This is Life

I had a very strange, yet not infrequent feeling this evening as I walked from the Gilgel Beles translation office to the hotel that I frequent when spending the night. Maybe you’ve felt it before, maybe you can relate, which I would find as an after the fact encouragement. Bear with me as I try to explain it.

 

It’s the feeling of being all alone in a crowded street.

It’s the feeling of being totally unlike everyone else, and not only in skin color.

It’s the feeling of being the object of everyone’s attention, whether they call out greetings or insults to me or stare in silence as I pass by.

It’s the feeling of being personally unknown by everyone within a thirty mile radius.

It’s the feeling of being dirty, not having showered, an itchy stubble for a beard, and literal dust/dirt clinging to three days worth of dried sweat on every square inch of my skin so that if I rub my finger on any given spot on my face, neck, arms, trunk, legs, feet, etc, the dirt rolls up into black globs that I’d rather not know is really there.

It’s the feeling of being separated from loved ones, a separation which was highlighted today all day as the mobile phone network stopped working last night.

It’s the feeling of being wasteful - that I could be doing so much more or a better job in each given day.

It’s the feeling of being tired, yet without the realistic expectation of true rest anytime soon.

It’s the feeling of being filled with bottled-up emotion: some good, some not.

It’s the feeling of being exactly where I am supposed to be, but yet realization that this doesn’t make everything suddenly peachy.

It’s the feeling of being normal.

 

It is this last point that is most interesting to me. I can honestly say that I feel there is nothing abnormal about our lives. The street I walk down is a 15-minute gauntlet of these feelings described above, and yet it all feels strangely normal. This is our world. This is life. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine it any differently.

 

Ps. I warn you for those of you who see us on our first furlough coming up later this year, don’t make us out to be martyrs for the cause of Christ. If you do, we will quickly disappoint you. After all, we are nothing more than normal Christians, living life as God has given it to us, just like, we hope, you are.

That Was A Good Answer

Sunday morning Bible study has become a routine. Most weeks following the church service, I have the privilege of leading 10-15 Gmz guys in a study of a new passage in our drafted translation of Luke’s gospel in preparation for one of them to preach it the following week. I love it…most of the time. Well, last week hadn’t been easy. I was tired, the guys were tired, and my words seem to evaporate like the light desperately rushing into the open windows only to get soaked up by the dark brown mud walls. But this, I told myself, was a new week. Sure, the bright sunlight still struggled to illuminate our dim corner and we still sat carefully on the tippy church benches, but I had high hopes in discussion of this new passage – Luke 9:57-62.

 

⁵⁷ As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go. ⁵⁸ Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” ⁵⁹ He said to another man, “Follow me.” But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”  ⁶⁰ Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”  ⁶¹ Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”  ⁶² Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”

 

The meeting began with a connection to the previous passage, which was followed by a quick read through and talk through the various conversations Jesus had along the road. In record time, I had questioned through what I wanted to surface in our discussion, and as usual, I then opened up the floor for any additional comments. Tesfaye, to my immediate right, said in typical Gmz style “Eh, ah dashi’” which loosely translated means “What the heck! This is tough stuff!” I silently nodded my head, but apparently that wasn’t enough of a response. Dewan, the member of the Gesas translation team with the brightest mind, spoke up first, explaining again some of the important points of the passage. Next came Habtamu, the member of the Gesas translation team with the biggest heart, describing the importance of leaving all else behind to follow Jesus and preach his gospel message. Before Habtamu could finish, the room began to pop with conversation. Unable to conceal my smile, I leaned back and listened as best as I could. We had been meeting like this for more than 10 months and never before had I seen the Gmz church leaders embrace and engage a text this much. I thanked God for being able to be a fly on that mud wall.

