(Here's a short essay from our December newsletter. The newsletter is posted here if you want to catch up on some news about us. It may help put context to many of the blogs over the past year. Merry Christmas -- from all us.)



For a week in November I travelled throughout the “mountain kingdom” of Lesotho. I visited with a missionary family living in a quaint village tucked within a breathtaking valley on the eastern side of the small country. Over the course of several days, John introduced us to a ministry among the shepherd community of Lesotho. In reality, John was just beginning to understand the shepherd culture himself. Lesotho is unique for its relatively homogenous ethnic demographic. There are no “tribal” divisions, and the country is a little more stable and peaceful as a result. But alongside the Basotho culture, which covers every niche, there are these shepherds. They are boys and men relegated to a life of hardship, outcast in many ways, tending animals belonging to wealthy stock owners; living on the fringe and on the edge.

From age six to sixty. They are easily identified by their tell-tale garb: Gum boots, and a filthy wool blanket wrapped from shoulders to toes. Beneath a knitted cap, dark and distant eyes peer beyond a tattered slit into seemingly nothing. The shepherds are ubiquitous. They are visible near and far; on every distant hill or valley or field. Animals punctuate the landscape around them -- scattered like stars in the sky -- and it is a mystery how they ever gather them up at the end of a day. But these men have uncanny skills. At one point I watched a shepherd count his goats with a wave of his hand and a methodology which escaped me. Over a hundred animals moving about in a rocky corral, in the fading light of the day no less. What took him thirty seconds, I never accomplished.

But they are considered to be ignorant. They smell like the animals and look like trouble. In a country that boasts Africa’s highest literacy rate, they are illiterate. They smoke pot and possess neither the manners nor the attire required to be welcome in a church. My dad would have loved these guys. Jesus would have loved these guys. Still does.

John’s heart to reach this community is perhaps one of the most pure I have ever seen. Because even a child knows that God has a special place in his heart for shepherds. From the earliest of human history until now, they represent a lower class of person. In man’s eyes they are foolish and weak and most certainly “last”. Yet God relates to such as these. Sends his Son and calls him the “Good Shepherd.” And then tells us that the “last” will be first. Imagine what the shepherds of Lesotho will think when they learn the King of Kings is one of them? Imagine how the shepherds felt that night long ago when angels shattered the silence and announced to them, of all people, the arrival of the infant King?

One night I sat with a couple of the shepherds there at their encampment and thought about this. It was deathly cold and rained ice that night. We were engulfed in a fog as the sun set, blanketing the land in misery. John spoke to them a little about God’s love and it sounded small in such a vast and empty place. As a promise of something unbelievable, a tiny coal of warmth that could only be felt if you were very, very close to it. And I could see in the longing eyes of the shepherd sitting beside him, a desire to move closer. As if no one in all of history had ever been more prepared to do so. Except that it couldn’t be possible. Could it?

Christmas is for shepherds. I’ve long thought so, but now I know for certain. Christmas is for the unsuspecting, the open hearted, the downcast and outcast dressed in rags. Because no one at the feet of Jesus was ever more appropriately dressed than the shepherds were. We are all like filthy rags at His feet. It is only that the shepherds know it.

***

I’m sitting in a window seat over the wing, just a couple arms lengths from the giant turbofan engine of a 737 high above Zambia or Tanzania -- I’m not sure which -- on our way back home. The sky is serene and the light is fading fast below the horizon -- blue and yellow and clear of clouds. Sunset on another adventure. These past eight days have seemed much longer. I feel as if I’ve been gone for months and lived another life, and I feel this way perhaps because I don’t think I will fully be able to describe to Renee all the sights and experiences of my journey. As I scribble notes and remembrances in a notebook resting on the tray table crammed into my lap, I realize that like the setting sun, my memories are also fading fast.

It could just be that I’m spent. But in a good way. An exhaustion of body and spirit knit together with great contentment. The contentment stored up in the memories of care-free adventure, beauty, laughter, and some moderate danger -- and in the stunned amazement that I walked away uninjured and a little bit wiser from the journey. This feeling is one of those things which makes our missionary work slightly addictive.

This time the adventure unfolded in an improbable little country carved out of the great nation of South Africa. Lesotho is quite literally “off my radar” as an AIM AIR pilot. We just don’t fly that far. So on this particular trip, I travelled under a different “hat” -- that of a writer and a storyteller, along with some of our colleagues in AIM’s media ministry, in which I participate to some small degree. The trip was designed to canvas the small country of Lesotho and tell the story two very different missionaries, and two very unique ministries: One of them among the outcast shepherd community; And one among the disheartened farmers throughout the land.

Lesotho is called “The Mountain Kingdom.” The descriptor seemed very rich to me: Mountains and kings. Well, only one king actually, and I understand that he's a good one. Lesotho has the highest “lowest point” of any country in the world. It snows there. You can go sleighing and build a snowman and almost forget you are in Africa. Of course, we planned our trip for the approaching summer months. But we were woefully unprepared. (Noted: don’t rest your planning on the local missionary’s interpretation of “Oh, it’s summer here so don’t worry about bringing really warm clothes.”) I will never go to Lesotho again without thermal underwear and a Polartec.

But despite an unreliable summer, it was still staggeringly beautiful. At times I was reminded of Southwest Virginia or the Southwest United States. At times I remembered my summer long ago in Ecuador; Seeing the locals wrapped up in wool and silhouetted against a backdrop of mountains. Farms and herds conquering the steep slopes of nearby hills. At many a turn I thought about how I could live there and be happy. This was not Africa as I have known it. This was not poverty or suffering or war. But first impressions are as unreliable as the weather it seems. Where I saw beauty, a local missionary described “devastating beauty.” We had eight days to understand what was meant by that; and now more than a week after the trip, I am still meditating on it.

As the guys on the media team begin to comb through the hours of video footage in search of a story, I am preparing to write two of my own. One of them will revolve around a cultural underclass in Lesotho -- shepherd boys -- and how God may very well use the humble and weak ones in that country to shame the wise, and maybe even bring spiritual renewal through them. The other story is about the decimated farmland of Lesotho and a few missionaries who are showing the people a new way -- which is really a very old way -- to farm. All the while pointing them to their Creator, the purpose they were created for, and mending their broken relationships with both God, and the land.

I breathed a lot of cool, fresh air in the mountains of Lesotho. Bounced around in Land Rovers for hours on end. Nearly froze to death in a shepherd encampment. Learned a little about farming. And saw that God still loves the feel of moist earth in his hands. And still has a soft spot in his heart for shepherds.
***
Here's some pictures from the trip. Keep a lookout for the essays once I write them.

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