missionary pilot had directed the aircraft westward, above East Africa’s plains. The Cessna was a baby fly at the foreground of the continent’s most stunning monument, Mt. Kilimanjaro. Massive. Majestic.

We had lifted off from Moshi’s small airport and were bound for remote preaching outposts. Five of them. Each outpost was marked by a small gathering of Maasai huddled under one or two trees or beneath a shiny tin roof indicating a village schoolroom.

Denny’s passengers also numbered five, meaning the Cessna 206 was at her half-dozen capacity.

“Every three weeks or so I fly young evangelists to these outposts, leaving them one by one at each preaching point”, Denny had said when inviting me along. “They share with any locals gathered who want to learn about God.  I myself offer a short teaching at the final spot on the circuit. Afterwards I retur home, retracing the earlier route, collecting the young men once again on the way.”

Denny said travelling by air cut the travel time for such a venture by days.

By now, we had touched down and taken off a couple times.

We departed the most recent dirt strip where we had left the third preacher-trainee. It was near this time my French pilot friend began cluing me in on particulars of our next landing site.

“So, now we will be coming, in about fifteen minutes to an unusual landing place. It is among that range of peaks there.” The landscape ahead was varied, featuring moderate elevations merging with steep green slopes revealing spherical volcanic outlines. Nothing of the terrain hinted at flatness.

As we flew, several distinct bumps alerted us to updrafts. We were passing within near range of one of Africa’s towering escarpment cliffs.

The missionary’s accented monologue resumed. “We approach soon the most difficult landing strip I visit in all the region.”

It was here that my palms began moistening. This, despite Denny’s steady, undramatic, near-casual manner.  What does ‘most difficult landing strip’ actually mean? For Denny. For me. Today?

He seemed in a mood to describe something of our coming destination. In more detail than I would prefer.

“First, the terrain near this village has few suitable places for landing a plane, so the length of the strip is quite short.

“Then the landing/take-off space lies slanted a bit – uneven, not quite flat – resting at the edge of a greater slope. . .”

The aircraft brought us nearer the village and, in the distance the ribbon of runway came into view. . .

My instinct here was to wave a friendly hand – further moistened by now – to signal satisfaction with the amount of info he had supplied.  I did not.

“And, finally”, Denny went on, “there is the wind. Up here it is seldom moving the direction best suited for landing and takeoff.”

Our descent was well underway. Apart from the queasy feeling brought on by the data just delivered me, I relished taking in the wonder of the volcanic mountain landscape rising to meet us.

With a talent common to seasoned bush pilots alone, the Frenchman brought the airplane safely in. A smooth, entirely glitch-free landing.

Denny’s performance, in my estimation, confirmed the viewpoint of a person whose opinion should count for something. . .

It is possible to fly without motors, but not without knowledge and skill.   – Wilbur Wright

© 2017 Jerry Lout

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Summit Destiny

While the dance idea may suit some believers as they launch into a transforming life in Jesus, the metaphor likely won’t attract others. A mountain-climbing expedition may. The apprenticing pilgrim takes on a rigorous life if he is seriously chasing the call of Jesus: Follow me.

More rigorous than a climber striking out for, say, Africa’s highest mountain peak. Our family lived and served among the Chaga people in the foothills of the majestic mammoth.

School break had set in for our two oldest. “Shall we give Kili a try?”

What parent adopts a fairy-tale voice and launches into a children’s story (the Little Red Choo-choo Train) for a teenaged son or daughter? In a public setting, no less.

Maybe it can inspire them to go the full distance (Kilimanjaro’s 19,000-foot summit) once we set out from this base camp. As the fairy-tale unfolded, fourteen-year-old Scott lazered his attention to a hiking boot as if the world’s survival depended on his rightly adjusting a small stone beneath it. Anything to distance his association with the backpack-laden man prattling on with “I think I can, I think I can. . .” Julie, two years his senior, simply rolled her eyes.

The truth was, we were in for the most daunting test of our stamina and will we had ever faced.

