Saturday, May 30, 2009

"And now Mama Vinton has a few thoughts to share with us," the village
chairman loudly announced in Swahili. I certainly hadn't planned that this
morning I would be in a cemetery, but Mjei had been at my door first thing
in the morning to let me know that Lidia had died and would I please come.
Lidia was from the village of Mkonge, a tough place where tea picking is the
local occupation and AIDS reigns. People drink a lot and really my Mkonge
friends are a troublesome lot. When I arrived at the pre-burial, I was
invited in to talk to a group of the village leaders. The conversation, of
course, quickly moved to the whole matter of AIDS. I said that as
Christians, since "Christ will always be with us," that we should lead the
people through this time of fear and be the first to go and get tested and
to show the way, and that if we don't have the virus, following Christ's
example, we have to help our neighbors who do. Really, I didn't know that
morning who my audience was (Christian or not), so I was a little surprised
when the village chairman asked Mjei to go call the village "catechist" (as
in most villages here, the little catholic church in Mkonge doesn't have a
priest so they have a man called a catechist who normally leads their
services) so that we could talk about that! It was a great conversation,
and that is how I ended up, at the catechist's insistence, next to Lidia's
grave telling the crowd about HIV/AIDS and the special responsibilities that
those who are Christians have during this terrible time. I let them know
that it affects absolutely everyone: the good, the bad, the Christians, the
pagans, the Muslims, all ages and every color of person alive. I asked them
to recognize the miracle that somehow God in His great mercy and brought
right here to our villages - we have free testing, free transport, free
medicine -- all we have to do is to not reach out and accept it. Just as it
is with God's gift of salvation - free - all we have to do is reach out and
accept it - so it is with help in these villages for those who are sick. I
asked them to be part of the solution - to go get tested, and to help those
who are ill, and those who are widowed, and those who are orphaned. The
women cheered wildly, and a few men chuckled, and a few others looked away.


Lidia left her twin sons who are in the 7th grade. It breaks my heart.

And then there is Luka. I was about to leave for his village of Lulanda
when we learned that we had lost Luka's mom. On Friday, I had sent Luka
home from school with a small gift and greetings for his mom, only for Luka
to arrive home to the wails of family and neighbors. He was the third
student of ours to lose a mom or dad this month. The obstacles to getting
our "high risk kids" through school are great, but I am convinced that they
are one of the reasons that God sent us to these particular villages at this
time. We packed up and started on our journey because I wanted to make sure
Luka would return to school, and wouldn't you know it after a few kilometers
into the journey, there was Luka and a few of our Lulanda kids looking
slightly like refugees, carrying huge bundles on their heads so that they
could return to school. We packed them all into my car and took them back
to our village. Luka's future isn't bright, it isn't bright at all, but
there is hope, hope in our loving Father and His goodness.

This whole AIDS outreach is a walk in faith in which I can't pretend that I
know all of the answers. Sometimes I don't even know what to pray for. I
remember while Steve was in the States, our bus Huruma ("Compassion") was in
serious need of repairs, so we made the decision to pull her off the route
and to borrow the big Fuso truck so people could get to the hospital. That
was a very hard month with so many complications and frustrations and
heartaches that I just asked God for help without even knowing how to
propose to Him what help I thought I needed! You can only imagine my
overwhelming joy and relief when Steve returned from America with "Namba
Mbili" (Number Two is what they call our new bus). And to top it off, that
beautiful new bus was carrying 25 cases of baby formula! My heart sang,
"Thank you Lord, .." And it hasn't stopped singing.

Because this second bus looks just like Huruma (hence the name Namba Mbili),
a lot of people thought at first that perhaps we had just bought some new
curtains to spruce it up a bit, but after hearing its motor going down and
around the hills (every vehicle has it's own distinctive sound, something
you learn when you're in a place with so few vehicles), they knew that God
had indeed sent a new bus. Another intervention. Without the continual
interventions that I know in my heart has come from Him, these people would
not have free transport and free treatment, and very few kids in these
villages would still have mothers and fathers. Every time I see our bus
filled with people heading to the hospital, I recognize the miracle of it
all. These folks would all be dead had He not intervened.