Then again, I shouldn’t have been surprised. My mind wandered back to the first time we encountered this passage in the translation office. Undistracted by the rainy season’s all-too-common pitter patter on the tin roof above our heads, we were hard at work trying to finish chapter nine. Noses to the grindstone, we had been in this long chapter for what felt like weeks, and so, finally after putting the final period on verse 62, I slouched deep into the backrest of my plastic chair. It’s not unusual that, whenever there is a pause in translating, the Gmz guys start their own conversation amongst themselves. It’s also not unusual that I am completely lost as to what they are talking about. After a bit, I tuned back into my surroundings, sat up and turned my attention again to the computer screen. Normally, this non-verbal action is enough to wrap up any side-conversation and get us back into the text, but not so this time. I gave them a few moments before turning my head toward the main speaker. “What are you talking about?” I asked with a certain level of displeasure, expecting to get an answer like “Our assessment of the finale episode of LOST,” or “The chances of the Cubs taking the pennant next year.” Just kidding, but I honestly didn’t expect the answer that I did receive, “Makwaak’oma dagah.” (“That was a good answer”). “What?” I asked for clarification. Work’u’s smile straightened in seriousness, “Jesus’ answer…it was really good. You can’t plow a field if you are looking backward.” Yes, of course, Jesus’ answer! I had long crossed that verse off my to-do list and mentally transitioned to work that awaited us in chapter ten. My co-translators, on the other hand, had gotten stuck on the profoundness, wisdom and truth in Jesus’ response. Coming from a culture that actually plows by hand, they know very well that someone distracted by something behind him cannot keep a straight line in the soil. So also the distracted minster of the gospel cannot serve well. The Gmz in the translation office that morning were struck with Jesus’ wisdom and changed as a result.

 

Likewise, when Tesfaye encountered this passage for the first time during our Sunday morning Bible study, he too was struck to the core – Jesus is asking a lot here. And the translators, the same three who wrestled with this text six months earlier, where right there, willing to speak up and help Tesfaye and the other 10 guys in the room process through its implications. It was a beautiful glimpse at a Bible translators’ greatest dream come true, seeing Scripture not only used, but changing lives! And not only changing lives, but spreading! No credit to me, only God can make that happen! I just have the privilege of a front row seat.

 

An Anti-Weaning Advocate

A mother’s breastmilk is a beautiful thing. I don’t mean that in appearance or in taste. No, I am talking about what I once read in some baby book and have since come to see and appreciate firsthand – the transfer of valuable antibodies from the mother’s fully developed immune system.

 

For Micah’s first year of life, he was an amazingly healthy baby – without even a single common cold. However, all that seemed to change once Micah reached that fateful day of weaning. Even as his drinks at the fountain of immunity were being cut down to only one per day, we noticed a problem developing in his digestive track. Every kid eats a little bit of dirt early in life and maybe Micah ate more than his share, but it was clear that something bad had set up residence somewhere within his system. No problem, we would be heading to Addis soon, we could get a stool sample done and knock it out with the right meds. Finding the problem, however, proved more difficult than we expected. The first lab test came back negative for all parasites, but since that hospital only charged us 75 cents for the tests, we figured we got what we paid for. We waited a few days and Micah seemed to only get worse. A second test at the overpriced foreign-based hospital came back with a positive result – amebic dysentery. We were relieved to get a clear diagnosis of a treatable illness. So we bought the medicine and just before mixing up our first dosage for him, got a call from the hospital, “Uh, we’ve made a mistake in looking at Travis’ lab results from last year, Micah’s sample today showed no parasites.” Our hearts sank. Confident that there was indeed a problem we turned to our other medically trained colleagues for advice. Feeding him only dry rice for two days revealed the problem was not food-allergy related. Giving him the first initial doses of a powerful Giardia drug showed improvement and so we continued for 7 days as recommended. However, after the medicine stopped and everything seemed normal a few days, the problem quickly returned. Returning to the drug, we gave a full 10-day dose followed by lots of yogurt to replace the good bacteria, and finally, after about two months of fighting it, Micah’s digestive track was back to normal for good. Whew!

