Good Friday thoughts

It’s Good Friday and many thoughts are converging in my head right now, on topics from gay marriage to my life in Swaziland to suffering, and actually they all relate.

First, the Supreme Court’s hearing of oral arguments this week on gay marriage has meant that I have been spending more time than I should, probably, following online the debate and commentary and coverage in the US. The debate over homosexuality has been raging with increasing intensity and heat within the church, and I’ve been spending quite a bit of time for months now reading articles and blogs, and thinking a lot, and grieving over how the church is struggling with this issue and losing its way, it seems to me, in quite a fundamental way. The central question I keep hearing, over and over, is “How could God be against someone (in this case, a person with homosexual desires) finding love and happiness (in this case, through meeting those desires within a homosexual relationship)?” And the way I feel so much of the church is losing its way is in our understanding of who God is and what he really wants for and demands from us. In this paradox of the Christian life God wants our good, happiness, and fulfillment, but he also wants—and even demands—our holiness, humble obedience, and willingness to be disciplined through means that will not make us feel happy and fulfilled at the time. We lose our way if we lose sight of either truth in this paradox.

Last night I read some excerpts on a blog from a book I haven’t read yet, Wesley Hill’s Washed and Waiting. He’s an evangelical gay Christian with deeply orthodox views on sex and marriage (i.e. God has created sex for and only for a marriage between a man and a woman), and writes about his personal struggle to lead a holy life as a celibate gay man. I was deeply convicted by some of his statements. His struggle is not my struggle, but the things he is discovering about the character of God apply, I believe, to all of us who are followers of Christ.

Besides seeing God as intimate, loving, and full of grace, Wesley also writes that God is out to “challenge, threaten, endanger, and transform all of our natural desires and affections… Engaging with God and entering the transformative life of the church does not mean we get a kind of ‘free pass,’ an unconditional love that leaves us where we are… Instead, we get a fiercely demanding love, a divine love that will never let us escape from its purifying, renovating, and ultimately healing grip. And this means that our pain—the pain of having our deeply ingrained inclinations and desires blocked and confronted by God’s demand for purity in the gospel—far from being a sign of our failure to live the life God wants, may actually be the mark of our faithfulness.”

Pain. These last few five months since we’ve been in Swaziland have involved a lot of pain for me. The circumstances really don’t matter much; you might think the things I am walking through were really difficult, or not much at all. You might be walking through things that are far more difficult. I certainly know my experience of pain isn’t unique. We all face difficult times, circumstances that we don’t want, challenges that we don’t want to face, costs that we don’t want to pay. My general response these last few months has run mostly along the lines of anger, depression, questioning God’s love for me when he allows this or that, and plain refusal to walk a path of obedience that seems too hard. I’ve realized how weak my faith, trust, and confidence in God are, sobering realizations indeed. I am still struggling on this precipice of choice: To obey, wholeheartedly and joyfully (choosing joy even when obedience hurts), or to take the path of least resistance because it seems easier, even though I know it is not the path of life. To accept the cross, or to run away from it as much as possible.

The point is that all of us who have committed to following in the footsteps of our Lord will sometimes find that the way involves a cross. Jesus himself is so clear on this: “If any man would follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me”, and “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake will find it,” just to name a couple. I’ve noticed lately that a lot of people want to boil Jesus’ message down to nothing more than universal love and non-judgmentalism, and don’t seem to realize what else is right there in red letters in their Bibles. Jesus preached a hard message.

And here we are on Good Friday. In this three-day march of hours towards the joy and hope of Easter, these are the hours in which Jesus hangs on the cross, suffering, doing what he pleaded through sleepless hours and bloody sweat with his Father not to do, if there was any other way. There was no other way. Jesus didn’t get a free pass. He had to suffer.

How often we forget as Christians, as we sing our happy Christians songs and talk our often trite Christian talk about grace-love-hope-blessing-redemption, that all these things came through a monumental act of suffering and sacrifice. We have access to the throne of grace and to lives that can be infused with the joy of fellowship with God because Jesus submitted himself to a divine plan that took away his happiness, because he gave up the right to fulfillment of his desires (not just on the cross, but through 33 years on Earth, during which among other things he walked the hard path of celibacy), because he obeyed. How often we forget that we also are called to suffering and sacrifice as the only way that we can become like Christ and fully enter into the abundant life that He purchased for us on the cross.

