Monday, March 24, 2008

Lovely Kids





Well I get a lot of complaints from people about not sharing my kids with them. As you can see they are so beautiful it is easy to try and keep them to myself. Here are a few pictures though. You can see they are continuing to grow up. Zibby's (Elizabeth's) eyes in this picture show a bit of the brilliance that she holds inside them. Ian is wearing his favorite outfit (yes we found a Spiderman outfit here in the used clothes market. When he is not wearing that he is likely wearing a Buzz Lightyear one! Emma is trying to help Zibby walk. She is such a great sister to both of the kids- though sometimes tries to be more of a parent than sister. I have been reading the Narnia series with her each day- She begs and I cave easily so we often end up reading 3 chapters a day and are midway through the fourth book since coming back from Malawi in February.

Mawenzusi




The name of the village in Kifipa is “Cold Stone” but it has nothing to do with ice cream shops. It is a village where a few years ago a short-term missionary went to show the Jesus film. From that a community of new believers was formed. They built walls and the community grew. Another missionary helped fund the roofing of the small church and the community grew. Once, twice, now three times the walls have fallen in. The building they made was like the village itself struggling but surviving. In fact despite the struggles with the building, the church is growing. There is an old Ethiopian proverb that says, “Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” This church will become skillful through their struggles.

As we entered the village we were greeted by a half dozen donkeys, a testament to the villages economic strength as a transport city. Most of the people in the village are farmers of course, but they supplement this income by carrying fish from the nearby lake Rukwa to Sumbawanga and other cities where they can sell them in the market. They use donkeys to carry the fish up the mountain.

As we arrived at the pastor’s house we heard a crowd gathered in the courtyard. The home was a traditional Tanzanian house with several small buildings including a pit latrine, a place to bathe, a small kitchen room, some bedrooms, and a sitting room. All of these buildings form a square with an open courtyard in the middle. The congregation met in the courtyard on small benches and grass mats. Sunday school had already begun when we got there but our arrival ushered in many others who may not usually attend the service.

We traveled with a long time pastor who makes up what he lacks in education with great passion and a pastoral heart. He had asked us to visit the church with him because it had been many weeks since he had been at the church and he was charged with overseeing this church as well as 7 others in and nearby Sumbawanga. He was tired from conducting a funeral in the city earlier in the week and another in a village further off. Biking for half a day to get to the village would have been too much for him.

In the service, I was asked to say something to the congregation as is customary when visiting a church here. Being the first visit to the church, I introduced myself but talked mostly about Palm Sunday. I remembered the donkeys. Here people don’t talk much about the triumphal entry of Jesus. They did not even mention the palm branches or the shouts of Hosanna. Instead, they remember Christ coming on a donkey. I talked a bit about the entry but talked more about how the church falling echoed in the reality of Christ’s body being broken. Like the death of Jesus did not kill the church, the falling of a building did not kill the true body of Christ in the village of Mawenzusi. Like the resurrection of Christ’s body on Easter, the body of the church lives on in the Christians who make up the community. And likewise the building too will rise again. After saying all this we gave a gift of about 20 dollars to the church towards the rebuilding project. You would think I gave them a new Crystal Cathedral from their reaction to the gift.

A little encouragement is all the church needs. They will rebuild from out of the rubble. Visiting the church building again after the service we saw the reason it fell was lack of cement holding the bricks together and other construction flaws based on inexperience in building and lack of money to buy cement. The gift I gave them is a little more than half of what it will cost to repair the wall that had fallen. A little more cement and they could prevent more falls in the future.

A seed has been planted. Another has watered it, so the story goes that Paul told the church at Corinth. More graphically, my friend and pastor, Mwanisawa called me and all Christians, “Punda ya Bwana”. (Donkeys for the Lord- could be translated in other words). We thank you for providing for us so that we can pass your gifts on to others.

In Him who calls us to be his hands and other parts in this world,
Zubers

Sickness and Health

The bugs keep biting but they are getting smaller. This year continues to be one of attack on our bodies. (You may remember the fly larvae that we popped out of our bodies in January).

It all started with me buying shoes over the internet. Because I bought shoes that I didn’t try on, they came a little smaller than I had hoped. Not to worry my foot got used to them except my big toe which ripped off the toenail and grew back poorly. In growing back, I got an ingrown toenail that became infected. While I covered it with triple antibiotic cream (our version of Windex for the fans of My Big Fat Greek Wedding), it continued to pus. I didn’t worry about it and figured when the nail finished growing it would be fine. And so it was for a few weeks time. Let me give a disclaimer here: I am not a smart man. Though I knew on some level that I had an open infected wound in my foot I never let that keep me from running through rivers, or wading in swamps looking for hippos while in Malawi. God has made our bodies remarkably good at fighting off so many things that should kill us everyday which causes us to do stupid things that the human body was never intended to do (like mentioned above for me or living in Michigan in February for some of you reading this email). The problem is that while waiting out this infection I got sick with malaria, giving the infection a foothold (my Jr. High English teacher would be proud of that pun).

This was my first experience with Malaria but I knew from seeing others and reading a bit what to expect. Malaria is carried by mosquitoes who are themselves infected with a smaller bug which takes two weeks to mature in the mosquito, which is why most mosquitoes cannot carry malaria. They die too soon. It does the same thing in us so this malaria likely came from a mosquito bite 2 weeks before. The alternating fevers and chills and overall aches followed everything that I read about, but when I took the science kit home test for it (which Becca was all too happy to poke me for blood that she did it an extra time for good mesure), it came out negative. I let the fevers come and go for another 2 days before I went to the clinic for a real blood smear. One thing that any African doctor can out diagnose nearly any American doctor is malaria. They see it everyday and the meds are pretty easily available. The entire blood test and doctors visit cost $1.20 cents (much cheaper than the malaria home test that misdiagnosed me). We had Becca and Emma tested too but they both came out negative.

While the Malaria symptoms went away within the next few days the ache in my upper leg would not. In fact, it got much worse. Feeling around the lymph node I noticed that it was swollen and really sore. This soreness and swelling continued to increase. In talking with Mark Guilzon, a doctor and new missionary in the Rukwa Valley, he encouraged me to get on antibiotics. After starting the Antibiotics, the pain decreased but I became worried when, what I thought I was feeling was a huge increase of size of the node. One doctor friend of ours recommended going to Iringa to get it drained. However Mark was coming that day up from the valley and agreed to take a look at it. He said what I was feeling was not one really big lymph node but rather two smaller ones. (While 2 is bigger than 1, I guess that size does matter, more so than number anyway). So I am continuing the antibiotics and today things continue to look and feel remarkably better. Three days ago I was in the worst pain of my life. Today, I am thinking of running. No swampy rivers though for a little while.

Meanwhile, Ian and Elizabeth are fighting off colds (Always blamed on the change of weather here). Becca also has a few scratches on her foot that got infected and swelled a bit. Maybe its something in the air (Maybe it is the weather). She will not be chasing hippos at any rate. But pray for our family as we continue to get bitten up by new bugs of all sorts.

In Him who leads through sickness and in health,
Zubers