But God intervenes through people! And so I want to thank all of you who
over the past three years have helped in one way or another. I really do
thank you. You have done a great thing.

In His service,
Susan

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

During the last four months of this year's particularly wet rainy season, people worked tremendously hard to get the foundation in for our Community Treatment Center. Had it been just any old building, or any ordinary project, we might have simply waited for the rains to eventually peter out and stop. The trucks carrying stones and bricks often got stuck in the mud and on many a day could only come within a half kilometer of the building site and had to drop their load, which meant then that our students had to do the incredibly hard work of carrying those stones and bricks the last distance.

But the Community Treatment Center is by no means an ordinary building. The sooner we get it built the sooner hundreds of sick people in these villages will be spared from traveling all the way to Lugoda Hospital to get their medicines. Many people, perhaps even most people, will still have to go all the way to the hospital, especially when they come down with the weird opportunistic infections that plague those with AIDS. But when we have more than 850 people having to travel every month, sometimes twice a month, to get their ARVs, it will certainly be a huge blessing for hundreds of them, once they are in the system and healthy, to be able to get their medicines right here in our village.

The hard and time-consuming work of laying out and then building the stone foundation is finished. The huge task of filling up those foundations with special "landfill" has been completed -- thanks to our students who used the two days that we called off classes and the free reign that we gave them to use our two trucks to literally work from morning to night! And now, with the rains finally over and the sun shining here at Madisi, we are wonderfully able to begin building the walls of the Community Treatment Center. It's a monster of a building, centrally located -- just as our school is -- between the five villages of this area -- so that people throughout the area will be able to walk here to get their medicines.

One of the most wonderful things that our students did was to carefully place all of the bricks in small piles all around the building which means that the builders can build at an incredible speed because the bricks are literally right within their reach. And indeed they are building at an incredible speed as the walls seem to rise before our eyes. Susan and I have taken to walking down there two and three times a day just so we can revel in the progress that has been made.

But there's something else that we revel in each time we go there. It's seeing that among the builders is Mateso, a wonderful man who a year ago when Susan first met him was literally on his deathbed. But he got on that bus, he made it to the hospital, he got the medicines and today his wife is not a widow and his little girl is not an orphan, and he is no longer in bed waiting to die. Instead he walks every morning from his village of Luhunga and is at work bright and early. They don't call it the Lazarus Effect for nothing!

There will be thousands of people who will come from all over the day the building is finished in a grand celebration. I'm looking forward to Mateso's daughter being in that crowd and seeing the building that her father will have worked very hard to help to build. He reads every night to his daughter from a Children's Bible that Susan gave him. He loves her. He wants her to have a future, he wants her to go to school, he wants her to grow up. How wonderful that he might be around to see it all happen.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

I'm home now. Susan and I were going to go away for a few days just the two of us but, in the end, we decided not to do that and instead we've just been enjoying things getting back to normal. I can't think of what has made me smile more than coming back from a nice walk together around our little lake here at Madisi and seeing Jonathan flying his new kite and obviously enjoying himself so very much. How really blessed we are!

So much happened in the month that I was off in America with Jonathan. The people in the village of Haraka began at a feverish pace the building of their school towards an admittedly impossible goal of having their kids start school in September -- it is impossible, and I know that, but I also know that there's no point in arguing with a mob of 1500 very determined people! Rather spectacular progress was made on the building of Susan's AIDS Community Treatment Center, and it happened in spite of the heavy rains of this rainy season, mostly because our students really gave of themselves in a tremendous effort this past month. James has taken on with incredible gusto the challenge of getting the building projects at Nankanga, Memya and Imauluma finished so that we might register those three schools in time so our students there can take the national exams this year -- and there's hope, so much so that today Godfrey is in Mbeya talking with the Chief Inspector about setting dates for our schools to be inspected. The amount of work that James has produced at those three schools in the last 30 days just makes my head shake. If we had five men like James! And that's just the big picture stuff!

They've made great progress on getting the books sorted and boxed up to go to our schools so that students in our schools will have library books. Susan has seemingly unending tales of good things happening in the lives of this grandmother and that widow, and that kid, and these sick people. She's been to villages further and further away with her little car. There seems really to be no end to all that has happened in just a month.