Hiking miles upward to Africa’s loftiest point, with its scarce oxygen and precarious steeps, calls for all the reserves a climber can summons. Reaching Kili’s snowy rim demands three things. Vision, intention and means. 

A brilliant and beloved U.S.C. professor and gospel minister, Dallas Willard, strung this trio of nouns – Vision, Intention, Means – together when coaching Christ-followers toward best practices in their quest to become like Jesus. Willard often used the word apprentice when speaking of a disciple.

“An apprentice of Jesus is learning from him how to lead their life as he would lead their life if he were they.”

My own long and incompleted walk towards transformation into Christlikeness – winding trails (often upward, at other times plateaued, even descending) – stirs added memories from the 1989 Kilimanjaro venture. Our little trio in the company of our guide.

The climb would have met with failure but for our guide.

©2018 Jerry Lout

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Consulting The Guide

August, 1988. . .

Really? I couldn’t believe the signatures facing me from the entry roster. Him? Really?

“Hey guys, look over here. Guess who beat us up the mountain ten days ago. . . a president of the United States!” My two teens, their backpacks secured in place, sidled over.

Some twenty names, including family members, were all penned vividly in artful hand-written cursive, clearly by one person. . . a scribe representing the entourage, no doubt.

A further surprise came later in the day as I chatted up our guide.

“Joseph,” I asked, “I noticed back there that a United States President went up the mountain a few days ago.”

“Yes, that is correct.”

“That’s Interesting. Were you one of the porters or guides for the climb?”

“Yes, sir.

“Well – if I could ask – what was it like, that trip?”

“Ah”, Joseph smiled broadly. We had paused on the trail to take a swig from our canteens. “It was a very good trip”. The guide’s face brightened further. “Yes, a good trip, even though the president almost refused to succeed. He did reach there, though. Up to the mountain’s top.”

Joseph’s voice now took on a deepened tone of pride (well-placed, I afterward thought).

“You know, we carried him there.”

“Carried him? You carried the president?”

“Ah, yes. You see, once we reached to a quite high place he was very tired and lacking strength. He told the group to go on and continue. He said he would go back down the mountain for he could not continue on.” Joseph swiveled to gaze toward the summit, many kilometers far ahead and far higher.

“But we told him ‘no’. We Guides, we said to him he must reach to the top, he must get there. So two of us came to where he was. Together we lifted him. We carried him on to the top.”

Assuming the guide’s account was accurate, the past president – raised in the deep south and now well into his sixties – had found himself perched atop the roof of Africa. In good hands. Literally.

The image in my mind of mountain guides bearing their distinctive human cargo along Kilimanjaro’s steepest slopes called to mind a beloved piece of popular verse. Adorning the walls of gift shops from Disney World to Branson, Missouri – Footprints in the Sand.

My mind goes to the spiritual trek any sincere believer embarks on.

While it is true there are times we are unable to lift a trace of our own shoe leather in making headway on our march of faith, our call from him, our invitation is to walk. Not walk apart from him, to be sure. As Bob Sorge states it in The Secret of Walking With God, “God created man for the enjoyment of a walking relationship that involved companionship, dialogue, intimacy, joint decision-making, mutual delight, and shared dominion.”

And here is the rub. I am called to sonship in Christ, called to know him. Know him more and more, by walking with him.

So how? Just how does this happen in actual, realistic ways?

A visit with the one we call our guide, along with a few of his early spokesmen as their words reach to us from scripture, helped shed some light on the big question, How?

© 2018 Jerry Lout

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Mind The Step

Growing in Christlikeness takes brains.

Not brilliance. Not genius. The Christian Faith isn’t privately reserved for Nobel Prize recipients in science and medicine. Indeed, any trusting, open-hearted child may drink deep of the waters of salvation.

But serious Jesus-followers setting out to grow as his disciples are not ones to check their brains at the door. To them, good sense reflected by sound thinking is essential – a no-brainer, you might say.

Unfolding the topography map (Google Earth wouldn’t debut for another decade) I was soon taken by the stunning landscape spread out before me. Even when merely displayed on landscape parchment, the vast range of Kili’s expanse – her ravines etching wrinkles across her ancient face – captivated me.

