Weekend Warrior

On Friday night I was past my expiration date. I could feel the stress of the week piling, my brain slowing down, the introvert in me screaming for quiet time, the general lack of love and increasing irritability that “good” missionaries shouldn’t struggle with. I stayed up waaaay past missionary midnight (9 pm) until the real midnight in hopes of watching the Olympics opening ceremonies in London. Despite the major advances in technology and Internet in Bundibugyo in the last few years, the opening ceremonies viewing was a flop. Youtube failed to buffer well and we sat watching the spinning wheel more often than the actual footage. We gave up and trudged home. I was beyond exhausted and went to bed thinking to myself “I could really use a mental health day tomorrow”.

Those were fleeting hopes. I woke up the next morning exhausted, happy I could sleep in. I figured I would use the bathroom and head back to bed for another few hours. Nope. As I rolled out of bed, with bleary eyes I noticed my bedside mat was wet. It had rained very hard the night before but as it is rainy season, I didn’t think much of it. It had rained really hard nearly every night last week. But as I got out of bed, I realized something had gone very wrong. My room had a puddle of standing water near the door. When I opened the door and looked around, I considered going back to bed and pretending the outside world didn’t exist. Our bathroom had 4 inches of standing water in it. There were puddles throughout the entire house. The front room had a layer of mud and slime amidst the puddles. The kitchen, hallway, and living room were pond-like. The two rooms unaffected? The pantry (where everything is off the floor) and the office (where nothing important is kept).

I went into “emergency mode” when my mind runs at about 100 miles an hour. What to do? Where to start? Josh. I called the team knight in shining armor who is ever rescuing us. Thank goodness he was awake and came over to confirm that yes, indeed, this sucked and was generally quite awful. The next four hours were all consuming clean-up. After receiving the sympathies of my teammates, I called three Ugandan friends and helpers—George, Joas, and Gladys. Pat and Katie from Fort Portal, who were staying with me for the weekend, woke up and sprang into action; making coffee, providing encouragement, and filling buckets and basins with the floodwaters.

When Gladys arrived, she was her typical joyful self. I was struggling to keep it together but she came in, assessed the house, and said “It’s no problem. We will fix it today.” She then merrily started humming to herself as she filled a basin with water. How could I be upset when she was happily humming praise music and her child was hospitalized with malaria??

The day steadily improved—within 4 hours the house was clean and smelling of bleach. I picked up a care package that was full of goodies from my parent’s vacation to Ocean City, NJ. Ann brought me more coffee (I was running out!) and Jess went to the market for me. The power came back on after being off for over 24 hours. And on Saturday night I enjoyed tacos and mojitos with the team, successfully watching mens swimming on the Olympics afterwards.

Life here in Bundibugyo often feels like moving from one crisis to the next. You can’t go very long without feeling the brokenness of the world here. From the annoyances of burning my finger, the power being out, and the internet not working to floodwaters invading my house. Add on the much bigger crises of the area such as famine, cholera and measles epidemics, tribal conflicts, rebel attacks just over the border, and a new ebola outbreak and my shoulders quickly become heavy.

It’d be great to have full redemption now. I’d very much like the suffering to end. But God hasn’t promised a life of ease and perfection as we wait. And I’ve found in living here that suffering, whether it be cancer or a flooded house, opens doors for the Gospel. People suffer more here in a lifetime than I can probably imagine. But being vulnerable before my Ugandan friends; showing them that I desperately needed their help and having a bad day in front of them has a greater effect than I previously realized.

Isaiah 52:7 has greater meaning to me now that I am living in Bundibugyo than ever before. It says:

“How beautiful on the moutains are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’”

These are not what I would call beautiful feet. Flip flop tan lines, mud caked from cleaning up flood water, bruised and broken nails from hiking the Bwamba Pass. They’re pretty gross and my “foot righteousness” has long vanished. But these feet are a testimony to what God has been doing in my life—a year ago I had beautiful, soft feet because I was laying in bed and teetering on the brink between life and death as I got ready for cancer treatment. Now, my feet are ugly but show just how much I’ve been up to lately. And these feet show the struggle that allows me to identify with my dear Ugandan friends, the ones that I came to serve. Tonight, I am thankful for flood waters and ugly feet.