I can only speak for myself. I want the happiness and blessing of the Christian life without the cost. I want the joy without the pain. I want my desires fulfilled, 100% and now, without the self-denial of surrendering those desires to the one who set an example of suffering, and calls me to follow in his footsteps. I want true fellowship with Christ without first being crucified with Christ. But it can’t work that way.

This morning at our Anglican church’s Good Friday service the priest preached a pretty hard message, on how Jesus was always found outside his comfort zone, and how we have to leave our comfort. I guess there is no other message Biblically faithful message to preach but a hard one, on Good Friday. I cried out of the realization of what Christ did for me, and also out of the realization that obedience hurts and costs and I both want it and so deeply don’t. Oh wretched woman that I am! Who can deliver me?

The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different. (Romans 7:25, The Message)

I have no neat and tidy way to wrap up these thoughts, other than to observe that I think we all face pretty much the same choice between obedience and comfort, whole-hearted surrender to God and sin. May this day be a day where we all find some space to reflect on the choice, and on the choice that Christ made out of love for us.

the possibly worst possibly most important potluck I've ever hosted

These are similar thoughts to the last post, because God is still trying to teach me about stewardship, trust, surrender. I am resistant, and slow to learn, and quick to scream “Mine!” and “My way!” inside my soul, where no one else hears.

Case in point: last night. We had our small group over for our monthly potluck. It was the first time we’d ever had our small group meet at our house, but the family that always hosted our group is moving in a few days, so we needed another location. This other family has a wonderful big house that is always clean and a huge table that can seat our whole small group and they are always so gracious and organized and being at their house is always such a pleasure. I say this because none of these things were feeling true about us and our house last night. About 20 minutes before people were supposed to show up I was nearly in tears because the chicken legs we were trying to grill on our little charcoal grill had burned in about 5 minutes flat and of course were still totally raw on the inside (note to self: find a lower-stress time to try a new grilling experiment), and two had fallen into the fire/briquettes and so were covered in ash, and the bathroom was still dirty, and the baby was fussing and needing attention, and nothing was ready. Ten minutes after people were supposed to show up no one had and I was again nearly in tears because suddenly it seemed like no one might come and we might be left with 25 half burnt/half raw chicken drumsticks (and nothing to eat with them, it was supposed to be a potluck). J was trying to be encouraging and said they looked good (and ate a couple of the more cooked by which I mean burned although still somewhat raw drumsticks to prove it) but really, dinner was a disaster in my leger.

A few minutes later the lovely family that usually hosts us did show up, with their two small and energetic boys. The chicken by this time was in the oven (had been trying to avoid turning on the oven on this 100 degree day, but oh well) and it proceeded to finish cooking in the oven for the next 45 minutes or so, while we waited. Never have I seen chicken cook so slowly. Meanwhile the boys kind of bounced off the walls, another small group member showed up, I realized we didn’t actually have any starches to eat with our proteins and vegetables (the perils of potlucks), so decided to try to grill the bread dough that I’d haphazardly thrown together earlier in the day and wasn’t really ready. I’ve heard you can grill flatbreads or pizza on a grill so onto the grill went the dough, where it promptly fell down in between the bars of the grill and burned and turned into a huge mess (note to self: find a lower-stress time to try a new grilling experiment).

Then about an hour after we were supposed to start (and just as the chicken was finally almost done), another couple in our small group showed up with three family members who were visiting. More on them later. So then we were scrambling to find seating since we couldn’t all sit at the table so half the group ended up in the living room and the whole evening people were trying to squeeze through the too-narrow dining room to get food and drink and it was so loud and the boys were still being their small energetic selves and the late-comer group ordered pizza just to make sure there was enough food and dirty dishes stacked up in our small galley kitchen and people threw chicken bones in the recycling bin and one cat got out and it was just all kind of chaotic.

