Attempting Great Things for God

Welcoming ceremony at the Hope School for the Foundation for Hope in Africa mission team.



Committing to leading a team of short-term missionaries on a week-long visit to a remote part of Burundi and offering to bring your mother-in-law along to boot while leaving your wife behind might sound like a good scenario for a situation comedy, a recipe for disaster, or a bold leap of faith.  I prefer to think of it as the latter, but as the time of this event approached I really began to wonder what I had got myself into.

For some reason I was reminded of a time as a young man when I was running a ropes course for a youth camp in Colorado.  While I was wating alone for a group of campers to arrive I was reading through a book of survival skills for mountain climbing.  I found a diagram of how one can make jumars (a kind of clip that one can use to ascend a rope) out of ones bootlaces.  I unlaced my shoes and followed the detailed directions carefully on how to do it and I succeeded in making them and began ascending the rope up the cliff face.  When I was about 15 feet up, it suddenly donned on me that I was all alone ascending a cliff on a rope using two pairs of bootlaces to hoist myself up.  I had been so involved in the details that I had completely lost site of the big picture.  I quickly descended down the rope before I got into a worse situation.

I can't say that this was a perfect parallel but there was something about focusing on all the parts and details in order to prepare for the trip that the challenging reality of the whole was somehow escaping me.

But let me back up a bit and fill in some of the background. I was contacted about a year ago by a pastor, Dr. Robin Wilde, representing the Foundation for Hope in Africa.  He was interested in finding some areas of intervention in Burundi for his foundation.  I connected him to our partner who works with the Hope School for the Batwa.  After several visits, Dr. Wilde's foundation supported the completion of several of the classrooms in the secondary school.  He also inquired about the possibility of sending a mission team to the school to participate in one of the building projects.  After some planning by email, I agreed to help facilitate the team visit and we made an itenerary for them which would have them fly into Kigali, Rwanda and travel overland by bus to Burundi and down to Burasira where they would stay at a seminary and walk over to the Hope School daily which was 'nearby' on a neighboring hill.

As the time of the trip arrived, we found that it would correspond with the visit of Rebecca's mother, Jean.  Since she had recently been instrumental in getting a container of books sent to Burundi for donations to the Hope School and was anxious to see the results, I offered to take her with us during the visit while Rebecca stayed home in Buja to keep the kids in school.

It all seemed so simple and logical on paper.  But as the date approached (2 weeks away) I realized that the two translators we hired would probably not be sufficient as none of the arrivees spoke French and I had proposed that besides working on the construction site, the team could break into small groups in the afternoons and visit classes to interact with children in English language instruction, crafts, and singing.

We did not have the budget to hire more kirundi translators, so I decided to invite our Rwanda SALTers Bethany and Annie to come along to help with translation into french at least which the older kids understand.  They agreed to come along.

Another afterthought which proved to be vital was bringing my car.  I had originally thought of taking a bus to Kigali and join their bus on the way down but changed my mind and brought it as an emergency vehicle.

All of my last minute decisions proved to be fortuitous and I was glad my judgement was good.

So last Sunday I drove to Kigali by car followed by Jean on Monday morning who arricved by air.  We took the opportunity on Monday to visit Rwanda partners and to see the libraries of our Rwanda partners that were fortified by some of Jean's contributions from the container.  She was quite pleased to see that many of the 8000 books that had arrived were already catalogued and on shelves.  We also did banking in the afternoon and had a nice dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant ZAFFRON with the MCC Rwanda team.

The Hope for Africa mission team arrived on Monday night around 3am and we met their bus heading out of town at about 9am.  Pastor Wilde got them to that point then returned to Kigali to make a trip to Zambia while the team followed me, Jean and the two SALTers in our car.  The trip took about 4 hours including the border crossing which mercifully did not involve any search by customs.  (The mission team had quite a few gifts for the school on board that might have looked like merchandise for sale.)

We arrived at the Seminary about 2pm and had lunch then headed up the hill to the school.  It was at that moment that I realized that many of the team were retired and older and a mile walk up a steep hill in the hot sun was not going to be part of the daily repertoire for all of us.   We did all make it to the top that first day though and were met by the drum team and most of the school who gave us a rousing welcome.  Our translators and the UCEDD team were there as well to greet us.  We had a short opening ceremony, surveyed the work site that was well underway then went back down the hill through the Batwa quarter to see the houses they lived in.

The batwa are poor and for the most part, the immediate reaction of seeing such abject poverty is compassion, but there is something about this kind of compassion that is distanceing, not a feeling that draws one nearer.  One wants to help but also to push it away, because it is too difficult and overwhelming to look at for too long.

I know that is often the first reaction one has to encountering the school and neighboring community.  But I felt it as a personal mission to help this team move beyond that kind of 'otherness' compassion toward a more intimate connection and understanding of what the real struggles are for the kids in the school and to wrestle with them over how to overcome their challenges rather than feeling like throwing money and stuff is the only possible response to such need.

Over the week I do feel like we succeeded overwhelmingly at getting connected to the school, the teachers, the students, administration, and even parents.  We generally divided the day into two parts, in the morning most of the team did construction on the 10th grade classroom and in the afternoon the team split into small groups and went into different classrooms to do small workshops in English, crafts, and singing.  In the late afternoon we did prayer and worship together the first 2 days and sports on the third day.

