Inspiration from Africa

The story below about Lillian, an AIDS orphan in Uganda, is all too common. Throughout Africa it is very common for these children to be taken in by aunts and grandmothers. There are 1,200,000 AIDS/HIV orphans in Uganda and an equal number in  Tanzania. The pictures below are from our trip to Tanzania in 2011, where we had the joy and opportunity to visit a boarding home of a program called Help for the Maasai, founded and run by Angelica Kinsey, a Lutheran Deaconess missionary from Germany.  Angelica is a delightful servant of the Lord who has worked with the Maasai people for almost 30 years.  She is now married to our good friend Erwin Kinsey who we have known for many years.

Giving and Receiving: An Advent Reflection

An Advent Reflection

 

 An Advent Reflection

by Jerry Aaker

She out of her poverty has put in everything she had.                                                                           Mark 12:44

As we move through the Advent season towards Christmas our thoughts turn to gift giving.  Christians and non-Christians alike get enthused about buying a gift for everyone on their lists at this time of the year as we are encouraged by a massive marketing campaign to spend lots of money. We will hear of Ebenezer Scrooge again in the retelling of Dickens' Christmas story and that even the stingiest among us can be generous - or should be. One writer said that the story by Dickens has probably done as much to form our notions of Christmas as the St Luke story of the manger. Dickens suggests that down deep even the worst of us can become generous, giving people. 

Both stories - Luke's and Dickens' - get us into the spirit of Christmas. However, the Gospel story is really not only about how blessed it is to be givers, but about how essential it is to see ourselves as gracious receivers. Being a good receiver is hard, especially if we get a gift we had not expected or think that we did not deserve. Then, we always think we have to reciprocate - "Oh no, I got a gift from someone that I had not even thought about buying for and I feel terrible about receiving this gift!". 

But, think about it, God gave a gift so extra ordinary that all we can do is accept it. And we don't have to feel guilty about it, either.  

Think about the people in your life who have given you that which is of much greater value than any material gift - the gifts of love, faithful witness and service to others and to the church, expressions of thoughtfulness, small actions of caring, hospitality and telling us "I'm praying for you" - and meaning it. 

We all have stories from our churches, families and communities about people who give of themselves in quiet and constant ways.  So, during this preparation time, this waiting time called Advent, why not take some time to remember those people in our lives, now and in the past, who have been gifts to us?  Just pause - maybe even once a day during Advent - and put aside thoughts of being the gift buyer and giver and reflect on being a thankful receiver of good gifts.  

The story, "God is Able", from Uganda illustrates this sentiment well, I think. 

Stories from Uganda

A Story from Uganda appropriate to think about during Advent and Christmas.

God is Able: A Story of Giving from Uganda

I found the following story from Uganda in a journal entry I made in 1995. It was another reminder to me to be thankful for people I have met along the way whose lives are a witness to the generosity of both giving and receiving.

July, 1995, in the village of Kiringa, 

Anna Kaggwa is raising her second family. Most of the children in her first family are grown and out on their own, but her brother's children are now living in Anna's home and are her responsibility.

The scourge of the AIDS epidemic that has ravished Uganda left many orphans in its wake, among them the five children of Anna Kaggwa's brother, who died of AIDS a few years ago. 

Anna named the cow that she received from the project "God is Able", Buinza, in her native language. Indeed this cow is able - she gives lots of milk! Income from the milk she produces makes it possible for five children to go to school; four of them are the orphaned children of Anna Kaggwa's brother.

We stood beside the recently built brick house in which the Kaggwa family now lives; also paid for by God is Able. I asked Anna how she has been able to manage in these last three years since she doubled the size of her family. 

"I was able to get a lot of training to prepare me to handle this cow", she says.  "A relative loaned me money to build the shed and corrals and I had to work plenty hard to plant the pasture that is required to feed my animals. The first year I paid off the loan; the second year we bought bricks, roofing and cement, and the third year we built the house". She went on to talk of other benefits the family has gotten from God is Able, like milk for the children to drink, manure for the gardens and, oh yes, a new bicycle.  She thinks she has been blessed, and so it was just the normal and natural thing to do to take in her brother's children. Listening to Anna I got the sense that she sees all of these things as gifts from God.

Last year Anna went to a course for model farmers and now is able to pass on skills and knowledge, as well as much enthusiasm, to other women in the village.

One of the orphan children who is now part of Anna's family is a very shy eleven year-old girl named Lillian. It is a bit overwhelming for Lillian to talk to a big white man (a muzungo), but after some minutes she relaxes a bit and tells me something about herself. Lillian is in primary school and her favorite subject is music. With the slightest smile on her face she tells me she likes to sing, and  "I can read Lugandan and even some English words", she says.

 

Lillian barely remembers her father; only that his name was Leve, but she remembers a bit more about her mother, Bernadette.  "I remember she was slender and brown, and very pretty", Lillian said, almost inaudibly. Lillian says she wants to be a teacher when she grows up, a dream that just might come true because God is Able.

She doesn't remember much more about her parents, except that "we lived far away from here".  I found out later that they were from an area near the Tanzanian boarder, a place where the AIDS epidemic first began in Uganda and from where it spread like wild fire across the parched plains. 