But some of what happened while I was gone is immensely personal. It might sound trivial, and perhaps in the big scheme of things it is, but I returned from America to finding out that I can flip on a switch in the middle of the night and make it to the bathroom without a flashlight anymore. And I can use my computer any time I want during the day. Because we now have lights and electricity 24 hours a day at our house, and 24 hours a day in our office up at school. I looked at Godfrey and almost didn't know what to say. I honestly didn't know how to really say thank you. Susan said work began almost as soon as I was out the door heading for America. Godfrey had evidently been plotting this for months. Susan and I talked about all of the meat that Godfrey conveniently brought to the house time and again while I was gone, all of the little things that he and Veronica did, and we talked about all of the big and little things that people are continually doing here to show us how much we truly are loved.

Yesterday, Justin brought us goat ribs to enjoy, Damas brought me a goat to raise, and as always, this and that at our table came as gifts from this person or that person's garden. This morning little Christian -- Emmanueli's little boy who can't be much more than a year old -- wandered up the path to greet me -- he's just learning to talk and could barely get the words out as I bent over and he put his hand on my head in greeting -- Shikamoo Babu ("I kiss your feet Grandfather"), handed me a little bit of his corn to share with me, and we walked back to the house so he could pick out an orange out of Grandmother's cupboard.

I know that what everyone knows of our lives here is the work that is happening, the wonderful things that God is doing as all of these schools get built, and all of these kids come to school, and as they begin reaching out and helping the needy in their villages. And I'm thrilled with all of that as well, I truly am. But the truth is that Susan and I have such wonderful lives here and that's all I can think of right now. It truly is good to be here. There are those whom God calls to serve Him in very difficult places, who really suffer as they serve, and who are called to make tremendous sacrifices. I really admire them and their obedience. But for us, we have such a wonderful life here, and it truly is because this place is full of love. Our house was built for us by our students, so much of what we eat every day comes to our table as gifts, and my heart is happy when Susan and I walk and we look out over it all and she says with a smile ... "Imagine that we get to live here!"

It is good to be home. Very good.

We just got the absolutely wonderful and totally unexpected news from the
doctor in Moshi that they had an opening to do Sifa's surgery, it appears to
have been a total success and she's all fixed, she's still in ICU and in a
little pain -- which is obviously normal -- but she's going to be ok and all
is incredibly and wonderfully great. Not sure how long they'll keep her
there in Moshi before she's allowed to come back with her grandfather, but
those are the little details that don't hardly matter even a little bit,
this little girl got her heart fixed and she's going to come home. It's
time to drop absolutely everything and shout from the mountain tops and
celebrate!

Friends, we just learned today that the doctors have scheduled little Sifa
for heart surgery on Monday. We would like to ask all of you to join us in
praying for her. She's a little ten-year old from the village of Luhunga
near our school here. Her parents both have AIDS and were too ill to travel
with her the hundreds of miles that it is to the hospital in Moshi, so it is
her grandfather who made the trip with her last month and has been staying
with her. Many thanks, Steve & Susan

It gives me great joy to share with you that for three days in mid-July 72 of our teachers will be gathering together for a time of worship, spiritual renewal and challenge. Young Life has agreed to organize, and host a special retreat for our teachers, and thanks to the many generous people who support the ministry of Young Life we are not being asked to raise any funds for the retreat and the training that our teachers will receive!

We want to invite you to begin praying now for those who will attend this retreat. For over four years, we have been asking people to pray for open doors – and it is clear that God has answered those prayers beyond all we could have imagined or dreamed of. We have asked also for people to pray for workers – and God has provided us with a wonderfully large team of teachers both from America and from all around Tanzania. Now we want to ask you to pray that God, at this retreat, will do a work in the hearts of our teachers and to give them a compelling desire to share the gospel with their students and to help them grow spiritually.

Because so many of our teachers are planning to attend this retreat, we have made the decision to close all of our schools July 16-20.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

I really wanted very badly to surprise Susan, but in the end I just couldn’t wait any longer to tell her. I had managed to hold out all of ten minutes!

