Friday, December 25, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Alabama Episcopalian Article
Hi friends I know it is strange for us to have three posts so closely together. If you do not get a copy of the Diocesan newspaper from the Diocese of Alabama I ask that you go to this link and read the article written by Penny and myself about our time in Namibia.Peace, Jeremy Click here for Walking the Way of Christ in Namibia
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Photos from the Training Program
Here are some photos from the training program.
Click here for photos from the last seminar of 2009.
Click here for photos from the last seminar of 2009.
Theological Training Program Student Interviews
Hi everyone thinks for your continued prayers and support. Here are the first videos from our students in the Theological Training Program.
More are on the way, including individual interviews from each of the students in these videos.
Sorry about the sound you may have to turn your speakers all the way up to hear them. Peace, Jeremy
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Time Flies
I cannot believe that it has been almost a month since our last post. This will be a shorter update. I want to point out that I have added links to four news outlets in Namibia at the bottom of our Blog. You can take a look at all the goings on in Namibia and read all about the upcoming elections.
Our main source of local news is The Namibian. Click here to go to their site. Lately most of the news has been about the upcoming elections on November 27 and 28. There has been quite a bit of tension leading up to this election. SWAPO the main liberation party and head of government has been dealing with several challenges from rival parties and in some places violent confrontation has taken place. The former President Sam Nujoma, considered by some as the Father of the Country has been making some particularly violent statements about Germans (they should be shot in the face) and Americans and Brits (they should be hit in the head with hammers). It is all a way of inciting the electorate to passion. Many inside the country are keeping a close eye on the situation although there is no expectation of violence similar to Kenya last year or Zimbabwe.
Work is going well. We are preparing for stewardship season at the Cathedral and the Bishops visit is on All Saints. In a few weeks we have our St. George's Fair and Funday. Work with the clergy training is going well and a few weeks ago they had their first year exams. We are waiting hopefully for the results. I go back North the second week of December when the temps will be around 110, and malarial mosquitoes will be at their worst. Well I will send more later. I am now off to a training class for new Lay ministers for the Cathedral. Peace, J
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Life in Namibia
I get asked sometimes what life in Namibia is like and it is a really difficult question to answer. But here is a short note to try a describe what our life is like. We live in the capital city of Windhoek. It is the largest city in the country with about 300,000 people. We live in a nice house next door to the Cathedral. It is the smallest Cathedral in the Anglican Communion and I am the Associate Dean and Rector. We make very little money by U.S. standards but by Namibian standards we are extremely rich. Over 65% of the people in this country live on less that $2 U.S. dollars a day. We shop at western style grocery stores and shops and can get just about anything we want. But not even most of the city live like we do. Over half of the city of Windhoek live in shacks and don't have a reliable source of drinking water. Outside of a few cities Namibia is populated by rural, subsistence farmers whose life depends on good rain and a good harvest. If you look around, statistics say that every 5th person you meet is HIV positive. Malaria, TB, and meningitis are just a few of the other diseases that plague the country.
We came to Namibia to work on a clergy training project. Our goal is to work with the diocese to help develop and implement a 3 year training program for new clergy. So far it is going really well. We have 50 students, mostly from the northern part of the country. They are highly motivated and are working very hard. I also run the cathedral, sort of. Sometimes it feels like it is running me. I am the main clergy presence for the approximately 400 parishioners and in addition I am the chaplain for the 700 student diocesan school. To say that days are full would be a great understatement. Penny works on various projects, like after school programs and organizing clergy spouse conferences. She has also started presenting at workshops on Hospice and the dying process. If it were not for her I would not have made it this long in Namibia. She gives me love and strength that carry me for days.
We have made friends and have met lovely people all across this country. We try to spend some time every week away from work with our friends, which usually means leaving our house, because our house is about 30 feet from the Cathedral, so we are always "on duty". I have taken up squash and try to get to the gym a few days a week. I have a standing squash game with several Americans from the Embassy every weekend. Staying healthy is one of our main priorities. I wake up at 5 am every Sunday morning to try and catch he end of Saturday nights college football on the internet. ESPN shows one college football game that begins about 4am Sunday our time and they show Sportscenter USA at 12 noon on Sunday.
