Welcoming Melody and Celebrating Abundance

David playing with the Noel on the porch.

If I had to characterize the sense I have about the beginning of our 5^th year in a word, it would probably be 'abundance'. It may seem surprising to say in a place where scarcity is something we are experiencing in the petrol and sugar market. But in our work and life here there is really a sense in which we have received a rich blessing of friends, colleagues, and 'workers in the vineyard' with us.

This is evident in several different areas of our lives. I will try to make a list here of the ways in which we have experienced this (not necessarily in order of importance):

1. We have several new American families here that have become good friends. The Ivaska's (JJ and Courtenay) and the Millers (Joel and Jeanette) with their kids have been a pleasant reminder of the some of the cultural uniquenesses of Americans that we sometimes miss. Sam Miller, Joel and Jeanette's 7 year old is in Oren's class and a very good friend. I have never seen anyone crack Oren up so much. He thinks Sam is absolutely hilarious and I think they have even gotten into some trouble at school by sharing jokes during class time. I admit as an adult I have trouble appreciating the rather broad allusions of 7 year old humor. ( I asked Oren what was making him giggle uncontrollably all the way home in the car one day and he said that Sam had whispered “Qu'est-ce-que tu bottom?” to him in class. --I am guessing it sounded to Sam a lot like the French expression Qu'est-ce-que tu pense? )
2. Our small group is growing larger: With the arrival of anglophone newcomers to our church this year we are finding our small group has been growing quite a bit. We may even have to split in two if it gets any bigger, but it is really good to see people committed to meet together weekly and support each other through prayer, study and fellowship.
3. My dance classes are really awesome this year. I have now committed Friday afternoons (3-7) to teaching dance. This is my 4^th year of doing this at the Belgian School and this year with many new children joining the first level and more than 10 returnees in the second level, I have an awesome group who are really ready to learn something this year. Another surprise is to find 10 adults, some with considerable past experience, who are willing to come out and do my 6-7pm adult class. I am actually excited about this extra-curricular activity. Saturday morning yoga is also now a fairly stable group of about a dozen.
4. Our team is growing a lot this year and we will be 14 (including David and Oren) at our retreat at the beginning of November. For those of you who have been following this blog for a while, I am sure it must seem like some dramatic series that suddenly added a confusingly large number of new cast members. We added another this week, and still another is coming in about 10 days.
5. Our fruit trees are also extremely productive this year and we are beginning to harvest enormous quantities (buckets) of avocados and mangoes. They should be fully ripe in a couple weeks, but the early ones have been coming every day for the past 2 weeks.

This year feels, in the arc of our lives here, like a season of harvest of seeds we have been sowing for the past 4 years. I admit there were times when we thought that many of these fields would never produce and we have been content to be satisfied with what the dry ground here would produce, but I see now that the bigger problem was our lack of patience to let the seeds of our community building reach the point of germination. It has been a very blessed season thus far this year and I feel that we go out into the fields of our communities like the husbandman who has taken care to plant his land with a variety of crops, mended the fences, pulled the weeds, watered, fertilized and having waited patiently for the harvest, can now go out and walk through the high amber waves of wheat, maize, and barley, as the time of fruitfulness has finally come.

Having said that, I should mention at least one significant area of attrition this month, and that has been in finding petroleum. We are in the midst of a gas shortage caused by a dispute between fuel station owners and the government about what the price should be. Gas prices are controlled by the government, but from what I understand, there has been an increase in gas prices coming into the country while prices in country have not changed. This means that gas station owners get even less of a very small margin of profit. They are expecting prices to go up soon so they are 'sitting' on the gas in anticipation. Almost every station is closed and where one does find a station open there is a line of cars that may take one a full day to arrive at the pump. And even then, there is no guarantee of success. People have been scrambling to find ways to get gas in their cars.

I came up with at least one 'African solution' which was to have a friend of mine who is a taxi driver take my car out and use his 'connections' to get it filled up. (My Fortuner is big and getting it filled is next to impossible.) My friend was able to do it with a $10 commission (split between himself and the gas station attendant.) It was well worth it to me.

By contrast, after a trip upcountry later in the week, I went and tried to fill the tank myself. I saw a gas station where only 7 people were lined up by the time I got there. I thought I had it made, but without connections, the progress of the legitimate line was so slow that I did not even get to the front for nearly 3 hours. I am hoping this problem ends soon, but for now, we are trying to less driving, although the necessity for weekly trips upcountry to orient new team members has not diminished.

Going back through the chronology of the week, I feel, among my the many hats I don as Country Rep of MCC, the chauffer's cap was the most well worn this week. It began on Monday when I took our SALTer Terri-Lynn and her dad Doug up to the Hope School. He planned to spend the week there to see what she did, and also brought some supplies to fix the swing set at the nursery school. The school was not the only stop on the tour as I also passed through Gitega to drop off our short-term service worker Saffy who had come along for the ride.

