Chiilin' with our homies from New York!

Oren hanging with Justin and Alicia by the pool at Club du Lac Tanganyika.


This has been a long anticipated week, and perhaps many who read this blog are waiting for this entry to confirm that indeed our three home-church youth have arrived. Justin and Alicia Thompson-Gee (the children of our pastor at the Poughkeepsie United Methodist Church) and Bridget Marrine arrived safely. All three youth were a big part of the youth group when Rebecca was youth pastor there and have since gone on to college. I like to think that their ongoing committment to mission work is partly a result of Rebecca's influence on their lives in their early teens. i will come back with more details of what will be a three week soujourn with us, but let me start back at the beginning of the week as they arrived only Friday night.

I can't say the week began well, for me. I mentioned getting sick last weekend, and that turned out to be a pretty nasty flu-like virus that I passed on to the rest of the family over the rest of the week. Oren and David were sick on Wednesday through Friday, and Oren was not able to go to school on Thursday or Friday. Rebecca also had fever Thursday and Friday.

There is a saying that goes something like "I used to complain that I didn't have any shoes until I met a man without any feet." And if we had any cause to feel sorry for ourselves, we need only consider the health of our cook, Marcelline, who has been out since Monday with a combination of typhoid and malaria. (Which is very common here in tandem.) She is out for 10 days in the hospital. Rebeecca went to see her on Tuesday and she looked pretty unwell. We are planning to go back and visit her later today with our friends. Visiting the sick is an extremely important ritual in Burundi. So much so, that there is actually a seperate verb in the kirundi language used to describe visiting a sick person that is distinct from any other kind of visiting. There is honor associated with it, and I have no doubt that 4 or 5 mzungus coming to visit Marcelline this afternoon will be greatly appreciated. (Even strangers.)

Illness has not been the only cause for anxiety though, and I am not trying to play for sympathy here ;-) We said goodbye to some very special friends this week. On Tuesday, we drove with Zachee and Tim to the airport before school. They were on their way to Canada for three months. It was honestly a bit surreal. We had dinner with them the night before along with Brandon, one of our service workers. The next morning we met him at the airport to take his car back to our house for security. They were meeting Bridget in Nairobi, then proceeding to Canada for 3 MONTHS! His departure is problaby the single bigeest rite of passage that will happen to us this year. We are truly being cut loose here, as he has been our program assistant, accountant, protocol officer, cultural attache, gopher, and most of all friend! It is honestly, unimaginable to think of doing our job here without him. We would not have been able to do so as recently as 3 months ago. I hope we are ready now.

We have already had a bit of a workout as Rebecca and I have taken turns running around to do many of the administrative things involving paying bills for gas, electricity, rent, phone, car registration, garbage collection, insurance, etc. (All of these are done with cash in offices in different parts of the city.) That was quite a cultural adjustment for me, who in New York, paid all my bills automatically through internet banking.

Timmy was another major loss as he and Oren have become fast friends have been spending many hours together jumping on the trampoline. (Now he prefers to jump with someone all the time and I am getting really worn out keeping him entertained.) He is really going to miss Timmy for these 3 months.

If Timmy were the only friend who had left town, we might be OK. But in fact, on Wednesday, Lizzie (Simon's wife) left for the UK with their kids, Zack and Grace. Zack was Oren's other best friend. Simon (who will join them in a few weeks) and Lizzie are going back to the UK for the birth of their third child, but then will be going to South Carolina for 3 years to do fundraising work for their mission. The departure of both Timmy and Zack, and this on the heels of the departure of the Carr's has really left us a bit high and dry as far as close friends for Oren, and for us. We are going to have to really work hard to replace them while they are away. It did make the arrival of our three friends from the US seem like divine timing. Granted, they may think they are a bit old to be Oren's best friends, but Oren does not seem to be bothered by the age gap. They were swimming in the kids pool at Club du Lac on Saturday, jumping on the trampoline today, and were even treated to a viewing of Oren's favorite movie (Bolt) this afternoon.

