Open Hands

On so many days it is easy to feel to weight of living in Africa - the poverty, the lack of things we are used to, missing people and the places we know etc. Other times, we feel the absolute gift of this time. The last two days we experienced the joy of this season, some of which is directly related to being here, other parts come from the window our family is in right now, a window that we are slowly watching close as Mackenzie turns the corner from "child" to young adult. These years in Zambia will always serve as a bookend of her childhood -- and an extended bookend given the amount of time we have together relative to home. I will always be thankful for this time.

Friday night we had pizza and movie night, made particularly sweet after an unusually trying week at work and not a lot of good time together. We all piled into our bed and watched Lassie on my laptop. We fell asleep sprawled across the bed and eventually got everyone in their own bed. We woke up to a beautiful Saturday morning - the rainy season is almost officially over which means day after day of blue skies. The beauty of Saturday morning was enhanced by the knowledge that this was the new normal. Molly left for Rugby practice - yes Molly took up touch rubgy that she wishes was tackle - and the kids and I got ready to take Bennett and Clara to horse riding lessons at a place we had not been. We drove 15 minutes from home and arrived at a gorgeous riding center at the base of two hills...The riding center was surrounded by eucalyptus trees which always reminds Molly and I of Santa Barbara and Westmont. Clara and Bennett got matched up with two ponies and took off with their class on a trail ride into the hills. Molly showed up from Rugby practice and Mackenzie and I went on a short trail run. It was filled with beautiful views with everything bright green after 3+months of the rainy season. After our run Kenz and I drove to their school about ten minutes away to do a swim workout together. (We are doing a triathlon at school in April.) Molly then brought Ben and Clara over after the lessons and all the kids swam and Molly and I just enjoyed the moment.

We then headed home and began getting ready for a dinner we were having. Kenz went to a birthday party and Bennett and Clara had our Zambian neighbors, Exit, Trenche and Lucas over for a couple hours of playing. Molly and I moved our porch table out under our "insaka" (thatched roof, open walled structure) and set up for dinner. We had two couples over and had a wonderful candle light dinner outside. Lots of laughter and light moments. The kids all fell asleep in our bed while we had our dinner.

Sunday morning was another gorgeous day that started with coffee and reading outside. Kelvin, our Sunday guard, was greeted with a big hug by Bennett. Bennett and Kelvin have developed a really neat friendship. They made new arrows for Bennett's bow and sharpened a stick for a spear and proceeded to hunt lizards for the rest of the morning. When Bennett went out at 7:30 a.m., he did not come inside again until dinner - literally. (why pee in a toilet when you can go on a bush in the "back 40" of our plot?) One of the best things about this time, I think, is what it means for Bennett. He is living life like I think it was originally designed for boys - Outside, shorts, no shirt, no shoes, grass, dirt, sticks, a couple balls, a tree house, a pool, lizards, frogs, turtles, rabbits, a couple wise mentors in Kelvin and Oswald (who model patience and playfulness to me) in short, paradise.

We had brunch around 11:00 and sat at our fancy table still under the insaka. Some good sharing and conversation. We then got ready for a few families that were coming over with their kids to try an informal "Sunday school" for our kids...We did several games related to our theme of "Trust" and then read a few passages of scripture with the kids that pointed to what and who we can ultimately trust. Everyone left and then Molly, Bennett and I played soccer and the game "500" as the day cooled down and evening came.

This weekend was a much needed respite and "filling time" that God knew we needed. Sometimes, like this weekend, the skies clear (so to speak and literally) and we experience life like God intended it...Because we are living in what we believe is a temporary setting, we live with the sense of the importance to grab every day...This is one of the many great lessons of this time, regardless of if we are "settled and home" or living on the other side of the globe. In the midst of this wonderful weekend, I missed living here in the future. I was reminded of the poem, I think by Frost, that talks about how "Nothing Gold Can Stay..." In other words, every good thing in life is a temporary gift (except the gift of faith), and the more we try to clamp down and hold on to it, the more elusive it becomes. We are reminded to embrace the goodness of our day to day lives, but hold onto it with an open hand.

That's what the longing is for....

Hello from Lusaka. We have not written in awhile - I think for several reasons. First, we just finished a fun visit with my Mom and step Dad. It was great getting to show them our life in Zambia and to see some things through their eyes that we have become used to, e.g. being a minority where ever you go. Second, the longer we are here, the more things feel like "day to day life" and that is tough to write about (and tougher to read). Finally, the longer we are here, the more challenging it is to communicate the nuances of what we are experiencing.

Despite five years of traveling through Africa, I feel like in many ways I am just now coming to grips with the magnitude of the challenges that Zambia and many other sub-saharan countries are facing, largely, though not exclusively, due to HIV/AIDS. I've known in my head all the statistics and I've seen much of the suffering face to face. However, I am realizing that when I was traveling back and forth, I would start to "Shrink the problem" when I would come back to the U.S. and start to believe that "solving" the problems "simply" required doing XYZ. In living here, there is never a respite from the sad reality that HIV/AIDS, and poverty in general, is destroying so many lives.

This last Friday I was visiting the work of one of our partners. We went out with volunteer caregivers and visited some of their patients. The first woman we visited was lying on the her floor with the common "cough" that is associated with advanced HIV/AIDS (often caused by Tuberculosis). We learned her husband died two weeks ago and that she has four kids who, unless things turn around quickly, will become "double orphans" having lost both parents to HIV/AIDS. 100 yards away we visited a second woman suffering from the same cough, lying again on the floor of her 1 roomed house - Her husband and kids are all dead. I wondered where she gathered the will to live - In part from the caregivers that visit her each week and no doubt from a deep resovoir of faith that is not dependent on outward circumstances. Clearly.