I did not want to spend the night up at the school as I feel I have been away a lot so I took them up and came back the same day with a very short turn-around on arrival. I also gave one of our partners a ride down on the way home. It was not a bad trip except our ipod unexpectedly died just before I left. I happily avoided several rain storms that occurred in different places along the route until I got back to Bujumbura where I got pounded by a big cloudburst.

Tuesday was a nice day with everyone home and on Wednesday I taught ballet for the other teacher while Rebecca took our service worker Jennifer to the airport for a short visit back to the US.

Thursday we welcomed Melody Musser our new service worker who will be based in Gitega to work with our partner organization MiParec. Rebecca and I picked her up afer lunch from the airport and did some work in orienting her in the evening. That was also the day when I spent several hours buying gas.

On Friday morning I took her up to Gitega. The urgency for getting her up there was due to the fact that the Great Lakes Peacebuilding Institute is going on this month and she will be working with the partner who presents it. We want her to experience as much of it as possible. Our trip up was not easy, in fact, the police had blocked the main road that goes from the town of Bugarama to Gitega. When I asked what we should do they pointed in the opposite direction, toward the Kayanza road and said there was another way. I had never done it, but I did eventually find a dirt road heading off toward Gitega about 16 kilometers down the other road. It was quite long and steep in many places, but we did eventually get to Gitega only half an hour later than we had hoped.

We went over to MiParec, where the Institute is being held and watched the last hour of Gopar's presentation of a critical methodology for evaluating peacebuilding programs. We had lunch with the partner and Melody, then I took her over to Yolanda's flat where she and Michael Sharp (who came with us) began to make her feel welcome. I am happy that there are other service workers up there so she will not feel quite so alone in her new assignment.

On the way home I brought Teri-Lynn, her dad, and Saffy back to Bujumbura. I got home in time to teach my adult ballet class.

Saturday after yoga we went to the beach with Teri-Lynn and her dad to give him a bit of a taste of the touristy side of Burundi. We had a nice afternoon. In the evening our family went over to Joel and Jeanette Millers house at Hope Africa University. They made pizzas for us and Oren and David really enjoyed playing with their kids. Sam cracked Oren up the whole evening and we could hear peals of hysterical laughter emanating from the hallway that connects the bedrooms to the living room much of the time we were there.

I have not mentioned that with all the aforelisted activity, Rebecca was also preparing a sermon all last week. It was based on the passage at the end of the sermon on the mount (Matthew 7: 15-27) On Sunday she did a stellar job of talking about the different images of obedience that comes from a life of following Jesus. The first is the unconscious natural obedience that is produced like a tree giving fruit, the second is the obedience that comes from knowledge (knowing and being known) and finally the deliberate obedience of doing, like the wise builder who hews out a firm foundation in the rock.

She had some excellent anecdotes that went along with the sermon. In talking about a good tree bearing good fruit she told about her experience in Botswana of working with an NGO that was trying to propagate indigenous trees (marulla). In order to find good trees they had contests in primary schools to have children bring the best, tastiest fruits they knew of. From the winners of these contests they were able to find the best trees for future propagation. (Truly a living metaphor of a tree being known by its fruit.)

She ended with a story of what this obedience looked like in the famous story of the Anabaptist Dirk Willems, who in the 15^th century faced execution in the Netherlands for the heresy of believing that baptism should happen after a deliberate decision to follow Christ and not at birth. After being condemned to death he managed to escape from prison. While fleeing across a frozen river he was pursued by a prison guard. Dirk was outpacing him when he heard a crash and scream and realized the officer had fallen through the ice and was drowning in the freezing water. Dirk made the decision then to turn back and rescue the man. When he did so, he was immediately recaptured, taken back to prison and burned at the stake for the crime of heresy. Dirk knew that the decision to turn back and help his enemy would cost him his life, but he did it anyway.

Rebeca used this story to illustrate what these 3 types of obedience look like in the life of a man who truly imitated the sacrificial love of his enemy that we see in Christ.

Truly he could not have made that choice if he did not feel himself deeply grounded in the assurance of the love of Christ. His act was both unconsciously and deliberately obedient.

We had a very moving discussion about the sermon in our small group that evening. Among our more poignant observations was the fact that there is a great temptation as a builder to work a lot more on the superstructure than the foundation because no one really sees the foundation. People are easily impressed by the superstructure and having a tall multistory building in one's life may give the appearance that one had a great foundation. (Look at televangelists of mega-churches) Yet when one of these individuals falls (like a Jim Bakker) the entire empire comes down with a colossal crash. On the other hand, someone with a deep foundation may not have a very impressive house, a solid structure may never be as tall as a house built on the sand. But as the Bible says, when the storm comes it will withstand it.

We took Teri-Lynn's dad back to the airport today and we are looking forward to an entire week with no travel upcountry whatsoever. The first full week home since our arrival.

Sorry for the dirth of pictures, I will try to do better next week.  I forgot my camera when I was traveling.