I am on a media week right now. It is all new for us, and for AIM AIR, to have me steal away part of the time and help develop media for the mission. It's also quite a change of lifestyle when I do. Getting up after the sunrise, and commuting only fifty feet to our media office here on the compound. Not injuring myself in the course of the day. Not fearing for my life. I do miss the flying a little (I must admit)... the smell of Jet fuel, the mud, the heart-stopping moments... but there's plenty of it waiting for me next week. For now I get a chance to work on a few stories for future AIM magazine publications. We (our little team of three at the media office) have wrapped up a short video this week. But my current writing assignment, which is waiting for its third and hopefully final draft, has been the most interesting. It's about a single missionary in Tanzania who works with people who have AIDS, and also with the orphaned kids. I spent a day with her some weeks ago, quite accidentally, and was really struck with the devastation AIDS brings. Sometimes it seems that all the children I see in Africa are heart-wrenching. But these orphaned kids are much more so.

So the gist of the article is about how this missionary goes out on a limb to minister to those afflicted and affected. She and I talked a lot about how this type of ministry could drain a person, and possibly burn them out. This is considered a bad thing in modern missions, which in a lot of ways patterns modern culture. Self preservation is a virtue. We are clearly misguided making it too high a virtue, but is it a vice? The balance is tricky sometimes, I'll admit. What good is a burned out missionary? Then again...

I think about Jesus, and an assortment of apostles, who unwittingly (maybe) set a bad example for us. All those nights in prison. All that unnecessary interpersonal strife. Premature deaths. Imagine how many more sermons on other 'mounts' Jesus could have preached if only he had ten more years of ministry? Even five more. Even one.

We'll, I haven't finished the article yet. If you get AIMs quarterly, you may read about it sometime next year. But I doubt I'll have an answer for you, or for myself. I don't know how much to hold back in this life of faith. I've got kids to think about. I've got responsibilities... I need some kind of safety-net in case God isn't sovereign after-all, just in case providence is an empty idea... isn't that really what I'm thinking? Man, I thought the flying was going to be more challenging than the writing.

Southern Sudan is my most common destination with the airplane. We have been increasingly busy there as more missionaries move back in to minister and build after so many years of war. And as I've flow around these past six months, I have sensed a growing discontent from the southern Sudanese about the progress of peace in the country. Sometimes it looks more like they are preparing for war instead of rebuilding a country. Recent developments in Sudan confirm this observation, and are discouraging to see. Ministry in the south may soon change... again.

From the New York Times:
"While much of the recent international attention on Sudan has been focused on Darfur, in the west, tensions over the fragile peace deal in the south have been bubbling for months. American officials recently warned that South Sudan could plunge back into war."

full NYT article here

I had this terrific trip to Congo a few weeks back. There's a page of photos on the photography page here, and an essay I wrote for AIM somewhere in the works. When Renee and I arrived to Africa ten years ago, some of my first few flights were to eastern Congo. That route was soon after shut down as the region descended into yet another war. So, I have only known the place to be a mess. I have seen some of the tragic history since we've been stationed in Africa, but in small doses.

On my recent trip I went to an old AIM mission station and actually saw some of the triumph. It was enlightening to be there with an elderly brother and sister who were missionary kids in a relatively peaceful Congo many years ago. This was the first trip to Congo where I can remember not wanting to leave in such a hurry.

Yet the country remains a dark place. Just today I was reminded of that while reading this article in the New York Times. (Caution, the story will likely ruin your day.)

This bit from the article caught my attention:
"No one — doctors, aid workers, Congolese and Western researchers — can explain exactly why this is happening."

After my visit to this village not all that far away from the "freelance cruelty" portrayed in this article, I could offer an explanation. The Zande people whom I met were once shrouded in darkness, as are many in eastern Congo. But the love of God bore out in the lives of a missionary family over fifty years ago still shines. The "why" is actually simple, even if bringing about social change is not. Human sin, and its requisite heart of darkness is why this is happening. And as I saw in Zande-land a few weeks back, the light of Christ probably has a better chance of turning things arond than the "largest UN peacekeeping force in the world."