The God Who Suffers with Us, a Team Gathering, and a Resurrection

David taking a rest with Avril at Pinnacle 19.

I have many friends who are not theists.  But I have at least as many who believe in a powerful God who does mighty acts every day.  They live life going from ‘strength to strength’ and cling to the promise that we are ‘more than conquerors through him who loved us.”

The God I have come to know here, though, is not the one who always delivers us from suffering, tragedy and adversity, taking us from 'strength to strength', but rather suffers with us.  He is the one who abides despite poverty, famine, genocide, unimaginable acts of barbarism, but in our personal failings and weaknesses as well.

While I am more rationally comfortable with a suffering God, I have occasionally had a glimpse at the God of miracles, who heals our diseases.  In fact, I feel I was privy to a resurrection, this time not metaphorical, but quite literal.

It began at 4 am--a time I find is the preferred hour of bad tidings.  A skype message on my ipod from my youngest brother told me that my sister-in-law (of my other brother) was in a coma after an accidental overdose of medication.  She had been found by my brother, blue, not breathing and no pulse.  He started cpr and called EMS.  They were able to restore a weak pulse and took her to the hostpital on a ventilator.  She spent 3 days in a coma, completely unresponsive, and it appeared she might be ‘brain dead’.  It did not seem possible that she could not have suffered severe brain damage after so much time without oxygen. 

But then, she suddenly woke up!!  Although could not talk, because of the ventilator in her throat, she wrote on a paper asking how long she had been asleep.  When told 3 days, the next thing she wrote was ‘’I have an exam.”  She was fully cognitive and had all of her motor functions.  It was a real resurrection in my opinion.

For me it was even more dramatic because on the third day I was beginning to look for plane tickets in expectation of returning for a funeral.  To hear the news of her waking up really felt like God un-did history!!  She was gone, and then she was back.   I think I know now how the family of Lazarus must have felt.

I received the good news this past Friday at about 5 am.  I can tell you I cannot think of any day that has ever been better than that one in my life.  We were having a team meeting and I joked that no matter what any of them said to me, or no matter how bad things might get at work, there is nothing that could make that day a bad day.  It had started too impossibly well!!!

I have been living in the bliss of this wonderful news for several days now.  I suppose it will eventually wear off.

When I had heard the news, about the coma, I did ask many of my praying friends all over the world to pray.  And I can see that our prayers were answered.

But I did notice that not everyone was equally blessed that day.  My nightguard came and told us that one of his closest friends in town died quite unexpectedly.  My cook also told me that same day that a pastor in her church, one who had been supporting her family with tuition for several years, was senselessly shot to death by a bandit breaking in his house.  He died about the same time my sister-in-law recovered.  Because of this, I rejoice at the miracle we experienced, but I continue to put my faith in the abiding constancy of the ‘God who suffers with us’.  Miracles can happen, but they are not entitlements to us as believers, and we don’t control them.

Because of the turmoil of the past week which ended so well, I was a bit delayed in writing any report on the past two weeks, so I will backtrack here to some of the highlights.  I am writing from Kigali where we have come with the family because the kids have this week off for the pre-lenten vacances de Carnaval.   They were very excited to come and really feel like it is a vacation.  They meticulously pack certain toys and games they want to take with them.  Their current favorite activities are drawing and watercolors.  They immediately spread out on the floor of our guesthouse suite and went to work. 

We brought Teresa and Julia our SALTers back from Burundi with us as they had come down for a team meeting and retreat that we held at our house.  It was great to have everyone down for the annual meeting to discuss MCC values.  We do this every year because new people join each year and it is good to revisit the motivations behind the work we do and the way we do it. 

I appreciate MCC’s commitment to a holistic approach to international development work.  We, as Christians working in the field of relief, development and peacebuilding, are expected to ‘live’ our assignment.  That is to say, we attempt to live simply, learn language, behave in ways that are culturally appropriate, work through local partners rather than implement our own programs, etc.  We believe the ends are only justified by the means.  We are not here just ‘doing’ our work, we are ‘being’ our work as well. 

We have an awesome team and they enjoy getting to together as much as we do.  We had Melody, and our new service worker Sata down from Gitega, Jennifer and Matt from Bujumbura, with Felix our program assistant, Teresa and Jennifer our SALTers in Kigali came down, and Patrick and Michael from Bukavu joined us as well.  Matt Gates was not able to come because his parents were visiting him in Kigali during the week.

