That Crazy Month and the Love of the Father

The story of this last month has run along one eerily consistent plotline: NOTHING works... at least not the right away, and certainly not like I expected. It’s almost comical.

I left you last in Addis Ababa. I had arrived on a bumpy local bus (that I almost didn’t get a seat on) after 10 exhausting hours squished between two Ethiopians. 

I arrived to find I didn’t have a hotel lined up. But after a couple tense hours, I found myself at the mission guesthouse in a comfortable room paying a tenth of what I would have paid at the hotel.

The seminar I had come to teach was not what I expected: 7 guys instead of 30. 9 hours instead of 14. And I was unprepared to teach.... BUT it turned out I really needed the extra rest time, I managed to get my notes prepped, and the small group setting was a much more fulfilling experience for me. Less teaching, more dialogue.

Then because I had more time in my schedule than anticipated, I caught a ride (at the last minute, of course) to a Bobogaya, a breath-taking retreat center, a Edenic garden of spindly trees in full purple bloom tumbling down to a volcanic lake.

There I met Gary, my pastor from Fayetteville for a retreat with a dozen rough-and-tumble frontline missionary families scattered throughout Northern Ethiopia. Throughout the weekend, I learned what sacrifice looks like: these talented families had given up career, family, community, comfort, and safety to live in towns and villages on Ethiopia’s inhospitable frontier, to do what they felt God told them to do: Bring Christ’s love to dark places. These people were the real deal, and they would show Christ’s love to me.

Sunday morning, I got an email from Debra:

“I have no idea when you'll get this, but I need you to know that I'm taking Levi to the ER right now for breathing stuff.  I called the nurse line and they told me to take him in. The girls are at the boltons. I'll keep you posted.”

I felt sick. Suddenly my beautiful retreat center was the last place in the world I needed to be. As the day progressed, Levi was transferred by ambulance to another hospital where his oxygen level continued to plummet and he was given pure oxygen just to keep him alive and breathing. I felt helpless. I sat in the big room at Bobogaya and was surrounded by dozens of people who know that feeling all too well. Warm hands rested on my back and neck as earnest prayers, cries for help were voiced on our behalf. I wept, feeling lost and loved and the same time. Gary was especially instrumental that weekend in helping me process all the chaos both from the Ethiopia trip and things happening on the home front. He was encouraging, thoughtful, a good listener, helpful, and generous. In that situation, he was as good as a father to me.

After the prayer time, scheming little huddles of people formed and I got the sense that this community was ready to move heaven and earth to help me get home. A ride to the airport, cash for the journey, anything they could do. I was also getting news from our friends back home. They were also moving heaven and earth to help Debra. The girls stayed with our friends, the Boltons (bringing their total kid count to 6). Other friends came over to clean our disastrous house. Others brought meals (when we got home our fridge was overflowing and the meals just kept coming). Others braved the hour-long drive through Atlanta to visit Debra and give emotional support. We don’t have family where we live, but at this moment, our community there (and my ad-hoc community in Ethiopia) was better than family. They were God’s love to us activated through human hearts: Christ’s “body” doing what it was made to do.

At Bobogaya the power was out and my phone was barely getting signal. So changing my ticket became a big saga. We traveled to town to buy credit for my phone. Then I called the ticket office in Addis, who told me I would need to call the US office. I made the international call and ALMOST managed to change the ticket before I ran out of credit and got cut off. With my last scratch card, I called Debra, who had barely slept all night and asked her to call on my behalf. After a long time, she called me to confirm that I was on the plane leaving that night.

The team decide I wasn’t about to travel the 90 minutes to the airport alone in a taxi, so they sent a small delegation with me in their best vehicle to make sure I got through security (which I did, though my green coffee beans did not... sad face).

The flight over the Atlantic was incredibly long and I numbed my brain with 4 movies and whatever sleep I could manage. All went smoothly until I reached Miami and discovered my flight to Atlanta was delayed 45 minutes. Yay.