This is the thing: I kind of pride myself on being a good cook and a good hostess. I like to have people rave about my food and how effortlessly I can host a crowd. And last night I was certainly not feeling like an awesome cook or an awesome hostess, and my pride was hurt. At the end of the night I realized I was missing one earring and had cat hair all over my shirt (i.e. not quite the hostest with the mostest), plus I felt like I wanted to vomit (I still do and am wondering if that problem chicken is to blame), and the whole evening just kind of felt like a disaster.

Except for the fact that our friend who showed up an hour late with his wife and three members of her family looked at me at the end of the evening and said, “That was really fun.” To be honest, by that point in the evening I was expecting that they would be gone already, and was watching the clock, wondering if I still had time for any work on my needed-to-be-done-yesterday dissertation proposal. But his comment stopped me cold, because if anyone needs a night of fun and fellowship, it is this man. His wife was just diagnosed with breast cancer. They’re both in their mid-20s and she’s the youngest patient her surgeon has ever seen and this was the summer she was supposed to be finishing her master’s and moving into their new house (they had become homeowners literally about 10 minutes before she got the call from her doctor that she had cancer) and instead they are looking at a likely double mastectomy plus chemo all within the next week or two and how can a young couple, married less than 2 years, even bear all this? Her mom and brother and sister-in-law have come into town to help them as they try to make sense of what to do and how to go forward in this radically altered life.

We were able to pray for them last night and give them a little shelter from the storm and if we were able to do that, who cares if my potluck wasn't photo-shoot worthy (yes, I read the glossy cooking magazines). I am quite sure that our friends will never again think about what they ate for dinner last night or how much cat hair was on the couch, but I hope they will remember that in the days after the diagnosis, they were among friends. And I hope that I will remember next time that the whole point of hospitality is not to impress people with my perfect food/house/outfit, but to use the things I have been given to bless people who need a little port of rest and fellowship in the storm of life.

stuff, abundance, and 120 cubic feet

It's been nearly 2 years since I've posted here, and I've missed this space. Of course I've been busy-- completing the courses for my PhD (I'll be done with those in 4 weeks!), getting established in this city, setting up one house and then another, being pregnant, having a baby. Facebook has met some of the gap in keeping the people I love somewhat in the loop of my life. But this season of life has felt awfully short on time to slow down and reflect, to celebrate the milestones of my life as they barrel past, to siphon off a trickle of what God is doing and write it down in words that will last longer than my patchy and fallible memory.

So here's something I want to reflect on a little and share with the handful of people who read (used to read?) this blog: I feel I've just won a battle in my ongoing war with my stuff (by which I mean my earthy possessions). Does anyone else fight this war? I love my stuff. I hate my stuff. I have moved 3 times in the past 3 years and every time the stress of moving all that stuff has felt utterly overwhelming. I have wondered time after time after time why it is so difficult, why this bizarre cultural pathology of stuff overload is so soul-draining yet so hard to break.

But this morning I am feeling awesome and fantastic and this is why. We are preparing to pack up our household to leave Baltimore in a little over 3 months, and to land in Africa a couple months later. The thought has felt overwhelming. I've pictured myself sorting my household possessions into massive piles: Stuff to garage sale. Stuff to move into a storage unit. Stuff to store at my parents' house in Oregon. Stuff to take to Africa. Stuff to take to Africa that won't fit into the car when we drive it cross country that needs to go into a special pile at my parents' house for me to pick up. Ughhhh. It's all so complicated.

Plus I've been doing some research. Cost of taking more than 250 lbs (total) on airplane to Africa = prohibitive. Not an option. We'll have to pack carefully and lightly. (I think of the would-be missionary family stepping onto the plane to Congo wearing 5 layers of clothing in The Poisonwood Bible, but that's a digression.) The cost of storing our stuff here while we're gone is also pretty prohibitive, once I do the math. We really don't know how long we'll be gone. Maybe a year, maybe for 10. Let's say we're gone for 2 years. I realized last night that it would likely cost us a couple thousand dollars to get a storage unit big enough to store our furniture (by which I mean the little bit of it I was planning to keep) for 2 years. Which hardly seemed worth it, considering the state of our furniture.