 

We would have been happy to say that it’s been easy sailing since then, but in reality it has been anything but that. About three weeks after the digestive system got back on track, our next challenge hit in the form of a bug bite on Micah’s face. This bug bite became like a pimple when we suspected it to be a mango fly larva, covering it with Vaseline to force the larva to the surface for air. After trying to squeeze the larva out the former bug bite turned pimple grew into a cratered ulcer, which sent us paging through our medical manuals. About a month after this one started we went to Addis and saw a couple different doctors, each time given the same diagnosis and treatment. With no improvement after those topical treatments we had a smear and culture test done, all of which came back negative. Hmmm… The ulcer eventually stopped growing, probably as a result of one of the treatments, but we still don’t have an official diagnosis for what it was. The circular scar (we assume it is a scar) on his face is a testimony to our frustration over those 4 months of looking for answers (our self diagnosis is lieshmiasin, caused by a fungal growth after a sand flea bite, which then got infected).

 

The story doesn’t end there. Less than a month after we came to the conclusion that the remaining spot on Micah’s face was just a scar, we encountered his first bouts with high fevers. After a full day of high fevers unresponsive to ibuprofen or Tylenol, we were just putting him to bed when we had the scare of our lives – seeing our little guy’s eyes roll back and his body shake in the sudden onset of a seizure. Freaking out, we grabbed him, a few belongings, truck keys and bolted out the door. By the time we had piled into the truck and on our way to find an emergency doctor, the seizure had stopped, but seeing Micah in that post-seizure semi-conscious state was equally torturing on us as we fought images of the worst case scenario. After getting a quick fever reducing injection, we waited about an hour, had blood drawn (everything came up negative…again) and were sent home with a diagnosis of tonsillitis on the basis of slightly swollen tonsils. Without any evidence of a sore throat, we were not convinced, but we started the antibiotic anyway and continued to fight the fever for another day and a half before deciding to see another pediatrician. This guy, we think, called it what it was – a virus. We stopped the antibiotic and sure enough later that day, the fever left and stayed away. We breathed a huge sigh of relief and thanked God for many, many things (ie. I had been out of town until only hours before the seizure…THANK GOD on that timing!) Ps. As rash a day or so later helped us identify it as “Rosiola.”

 

Now, if that was the frosting on the cake, we unfortunately are currently dealing with the sprinkles. Last Sunday afternoon, after enjoying two weeks of good health, Micah began to get a fever again. Ok, we’ve crossed that bridge and we aren’t about to mess around with it. Armed and ready with ibuprofen and a cold washcloth, we did everything we knew how to avoid another seizure episode and this time it was working. However, in the middle of the night we faced another, equally serious problem– a restricted airway and loud gasps for breath. Of course, we bounded from bed onto our feet scrambling for some of the home remedies we’ve heard (steam tenting and vapor rub). Monday morning, the wheezing wasn’t going away and so, when I went to an “internet city” for work that day, I surfed all over for more suggestions to try (Vicks on the feet, peppermint oil steam, patting his back, onions, garlic, hot peppers, etc.). None of them were the miracle cure we were looking for. To make matters worse, every year at this time, the Gmz people burn their fields so that when the fires come close to us, the whole sky is filled with black smoke, raining down ash - an absolute nightmare for someone with a respiratory infection. With the fires drawing close yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon, we packed up our co-worker’s truck (ours has two flat tires and only one spare) and headed for the hills (literally). So today (Wednesday) we are hunkered down within the hospitality of a friend living a good 70 miles from Gesas. For the record, the expertises of three mothers with a total of thirteen children are all calling this sickness “croup,” as evidenced by Micah’s loud quacking cough that filled the whole house last night. Thankfully, the cough is loosening and the virus seems to be working its way through his little body so that we hope to get back to Gesas in another day or so. Yikes, only God knows what lies next!

 

All that to say, I could count on my fingers (no toes needed) the number of weeks Micah hasn’t had a concerning medical issue in the 8 months since weaning. It makes me wonder, why did we wean him in the first place? Gmz nurse their babies until they are at least 2, if not 3. And if Andrea’s immune system can keep our little family from having to go through all of these trials and heartaches, I might be in favor of nursing through Jr. High! Ok, I haven’t run that idea by Andrea yet, but when I do, at least I have the evidence to back up my argument.