Our days in Namibia go up and down. Sometimes we feel like this is exactly where we are supposed to be, and other times we are racked with guilt and sadness and feel we must get out before we are overcome. It doesn't mean we can't be in both places at the same time and some days we are. It is hard to adjust to the back and forth. Some days we can go from dinner at an ambassadors house to serving the homeless in a few hours. Lately I have been working with a lifeboat metaphor. Although we didn't come to Namibia to "save" people and we realize that there is nothing we can do for most of the people here, it is horribly painful to watch the immense suffering in this place. It is like being in a lifeboat, in our case a comfortable place to live with plenty of food and relative safety and looking out at a sea of drowning people. We only have a few life vests and they are not nearly enough to help. It is not that we feel guilty all the time, we work as hard as we can to do everything we can to help the men, women and children of Namibia. But working hard does not hide you from the day to day reality of life and death. We do not have the luxury to hide our eyes from this suffering, looking out across the drowning sea of humanity and being present to it. This is the key. If you are present to suffering it will effect you. No matter how good you are at professional detachment, not matter how much self reflection work you have done, no matter how much you pray you will be affected. Sometimes it is just too much. Sometimes I feel like we are being taken down into the waters, that our "lifeboat" has capsized and we are swimming for our life. I have been trying to find an appropriate prayer to say for what we are experiencing but it is not easy. I was recently reminded of a prayer that was prayed by the desert monks of the 3rd and 4th century. It is the opening of Psalm 70 and has been prayed daily for centuries, "Oh God make speed to save us, Oh Lord make haste to help us" Many days it seems like the only appropriate thing to say.
About a week ago the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams gave a sermon on mission that was quite good and in it he said "Mission is most truly itself when it walks along the same road as those who are suffering in body or spirit. Only then does it walk the way of Christ. …to stand with and walk with those who are forgotten or despised, the poor in city and country, women who have suffered violence, children and migrants. Walking in this way will not guarantee success or safety, but it will be a true fellowship with Jesus; without that true fellowship with him, there will be no true reaching out in love to others, and without reaching out to others there is no fellowship with him."
We are trying to understand what it means to "walk along the same road as those who are suffering in body or spirit" We know that our privilege means we will never be on the same road. Even if we are walking together, side by side, we can never truly know the suffering the people of Namibia live with. We can be present to it, we can be a witness to it, but we will never really know it. These are nice words and what we are supposed to say about mission but there will always be something that keeps us from knowing truly what the people here experience.
Overall this has been one of the hardest, most challenging, most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life and we are not even half way through it. I ask for your prayers for the people of Namibia and all those who are here, far from home, working and serving the people. Peace, Jeremy
We came to Namibia to work on a clergy training project. Our goal is to work with the diocese to help develop and implement a 3 year training program for new clergy. So far it is going really well. We have 50 students, mostly from the northern part of the country. They are highly motivated and are working very hard. I also run the cathedral, sort of. Sometimes it feels like it is running me. I am the main clergy presence for the approximately 400 parishioners and in addition I am the chaplain for the 700 student diocesan school. To say that days are full would be a great understatement. Penny works on various projects, like after school programs and organizing clergy spouse conferences. She has also started presenting at workshops on Hospice and the dying process. If it were not for her I would not have made it this long in Namibia. She gives me love and strength that carry me for days.
We have made friends and have met lovely people all across this country. We try to spend some time every week away from work with our friends, which usually means leaving our house, because our house is about 30 feet from the Cathedral, so we are always "on duty". I have taken up squash and try to get to the gym a few days a week. I have a standing squash game with several Americans from the Embassy every weekend. Staying healthy is one of our main priorities. I wake up at 5 am every Sunday morning to try and catch he end of Saturday nights college football on the internet. ESPN shows one college football game that begins about 4am Sunday our time and they show Sportscenter USA at 12 noon on Sunday.
Our days in Namibia go up and down. Sometimes we feel like this is exactly where we are supposed to be, and other times we are racked with guilt and sadness and feel we must get out before we are overcome. It doesn't mean we can't be in both places at the same time and some days we are. It is hard to adjust to the back and forth. Some days we can go from dinner at an ambassadors house to serving the homeless in a few hours. Lately I have been working with a lifeboat metaphor. Although we didn't come to Namibia to "save" people and we realize that there is nothing we can do for most of the people here, it is horribly painful to watch the immense suffering in this place. It is like being in a lifeboat, in our case a comfortable place to live with plenty of food and relative safety and looking out at a sea of drowning people. We only have a few life vests and they are not nearly enough to help. It is not that we feel guilty all the time, we work as hard as we can to do everything we can to help the men, women and children of Namibia. But working hard does not hide you from the day to day reality of life and death. We do not have the luxury to hide our eyes from this suffering, looking out across the drowning sea of humanity and being present to it. This is the key. If you are present to suffering it will effect you. No matter how good you are at professional detachment, not matter how much self reflection work you have done, no matter how much you pray you will be affected. Sometimes it is just too much. Sometimes I feel like we are being taken down into the waters, that our "lifeboat" has capsized and we are swimming for our life. I have been trying to find an appropriate prayer to say for what we are experiencing but it is not easy. I was recently reminded of a prayer that was prayed by the desert monks of the 3rd and 4th century. It is the opening of Psalm 70 and has been prayed daily for centuries, "Oh God make speed to save us, Oh Lord make haste to help us" Many days it seems like the only appropriate thing to say.