I arrived in Atlanta close to 11pm, and my friend was there to pick me up and take me straight to the hospital. In spite of how all the pieces finally came together, I was exhausted and my emotional reserves were totally depleted. I was about to walk into a high-needs situation with absolutely nothing to give but my physical presence.

I found Levi and Debra sleeping soundly in a dark room at Scottish Rite. I blew up my little camping mattress, laid on the floor and went to sleep. I had made it home. 

God’s care and provision were unbelievable. In spite of a dozen twists and turns, HE got me home. I was beyond myself. I had nothing to give, but I was there. And as long as everything went smoothly from that point on, we would all be okay. Well... everything did NOT go smoothly. My prayer has been, "God, thank you. But this is really hard... But thank you... But this is hard..." 

I’ll leave it there for the moment.

Homosexuality is not a Verb

Can I clarify something? Because for all the discussion on this topic, my Christian friends have not yet adopted this distinction in their vocabulary and it’s sending some really bad messages. When evangelical Christians use the word “homosexuality”, they are almost always referring to sexual behavior between two people of the same gender. When EVERYBODY else in our culture uses the word, it refers to attraction and not behavior. Homosexuality refers to a person’s attraction to the same gender and NOT to the behavior associated with that attraction.

Hate to say it folks, but the church got this one wrong and the culture is right here. Whatever you believe about homosexual behavior, homosexuality is a word that refers to attraction and not behavior. It’s not something you do. It’s not something you can “commit”. It’s an adjective; not a verb. A homosexual is someone who is attracted to the same gender. And yes, a person can be gay without ever being sexually active. This isn’t rocket science, people.

Terminology matters! Why? Because when we talk about homosexuality as a sin people commit, we are telling everybody that has ever felt attracted to the same sex that the attraction they feel makes them uniquely sinful (more so than others) and the only hope for them is to change their orientation. This is a dangerous heresy. So let me say this plainly as a bible-believing Christian: Homosexuality is NOT a sin. In other words, your orientation does not set you apart from God. Your behavior does.

If you believe (as I do) that having sex with the same gender is a sin according to the bible, then hunky dory. Believe it. But don’t let “homosexuality” become a catch all for behavior and orientation. Because many gay men and women are being told that their sexual orientation which is inextricably wired into them (by nurture AND biology), and which most will never be able to significantly alter outside of a miracle makes them dirty, untouchable, and irredeemably separated from God. That’s wrong. That’s unbiblical.

Addis like a Vagabond

Outside the city of Injibara, a town in the crisp mountain air of northern Ethiopia, Mark and Debbie Maclachlan live in a little cultivated garden of Eden surround by thousand-foot granite pillars protruding the green countryside. In their agriculture project, dozens of species of plums, pears, apples, and plants I can’t pronounce are flourishing in the mountain climate. The plums and pears have gone to market and exploded in popularity, created an insatiable demand. It’s part of their vision to create livelihoods in their community while representing Jesus to their neighbors, most of whom are nominal Coptics.

I spent a couple days with them, refreshed after 2 days alone in a hotel room in bustling Addis Ababa and then a full day on the bus. My pastor flew out from the States to join us and as we walked together along the dirt road he helped me process some of the frustration and exhaustion I had been feeling. Truthfully he was a life-saver. That night, I shared a devotion with the Injibara team (2 couples plus the team from our church) about experiencing God’s presence and was pretty vulnerable about the things I was wrestling with what God had been teaching me. It was cathartic to share and encouraging to them.

I wish I could have stayed in Injibara, but I was expected to teach on Tuesday, so on Monday, I woke up at 4:30. Mark and Debbie took me to the big patch of dirt where local buses (all looking as though they’d been through the wars) were about to depart. They told me to play the “white card” and I would be fine. They said goodbye and drove off. A little stunned, I wandered into the compound looking lost. “Addis?” I inquired helplessly to the throng of Amharic speakers. “Addis Ababa?”