The mountain’s greens, from rich shadows to hues showcasing rain forests and highland grasses drew me in. Into dreaming. And more than that. To thinking.

How often do we give it consideration, this quality of thought. Its power and its necessity. The uniquely human capacity to consider, to surmise and decide – that is, to use our brain?

Before any venture can get underway – from the Wright brothers winged launch into North Carolina skies to the designing and building of India’s dazzling Taj Mahal to putting together the kids lunch bag for school – the mind must stir.

Surveying Kilimanjaro’s image that morning, my mind did that. It stirred. And a dream was born.

I would set out to climb this mountain. . . and do it with my kids. At the very least, I could try. But there would be a needed sequence about such a heady vision. Some mental pacings must precede the actual ones. Before the climb could ever begin, I must further engage my mind. Questions asked. Mysteries uncovered.

When is the best season of year for such thing? – Which route promises the best chance of success? – Supplies – what equipment, survival gear and food stuff do we gather If my two teens and me are to set foot on Africa’s legendary rooftop? – What will it all cost? (this was a Biggie)

Does this make any sense? Could we actually achieve it? Thoughts. These demanded logic, rationale, kinds of things I’m not so famous for. Still, the thinking part, I came to realize, was indispensable to a happy, adventurous – and completed – climb.

I got encouraged, enthused actually. The task would be daunting, but it was reachable. . . I felt certain. I had lived at the foot of this glorious giant long enough to learn some secrets, catch some glimpses of the possibilities.

Thinking had been happening a while.

So simple strategies began playing in my head – vague and ill-defined at first – of taking on this vast, snow-crowned volcano.

I peered again at Kili’s image lying there atop our dining table, the table itself crafted of timber harvested from other African slopes – Kenya’s Mount Elgon.

On and on I continued thinking. . . and on.

Trekking a mountain to her summit may be much like walking with Christ, I mused. One [sensible] step at a time.

©2018 Jerry Lout

 

 

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Sweet Expansion

Sunday church service in the shade of a fruit tree brings its perks.

When a high-up branch at our quaint meeting place let go its grip on a ripened mango – thumping a half-sleeping listener on his head – my Bible class came alive. For the moment at least.

***

Mzee Kunda (my Tanzania co-worker) and I had scouted Moshi town in hopes of marking out a preaching point and eventually establishing a church. The spot of land with a mango tree caught our eye.

Kunda, an aging, never-wed Chaga tribesman of Kilimanjaro, had endeared himself to great numbers of people as a travelling evangelist. His one-on-one chats had brought many across the region – town and country dwellers alike – to a vital faith. From Moshi to Arusha and back, village after village had engaged the winsome personality which was Mzee Kunda. He knew his calling and trekked hundreds of miles through the years, facing hard opposition at times, but pressing on, sharing a compelling message of love.

“Mzee Kunda,” I posed one day, “could you check an area over near the Muslim sector – you know, where the city has no church at all. . .”

The property he found was the right size but lacked electricity and water. A small river (all but dry but for the rainy season) snaked nearby.  Visits with the land owner brought a meeting of the minds.  Prayers went up. Funds came in. We were underway.

Fencing the acreage with the aid of our son Scott during his Rift Valley school break, secured the area for construction. Scott and his big sis, Julie, drew water from the river to aid the cement-mixing venture while little sis, Amy, scurried about entertaining neighborhood kids.

It was a special day when Dan and Nancy Larkin came our way. Hailing from New York, the Larkins answered a call to missions. . . and to Moshi. Grandma Nancy promptly endeared herself to 7-year-old Amy.

Excitement stirred in the Kili region when Dan launched a training center project on our two-acre grounds. Decades later we would journey again to Moshi and celebrate Kilimanjaro Christian College opening her doors twenty five years before. Lazaro Kiriama of Maasai-land had nurtured the school into a thriving training center for church leaders, equipping them for service throughout the region.

Meanwhile a familiar old tree like a quiet, loyal friend, moved from thumping Sunday worshippers with mango missiles to seasonally treating a parade of ministry trainees her juicy delights.

©2018 Jerry Lout