Welcomes and Celebrations

A lot can happen in a week.  Like most of our lives, the majority of the moments are small ones that a hard to record and even remember.  Each one is important, each one shapes and re-shapes both a particular days as well as an entire experience, but how do you recount them to others in a way that conveys the depth of meaning you've found in them?  In less than seven days several of us have been in places of utter despair, as well as being in places where we've glimpsed a hopeful future and present reality of God's activity.  Kids have come home from school in tears of frustration, loneliness, and embarrassment, and have also gone out to explore and conquer literal and figurative islands of newness and fear.  I've been uncharacteristically harsh with our 4 year old, and have also had some deeply tender and significant times with her.  Leslie and I have both been utterly exhausted in our house, but have found great rest on the island of a nearby lake.

And those barely touch the experiences of the past several days since my last post to the blog.  Nevertheless, let me share with you a few photos and experiences of particular significance:

BBUC Reception

Welcoming and Commissioning at BBUC Chapel

Last Sunday, September 26, Bishop Barham University College officially received the Morrow family and us into their community in a church service in their chapel on Sunday morning, and at a tea reception following the service.  In the photo above are several important folks: The Rev. Matthias from Germany, a lecturer here who, with his wife and children, have done much to welcome us; the Rev. Canon Gideon (giving the blessing), university chaplain and a Trinity alumnus and our neighbor; the Rev. Canon Dr. Muranga (center), principal of BBUC and a man of tender humility; the Rev. Canon Jovahn, deputy principal and the man with whom I've been in contact for 5 years, and who has worked the hardest to receive us here in Kabale.

Rev. Gideon, Prof. Muranga, Rev. Paula Sage

Leslie remarked that this part of the service was very special to her as we knelt before our Ugandan community, looking at their African feet and feeling their hands on our heads, as they both received us, blessed us, and commissioned us for the work God has for us here.  It was both humbling and empowering, sweet and significant.  As they received us, Prof. Muranga reminded the congregation of two missionary families who had come decades before us, and of the impact they had had on the community of Kabale, and he prayed for a similar ministry to flow from us to them.  (I'll have to tell their story another time.)

I also had the honor of preaching in that same service.  They let me choose the text, so I picked Colossians chapter 3, which has been a key passage for me for many years.  My call to them (and to our team) was to "Remember what is real -- your life is hidden with Christ, in God."  Fear creeps into our lives, deceiving us and causing us to forget what is real, and the temptation is to react to our circumstances by grabbing control and trying to hold it together. We forget that only in Christ do all things hold together, and that he is present and active in all circumstances.  The call, then, is to rest in the protective embrace of the Father, and to respond to what Jesus is doing in the moment.  Living hidden in Christ, responding to his presence, is the starting place for the flow of our lives, a place to which we must return, even moment by moment.  Remember what is real....  Hard to do, really, but essential.  This has become vitally important for me in these difficult early weeks of our time in Uganda.

Following the service was a tea held in our honor where we sat at a table in front of the gathered community and simply drank tea and ate some food.  Eventually there were some wonderful words of welcome spoken to us ("you are no longer visitors, but family...hide nothing in your hearts from us...."), and we had the opportunity to speak as well.  The highlight for me, however, was when we were invited to cut a cake, and then we served them the cake from a common plate!

SCHOOL DAYS

Jesse and Georgia on their first day of school

 