“No!” replied the an official looking man. “Addis for tomorrow okay. Today, no. Tickets no.” I’ve learned not to walk away immediately when someone says “no” in Ethiopia, so I shuffled my feet and looked helplessly at the man while he gathered the other passenger’s tickets. After a long time, he shouted some things to the driver and some people standing nearby, grabbed my bag, looked at me, and said “okay.” I paid the man and got on board, relieved. I had played the “white card”.

The bus creaked and veered slowly across mountain plains and through a winding gorge as deep as the Grand Canyon. The man on my left was drunk or hung-over. The one on the right held a small baby. The old woman behind me lay there moaning as though she were sick, one breast dangling haphazardly out of her shawl. I folded my long legs into the tiny seat and tried to entertain myself for the next ten hours. During lunch, two Israeli para-gliders approached me, eager to talk with another English-speaker. At long last we reached Addis, butt-sore but alive. I was dropped on a side street and immediately mobbed by taxi drivers.

A phone call to my Dawit confirmed my fear: lodging at NOT been arranged for that night. Homeless in Africa. Great. I had one more trick up my sleeve. I told the driver to take me to the SIM guesthouse (the mission Mark and Debbie served in). Pulling into the deserted compound, I was told the office was closed for Adwa (or “Expel the Italians Day”). But the guy on duty managed to find me a room just for the night. It was a simple, clean, quiet little room on the second floor. I collapsed onto the bed exhausted and relieved. I was running on fumes, burned out from all the travel and bustle and ambiguity and then a horrible thought struck me: I have to teach tomorrow. And I have no idea who, where, or how many.

I imagined myself standing behind a podium in front of dozens of sharp-faced Ethiopians and trying to conjure up something wise and insightful to say about discipleship. My mind went blank. I panicked. I have nothing to say! I don’t want to teach! I just want to go home and watch movies and drink a cold beer and eat comfort food. The whole weight of the trip hit me in that moment. I wondered, is this burnout? Or am I just tired? There was nothing to do, though I secretly hoped for a catastrophe to strike and cancel the seminar.

I walked into the guesthouse’s dining hall where a middle-aged American was listening eagerly to a Nigerian Muslim-background believer tell his story. Eventually I joined the conversation, intrigued, and listened as the Nigerian spoke passionately about his work discipling other “MBBs” in Nigeria. There was something genuine about him that I really liked and I wanted to know more. So I invited him to join me for dinner. I talked for a long time with my new friend. I learned about his family, his dissertation, and the training center he has for Jesus-followers coming from Islam. I learned that we know some of the same people. I also learned that some of the people he works with are Fulani, those beautiful wraith-like cattle nomads I work with in northern Ghana. We exchanged contact info and discipleship resources before he went home today. I think what attracted me most about him was that everything he’s doing so perfectly embodies the style of intensive, hands-on discipleship that Jesus modeled. I teach all about that model of discipleship throughout Africa, but I know of precious few who are actually DOING that model. It made me want to quit teaching this stuff and just spend the next few years DOING it.

Yesterday morning, I gave a little talk on Exodus 33 to a dozen Nigerians working at an international school. Then my host, Dawit informed me that my “seminar” that afternoon would consist of 7 people who had already done the conference before. I had expected to train the 7 in the context of leading a bigger seminar with them. NOW I had to come up with a new plan, a NEW seminar just for them.... in 2 hours.

Well, I did some fast typing and came up with a plan. So when we arrived at the tiny office where we were meeting, we spent time getting to know each other and having some pretty honest dialogue about what was happening in their lives. Over the next 2 days the teaching became a great round-table discussion. By the end of today the conversation reached a fevered pitch. Okay, I thought. We have buy-in. Tomorrow we’ll finish with some practical work which I hope they’ll be able to apply in their context.