Indeed, I think to myself, Lillian could become a teacher some day.  This is a place where suffering and sacrifice has turned into a miracle of love and caring - where marvelous things are being done by God's people and because God is able. 

During these days we also visited Kisinga, a densely populated region, and well known back in the US as the village of the Kinsinga Dairy Goat project. I enjoyed getting to know the women and children of Kisinga and seeing their pride of accomplishment as they worked together.  This is where the now famous Beatrice, the little girl featured in the Heifer Project video and children's book comes from. There are many more little girls like Beatrice here.

We visited many families on their small farms in Kisinga. In one home we met a young woman who had given birth to twins three days previously. As we left I pondered what the future holds for those babies and so many other children in that part of  the country. In the poor rural areas of Uganda one in ten infants die before they reach their first birthday. Not all are so blessed as Beatrice, or even Lillian.

On Sunday I worshiped with the Bigirwa family. Their children were all dressed up for Sunday services and proudly recited Psalms by heart all the way to the church. The cathedral was brim full with worshipers and I enjoyed a good sermon and great hymn singing. 

The previous evening Mr. and Mrs. Bigirwa had invited me to a meal and we enjoyed good food and conversation. We talked some about the passing of  Brenda whom I had previously met. Their little daughter had suffered much illness during her short life before she died at the age of 13.  The parents talked about how they had "grown in the Lord" through that hard time and of their good memories of Brenda. They accepted that Brenda had been a gift to them for the short time she was with them.

The sermon was from Romans 8:1.  "There is no condemnation now for those who live in union with Christ Jesus"  We live in the Spirit, the preacher said, and we are put right with God through the sacrifice of Jesus. What a gift from God!

 

Reflection

Later I thought about the children I was with those days and how we are all children of God.  Some of us are blessed with health and security and many of the material things of life, and others are not. Some suffer more than I can imagine.

I had seen love and relationships of caring and sharing during those days, a compassion that is a far greater treasure than any other on this earth. I was reminded again of the scripture that tells us to love one another deeply, from the heart.  It is the gift we can both give and receive unconditionally, because God is Love and God is Able. 

In a sermon titled "God is Able", Martin Luther King, Jr said,

It is faith in God that we must rediscover. With this faith we can transform bleak and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of joy and bring new light into the dark caverns of pessimism. Is someone here moving toward the twilight of life and fearful of that which we call death? Why be afraid? God is able. Is someone here on the brink of despair because of the death of a loved one, the breaking of a marriage, of the waywardness of a child? Why despair? God is able to give you the power to endure that which cannot be changed. Is someone here anxious because of bad health? Why be anxious? Come what may, God is able.

Meditation

Now to Him, who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to                                          all generations, forever and ever. Amen.                                                                                                                   Ephesians 3: 20, 21.

Ω

• Where and through whom have you seen that God is able to accomplish more than you would have asked or imagined for the good of God's people?
• Who has been a gift to you, someone who has reflected Christ and made a difference in your life? 

Accompaniment- A Comment from India

My friend Greg Rake sent this comment from India where he works with the Rural Development Institute helping landless people get rights to land.

There is so much I would like to share about this book…first, I give thanks to God for Jerry and Judy and their lives of service.  Our paths initially crossed in Quito, Ecuador about 25 years ago.  And it has been a joy and blessing ever since as we have been blessed to be linked in different ways across the years. 

Whereas Jerry and Judy began their service in South Asia and then ended spending a lot of time in Latin America and other parts of the world;  I started in Latin America, formalized the relationship by marrying my wife, Inés, a wonderful woman of Bolivia, and now we are ending our “professional” career in India.  And like many of the places they have served, we never had a grand plan…we simply felt called to serve.

There is a wonderful concept of development that Jerry presents in The Spirituality of Service.  It is the idea of accompaniment.  I first heard this phrase from Jerry and Pedro Veliz from Lutheran World Relief.  It is about walking alongside people regardless of who and where they are.  Here in India people often talk of “hand-holding” as a way of walking alongside, especially in the development sector.  This morning in my walk it was beautifully illustrated by a very common custom of two men holding hands as they walk.  Sometimes they walk silently next to each other, then they may talk excitedly and then, one may take the lead as they cross a street busy with traffic, but you have to be close to hold hands.

Jerry’s book is about that kind of walking together, of walking close in a relationship with God, with you yourself, with others and with the environment.  While reading the chapters you can easily feel that someone has come alongside you, slipped their hand in yours and is walking with you.  And there are times when it is quietly accompanying you, shaking you up or just providing some wisdom for guiding your journey.  One of my favorite Bible stories is about the walk to Emmaus because Jesus was doing just that – walking alongside, talking with them, engaging in their doubts, and without judgment.  That is the gift of this book – it shares a wealth of experiences from so many contexts and settings, it invites you to the journey and it asks,  “And what about you?” 

Greg,  

Inviting your Stories

Thanks for the good feedback and comments on the book from many friends via e-mail. Also many former colleagues from Heifer International, Lutheran World Relief and Agros International have been in communication with very affirming feedback.  I invite more comments and personal reflections on your own stories and journeys of service.