In the morning we had breakfast at the seminary prior to ascending the hill.  I drove my jeep up every morning to bring about half of the team up who needed assistance.  We would go back down for lunch then return at 2pm and stay until about 6.  We returned to the seminary and had dinner about 7:30 pm and usually had a team debriefing and planning meeting for the next day.

It seemed that all aspects of this went off very well.  During construction I think the workers there were stunned to see mzungus doing menial tasks like moving bricks.  There were also several skilled masons on the team who helped mud and lay brick as well.  Again, I think modelling a respect for manual labor was well received by those who were working.

At one point 5 Burundian women with 7gallon jerry cans hijacked one of the young women on the team to help carry water (womens work) to mix with mortar.  They were gone about an hour and when they came back she told us they walked over a mile down hill to fill up and back up.  When they came back Gwen was struggling mighily to carry the water jug up in her arms while the 5 others balanced the full jugs deftly on their heads, several of them with a baby in tow on their backs.  (It did give me the opporunity to talk more about women's work in this country and how they do most of the labor especially water bearing, cultivating and childbearing.)

In the afternoon I did participate in some of the team activities, particularly the singing group.  The intention was to teach some simple english songs like 'If You're Happy and You Know It' which we did but when we asked them to sing some songs they knew to us we felt really put to shame as even the youngest primarly classes would break into choruses with soloists and responders in 4 part harmony, while the mzungus struggled to stay in pitch with our simple melodies.

In the teaching I was very happy to have two of the mission team who were teachers get more involved in teaching english lessons and interacting with teachers as well.  We actually had the team sit down with the primary and secondary school teachers and talk to each other about what challenges they face as far as helping students succeed in school.  The American teacher (Judy) said that behavior problems was the biggest obstacle to learning for many students in the US while the Burundians said that absence due to hunger was the biggest obstacle they faced in trying to get students to learn.

On Thursday we were also able to set up some one-on-one interviews with individual students.  Two men interviewed two boys and two women interviewed two girls.  They asked them questions about life and school.  The women told me they were very surprised by answers the girls gave, particularly to the question about challenges they faced in order to succeed in school.  To this the girls said that what they needed most were candles because they had to do chores after school during daylight hours and at night, without electricity it is too dark to study.

During the afternoon Bible study time, we enjoyed singing by the students and on one day I preached to the group (a challenge to preach cross culturally) and another day one of the team preached as well.

On Friday we went down to the seminary soccer field in the afternoon and played soccer with the kids.

During all of this time, Jean Sack worked with the library books sorting them into age appropriate categories and also went into most of the classes to read some books and demonstate to the teachers how books can be used to stimulate learning.  Her work was greatly appreciated by Beatrice the coordinator of education.

I did take the opportunity on several of the early mornings to attend mass at the Seminary where once again one can hear beautifully and chanted liturgy.  It was good preparation and a time to pray for the work of the team in the morning.  In the evenings most of us were quite tired and fell asleep shortly after dinner.

The lodging is modest to say the least, there was neither electricity nor water much of the time, but the simple rooms were comfortable.  I had warned the team not to expect much.  "If you think of it as camping you will be pleasantly surprised by the amenities, if you think of it as a hotel, you will be quite disappointed."     I never heard a single complaint from anyone the whole time.  I think working with those who have so little puts much of this in perspective.

On Saturday Dr. Wilde arrived in the bus in the morning and we went up the hill together for a very nice closing ceremony.  There were many pictures, and very positive sentiments.  The team also distributed some gifts (toothbrushes and flip-flops) to the kids.  The ceremony ended in good time for the team to go back to the seminary, pack the bus and head down the road back to Kigali before the border closed at 5:30 pm.

Jean, Bethany and Annie and I headed back to Bujumbura to connect up with Rebecca and Janelle (the other SALTer)  There had been some hope that Rebecca, Janelle and the kids could join us upcountry on Friday night and we could come down together, but that was not possible as Rebecca did not have a ride.

It was good to be home!  We had a full house Saturday night with all 3 Salters and Jean with us.  But Annie and Bethany headed back up to Rwanda on Sunday and Jean boarded Brussels Airlines on Sunday evening to return to the US.  It was hard to believe she had been here nearly 4 weeks.

In retrospect it was interesting to consider that in time Jean was here, she spent 2 weeks with me alone.   Two weeks ago she helped me watch the kids while Rebecca was in Uganda and last week when Rebecca came back, she went with me to the Hope School.  All in all her visit went quite well for all of us.

The end of this week was an important landmark as it demarks the time, since homeleave when all of our big projects have ended.  Rebecca and I knew we were going to face the toughest 6 months of our assigment right after homeleave.  We oriented new workers, had an evaluation, an audit, a visit from our supervisor, a short vacation, then her trip Uganda as worship leader and my leading the mission team to Hope School this past week.

We could not have done it in our own strength.  In the words of a famous missionary (William Carey) I feel like we have lived out his motto in the last 6 months:

"Expect great things from God, Attempt great things for God."

Rebecca and I dropped the kids off at school this morning and went to Club du Lac T. and enjoyed a quiet breakfast and time of reflection together, in gratitude for the completion of these tasks.  It was tiring but we both have felt enriched by our experiences.

All of us are now coming down with colds and flus and David has a fever.  I think the timing is good and expected.  We can let down our guard a bit and get sick for a few days.  Amen.