It was not all work and no play.  The team did enjoy cooking together, we watched a movie one evening and went to the beach on Saturday afternoon when we were done.   We went to Pinnacle 19 on the beach day where our family enjoyed spending about an hour on a porch with Avril the chimp.  The kids played with her and had a ball.  I have some very nice pictures of David and her lying around together.

The team retreat was the culmination of a fairly busy 10 days, which kept me occupied through two weekends without a break.  The previous weekend I was upcountry for several reasons.  I was asked to preach on the theme of reconciliation at a Friends Church upcountry (the legal rep. would like me to visit several churches in the next 3 months to share as we are leaving soon.)  I got up at 6 am on Sunday and drove with the Legal Rep. and Matt Alan, our SALTer who wanted to see what it was like, to Mutaho.  It took about 3 hours.  We were lucky we had been warned that rain had made many roads muddy and we took a longer but paved-road way.  The service started at 9 am and I started preaching around 12:30.  We were done a bit after 2 pm, afterwhich we were invited to share a meal.  It was a pretty typical upcountry service.

Despite the length, I did not mind it really.  There were about 8 choirs that sung, a youth choir, an adult choir, a mens choir, womens choir, young mens choir, young womens choir, prayer intercessors choir… I think at least 400 of the 500 people present were in some choir.  The other remarkable thing to see are the hundred or so kids who sit quietly through the whole thing without complaining.

I feel the sermon went well, I preached on the passage about Jesus coming with a sword, to divide families.  I used this to talk about generational sin. How belonging to Christ is taking on a new identity.  Not that we change physically, I am still white, male, etc. but that these identities are must be redeemed as we are adopted into Christ’s family.  I used my own example as coming from a family of slave traders, now myself a ‘slave of Christ’ in Africa.  But I said that standing here requires that I renounce that identity and even ask for forgiveness from African brothers and sisters whose ancestors my ancestors may have harmed.

By the same token I challenged them as Hutus and Tutsis, to renounce the generational sins of their families, the hatred and prejudice that they inherited along with the good things that they were given by their families of origin.  When this is done, you become available now, to go back to your identity as a redeemed individual, able to forgive your enemies, and then share the gospel of peace with those with whom you share a common background.

We left around 3 and headed to Gitega where Matt and I stayed the night.  I needed to do a field visit to the Hope School so stayed upcountry rather than return to Bujumbura.  We took the opportunity to drop in on Melody and Sata who live there.  We had a nice evening with them, shared dinner and conversation.  Sata had just finished a kind of village ‘live-in’ where she spent 2 weeks with a Burundian family as part of her orientation.  She said it was a bit challenging but OK.  Matt and I stayed the night at a Catholic guesthouse and left the next morning.

We headed to Hope School, close to the church we were at the day before.  We took Innocent and Beatrice, our partners who run the school with us from Gitega.  I was going to see the completion of a new water project that collects rainwater off the roofs of the buildings.  The project looked great and they can collect about 5000 liters per rain for the school to use for drinking and cleaning.  It is even filtered when it comes out of the tank thanks to new technology.  This was a project sponsored by the Foundation for Hope in Africa.

I also had to do an interview with a student for some reporting to MCC and met with the teachers to discuss challenges with meeting our objectives of high success rate for students continuing beyond grade 10.  Because this is a Batwa school, in a very impoverished community, factors like hunger and illness make success difficult.  Girls are particularly vulnerable as they often do not have family support as well.  Currently only 2 of the 15 10^th graders are girls and they face a difficult road to the end of the year.  Passing the national exam is a challenge as well.

The meetings did go well and then Mat and I headed back to Bujumbura again.  It was raining on the way down and we took the longer paved way to get home.

I was very happy to be with the family again although Rebeca and I had only two days to get ready for the team retreat.

It was on the night of my return that I received the bad news about my sister-in-law.  I still can’t believe how the dark cloud of grief that day gave way to the bright sun of resurrection three days later.  I was glad we have a team who was able to be compassionate and understanding when I shared the bad news and were able to rejoice with me at the good news.

I am also blessed to work in an organization where we work, play and pray together.  Every morning and evening of the team meeting we had singing, prayer and went and brief liturgy.  I feel God in our midst when we are together and it is a blessing to be with them.

Thanks to all my other praying friends around the world who interceded for my family and I during the past week.  Our prayers were mightily answered!

Bonus Photo:  David and Avril