Life Together

We have now been living in Bundibugyo for two weeks...two weeks of unpacking, organizing, meeting neighbors, learning Lebwisi, establishing household routines new to us (like composting and washing cloth diapers), adjusting to indoor life with insects/mice/chameleons, and this morning, even removing a larvae from our 12 week old puppy!

But the greatest joy of these first two weeks comes from the welcome and relationships we have experienced with the WHM teammates.

When we were in Kampala, I became friends with a precious German missionary who serves north of here. As I asked her about her team, she remarked, "What is a team? Just because we are all from the same country, serve in the same place, and live on the same compound does not mean that we are a team. It merely means that we exist together. We are all independent people who have our own ideas and do our own work." Though I was saddened for her, I can understand her thoughts about the type of people who move out to Africa...independent. Ask my mom and Travis's mom. We tend to have our own stubborn and independent streak. In some regards, you have to be fairly determined to get to this place. It is not an easy place to live. And what is even harder than living in Africa? Living in community in Africa; for a bunch of independently natured people to serve Jesus together...in community...in humility...in repentance.

This is the theme of the book Life Together that we are reading with the teaching staff of Christ School Bundibugyo on Tuesday nights. In the first chapter, Dietrich Bonhoeffer remarks that fellowship can be a fluid state, sometimes it is available and other times not. The one who has "the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians [should] praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren."

So, with grateful hearts to God, Travis and I do thank God on our knees and praise God for His grace to us expressed in the community of the teammates here in Bundibugyo, Uganda.