About a week ago the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams gave a sermon on mission that was quite good and in it he said "Mission is most truly itself when it walks along the same road as those who are suffering in body or spirit. Only then does it walk the way of Christ. …to stand with and walk with those who are forgotten or despised, the poor in city and country, women who have suffered violence, children and migrants. Walking in this way will not guarantee success or safety, but it will be a true fellowship with Jesus; without that true fellowship with him, there will be no true reaching out in love to others, and without reaching out to others there is no fellowship with him."
We are trying to understand what it means to "walk along the same road as those who are suffering in body or spirit" We know that our privilege means we will never be on the same road. Even if we are walking together, side by side, we can never truly know the suffering the people of Namibia live with. We can be present to it, we can be a witness to it, but we will never really know it. These are nice words and what we are supposed to say about mission but there will always be something that keeps us from knowing truly what the people here experience.
Overall this has been one of the hardest, most challenging, most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life and we are not even half way through it. I ask for your prayers for the people of Namibia and all those who are here, far from home, working and serving the people. Peace, Jeremy
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Trip to the South
Hello everyone hope you are doing well. Penny and I are doing pretty well but we have been really homesick lately. As I said in as an earlier post we spent most of the month of August on the road. I am attaching several Web Albums to this post so that you can see where we have been and what we have been doing. I am also sharing what we wrote for this month’s parish newsletter. Peace, Jeremy and Penny
Ministry to the South
From 21 August to 1 September several members of St. George’s Cathedral travelled on a mission and ministry trip to the South. Penny, our new Deacon Thomas and myself began the journey and travelled through Keetmanshoop to Luderitz for Sunday Eucharist and Baptisms on 23 August. This is the Web Album for Luderitz and Oranjemund. Click Here. On 25 August we travelled to Karasburg to meet the rest of our team, Mrs. Hetty Rose Junius, Mrs. Rose Beukes, and Mr. Simon Wilke. We met with a Lutheran congregation for singing, prayer and fellowship on Wednesday as there was no sustained Anglican presence. After that we travelled to Noordower for a Eucharist on Friday, Aussenkher for a Eucharist and Baptisms on Saturday morning then on to Oranjemund for Sunday services on 30 August. Here is the Web Album for Keetmanshoop, Karasburg and Noordower. Click Here. This is the Aussenkehr Web Album. Click Here. After Church Hetty, Rose and Simon headed back to Windhoek via Keetmanshoop and Thomas, Penny and I started our trip back on Monday making a stop in Rosh Pinah to meet their lay minister and find out that they have 500 Anglicans on their role. We finally arrived home on Tuesday afternoon after 4000 kilometers of driving.
To say that this was an incredible journey would be an understatement. It was an amazing blessing and the Holy Spirit was with us all the way. It would take three Gateways to tell all the stories of the South so what I have asked everyone on our mission team to do is to write of the moment that had the greatest impact on them. The moment that they felt closest to Christ. This will be a way of introducing our trip along with a few photos. When we have had the opportunity to organize all the photos and our thoughts we will have a presentation at the Church for everyone to see what an amazing ministry this truly is. We are also starting to plan our next trip. If you are interested please let me know.
Moments Closest to Christ
My moment closest to Christ came in Noordower. On Friday morning we went to the home of Tate Enoch a lay minister for the Anglicans that meet in Noordower. We sat in chairs and on logs in front of his modest home made of sheets of tin and reeds and under a shade made of net and reeds. As we spoke it became apparent that this was a place for us to have a Eucharist. On the outside wall of his home was a hand painted sign that said “Congregation of Enoch”. We were told that since they were not a Church he did not feel comfortable giving his home a Church name but that he wanted people to know where to come for Anglican worship. As we sat and talked more and more people gathered around and as we prepared a small, folding table to be our altar the excitement grew. Close to 60 men, women and children gathered for communion and blessings. Just as the service was ending Tate Enoch asked to say a few words and came to put N.50 cents on the altar. After the service he told me he wanted us to have the money for our continued work in the South. As I looked around I think I know now how the disciples felt in Mark 12:41 when the widow comes to give her offering. Jesus says to them ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on. I humbly accepted his offering to God and commit to putting it to use in our continued ministry to the South. Fr. Jeremy+
Throughout our trip to the South I was overcome by a deep feeling of humility. It is hard to describe because it takes time for me to process all the emotions I felt. If there was one moment I could point to it would be standing and sharing communion with the people in Noordower and Aussenkehr. It felt like a true communion. We were sharing in something that brought us together. It touched me in a deep way that people who have almost nothing in common and come from such different worlds can be brought to a different understanding of who they are before God by standing side by side and sharing in the body and blood of Jesus Christ. We were connected in our common humanity and it is humbling to remember that connection. To remember that people are more than what they have, or where they work, or where they live. As Christians we are not defined by these things. We are defined by a common creator and savior who loves each one of us. Although we went to the South to take communion, I realized that true communion was already there and by going I found it. Penny
Ministry to the South
From 21 August to 1 September several members of St. George’s Cathedral travelled on a mission and ministry trip to the South. Penny, our new Deacon Thomas and myself began the journey and travelled through Keetmanshoop to Luderitz for Sunday Eucharist and Baptisms on 23 August. This is the Web Album for Luderitz and Oranjemund. Click Here. On 25 August we travelled to Karasburg to meet the rest of our team, Mrs. Hetty Rose Junius, Mrs. Rose Beukes, and Mr. Simon Wilke. We met with a Lutheran congregation for singing, prayer and fellowship on Wednesday as there was no sustained Anglican presence. After that we travelled to Noordower for a Eucharist on Friday, Aussenkher for a Eucharist and Baptisms on Saturday morning then on to Oranjemund for Sunday services on 30 August. Here is the Web Album for Keetmanshoop, Karasburg and Noordower. Click Here. This is the Aussenkehr Web Album. Click Here. After Church Hetty, Rose and Simon headed back to Windhoek via Keetmanshoop and Thomas, Penny and I started our trip back on Monday making a stop in Rosh Pinah to meet their lay minister and find out that they have 500 Anglicans on their role. We finally arrived home on Tuesday afternoon after 4000 kilometers of driving.