I share this because it is one of the biggest challenges for us right now, and it gives a glimpse into the realities of culture shock.  In the photo above Jesse and Georgia look excited and ready for their first day of school at Kabale Preparatory School.  Well, they were ready...until they got there.  Our cross-cultural training at MTI talked about the "twang" of missions -- the further reality is from what your expectations are, the greater the twang, the greater the pain of encountering reality.  Well, school for the kids can be summed up in one word:  "TWANG!"  School begins at 7:45 am, and is supposed to go until 6pm, with a half day on Saturday.  Did we know that before the first few days of school?  Nope.  Twang.  Lunch served there every day is either beans and rice or beans and potatoes.  Twang.  The kids spend the majority of the day copying down their assignments from the blackboard to paper.  Twang.  There are over 50 kids in Jesse's class.  Twang.  They, with the Morrow kids, are the only Western, white faces at this "international" school.  Twang.  Our straight A students are now lagging behind the rest of the class. Twang.  They can barely understand the English of their teachers or their fellow students.  Twang.  Crowds of kids follow them between classes asking them questions they can barely understand.  Twang.  Because of intense competition for places at secondary schools, we can only expect things to become more challenging.  Twang.

Our kids are going through the wringer, and it is hard to watch, and hard to know what to say and how to walk alongside them in all of this.  Yes, of course, we're talking to teachers and administrators and requesting and receiving exceptions, and students and staff alike are being wonderfully understanding and accommodating.  And, yes, we're seeing remarkable bravery, humility, kindness, tenderness, and responsiveness shining through our children.  Jesse, for example, spent one recent afternoon in tears.  He asked if he could just go play his video game for a while, but I instead asked him just to sit on the couch and cry for as long as the tears would come, then come talk to me when he was ready.  He did that, and we had a long, sweet, significant conversation following that time.  It concluded in the evening with Jesse saying, "I hope that Scripture is true that says, "Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning!"  The next morning a modicum of joy did come, and they all returned for another day of school, better than the day before, but still not easy.

HOUSE AND HOME

Leslie and kids on the porch in the evening

 One of the other challenging things is our house.  It's not yet a home.  Endless delays, miscommunications, power outages, water outages, paucity of resources, our own ignorance of how things work or where to find things, and just the daily struggle to get food on the table and other basic needs met keep us from being fully settled, which keeps us from having a home that provides and peace at the end of the day and life for the coming day.  And yet if you walked into our house, you would see evidence of the work that our hosts have done to ready the house for us -- new paint on the walls, tile in the bathroom, selves in the kitchen, furniture loaned to give us places to sit and eat and rest.  Also you would find our help hard at work -- Protase planting a garden and tending the grounds, Sharon cooking over charcoal and preparing our lunch, Maureen doing our laundry and hanging it on the line, Judith caring for Maureen's baby.  We are loved and provided and cared for...but not settled.  We have a house, but the energy and time it is taking to make it a home are both much greater than we expected, and at times seem more than we can endure.  And yet we are hidden with Christ in God, and we do endure, and another modicum of joy comes each morning....

Sharon cooking in "the boys' quarters," a shed behind our house

Protase cutting the grass with a "ponga" (machete)

Julia sitting with Judith

Maureen doing dishes

A table set by Leslie

 

BBUC Graduation

Social Work Graduands Rejoicing

 Well, this one is going to have to be shorter than I wanted.  Julia is crying (again), and it is past 11pm here....  I'm trying to be in bed no later than 10:30pm, and most nights I'm awakened by either Julia or Lucy crying.  We haven't had a full night's sleep in a long time.

Post graduation walk to lunch

Suffice it to say that a great way to begin is to see the end.  In other words, to sit and watch these East Africans (people from Uganda, Rwanda, Congo, Burundi, and Sudan) graduate and take the first steps into their new lives -- education, social work, public relations, environmental conservation, gender studies, ministry -- and to see the movement of God in full gear before we even get started.... This was a great reminder as to how God has already been at work without us present, and how much the staff and students of BBUC are already doing, and how we are just getting to join in a work that has been going on for decades.  There is a lot for us to learn before we can even begin to contribute.  (One particularly exciting bit for us, since our motto is "raising up a generation of Ugandans to reach the world for Christ," was watching as one Ugandan was commissioned as a missionary to Germany.)

Archbishop UCU Chancellor  Henry Orombi Presides

Bishop George Katwesigye and Bishop Kenneth Barham