Then I had a brilliant thought: What if we rented the smallest unit possible (5 feet by 5 feet) and just got rid of everything that didn't fit? We could keep some books, our kitchen and dining stuff, and stuff with sentimental value (J's crates of things from childhood). But we'd have to get rid of all the furniture, and pretty much everything else.

Suddenly I felt so relieved. Packing up my whole house seems so daunting. Packing a 5x5 storage unit seems really do-able. And I felt something else: real joy at the thought of giving all that stuff away. Our church here supports political asylum seekers, who arrive from around the world with virtually nothing. They live in an enormous community house with Mennonite service volunteers, and certainly someone in that big house can use a lot of our stuff. This year's service volunteers work with men and women in Baltimore who are breaking addictions and trying to get established in their own homes. Some other folks who need our stuff a lot more than we do. We know two young couples getting married in the area in the next 6 months, neither with any money. I wonder what they need. The thought of finding homes for our mattresses, bookshelves, dressers, couch and chairs, and rickety but still lovely 1920s-era dining room set suddenly seems so much more appealing than trying to stuff it into a storage unit against an uncertain return date.

To be honest, I also look forward to the adventure of seeing how God meets our needs out of his generous storehouse of furniture and household goods (he doesn't just own the cattle) once we return to the US. As I look around my house I see reminder after reminder of how God has met our needs. Buying that dining room set for a song (and how I've loved using it!) The dressers we found on the curb on trash day. The bookshelves friends gave us that (unbeknownst to them) exactly matched our existing bookshelves. All the great stuff we inherited 3 years ago when good friends of ours moved overseas. The great couch we bough off Craigslist for $40 just a few months ago. We've received so much abundance, and I want to keep learning to operate out of a mindset of abundance rather than scarcity. To believe that when we need stuff again, God will give us exactly what we need.

A few days ago I received news of the death of a high school friend's father. I was sobered by the fact that her dad is my dad's age, and I'm sure was no more ready to die than my dad is. I was also deeply moved by his obituary, which glowed with evidence of a life lived for the right things. His favorite verse was given as Jesus' admonition to store up treasures in Heaven, not on earth. These verses have run through my head very often in the last year or two, a time during which I have known God was trying to teach me things about possessions, and freedom, and abundance. The command is so unequivocal, so terrifying to the materialistic American in me, so exhilaratingly inviting to the part of me that longs to live free of worry with my heart set on Heaven. The me that I want to be. The me that I hope to become a little more as we take this step of faith involving 120 square feet of storage space. Stay posted for more stories from our journey.

For right now I need to wake my sleepy-head son (who I woke up once at 10 a.m., an hour and a half ago, but it didn't take) and get him outside for a walk in this beautiful spring day, which hopefully will wake him up for real. 

make these nuts

I have no good reason to blog about pecans, except I can't stop thinking about them and maybe writing it out will get them off my mind enough so that I can go to bed in peace. :)

And I have no pictures, because I already ate them all (the pecans, not the pictures). (I do wish I were one of those slick food blogs with gorgeous pictures of everything. Sorry.)

Today I came home from school absolutely exhausted (blame that on being up til 3 a.m. last night working), and sat on the couch for a while debating nap or work, nap or work (the nap won eventually), and went to the kitchen to get something to eat because I hadn't eaten much all day. And unfortunately saw the pecans. The pecans which I'd almost forgotten about. The pecans which I made a couple weeks ago to go on a really yummy salad with fresh strawberries and feta. At the time I couldn't stop eating them so I put them in a jar on a high shelf and told myself I was only going to get them down to use on another salad. In moderation.

So today in a moment of very bad judgment I decided to eat just a couple, and before I knew it I had taken the little jar up and down off the top shelf 3 different times, and it was empty. This is why not to eat when you're really tired. And also why not to keep these things on hand. I don't usually scarf down treats-- I mean, I can keep chocolate or ice cream around and not touch it for weeks. But these are somehow a whole different level of addictive.