To say that this was an incredible journey would be an understatement. It was an amazing blessing and the Holy Spirit was with us all the way. It would take three Gateways to tell all the stories of the South so what I have asked everyone on our mission team to do is to write of the moment that had the greatest impact on them. The moment that they felt closest to Christ. This will be a way of introducing our trip along with a few photos. When we have had the opportunity to organize all the photos and our thoughts we will have a presentation at the Church for everyone to see what an amazing ministry this truly is. We are also starting to plan our next trip. If you are interested please let me know.
Moments Closest to Christ
My moment closest to Christ came in Noordower. On Friday morning we went to the home of Tate Enoch a lay minister for the Anglicans that meet in Noordower. We sat in chairs and on logs in front of his modest home made of sheets of tin and reeds and under a shade made of net and reeds. As we spoke it became apparent that this was a place for us to have a Eucharist. On the outside wall of his home was a hand painted sign that said “Congregation of Enoch”. We were told that since they were not a Church he did not feel comfortable giving his home a Church name but that he wanted people to know where to come for Anglican worship. As we sat and talked more and more people gathered around and as we prepared a small, folding table to be our altar the excitement grew. Close to 60 men, women and children gathered for communion and blessings. Just as the service was ending Tate Enoch asked to say a few words and came to put N.50 cents on the altar. After the service he told me he wanted us to have the money for our continued work in the South. As I looked around I think I know now how the disciples felt in Mark 12:41 when the widow comes to give her offering. Jesus says to them ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on. I humbly accepted his offering to God and commit to putting it to use in our continued ministry to the South. Fr. Jeremy+
Throughout our trip to the South I was overcome by a deep feeling of humility. It is hard to describe because it takes time for me to process all the emotions I felt. If there was one moment I could point to it would be standing and sharing communion with the people in Noordower and Aussenkehr. It felt like a true communion. We were sharing in something that brought us together. It touched me in a deep way that people who have almost nothing in common and come from such different worlds can be brought to a different understanding of who they are before God by standing side by side and sharing in the body and blood of Jesus Christ. We were connected in our common humanity and it is humbling to remember that connection. To remember that people are more than what they have, or where they work, or where they live. As Christians we are not defined by these things. We are defined by a common creator and savior who loves each one of us. Although we went to the South to take communion, I realized that true communion was already there and by going I found it. Penny
Monday, August 24, 2009
Trip to the South
Hi Friends this is a very quick update sent from an internet cafe in Luderitz, Namibia. Luderitz is a small coastal town that looks like a cross between an old German village and a small town in the Greek Isles. 100 year old German buildings built on rocks in bright colors around Luderitz bay. We are here as part of our 10 day mission trip to the South of the country. Yesterday we had a great service at St. Peters and St. Lukes and did two baptisms. We leave tomorrow for areas even further south. Please keep us in your prayers. You can keep up with where we are on twitter or facebook or by checking the twitter feed on the left side of the blog. Peace, Jeremy
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Quick Update
Hi everyone hope you are all doing well. Penny and I are doing fine and are very, very busy. Since we returned to Namibia we have been going in 100 different directions. While this is good it takes away from our time to sit down and write on the blog. In fact the longer we go without a post the more overwhelmed we feel about how much has happened and how long the next post would need to be. So in an attempt to get out of the non-blogging rut we will try to post a few short things over the next few weeks. We will also try to put together some Web Albums to show you where we have been.
