JJ and daughter Zadie doing the Virginia Reel at our square dance last weekend.
I am surprised to feel a bit unmotivated this week to put up
a post, especially since the last week has some very newsworthy events (at
least in our lives here) worth reporting.
It has been a week since my last update on the eve of my
return from a 5 day trip to Kigali last Friday, and I wanted to be able to
report on that before jumping into the following week which began (on Saturday)
with a party!
Yes it was time once again for our tri-yearly folk and line
dance party. It is kind of a
back-to-school gathering, a time to take stock of who is still here from last
year and who are the new arrivals. We
try to schedule it toward the end of the first month back from vacation so
people have a chance to get settled.
The biggest challenge with regard to preparation is getting
the house ready before the big day. Rebecca and I prepare food and other parts of the house as well.
Being in Rwanda until Friday made this a bit of a challenge, especially
with yoga on Saturday morning. But by
early afternoon we had the house ready—all the furniture out of the living room
and moved onto the porch, the music plugged into the back up power system, food
and beverages prepared, and guests started arriving after 4.
I have noticed that the number of people coming to these
events has tended to increase over the years, and I would say that at the
height of the party there were at least 70 counting children.
Besides the excitement of having so many people here and the
chance to celebrate the beginning of our last year, there is a ritual significance
that these gatherings take on for me that I have spoken of before. I expect we will have a total of 3 such
events this year—one now, one at Christmas, and one toward the end of the year. Dancing together, especially the figures of
square dancing, is a symbol--an
affirmation of our community, our interdependence, our support
of each other. I believe these dances
had this intention historically—a symbol of social and cultural cohesion. In this cross-cultural context I see even
more value in this. In some ways it
seems a bit ironic to be reading more and more about the lack of social
cohesion in our country at the level of our legislators, and yet finding here
that differences in political ideology are not causes for culture wars in
this community where Americans are a small minority.
There continue to be a larger and larger group of US
citizens with families in Burundi, and this has been evident over the years in
these gatherings. It certainly feels
like a big change for us as I remember being able to count the US families on
one hand when we arrived in 2008 (3).
Whether the additional families is making the dancing any
better is debatable, but we did have fun doing several line dances, a hora, a
cotillion, and ending with the Virginia Reel before dinner.
The last Reel had particular meaning for me because among
the guests was the Withrow family, American missionaries that have been in the
process of leaving for a while but symied by issues of visas for 2 adopted
children. Finally Astrid (the mother)
and 4 of the 5 girls will be able to leave for the US while Travis and Divine
(last adopted daughter) stay to finish her visa process. Saying goodbye to Astrid and the girls is a
mixed blessing. We are thrilled that
they have been able to get this far in terms of completing this process, but
sad to see them leave.
Watching Travis and Astrid do their final ‘sashees’ down the
line reminded me fondly of the many times they and their family have celebrated
this rite with us in the past 5 years.
After our dinner, we did have a time of prayer with their
family with those of us who knew them gathering around them in a circle and
praying for God’s guidance and protection over them as Astrid and the girls
leave, and for a rapid completion of the work left to let Travis and Divine
leave as well.
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| The Withrows |
The dinner was great and for any who did not feast on the
first round, there was at least as many desserts as their were main
courses. The kids had a blast playing,
watching movies and jumping on the trampoline.
(I did take a peak in at the trampoline once or twice and was a bit
shocked by the wildness of the little kids bouncing around.) I am thankful that the large enclosing safety
net keeps them all on top of the trampoline mat. We also have mattresses against the walls
that are close to the tramp.
Among the newcomers to our gathering were several families
of doctors who have moved here to staff a training hospital upcountry. There are more than 20 counting children and
it was great to meet several of them at our dance this year. I am encouraged to see their sacrificial
desire to live and work upcountry to improve the Burundi health care system
through better training of doctors at the clinical level.
The celebration ended a bit after 8:30 pm and the clean up
took about an hour. I actually like the
work of methodically putting everything back the way it was—putting all the
furniture back into the living room.
Preparing the house is an interesting transformation made possible by
the fact that the large living room has large doors out to the large porch
allowing us to move the furniture between the spaces easily. The capacity to transform our living room
into a dance hall is one of my favorite features of the house we live in.
I was grateful for small things. It is rainy season and it did rain some, but
since the wind was not too strong the water did not come in onto the
porch. Also, the power went off 5 times
during the party, but thanks to our back-up power system (solar and battery) no
one even noticed a glitch as it switched back and forth between battery and
main power several times during our dances.
I was thankful that none of these things were an impediment to us being
able to dance together last Saturday.
Rebecca and I went to bed a little after 10pm. We enjoyed sitting briefly in our clean
living room when we had finished and marveled at the way things went. There is a sense of relief in giving oneself
greatly in something worthwhile and seeing it come to fruition. We are definitely getting better at doing it
efficiently and with less planning. This
round we did not really begin preparations prior to the night before and were
done 24 hours later. We did have help
from friends with dishes at the end thank Tim and Jeanette our South African
friends for hanging around a bit longer at the end to help with that.
Sunday morning was also to be an unusual day for me as I had
agreed, after much coaxing, to go to visit again, one of the local “Mennonite
Brethren’ churches in Bujumbura. I have
mentioned before the complex relationship MCC has with these churches as they
are started by independent pastors who want to be affiliated with the Mennonite church for
complicated reasons, but financial assistance being high on the list. None of these churches was started under any authority of an existing Mennonite Church polity. They are registered with the Burundi as 'mennonite' but have no official status with the World Mennonite Conference.
We seem to have the opposite problem of some of our
Evangelical missionary friends. While
they are working to bring people here into a relationship with the Lord, we, at
MCC are doing what we can to politely push away churches that are forming themselves
and claiming to be Mennonite.
