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March 9, 2008
Friends, Please let us share an update on our progress toward going to Ethiopia. You recall that our entire three-year term must be supported by pledges, and that the deadline for securing those pledges is May 1 if we are to leave in August. This is a frustrating time for us, because we are tired of focusing on money. (We suspect that you are tired of hearing about it, too!) We’d rather be spending time on Bruce’s dissertation about Ethiopian education, or collecting materials for Lora’s English teaching, or starting to learn Amharic.
We are still more than $20,000 short on annual pledges. If you can help in any way, we’d appreciate it. That might be a congregational collection, asking individuals to pledge whatever they can afford, or inviting a neighboring church to join with you in our support. We also need a substantial amount of cash “up front” so that the church can afford to start spending on us for such things as transportation, commissioning, and orientation. If you are considering making a donation, now would be a good time, or if you have made a pledge and can pay part of it now, that would help.
In the meantime, we are balancing between our present here in Louisville and the future that we hope for. We spend the days at the church office, helping missionaries schedule visits and working on the foundations for Mission Challenge ’09, the successor to MC’07. Then we come home, leaving Louisville behind and “moving” to Ethiopia. Bruce spends evenings studying while Lora writes letters to churches.
We are balancing between two seasons of our lives.
Beargrass Creek runs by the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, where the Wheartys live. Louisville just had the deepest snowfall of the last three years. It was exciting and scary! Friday morning, along with most of the rest of the city, we called into the office and said we just wouldn’t show up. Then we watched flurries of snow through the day, gradually accumulating about six inches by nightfall. Then Lora slid and slithered downtown to pick Kinsey up after a choir concert. The plan had been to take Kinsey back to her dorm to change clothes, pack, and come home for spring break, but the roads were too slick. Lora just brought Kinsey home, happy to be safe even with no toothbrush or extra clothes. It kept on snowing through the night and Saturday morning, reaching a depth of about twelve inches.
Saturday afternoon, though, the clouds broke up and things looked promising, at least for the main roads, so Lora and I took Kinsey to the campus so she could get clothes for the coming week. The day cleared and became a two-color winter day, all blue and white. I went for a walk along the creek below our house and took a ridiculous number of pictures of snowy limbs above the sparkling water. Every few minutes, I had to pop my camera into my pocket to warm up the battery. That gave me time to simply enjoy, watching and listening, standing in the snow with my feet growing cold in spite of the garbage bags I was wearing as extra socks. Gusts of wind relieved branches of their loads, which sifted down through the branches like tiny, local blizzards. A pair of mallards on the creek made little domestic cheeping noises to each other, oblivious of my eavesdropping. Echoes of kids’ laughter drifted across the park from the sledding hill. It was enchanted.
I shoveled the sidewalks and the parking area in front of the Furlough Home. It felt good, those pushing and lifting movements, familiar from years ago in Montana. These old muscles remembered somehow, like riding a bicycle or swimming. The sun was so warm I took off my coat. I laughed a little to think how silly I must look, shoveling snow in shirtsleeves, but I got rid of the berms behind the cars and made sure the gutter was clear, removing what obstacles I could before my back got too sore. Today, the sun was brilliant, and shone the whole day. Most of the snow melted, both the parts I shoveled and the parts I didn’t even touch. In another day, my shoveling will be forgotten except for a little stiffness in my back. From winter to spring in a day!
I think that is where humanity is right now, all of us balancing between the familiar past and an unimaginably different future that is beginning to take place among us.
Right now things are cloudy, and sometimes we feel buried. We worry about safety. Plans have to be cancelled, and some of us lack necessities. We catch the moments of joy that we can and work hard, muscling through the best we can.
Our faith, though, is the promise that the resurrection is near. Loads will be lifted, laughter will echo, and the thaw will come. Our small, earnest efforts will be remembered as a pleasant ache, appropriate at the time but now irrelevant. The world will reveal itself, emerging from the tomb of winter and ready for a future bright with a full spectrum of birds and leaves and flowers.
Happy Easter!
Lora and Bruce
P.S. Please check our Web page for our monthly electronic letters, as well as the instructions for cutting a paper Ethiopian cross for Easter.
The 2008 Mission Yearbook for Prayer &
Study, p. 223 |
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