Our Tip Home
From May 19-June 22 we were in Alabama visiting family and friends. We had a wonderful time seeing everyone. It was our first trip home since coming to Namibia. The highlight of the trip was meeting our new nephew Max my sister Monica's first child. He is such a cool kid, and as good as Skype is to stay in touch, there is no way to reproduce holding a baby in real life. Our trip included visits to many Church in the Diocese of Alabama and we will be trying to send home more items for purchase. Overall we want to say thank you to everyone for you r love and support and please continue to keep us in your prayers.
Penny's Birthday
Some of you have probably seen our new profiles pictures on Facebook. Those were taken at a place called Sossusvlei about 5 hours south of where we live. They are considered by most experts to be the oldest and tallest desert dunes in the world. Many of the dunes are 1000 feet tall. It is a truly incredible place on the same level as the Grand Canyon. We took the trip as a way of celebrating Penny's 40th Birthday on July 18. We camped two nights and stayed in a lodge two nights. It was really windy while we were there. In fact when we camped we had to tie our tent to the truck to keep it from blowing away. It was a great time.
St. George's Cathedral
Coming back to the day to day work at the Cathedral was like coming back to any job after being away for a while. There were a lot of things that needed to be dealt with and a pile of messages to deal with. We have recently been doing renovation and restoration work around the Cathedral grounds that has been needed for years. We are now finished with phase one and hopefully will be moving on to phase two soon. We are working on lots of outreach projects, training new lay ministers, teaching confirmation classes (35 students so far) and planning weddings (5 in the works for the next couple of months). Our newest project is going to be the Anglican Rosary Project to benefit our Loaves and Fishes homeless ministry. We are recruiting women and men from our ministry to make Anglican Rosaries that we will buy from them and then sell to benefit Loaves and Fishes. We hope to have the first rosaries made by the beginning of September and I am taking orders.
The other exciting thing happening at the Cathedral is an upcoming mission and ministry trip to the South of the country. On August 21, 6 members of the Cathedral, including me and Penny will be headed South 8 hours to celebrate communion and perform baptisms for parishes and outstations that have not seen a priest for a year. It will be a 10 day trip and we are getting very excited.
I am out of time to write more now. Next post I will update everyone on the Clergy training project. Peace, Jeremy
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Sorry Friends
This is just a quick note to let you all know that since we have been home we have had quite a time with both the internet and our phone. We have had almost none of either. Hopefully we will be back in touch and be able to post some photos from our trip home and of our upcoming trip to the Sossusvlei Dunes for Penny's Birthday. Peace, Jeremy
Friday, June 26, 2009
Back in Windhoek
Hey Everyone just a quick note to tell you that we are home safely after a long week of travel. It is about 5pm and we are unpacking for as long as we can stand up. We still don't have home internet connection so I am not sure how often we will be able to email. I am at an internet cafe now not far from our house. We had a great visit home. Thanks to everyone for everything. We cannot express how great the trip was for us and we cannot wait to see you all again. Love, Penny and Jeremy
Monday, June 8, 2009
Help For Linea
We have been having and incredible time on our home stay. We spent the morning at St. John's in Decatur and had a great time. I want to say another very special thank you to Rev. Richard Lawson and Ms. Monica Romano. Monica has been travelling over the past two week to wherever we have been speaking to be our all around audio/visual professional. She created two DVD's of our photos and has been an incredible help. Yesterday was very special because we got to go "home" for a visit to our old parish in Athens, St. Timothy's. This visit was all the more special because we were joined there by The Rev. Deacon Linea Haufiku from Namibia. She is currently continuing her theological studies at the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas but she is spending the summer on an internship in the Diocese of Alabama. She added so much to last night's discussion. Here is a photo of her (on the left) with the Rev'd Nangula Kathindi the coordinator of the Diocesan HIV/AIDS program. Since the time this photos was taken he has cut her hair. I made a request last night for some small amount of support for Linea while she is in the U.S. studying. Although she receives tuition and housing she still has to buy groceries and other household needs for herself AND she sends money home to support her mother and the 6 children that live with her now. Many people at St. Timothy's gave her a love offering last night but also requested her information to continue supporting her into the future. Thanks to everyone who made last night possible. Here is the information:
The Rev. Deacon Linea Haufiku
SUMMER ADDRESS IN ALABAMA
107 Forest Glen Dr.
Madison, AL 35758
(256) 479-5674
PERMANENT ADDRESS IN AUSTIN, TX
3007 Duval Street
Apt. 303 N
Austin, TX 78705
Friday, May 29, 2009
First Week Home
Hi Everyone. I hope that everyone is having a great week. We are finally recovering from the trip home and have been criss-crossing the state visiting family for the past week. We are in Birmingham until Monday when we will head to North Alabama. So far it has been a great trip we spent Memorial Day with my sisters family and
the new baby Max. These photos are from their house. My bro-in
-law Phil made some incredible smoked BBQ and we had a nice relaxing day. This past Sunday night we went to St. Francis to share a little about our mission work. Monica Romano produced a great video for us and we had a really great evening. Thank you to everyone who donated to the cause. This weekend we will still be in Bham and I will be preaching at St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Cahaba Heights. They have two services, one at 9am and one at 11:15am. During the Christian Education hour Penny and I will be giving a presentation on our mission work and selling all sorts of Namibian gifts to raise money for the cause.