The traditional community development that World Vision does around the world, empowering communities to address the causes of poverty in their own context, is very difficult even under the "best" of circumstances. When you mix in a disease that attacks the productive adults and leaves them dying on the floor of their homes with orphan kids in their wake you have a disaster. The women I was with last Friday were not attending to the activities that you see in a community that is moving forward -- having discussions about how to improve their schools or attending meetings learning how to grow a better crop or working on plans to start a new business funded with a Micro-enterprise loan. They were simply, and sadly, dying on the floors of their homes. HIV/AIDS in a country like Zambia is a major natural disaster EVERY DAY (Think Tsunami or Hurricane Katrina) but one that only kills productive adults leaving the kids and elderly in the aftermath...

So this reality leaves me (us) less inclined to think about "solutions" put forth in books like, The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs (and the many other well intentioned movements that are currently raising awareness and offering solutions on issues of poverty) and more inclined towards trying to embrace the ethos and way of Jesus who, even as God's own son, did not usually bring about wholesale change in an instant, but instead reached out to individuals and small groups of people and celebrated when the lost one was found, and the hungry fed (a meal), and the (single) leper healed. As a 21st century, business trained, American male, this can be really hard to accept -- I want the singular BIG IDEA that is going to very quickly (and efficiently) do away with the mess. But, I'm afraid, it does not exist. This experience is showing me what I already knew - that the world is a very broken place desperately in need of redemption that can only come from a loving God...I'm understanding, better than ever, Jesus prayer, "Your Kingdom Come, Your Will be Done, ON EARTH as it is in Heaven..."

Paradoxically, the extreme brokenness does not leave me depressed. Overwhelmed at times, but not depressed. As I e-mailed some friends last week, I've concluded that (unfortunately) we only have two choices when it comes to facing suffering and brokenness: 1) Quit, disengage and/or become cynical (an understandable option but unfort. not available for those of us who claim to follow Jesus.) Or 2) Keep showing up and somehow trust that the little we do is being multiplied in ways that we just can't understand. I guess this is faith. For those of you praying for us, Pray that we would be the latter and not succumb to the former. I pray the same for you as you read this. (And by the way, keep pursuing, praying for and working towards Big Ideas because it will be the collective sum of lots of the big ideas that will ultimately improve life for millions...)

Another tough part of writing like this is that you can never capture all sides of a day, much less a week or a month. As I just read what I wrote, it is pretty bleak, which is part of our reality here, but so far from all/most of it...Last night we were watching a bad copy of this year's Super Bowl (Indianapolis won...Good to know) all laughing hysterically as Bennett climbed the security bars on our window to go after a spider with a broom - a spider against a determined 5 year old boy who has an audience does not stand a chance. Or Sunday afternoon playing with the kids in the pool, or Saturday, watching Mackenzie run in her first cross country race (and Clara, wanting to encourage her big sister, jumping into the race to run the last 200 yards with her...) Or Bennett and I laying on sleeping bags in his thatched roof treehouse reading King George and the Dragon, And on and on and on...And likewise on the work front I have the privilege of working on a team that is getting to be a part of some amazing things, e.g. bringing in 20,000 bikes for caregivers and orphans, 500,000 bednets to prevent malaria etc. all of which impacts real individuals, one at a time.

One of the gifts of being in a context like this is the heightened sense of appreciation when things are "well and right in the world..." Even if that is the little world of our family. Today at lunch Molly spoke to this and expressed such a deep sense of appreciation for all that we are able to offer our kids. At home this is just "normal" and what everybody does - here you realize the extreme gift of being able to tuck your kids into a warm, soft bed, well fed, educated, loved etc.

Another thing that came up at lunch (it was a long lunch) was maybe coming to terms with the fact that our expectations for things "working" here are never going to be met. I'm talking about at a practical, household level. I think, because we were able to essentially transport our belongings here and initially able to get things set up and working that we bought into the allusion that things would generally "work fine". (Anyone reading this who has lived in the developing world is laughing or thinking we are idiots...) Right now our internet is down (has been for the better part of two weeks) Our new refrigerator is broken (despite the fact that it was "fixed" last week) Our water pump is barely working (despite the fact that it was "fixed" last week) and I could go on and on and on...You could fairly ask, "Well, what did you expect, you are living in Africa?" and I would say, "Yeah, but when we first got here all of this stuff seemed to be working and lulled us into believing that this was 'Africa Lite' and then all of the sudden stuff stopped working and no one mentioned that you have to call people 18 times and threaten them on the phone if you want them to come by to fix something and..." And then you might say, "Shut up, stop complaining." and you would be right. We talked about how our "problems" are all problems of affluence built around expectations. That we have electricity, internet, a refrigerator and running water to NOT work is something special around here. So, we are trying to be grateful for our non-working things. (I think broken, not working stuff is another, much less dramatic, example of our broken world.)

Finally, and I will close with this -- All of the massive and trivial issues we face living here in Zambia make us appreciate and long for the people and places we love. While none of us will truly be home this side of heaven, we appreciate our sense of home that comes from relationships with you. Thanks for reading and for your prayers. Drop us a note - we would love to hear from you.

Jeff & Family