But if you want fantastic nuts for ice cream, on a sweet/savory salad, or just as a really to-die-for snack, you should try these. I'm sure it would work with any nut, although I really love pecans.

There are a lot of recipes for candied nuts. Lots call for corn syrup, or butter, or boiling syrup to this or that temperature, and various complications. And then there's sweet-savory nuts: nuts roasted with olive oil, some sugar, salt, and rosemary or other herbs are pretty heavenly as well. But the day I was making the strawberry salad I just wanted something dead quick and simple, and decided to just go with melted sugar. Once you bring sugar almost to the edge of burning it develops incredible flavor-- and that's all you need for killer nuts.

Candied Pecans
This is less of a recipe than a very loose set of instructions. I didn't measure so I'm just guessing at proportions here.

1 c. pecans (chopped or whole, up to you)
1/4 c. sugar
1/4 t. salt

Before you start get ready whatever you are going to put the candied pecans onto. They will stick to whatever it is. I just used a regular plate but it was a bit hard to pry some of them off, so I wish I'd greased it, or used my Silpat, or a piece of waxed paper.

Stir pecans around over medium heat in a pan until they begin to toast-- that will give them a lot more flavor. When you start to smell them or they start to look like they are getting some color, add the sugar.

Once you add the sugar you want to stir constantly (use a heat resistant spatula), and the rest of the process will only take a couple minutes. The sugar will start to melt (turn to liquid, crazy!) Keep stirring and it will coat the pecans. How dark you let it get is up to you. I like it just one shade shy of burnt. Don't take them off too soon or you will end up with pecans that taste like sugar, without any of the delicious complexity of almost-burned sugar.

As soon as they are done enough for you, scoop or pour out of the pan onto whatever you're going to put them on. Sprinkle with salt and spread them apart with a couple forks. The sugar will harden really quickly and then you'll have to break them apart, so better to separate them a little first.

Try not to eat them all at once.

grieving... part II

I logged on tonight to write a little, only to see that my last post was about... grieving. Well, here we go again. It's a night for tears and eating chocolate and peanut butter for dinner because nothing else sounds remotely good (and Joel is working), and grief.

About a month ago this time I was grieving my grandpa's passing, and most of all the "not knowing" of where he stood with God. That seems like months ago now, at least.

Last weekend we found out that one of J's best friends from college had lost his wife, very suddenly. Once again, time is doing funny things-- I glanced tonight at my Facebook post from last weekend, saw the date, and thought, "was that less than a week ago??" Grief somehow seems to suspend the rules of normal life, and I am just... disoriented.

I never even met Jenny, but still, tears have ran down my face more times than I can count this week. I have cried while writing papers, cooking dinner, trying to get through the terribly long and exhausting days that have lately been my life. Jenny was "one of us," our age, our generation. Not someone who was supposed to die. I think of the last time I saw Matt (her husband), at J's fraternity reunion in the spring. We talked about the adoption they hoped would come through any day, about how a sea change in their eating habits had left them both feeling so much healthier, and Jenny had dropped a lot of medications. I knew she was sick, a serious congenital condition since childhood. I had no idea she might die.

They did adopt, a little girl from Russia named Sasha. On Matt's Facebook there are pictures of her and Jenny making cookies, of Sasha playing the piano, swinging her head like Stevie Wonder. Sasha is two. She's only been with them a few months. And now she's lost a second mommy.

This has hit us hard, and there is no other way to say it except that it has been hard. Of course our grief is small compared to the grief of those who were closest to her, and I can't even imagine getting up in the morning as a 34-year old widower and single dad. The fact that Matt does and still manages to testify about God's goodness is an amazing, well... testimony to the mighty arms of God. J is going to go out next weekend just to be with him. We all have those kind of friends-- the ones we would do anything for. I guess in times like this you find out what a friendship is worth.

J said a few days ago that Jenny was never supposed to live past childhood, and it got me thinking. She's had an extra two decades of life, and from what I can see lived pretty happily and normally. I'm sure knowing she was never supposed to make it this long isn't much comfort to Matt in the midst of his grief. But I couldn't help thinking, How wonderful. How wonderful that she got to live a full life, get married, have people who loved her, and have a child.

