June 14, 2006
Dear Friends and members of our supporting churches,
Greetings from the Braaksmas! It has been two months since most
of you have heard from us via email as our May news came by post
from the Reformed Church of America and the Presbyterian Church
(U.S.A.). Since that letter caught you up on our ministry with
RECONCILE, we thought in this June update we’d focus on
family news.
Almost two weeks ago our family moved again, but this time just
across town. We found that although we enjoyed our neighbors and
were close to work, our kids’ friends were almost all living
near their school and that Daniel, in particular, was spending
more and more time in that area. We travel a lot and missed seeing
him when we are home, and we also missed the contact with his
friends (in the Chicago area we lived about two blocks from school
and had a pretty constant stream of teens in and out). You can
tell I’m the mother of a teenage boy by what excited me
most about the new house—it was the fact that almost the
whole lawn area was paved. I immediately thought basketball! (Our
previous house had a steep driveway and no lawn, so a bit boring
for kids.) Because this house is in a “simpler” area
of town—Nabutiti, which feels like a village with little
stands on the sides of really bumpy dirt roads—we actually
have more room for about the same price. And most importantly,
we are already seeing a lot of the kids’ friends, a good
group, many of which are Africans.
This past Monday Bethany graduated from high school at Rainbow
International— they actually call it the “Leavers
Ceremony” in this British-curriculum school. The graduating
class was 40 percent Ugandan, and the other kids came from all
over the world. Bethany was presented with a presidential scholarship
from Hope College at the ceremony. The school was pretty proud
that one of their students received a scholarship worth $80,000
(over four years) and especially because she was from the United
States, as all of the other Americans go to one of two other high
schools in town (or boarding schools) that are almost exclusively
for expatriates. So the school even brought in a reporter from
the newspaper to interview her. Our son Michael, who is soon to
begin his senior year at Hope and is doing a theater internship
in set design in Louisville, Kentucky, is very excited to have
his little sister coming to Hope and is enjoying giving her pointers
on which dorm she should sign up for, etc.
The next big event is the wedding of our oldest son, Stephen,
to Alice Akumu, a lovely young Ugandan woman whom we have grown
to love. Steve met Alice when he was here serving as an RCA volunteer
and the relationship grew stronger during his time of study at
Makerere University. The wedding is June 24 at the Mbuya Church
of Uganda (Episcopalian) right here in Kampala.
Immediately afterwards, Del and I, Michael, Bethany and Daniel
are heading off to Kenya to do a trip that we have planned to
do for years. We are going back to visit the places in Kenya that
we called home from 1987 to 1998, when we previously served as
RCA missionaries, and the dear friends we left behind. We worked
among the Orma, who are semi-nomadic Muslim pastoralists. We will
be visiting the very remote village of Titilla, not too far from
the Somali border, where we had many wonderful times but from
which we had to evacuate five times, and it tore our heart out
to permanently leave in 1992 because violence related to the Somali
war spilled into our back yard.
We will also visit friends in Mombassa, where we relocated because
of continued security problems and continued our ministry with
the Orma people on a mobile basis, kind of like we are doing now.
We are so excited to go back and see these friends and familiar
places. It will be wonderful to catch up with some of the folks
who we saw accept Christ, to drink African tea as we sit on cow
skins together, to take a walk through Old Town. But we know its
also going to be challenging, as most of our friends, especially
in Titilla, are extremely poor (40 percent of the children were
considered malnourished). It’s hard to see the suffering
and hard to handle the inevitable begging that accompanies it.
I believe that the experience of growing up as missionary kids
in such an environment has made a deep impact upon our children.
Those 11 years were, in many ways, rich beyond measure, but not
always easy. I think this trip will help deepen their self-understanding,
as they are able to relive some of those experiences and think
about how the experiences helped to form them into the persons
they are now. We have been doing a lot of thinking, praying, and
even journaling in anticipation of the trip and would appreciate
your prayers as well.
Thanks for allowing us to share a bit of our lives with you.
We know that many of you don’t know us yet, so we hope this
gives a little insight into who we are and what it’s like
raising a family overseas. We are coming to the States from July
to September to do some speaking and work for RECONCILE and hope
to see many of you then.
Braaksma prayer requests
- As I am getting ready to send this, we have just received
news that Del’s oldest brother, Dave, has had an aneurysm.
His condition is very serious. We are so concerned and wish
we were closer.
- Continue to pray for the 12 to 15 children abducted in Yambio
by the Lord’s Resistance Army to be released.
- A trauma healing seminar will be held at Makerere Presbyterian
Church of Sudan with Sudanese refugees from June 16 to 18. Many
young adults will be attending. Pray for Milcah Lalam and Debbie
Braaksma as they lead the seminar—that they be sensitive
to the participants’ needs and help them to begin healing
the wounds of their hearts.
- Pray for God’s richest blessings on the marriage of
our son Stephen to Alice Akumu on June 24.
- Despite the signing of a peace agreement, the suffering and
violence in Darfur continues. Pray for the success of the Africa
Union/ UN joint team, which is in Darfur at this time to assess
the needs of the peacekeepers and to put plans in place to implement
the peace agreement.
In Christ,
Del, Debbie and family
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