One of the strongest contributors was a pastor named Million. Kid you not. When he was young, his mother didn’t let the other kids call him “Milli” because she wanted her son to get the “full Million.” He grew into a giant hulk of an Ethiopian gangster/street fighter before being introduced to Jesus by a frail old lady at a restaurant. Now he’s a hulk of a pastor (who I STILL wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley) with a growing passion for discipleship.

Another guy chimed in during our discussion on forgiveness. He was frustrated that the Muslims he works with view the forgiveness of Christians as a sign of weakness and God humiliating the Christians. He wondered if Christians should really forgive them or fight back to earn their respect. He concluded he would have to follow of the cross, even if he was misunderstood or ridiculed.

Tomorrow should be interesting. I’m having my two organizers, Dawit and Mekonnen do the teaching while I sit back and watch. This is my favorite part! We’ll have discussions on “what’s next” and then wrap it up for the week.

Stay tuned for what’s next! Babysitting missionary kids at a volcanic crater lake, preaching on Sunday, getting offered raw meat before my long flight home Monday. Hmmmmm.....

The Most Ridiculous Bus Ride Ever

 So on Thursday, I said to my friend, “I need to buy a bus ticket for tomorrow.”

“Okay,” my friend replies. I’ll pick you up at 9:45.

By 10:30, we were at a coffee shop sipping macchiatos... In Ethiopia, you find ANY excuse to sip macchiatos... 2 hours later, we’re still sitting there. His “friend”, he insists, is 5 minutes away and he will help us. An hour later, a big Ethiopian contractor guy pulls up in an old Mercedes. My friend opens the door and motions for me to get in the car. I hesitate. “This is my friend,” he says. “He is very generous. Go with him. I’ll see you later.”

“Okay...” I hesitate. “Will I meet you back here or go back to the hotel?” Vague affirmations that we’ll figure it out follow until I drive away with the big certain I have no idea what’s going on.

My new friend drives me all over town shouting, “Sky bus ticket office?!” to random strangers until we find ourselves (after several false starts) in a poorly-marked office on the 3^rd floor of a mall. And all the tickets for tomorrow are sold out.

As we are leaving defeated, a young man wanders up muttering something about Bahar Dar and ends up selling me his ticket, the last seat on the bus. “The miracle ticket,” my new contractor friend calls it.

On the way back the way back to my hotel, we have to stop for an hour to get lunch. Then he “drops by” the market to pick up some materials (which takes over an hour due to unknown people running around shouting unknown things in an unknown language and generally not telling me what’s going on. At last after 8 hours, I’m back at the hotel having accomplished my one thing for the day (well half of one thing.... I was told I would have to buy the return ticket in Bahar Dar, but don’t worry. They are 95% sure there will be plenty of space on the bus coming home.)

So this morning at 5AM, I sat down in the back row of the bus feeling like a very squished foreigner indeed. 2 hours into our 9-hour trip, we started careening down steep switchbacks into a 1km deep gorge with breathtaking and terrifying views. The two giggly muslim high school girls on my left took turns puking in a bag. Finally I fell asleep and when I woke up one of the girls was sleeping soundly on my shoulder, her arm draped casually across my knee. Only in Ethiopia I thought.

After two some great Ethiopian elevator music and two home-grown Ethiopian films, we arrived at our destination sweltering because the guy on my right insisted that the cool breeze was like evil spirits blowing across his body and would surely make him sick.

The payoff came though in the form of macchiatos overlooking lake Tana under a veranda next to a giant sycamore bowing its ancient limbs near the water. The coffee in that region (Zegie) is some of the best I’ve had and is shade-grown on the lakeshore by monks and family farmers but has yet to make its debut in America (to the best of my knowledge). I first had it 2 years ago on a small island in the lake where a family served us from their private crop grown under the shade of an 800-year-old monastery. “Sacred coffee” I called it. I was enchanted. Now I’m dreaming of introducing it to the American market. Holy Zegie macchiatos for all!

Oh... did I mention, that I went to the ticket office here and all the buses for Monday are FULL???? Wuh wuuuuuhh....... Squishy minibus anybody?