The fact that they became parents only months before she died seems like one of the craziest, most improbable, but yet somehow most right parts of the story. When I first knew J he would mention that he didn't think they would have kids (Jenny's health being one reason). Then they seemed to experience a sudden, joint, radical conviction from God that they were called to be parents, and called to adopt. I remember crying reading Matt's explanation of it in a lengthy Facebook note. God was clearly doing something.

And less than 4 months after they finally got their child, Matt is a single dad and Sasha is an orphan for the second time. I can't imagine that they will have an easy road. I also can't imagine that this wasn't part of God's awesome, inscrutable plan. I'm not sure Matt would have been able to adopt as a single dad. But God allowed Jenny to live long enough to be a mom, and gave Matt a family for after Jenny was gone, and I'm sure that Sasha needed a dad.

Any time I hear about someone's death it's a little wake-up call to treasure my days, and to be grateful. At the African-American church we visited a few weeks ago they must have belted from the pulpit half a dozen times how BLESSED we all were to get UP this morning because MANY PEOPLE did NOT get up this morning. But thank you LORD that you gave us another DAY of LIFE. (Hallelujah, brother.) It reminded me of Africa, and kind of made me laugh, because I'm not used to that kind of drama and thanksgiving over the fact that I got out of bed. But they're right. We are incredibly blessed for about a hundred million reasons, not least that God has graciously granted us another day of life.

And Jenny was blessed. Blessed to live 37 years, far more than she was supposed to get. Without denying the tragedy of her death, it's such a different perspective to turn the tables, and consider what she was never supposed to get, rather than what was taken away. If I can get away from the feeling that I am owed this, that, or the other thing, and turn the tables on my life to ask what I never deserved to get... the list is so long. Even the stuff that 99.99% of the human race gets... God didn't have to. It's all a gift.

I heard something today from my advisor that made me realize how darn lucky I was to get the dream scholarship I got at Johns Hopkins. I know it wasn't luck, but really, I felt today more than ever today that I'd won the lottery. (Okay, the odds were a bit better than the lottery, but not much.) And it feels almost that random. The point is just that it's all a gift, and I was chosen for some totally random and undeserving reason, and everything I get in life falls pretty much into the same category. And when I don't like what's on my plate on a particular day, when it's bitter and distasteful, I want to learn the kind of gratitude that can thank God even for those gifts.

Tonight I went to Matt's Facebook and found this in a note, written by Jenny, after a particularly hard day with a traumatized 2-year old who she couldn't really even communicate with (they'd only had Sasha about 6 weeks):

As I tried to separate myself from the day and refocus I found myself asking why: why did we choose to do this and why did we give up the the lifestyle we had before? As if someone sitting next to me blurted it out, the answer came back loud and clear. We did not choose to change our life. We chose to be obedient to what God was calling us to do. God never promised an easy life to those who serve Him.

Words to live by.

grieving

I guess there are two ways to think of it: we are either dying from the day we are born, or we are moving towards a passage into the real life, the real home, the real place for which we were created... for those of us who have said "yes" to the invitation, at least.

As I see my skin start to sag and wrinkle and realize that my body is aging and in some ways it's all downhill from here... I try to keep the perspective that everything here is just a prelude, anyway, to the real story. Who cares what happens here, except that it's getting us ready for there? The point isn't to stay young forever, the point is to measure our days and live them so that they mean something for eternity.
And I try to keep the perspective that it's okay to let the people we love go, and it's really just a short separation, a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things. We weren't made to stay here forever, and like Paul, we should rejoice when it's time to go. What a joyful thing when a soul gets to shed an old and sick body and put on immortality.
But yet when I hear my beloved grandma has shrunk to 100 lbs and opted for palliative care, and that my dear grandpa is struggling to breath in a body that is about to shut down, all I can do is close my office door, sit at my desk, and weep. It's just so hard in the now.
We are still in lovely Zimbabwe... lots to write about but haven't had time. Hard to believe that our time here in Africa is nearly at a close. But I'm feeling ready to go... things have their seasons. And I want to be home.

rafting the Nile + words worth reading

After several weeks of really sporadic email access, we're in a hotel in Kampala with wondrously fast wireless internet (wondrous considering this part of the world and the fact that our hotel is $23/night!) So I'm getting caught up with my web-based life a little. I've posted some pictures of our Abu Dhabi trip over on Facebook and hope to get some pictures of our Kenya adventures up today.