I remember cringing after I got to America when I got Godfrey’s email telling that me that Susan’s bus was going to need to go into the shop in Iringa for probably three to four weeks for some major repairs and that he had made the decision to pull one of our construction vehicles out of service and to use it instead to transport people to the hospital every day. Susan has now nearly 850 people who need to get from our villages to the Lugoda Hospital two and a half hours away to get their ARV drugs. With those drugs they live, they are able to work in their fields, they are able to take care of their children – but if they can’t get to the hospital every month to get those drugs they’ll all die within a short time and we will have another 3000 orphans in our villages. I tried to imagine seventy maybe eighty people, many with young children, riding for several hours each way to the hospital in the back of that truck. I thought of how difficult it would be for many of them even to climb up into that truck. From the sudden comforts of my world in America it all seemed rather surreal, like a black and white movie with grainy pictures crowding into my brain. But I wrote to Godfrey to say that it was without a doubt a wise and compassionate and good decision that he had made, and that I was glad that he had made the right decision, but what were we going to do when the truck inevitably got stopped by the police? His answer was a pithy one: “Even a policeman, Mzee, is a human being. No one would dare deny these people the chance to get to the hospital.”

Every day I worried about it though. It was without a doubt the right thing to do. But I worried about an accident. I worried about the truck getting stopped by the police. I worried quite frankly about everything. I read Susan’s letter that she wrote to a friend of hers: “Thank you for praying. This week I have about 200 people traveling in the back of our Fuso truck. They will be divided between three trips Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Please pray that God will divinely protect all these trips. The trip is hard enough in the bus for some of these folks, but for the really ill, I cringe thinking about it.”

I cringed every time my mind wandered and I found myself thinking about it.

At our VSI board meeting on May 1st we discussed many matters of importance for the overall running of this ministry that God has given to us, but as important as all these things were and are, I know that much of what we talked about will soon be forgotten. But I will not forget the words of the chairman of the board when in answer to someone’s question it came out that with Huruma in the shop for a month Susan’s friends were being transported to the hospital in the back of Chapakazi, our construction truck. Obviously moved by genuine compassion, he told me quietly but firmly to get a second bus for Susan’s friends. It was a miracle of course, but it was easier said than done. I phoned Godfrey from America to ask him what he thought. God would not provide us with the money for a bus and then not provide us with a bus to buy Mzee. We have to believe that the bus for us is already there in Dar es Salaam and it is just waiting for us to arrive.

And so Friday morning Jonathan and I boarded our flight in America, and Godfrey, Emmanueli and Joshua boarded a bus in Iringa – all of us heading for Dar es Salaam. Friday night Jonathan and I slept on the airplane; Godfrey, Emmanueli and Joshua slept in the home of a new friend of ours in Dar es Salaam. Saturday while Jonathan and I made the long flight from Amsterdam to Dar, Godfrey, Emmanueli and Joshua visited every import yard in the city and found Namba Mbili (Number Two), a beautiful bus that looks just like our first bus, that can seat 29 people comfortably, a bus that someone else had already agreed to purchase, a bus that had already cleared customs, had all of its documents in order, a bus whose original purchaser had backed out on the deal a couple of days prior because he couldn’t come up with enough cash, and so they signed the papers while I was still in the air, and on Monday morning we withdrew the money from the bank and drove away with the bus. The bus. The one that clearly had been prepared and was just waiting for us. Me of little faith.

What began with Susan borrowing one of our cars in 2006 to take the sickest people to the Lugoda Hospital and then mushroomed into that car going every day, then twice and then three times a day, not with 5 or 6 people in the car but with 12 or 13 every time, that had morphed, thanks to the wonderful provision of God, into a bus that could comfortably take 29 people each trip, that started making two trips, and sometimes 3 trips a day, taking not 29 people, but often 35 and then 40 and sometimes 50 people. And now God has provided a second bus. Two buses to carry people so that everyone will get a seat now, so that no one has to make the trip standing up. It will make life easier for everyone, and it will mean that even if there is a day when one of the buses breaks down at least there will be another bus that can continue to make the trip to the hospital. Chapakazi (Hard Worker) will haul bricks. Huruma (Compassion) and Namba Mbili (Number Two) will carry people.