Next week we are headed to North Alabama to visit with our friends from the Athens/Decatur/Huntsville/ Madison/Florence areas. We will be at St. John's in Decatur on Sunday the 7th of June. That night we will be at St Timothy's in Athens for a dinner and talk at 5:30pm. Ok that's all for now. Have a good weekend and follow us on Twitter. Peace, Jeremy and Penny
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Feeling the trip
There is a great comment by one of the characters of Willam Gibson's book Pattern Recognition. She says that when you fly long distances you move faster than your soul and leave it behind. It takes a few days for it to catch up. Today it feels like our soul has come crashing into our body. Since Wednesday when we arived we have been doing OK with the jet-lag but today it has hit us like a ton of bricks almost at the exact same time. We are doing alright but are having waves of dizziness and upset stomachs. I am sure it will pass. Please join us tomorow night at St. Francis of Assisi in Indian Springs for our first official dinner and talk if you can. Blessings and Peace, Jeremy and Penny
Thursday, May 21, 2009
We're Home!!
Hey everyone just wanted to send a quick email to let you all know that we arrived home safely yesterday around 12pm. We stayed awake until about 7pm and got up around 7am today. We are just hanging out recovering at my Mom's house in Bham. If you need to call us the number is 205 871-1084. We will be getting a cell phone in the next few days to have while we are home and I will send the number when we get it. Our first official event will be this Sunday evening the 24th at St. Francis of Assisi in Pelham. I think it is at 6:30pm. We will have dinner and then we will have a talk and give people a chance to buy a few things we brought home. Hope you are all well and thanks for the great weather in Birmingham. We are really looking forward to seeing everyone. Peace, Jeremy and Penny
Friday, May 8, 2009
Coming Home
We hope that everyone is doing well. This will be our last post before we come home on May 20. On Sunday Penny and I are headed to the North for a week. Penny will be helping with an HIV/AIDS prevention and home based care training of trainers. I will be going for the second week of the clergy training program. We will be back in Windhoek on Sunday the 17th and begin our travels on the 19th. The last few weeks have been really great and we have made some great connections for our return. A few days ago Penny had a meeting with one of the directors of I-TEC (International Training and Education Center for HIV/AIDS), Yesterday we had the blessed opportunity to meet and have tea with Father Michael Lapsley and members of the training team from the Institute for the Healing of Memories. Here is a little about his story from the Forgiveness Project. Today we are going to sit down with Father Rick Bauer who is the director of Catholic AIDS Action in Namibia. It is great to be able to make these connections. We realize how much they could help with the work we are doing with the Diocese. This past week the Cathedral hosted meetings of the Cathedral Chapter and Standing Committee. The meeting included the Archdeacons from around the Diocese. There are so many stories from this country and diocese and the faith and hope of Anglicans here is beyond almost anything I have ever seen. Most priest in this country work for less than $200 USD a month. They are usually responsible for more than one parish and several outstations. Since almost none of them has a car they hitchhike between locations and then walk many kilometers to get where they are going. The parishioners go months sometimes without seeing priest but carry on with Lay Ministers doing Morning Prayer. The situation is desperate but there is hope. Next week will be the second seminar for out new clergy trainees and they are excited to take up their place in a few years. The Rev Deacon Linea Haufiku is now studying in the U.S. at Seminary of the Southwest and will be coming to the Diocese of Alabama for a three month internship this summer. She will be based at St. Matthews in Madison but will do some travelling to tell people about Namibia and share her own stories. She is an incredible person. I want everyone to know that your support for us has been turned into support for Linea.
We are really excited to be coming home for a month and look forward to seeing as many people as possible. On this trip we will be in Birmingham, Athens, and Gadsden to see family and friends and to do some preaching and presenting about our work in Namibia. Unfortunately we will not make it to the south or west of Bham on this trip. We won't make it to Montgomery, Auburn, Selma or Demopolis or to the Tuscaloosa area. On our next trip home we will make sure to put you all on the top of the list. If you are able to come to Birmingham, Decatur or Gadsden we would love to see you there.