Yesterday we had a glorious day white water rafting on the Nile near Jinja, something I have wanted to do for years and I am so glad that I waited til I had someone to do it with! We actually will have pictures to show, too-- one of the 8 or 9 Ugandans who accompanied us 5 mzungus (it was nice to feel that they were thus prepared for any eventuality, although we had a safe run) was a photographer who stowed his camera in a water-tight box in his kayak, and then would get to the rapids ahead of us to take pictures as we flew over. I wasn't going to pay for him to go along but the other 3 people in our party did and have offered to share the pictures. As it turned out those other 3 were a mom from Chicago who is visiting her parents here (missionaries), and 2 teenage girls (one her daughter)-- they are all here for a missions trip. We had a wonderful time getting to know them and are planning to have dinner with the whole family next week. (Side note: my trip to Nigeria has been postponed so we are here a while longer!)

Her grandparents were also missionaries in Africa and her father has lived in Africa his entire life, except for college. She had so many funny and wonderful stories to tell about them. My favorite had to be about her grandfather, who in the 1930s imported a crate of soda from Mombasa. Soda was then unknown in Africa. On the journey inland his African companions became very thirsty-- apparently they had run out of water. Not thinking anything of it her grandfather passed out bottles of Coke. The very thirsty Africans downed them in one gulp, which made the Coke start foaming out their noses, and they started crying, thinking that this white man was trying to kill them! I can't imagine that warm Coke, which does hurt a bit as it goes down (strange that we have come to like this feeling), would have been very pleasurable to people who had never had it before!

Anyway, we had a glorious day on the Nile. Sometimes Uganda is so green that the green almost hurts your eyes, and after a misty morning the fog burned off and we had brilliant blue skies with puffy white clouds. We are a bit sun-burned today in spite of vigilant application of SPF55 waterproof sunscreen, but it was worth it. I have to say my favorite part was probably floating down the Nile, in the parts where the water was smooth and we could get out of the raft and float along in our lifevests. We went 27 km. total and the water was mostly pretty swift currents so we could "swim" along by doing hardly anything, just letting the current take us and enjoying the cool water and brilliant sunshine and astounding beauty all around. We saw a lot of cool birds and I am not even much of a bird person, but I really enjoyed watching them swim, fly, dive, and just be graceful and beautiful.

The rapids were a blast too. We weren't expecting class-5 rapids but we got them! In the first set the raft tipped all the way onto its side (although not over) and so I was tossed out and shot through the rest of the rapids by myself, but I didn't hit any rocks or get hurt so it was actually really fun! Then one of the 4 Ugandans in kayaks came to rescue me and I held on to his kayak and he took me back to the raft. So it was all fine. I was actually really impressed by their professionalism and knowledge of the river, and would do it again in a heartbeat.

We went with the lowest-cost trip, which I don't think compromised the safety and quality of the rafting at all, but did mean that our ride home (2 hours back to Kampala) was a somewhat rickety matatu which got two punctures on the way back. The first one was repaired by the driver in record time but when the second tire gave out on the outskirts of Kampala he didn't have a spare. So then we had to find a public matatu (shared taxi minibus that holds 15 or so people) to take us back to downtown Kampala, then walk from the taxi park to our hotel. It was all fine but we were tired by the time we got back.

One more thing I wanted to share today, because I have read it several times in the last few days and it has hit me hard, in a good way, as I seek to try to honor the differences with my beloved:

How to Really Write a Love Letter

I love everything this woman (Ann Voskamp) writes-- she is deep and has a gift for clean and beautiful writing. But this post was particularly good.