I should say something about the actual arrival of our friends. Their flight came in on Friday evening, directly from Brussels. The Belgian Airlines flight arrives from there twice a week. I arrived on time to meet them and the plane was on time as well. I waited with a large group of other expectant locals and expats for our guests to emerge from immigration and customs. It is impossible to see what is happening behind the doors until they are almost done. People started coming through quickly and I was getting excited. But after about an hour, I saw that I was pretty much the only person still standing around waiting at the door. I was positive they were on the flight, so I was a bit worried that something was going wrong in the immigration process. (Were they going to be deported?) 15 minutes later they emerged, to my relief, and was told that there were no problems, just a long visa application process.

I took them home and we were only stopped once by a heavily armed army officer, but only because they were trying to pull a taxi bus out of a ditch. Oren and David had stayed up in anticipation of their arrival, but fell asleep shortly afterward. That was a good thing since it gave them a chance to disgorge the massive amount of goodies they had brought from the US for us with them. This included Cheerios, several pounds of chocolate chips, some large bags of jelly beans (Oren's favorites) as well as some precious Fuji apples. Here is a picture of them (taken on their arrival with my bad camera). As you can see, they brought many essential supplies for our mission work here, smuggled in their suitcases!

They also had many things for our partners, including Sunday school materials, and a laptop computer. All of these will be greatly appreciated when they are delivered into the hands of those waiting for them.

Saurday and Sunday, after their arrival proved to be challenging as well because of automotive adventures. What is ironic about it all, is that we are currently in possesion of two vehicles, our own, as well as Zachee's. Oddly, though, on Saturday morning, after everyone was up and had eaten we tried to go out to the beach, only to find that both vehicles had dead batteries! We were able to push start Zachee's corolla, and get it to a gas station for gas and oil, then drive it back to jump start the jeep. We then took the jeep to the beach and enjoyed the afternoon there. Simon also dropped by for a visit, and was very keen on taking our visitors out for some beach evangelism at 6am Sunday morning, then a trip to the Musee Vivant--our local zoo--to climb into the crocodile cages for some photo ops. We'll see! ( I will be dedicating a blog entry to Simon (Guillebaud) in the next few months when his film series comes out, but for those of you who want to know more about him, his book "For What it's Worth: A Call to Radical Discipleship" is well worth reading.)

On Sunday morning, as we prepared to go to church, we discovered the exact same problem. Both batteries were dead again, despite being charged back up for a long time. We did manage to push start Zachee's car again and drive it to church. We did not have the same luck leaving as the car refused to go at all after church on the way home. While I am tempted to see all of this as the devil's handiwork, the truth was, the dead battery at church proved to be a blessing in disguise. Because of it, many of our Burundian friends at church reached out to us immediately. We got a ride home, and then I even got a ride to a store to get a new battery for the jeep and assistance putting it in. By 1pm we were back to having a reliable car again.

At a time when we have been feeling particularly helpless and isolated without our 'go to guy', Zachee it was good to see that we are not, in fact, alone. We have been building a community slowly but surely, and there are many local Good Samaritans that are very happy to extend themselves when we are in need, and to go the extra mile to be sure that we are well taken care of.

I admit to feeling a bit fragile these days. With so many close friends and associates leaving and the illness that has beset us and our staff, we have been feeling a bit lonely and under attack. To have friends from our home community come and visit us at this time is a great encouragement. In fact, this evening, as we spent some time together in prayer I talked about the ministry that they will be bringing here to this place in the next several weeks. I think it is hard, especially on a short term trip, to feel like one is making a difference, unless they are doing something concrete--like building a playground, or school. But much of the work Rebecca and I do is relational, and it is in fact often just our presence, interest, and encouragement that is the greatest blessing. I even told the youth that it is possible that the most profound thing they may do here may be the encourgement they are to us.

That said, we have lined up a fairly busy and diverse program for them beginning tomorrow morning with the leader of the Burundian Union Groupe Biblique (Intervarsity Burundi). They will be spending some time with students before going up to meet our partners who run the Batwa school this weekend. We will keep you updated on their experiences next week.