What I will remember though is not just the story of how God provided us with a new bus to help these people. What I will remember is what Susan wrote: “I never even hoped for another bus. I sent a prayer for help but I had no idea what “help” looked like.” Tomorrow evening we begin the long journey across the country, by Wednesday night we should be in the village, and Thursday morning, Moses and our truck Chapakazi will be off hauling sand, and Namba Mbili will be making his first trip to Lugoda Hospital.

Just as Godfrey had said to me, Namba Mbili had just been waiting for us to arrive.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Little Amani was loved by his grandmother, held in her arms until he passed into His arms on Friday. He is one of the many babies that are born with this terrible HIV virus. Amani's father died last May, his mother last month, and now this sweet little boy was also dead. His two other young siblings remain at grandmother's along with a handful of other children. Never has this dear old woman mentioned her difficult circumstances. Her mud walls are falling in, plastic bags cover the places where the thatch no longer exists, and there seems to be many hungry stomachs to fill. Her circumstances are desperate, but when you are in her presence you know you are with a great and wise saint. We went to visit today to give our condolences, a small gift and our friendship. Really, words didn't come easily.

During the past two months, we seem to have lost a baby almost every week. They tell me that nearly three quarters of the babies born with the virus are dead by their first year unless there is some kind of intervention. Great strides have been made to prevent mother-to-child transmission, but moms often aren't suspicious that they have the virus until baby starts getting sick all of the time and by then it is too late. We have been blessed to have Dr. Leena come and visit with us for a several times each month for a few days at a time. As she accompanies us through the villages to visit our friends, she is able to not only assess the situation but do something about it. We were together at Amani's house on Tuesday and, after seeing so many babies like him in our villages, she has made it a priority to help our HIV babies to get on the ARVs early so we won't lose them. Really, we have seen what is like a miracle happen with the one baby that as started ARVs at just a few months old. He is no longer sick, but is instead smiling, and learning to crawl and doing other type of normal baby things. They will be normal kids who just have to take their medicines twice a day.

One of our stops was to visit Mama Baraka who lost her baby last month. We were checking in on her husband who has been making a slow recovery. At the end of the visit, she asked if we had just a little more time to look in on one more child. Her neighbor's son Devidi turned out to be one of our younger friends -- that I didn't know it as he travels on his mother's back during his trips to the Lugoda Hospital so he doesn't actually have a seat on the bus! He is six years old and he has been on the ARVs for two months now. Although emaciated and covered with the lesions, there was a smile and a twinkle in his beautiful eyes as we showed him a new toy that we "just happened to have" in the car. We were able right there to arrange milk for him and Dr. Leena "just happened to have" the medicines he needed in her little medicine kit, and really, it was a divinely appointed visit for little Devidi. I am humbled by beautiful women like Mama Baraka who have time to think about and serve others during their own time of grief.

One of my favorite verses in the Bible these days is "Trust in the Lord and do good" from Psalm 37, and really I cling to that as we venture into unfamiliar terrain to serve. Last time I wrote, I shared about Sifa and Lucia and sending them onto Moshi for heart surgeries. Both of those little girls are still there in Moshi. Sifa doesn't weigh enough yet so she can safely have the surgery so she is waiting -- and eating! -- there in Moshi. Lucia, on the other hand is waiting for the doctor to come up with a plan. Getting them there was a worry for me, and the whole idea of sending them off hundreds of miles away to a city was frightening to me. But Moses, a new friend of ours who has a taxi, was waiting for them at 11 pm at the bus stand, took them home, fed them, and put them to bed at his own house. The next morning he got them to the hospital where they have been waiting for the last 3 weeks. I can only imagine the overwhelming work load of the few people who know cardiology in this part of the world. I admire them. Everyday as I teach my students, I imagine the future with these kids using their God-given potential to make this country and this world a better place.

Please keep my little girls Lucia and Sifa in your prayers as they wait to hear the plan for their heart surgeries. It would be so wonderful if this is finally the trip when they come back to me healed. Thank you.

In His service,

Susan