Out of Africa

Saying goodbye to Avril at Pinnacle 19.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.

The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent

enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of

saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us….

No statement says all that could be said.

No prayer fully expresses our faith

.
No confession brings perfection.

No pastoral visit brings wholeness.

No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.

No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.

We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.

We lay foundations that will need further development.

We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.

This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an

opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master

builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.

We are prophets of a future not our own.

---Bishop Untener of Saginaw

It is my turn to be up late, unable to sleep.  We are at about T – 18 hours from departure from Burundi.  We are holed up in the small but very comfortable apartment adjoining the home of some German missionary friends.  They have generously let us use it in our last week as we have moved out of our house entirely and have, just yesterday surrendered the key to the landlord, having completed all cleaning and inspection.  We left on very good terms with him.

Flashforward 24hours--  We are now sitting in Heathrow airport waiting for our final connection to Zurich where we will do some visiting and ground travel to Stuttgart to visit our German friends who had left Burundi last year.   But I will talk more about that when we get back to the US.

Looking back over the last 5 days is worth some reflection.  How does one leave a home and community?  What do you do in the last hours as you set aside a way of life?  These were questions that we did reflect upon before the final hours were upon us.  I would encourage anyone who is leaving a place to reflect and plan before the last hours are upon you.

The last week itself remained busy and passed quickly.  The biggest responsibility we had left in the first half was making our final trip to Kigali to drop off our SALT  volunteers, Julia and Matt who were returning to the US at the end of their assignment.  Although it felt like a bit of burden in the very last days, we were grateful for the chance to make a final visit and have real closure with our partners and service workers there.

The highlight event (besides closing our bank accounts) was a dinner we hosted at the guest house we staying in, for all of our partners, the host parents of our SALTers, and our other service workers and local staff.  We were about 18 all told. 

It was not unlike other such events we have had in the past weeks.  There was dinner, speeches and counter speeches, prayer, and gifts.  We felt that we left Rwanda well and at peace with everyone there. 

The next chapter for the new reps. who will be based in Kigali, will be quite different as MCC is now registered as an official INGO in the country.  This will come with many new opportunities and challenges that were not part of our experience when we were the Reps. 

I should mention that we did take advantage of the drive upcountry to drop in on some friends.  Samantha and Isai Torres, are missionaries that arrived about the same time as us, and set up a center for vulnerable children, in Bukeye.  They have 2 young children.  Their mission is called Cries of a Child and they are currently building a clinic in this remote rural town.

It was good to share and pray with them on our final visit up country.  We had lunch together in the Kabira Forest Guest House at the top of the hill in Bugarama. 

We got back to Bujumbura from Kigali on Thursday afternoon and went to dinner with our Ethiopian friends.  It was Rebecca’s Birthday (pretty minimal this year) but we did have a fabulous Ethiopian meal, complete with coffee and Café Gourmand pastries. 

Friday I closed our Burundi bank accounts and Rebecca and I took shifts closing the house.  Our staff had pretty much cleared it out while we were in Rwanda and there was not much to do.   By the afternoon we were able to return it to the landlord and ended our stay in the house on good terms.

Saturday was a special day and we planned it as a family day to do some of our favorite things.  Rebecca and the kids stopped off at Musee Vivant while I ran a quick errand.   (I gave one of our old computers to Odifax, one of our house staff who also works as a pastor.)  From there we went to Café Gourmand for lunch.  We took some photos of Oren’s icecream sundai and the pastry counter. 

In the afternoon we went to Club du Lac Tanganyika for the last time.  We swam in the pool and lake.  Jennifer Price stopped by and we chatted.  We left there and stopped by Pinnacle 19 to say good-bye to Avril the chimp.  Avril knows David very well and immediately took his hand and led him to the trampoline. 

We spent about 45 minutes there then headed to Ubuntu for dinner.  Ubuntu is a place of special significance because it is where we had our first meal out in Burundi.  In fact we were brought there the very first day of our arrival to meet the MCC team.  To have our last supper there gave us a sense of closure as it was  a place we loved to go. 

We shared our last meal with very special friends:  Pastor Emmanuel Ndikumana and his wife Asele.  Also friends that we have known since our first days in Burundi.  Emmanuel Ndkikumana is one of the truly prophetic voices for the Burundian church. 

In fact, Sunday morning (the next day) he was preaching and gave an inspired message based on Acts 4-6 to the church regarding corruption and distraction as tools the devil uses to undermine the church. 

The last church service was fairly emotional as well.  We were asked to come forward and give a testimony.  We both talked about how the BICC congregation was really a home for us and the place where we really established sustainable community bonds in Burundi.  Both through the church and the small group that we formed out of it.  It was here where I also shared the poem at the beginning of this blog.  It was read at the funeral of Arch Bishop Arhur Romero.  It captures a bit how it feels to leave, not having completed nearly as much was set out to do.  The work is far from done, but we are no longer the people called to do it here.

We were prayed for and commissioned.  Sent back to the US to bring what we had learned from Burundi back to the US.  We took pictures of ourselves with several good friends (they are here in the blog).

We went home and finished packing.  Miraculously I was able to get all 9 of our suitcases into the car with our family.  Fortunately people who wanted to see us off did not meet us at the apartment expecting a ride! 

We said goodbye to our friends Samuel and Sabine, who had been hosting us, and headed to the airport at 4 pm.  We found on arrival, about a dozen wellwishers. 

At that point things began to get very surreal for me.  First handing off my cellphone and all my keys to Felix made me feel almost naked.  I am never without those things and the idea that the car, the office, my house, and the phone were no longer mine to use really made the feeling that the job was over sink in heavily. 

It was not so much a feeling of freedom as one of loss, like a heavy weight was lifted off my shoulders and I found that without that I was not able to keep my feet on the ground and was blowing away like chaff in the wind.

I really understood, at that moment that this was it.  We were not coming back after our nomal one month vacation in the summer.  There is no ‘back’ to come to now. 

Patrick and Michael in the Bujumbura departure lounge

To add to the surreal feeling were some surprise passengers at the airport.  Both DRC service workers (Patrick and Michael) were getting on the same flight for completely unrelated reasons.  All of us flying together was completely by chance.  I also saw Ali Blair, another old friend who was dropping someone off at the airport.  Ben Carlson was getting on the flight as was another father from the Ecole Belge—Marcus, Nicola’s husband.

Having this huge number of people I knew all going out with us added to the strangeness of the whole departure.

Nonetheless. We left without incident on Kenya Airways which stopped in Nairobi where got on a British Airways 747 to London and Zurich.

We are currenly in Zurich where we will take a train to visit some of our German missionarly friends and then do a professional ‘debriefing’ /reentry retreat to help us make the transition back to our culture smoother.  I am looking forward to that.

The poem at the beginning captures a bit what it feels like to leave.  So many seeds we harvested that we did not plant, but also so many seeds we planted that we will not be the ones to harvest.  Some will grow and flourish, other will wither and die.  But we are no longer the tenants in that place.

This is the first time in nearly my life where we are not going to something.  The future is unknown for us and the past 6 years are so rich that looking forward will be difficult.  I pray that the 'Grace that 'brought us safe thus far will be sufficient to lead us home.

 I plan to add one more entry to this blog once we are back on US soil and we begin a new season in our lives.