Our next post will be from the U.S. Blessings and Peace, Jeremy and Penny
We are really excited to be coming home for a month and look forward to seeing as many people as possible. On this trip we will be in Birmingham, Athens, and Gadsden to see family and friends and to do some preaching and presenting about our work in Namibia. Unfortunately we will not make it to the south or west of Bham on this trip. We won't make it to Montgomery, Auburn, Selma or Demopolis or to the Tuscaloosa area. On our next trip home we will make sure to put you all on the top of the list. If you are able to come to Birmingham, Decatur or Gadsden we would love to see you there.
Our next post will be from the U.S. Blessings and Peace, Jeremy and Penny
Thursday, April 23, 2009
The Last Two Months
Ok, so two weeks turned into two months without a post on the Blog. Hopefully you haven’t all forgotten about us. So many things have happened over the past two months that I will only give a summary. In mid February our friend Monica Romano from St. John’s Montgomery came for a visit. She brought four suitcases. Only half of one was her stuff. The rest were gifts and supplies generously donated by our friends in Alabama. We cannot say thank you enough for all the wonderful reminders of home and of the supplies for Sunday school.
While Monica was here we took 6 days and travelled around the country. We went North to Oshakati and ended up spending the day with an incredible group of people from the HIV support group at the village of Onakunghundi . I have sent out the web album to our email list but if you didn’t get that, here it is again. Click Here. The structure made of sticks is actually the Church/Preschool/meeting hall, etc. The people there were beautiful and generous, they cooked us a chicken and served us omalodu, traditional millet beer. We sang and prayed with them and were generally inspired by their hopefulness. You can see in some of the photos how high the water was when we visited. The flooding got much, much worse after that in the North. After leaving the North we took Monica to Etosha for some game viewing and to Swakopund for some ocean & dune viewing. It was a great trip and we were excited to see a friendly and familiar face. Just after Monica left we had a major computer crash and lost most all of our photos from the first 9 months. We thought they were backed up to another hard drive, but...
A couple of weeks after Monica left Penny and I were asked to come to an orphanage just across town with a friend from the U.S. Embassy. It was a life altering visit. I cannot go into detail about it here but here is what I wrote the night after our visit on my Facebook page:
Sometimes it happens before you know it. You walk into a place, a relationship, or a situation and before you know what is going on, your heart is removed from your chest and smashed on the ground in front of you. You feel your gut tighten and it hurts in a way no words could ever touch. A voice in the back of your mind says "What did you expect? This is the way it goes, this is life." Then you think you hear laughing, at how naive you were, at how silly your expectations about the world were. And all the time you stare down into the face of that child, crushing you heart beneath her feet. She smiles at you, it's her laughter you heard, and she's holding the first toy she has had in months. It only makes you happy that you once had a heart, it makes you remember where it was. Then the little boy comes to you wanting his photo taken and again you feel this ripping in your chest. "Wait" you think "isn't that over, isn't my heart destroyed beneath another foot?" And so it goes on and on and on for what seems like days, but is in reality only a few hours. The six month old infant, horribly thin and nursing a surgery wound bigger than her. A little girl unable to control her urination after being repeatedly raped by her step-father. 37 little children from 6 months to 17 years old, many HIV positive, living in a run down house, also known as an orphanage. A woman does her best to run this place with the help of German donors and provides a place and a home for those without a home. Each one of them now holds a piece of the heart that once lived in my chest. I'm happy I can still feel it hurt.
For the past few weeks everything has revolved around Easter. It is tradition at the Cathedral to invite a Holy Week presenter from outside the Diocese to spend Holy Week with us. To preach and celebrate and do a program associated with the themes of Holy Week. This year The Rt. Rev Garth Counsell, Bishop of Table Bay, and his wife Marion were our visitors. Bishop Garth is actually the Bishop of Cape Town in South Africa, but because that title is reserved for the Archbishop of Southern Africa, he is known as the Bishop of Table Bay. Bishop Garth and Marion stayed with us at the Deanery from just before Palm Sunday till the Tuesday after Easter. They are an incredible couple and we were so honoured to host them. It was truly a blessing and we feel as though we now have new friends in Cape Town. Easter at the Cathedral was an incredible experience and I learned so much. It is a blessing to celebrate the resurrection with so many incredible people.