(Self-Evangelism?) Definitely a
problem of the modern age!
But in fairness, when I go to one of these churches for a
visit, as I am often invited to do, I am always pleased by the enthusiasm of
the worship within. The congregation,
whether they embrace Anabaptist theology or not, are always lively and vibrant
in their worship and sing beautifully.
The reason for my attendance this week was the opening of a
new church. My appearance there was
important to the ‘bishop’ of the MB church here as a sign of blessing from what
I think they imagine to be the ‘great white church patrons.’
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| child outside the church |
As usual, I arrived at 9 for the 9am service which began at
10. There were many logistics that were
planned at the last minute, like renting a generator, and then getting gas for
it (separate trips) when it was found that the power was off in the
neighborhood.
When it finally did start, though, I did really enjoy
listening to and watching the 6 choirs that comprise that church of about 100
people. Each choir had prepared songs and dances and the worship time was
really beautiful.
 |
| intercessor |
There was a very intense time for prayer intercessors, a
group of old men and women that gathered around 2 men playing drums furiously
while they sang and dance with abandon.
At the end several women were prophesying in a kind of trance. I felt
moved to dance around wildly as well and had a funny thought about the quote in
the book of Samuel “Is Saul among the prophets?” at the thought of what the
spectacle of me participating in the ritual would have looked like. Very charismatic group!
The service ended about 4 hours later and I was thankful
that I was not asked to share a meal with them.
I was able to join Rebecca and the kids in the late afternoon at Club du
Lac Tanganyika before our small group in the afternoon.
The pastor insisted that I take a photo of the congregation gathered outside with me in front of the new building. I put it here and turning it black and white
to capture the feeling I had about doing it.
I really did not like being put on display and even asked
to pose as a ‘great white missionary’ bringing the Gospel to the savage heart
of Africa. That is not what Burundi is
now and there are plenty of Burundian Christians who are capable of sharing the
Gospel and planting churches in this mostly Christian country. But I am learning more and more that when we
come, we inhabit roles and identities here that we are put into, even if they
are stale and unsupportable. This is the
way that I am supposed to look to those who invited me.—The Great White Hope-- bringing the Good News... and other more tangible benefits.
I am happy to say I had another experience this week that
stands in stark contrast to the experience in the church on Sunday. It was the opportunity to go with Rebecca to
a gathering of leaders of all the major Burundian protestant churches as
well as representatives from the UN human rights office to talk about a
mechanism for the ‘Church’ to have a voice in the CVR (truth and reconciliation
commission) that is being formed. This
is a very delicate political issue and one that will affect most
Burundians. How does one bring healing
and reconciliation by righting past wrongs?
By exposing to the light of truth, the crimes of the past—particularly
the atrocities of the past 14 years.
The problem is immense and one of the biggest complicating
factors is that the govt, currently in power was one of the rebel groups in the
past who were accused of many of the atrocities. Can we expect such a govt. to allow this
process to go forward? And what is the role
of the church in this? Can Christians
bring a unified voice into how this happens?
What is the role of justice and grace in all of this?
These are important questions and ones the church has not
been prepared to answer because historically the church in Burundi has not been
very involved in politics as an institution.
There was much debate during the meeting and a recognition that church
leaders themselves need education about the issues at hand. Most know the Bible for instance, but have no
idea what is in the Arusha accords.
One of the highlights of the event was listening to Rebecca
deliver a meditation on what conflict resolution and restorative justice look
like in the Bible. She used the passage
in Matthew about Jesus’ instruction on how to restore one’s brother to the
church when he is wrong.
To me, the most interesting point that came out of the
debate was the recognition, that unlike other institutions of justice, the
Church does have a responsibility to minster to the offender as well as the
victim. I think it is true that we look
at justice more from the point of view of the victim’s rights. But the church has the ministry of seeking
and saving the LOST. The importance of
restoring the offender as well as the victim has interesting ramifications in a
transitional justice process.
I would say that outside those highlights the rest of the
week is a bit of a blur, but that is not entirely true. I did have one bad and particularly memorable
event. I was inspecting our roof for
leaks and climbed the homemade ladder fashioned out of eucalyptus branches
hammered together by a local carpenter a couple year ago. I climbed it, and about 10 feet up it snapped
in half. I fell to the ground suddenly
almost pulling the rain gutter with me.
Surprisingly I landed on my feet but had scraped much of the front of my
body. I am not in terrible pain, but it
was a shock and reminder of the hazards we have here that we take for granted
at home as being safe. (ladders that do
not snap in half)
We were all affected here by the reports of the Al Shabaab
attack in Nairobi. Although I do feel
relatively safe here, I think many of us here live with some fear of something
like that happening like that. In truth, I think we
face greater risks driving our cars upcountry from oncoming traffic, but the
situation in Nairobi leaves a deeper psychological anxiety for us living here as ex-pats. (I will add that we were relieved to hear that all MCC staff in Nairobi were safe although the MCC office is just a few blocks from the shopping Mall. It is a place we frequent when we are in Nairobi ourselves.)
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| Ernie, center with fellow Kairos brothers. |
I end with a tribute to a friend and mentor, a fellow
missionary who was working with the Lummi Indian Nation in Washington
State. Ernie Shultis was a friend and
co-worker in the Kairos prison ministry.
We worked together in a prison in Upstate New York for many years. This was probably one of the most important
preparations I had for the work I am doing here as I learned deeply what it
means to be obedient to the cross under his guidance and leadership. He died suddenly of lung cancer with about 2
weeks between diagnosis and death. I
know he is with the Lord now and many will miss him greatly. “Precious in the sight of the Lord are the
death of his saints.”
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