Well that is all to say for now. I am trying to recover from multiple respiratory infections, from sinus to chest, I picked up over the past couple of months and finally went to the Dr. for. We took a few days at the coast and are resting and getting ready for our next busy time before we come home. In two weeks Penny goes North to help with HIV training and the following week I go North for the second session of our Clergy training program. After that we have a few days to pack and then we are in the States for a month. We will be arriving in Alabama in May 20th and be there until June 22nd. Two dates are organized for preaching and dinners. On May 31, Pentecost Sunday I will be preaching at St. Stephens in Birmingham. Penny and I will also present for the Sunday School that morning. That night we will be hosted for a dinner and talk at St. Francis in Indian Springs. On the following Sunday June 7th I will be preaching at St. John’s in Decatur, and we will have a dinner and talk at St. Timothy’s in Athens beginning at 5:30pm. More gathering times are sure to be added and we will do our best to keep everyone updated as to our whereabouts. We have added a Twitter feed to the blog and we are trying to Tweet regularly. We love you and appreciate all your prayers and support. We could not do this without you. Jeremy and Penny
While Monica was here we took 6 days and travelled around the country. We went North to Oshakati and ended up spending the day with an incredible group of people from the HIV support group at the village of Onakunghundi . I have sent out the web album to our email list but if you didn’t get that, here it is again. Click Here. The structure made of sticks is actually the Church/Preschool/meeting hall, etc. The people there were beautiful and generous, they cooked us a chicken and served us omalodu, traditional millet beer. We sang and prayed with them and were generally inspired by their hopefulness. You can see in some of the photos how high the water was when we visited. The flooding got much, much worse after that in the North. After leaving the North we took Monica to Etosha for some game viewing and to Swakopund for some ocean & dune viewing. It was a great trip and we were excited to see a friendly and familiar face. Just after Monica left we had a major computer crash and lost most all of our photos from the first 9 months. We thought they were backed up to another hard drive, but...
A couple of weeks after Monica left Penny and I were asked to come to an orphanage just across town with a friend from the U.S. Embassy. It was a life altering visit. I cannot go into detail about it here but here is what I wrote the night after our visit on my Facebook page:
Sometimes it happens before you know it. You walk into a place, a relationship, or a situation and before you know what is going on, your heart is removed from your chest and smashed on the ground in front of you. You feel your gut tighten and it hurts in a way no words could ever touch. A voice in the back of your mind says "What did you expect? This is the way it goes, this is life." Then you think you hear laughing, at how naive you were, at how silly your expectations about the world were. And all the time you stare down into the face of that child, crushing you heart beneath her feet. She smiles at you, it's her laughter you heard, and she's holding the first toy she has had in months. It only makes you happy that you once had a heart, it makes you remember where it was. Then the little boy comes to you wanting his photo taken and again you feel this ripping in your chest. "Wait" you think "isn't that over, isn't my heart destroyed beneath another foot?" And so it goes on and on and on for what seems like days, but is in reality only a few hours. The six month old infant, horribly thin and nursing a surgery wound bigger than her. A little girl unable to control her urination after being repeatedly raped by her step-father. 37 little children from 6 months to 17 years old, many HIV positive, living in a run down house, also known as an orphanage. A woman does her best to run this place with the help of German donors and provides a place and a home for those without a home. Each one of them now holds a piece of the heart that once lived in my chest. I'm happy I can still feel it hurt.
For the past few weeks everything has revolved around Easter. It is tradition at the Cathedral to invite a Holy Week presenter from outside the Diocese to spend Holy Week with us. To preach and celebrate and do a program associated with the themes of Holy Week. This year The Rt. Rev Garth Counsell, Bishop of Table Bay, and his wife Marion were our visitors. Bishop Garth is actually the Bishop of Cape Town in South Africa, but because that title is reserved for the Archbishop of Southern Africa, he is known as the Bishop of Table Bay. Bishop Garth and Marion stayed with us at the Deanery from just before Palm Sunday till the Tuesday after Easter. They are an incredible couple and we were so honoured to host them. It was truly a blessing and we feel as though we now have new friends in Cape Town. Easter at the Cathedral was an incredible experience and I learned so much. It is a blessing to celebrate the resurrection with so many incredible people.
Well that is all to say for now. I am trying to recover from multiple respiratory infections, from sinus to chest, I picked up over the past couple of months and finally went to the Dr. for. We took a few days at the coast and are resting and getting ready for our next busy time before we come home. In two weeks Penny goes North to help with HIV training and the following week I go North for the second session of our Clergy training program. After that we have a few days to pack and then we are in the States for a month. We will be arriving in Alabama in May 20th and be there until June 22nd. Two dates are organized for preaching and dinners. On May 31, Pentecost Sunday I will be preaching at St. Stephens in Birmingham. Penny and I will also present for the Sunday School that morning. That night we will be hosted for a dinner and talk at St. Francis in Indian Springs. On the following Sunday June 7th I will be preaching at St. John’s in Decatur, and we will have a dinner and talk at St. Timothy’s in Athens beginning at 5:30pm. More gathering times are sure to be added and we will do our best to keep everyone updated as to our whereabouts. We have added a Twitter feed to the blog and we are trying to Tweet regularly. We love you and appreciate all your prayers and support. We could not do this without you. Jeremy and Penny
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Two weeks
Looks like it will be at least two weeks until we get our laptop back. We will update the blog just as soon as we can.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Computer Crash
Hi everyone we just wanted to give you a quick update and tell you that we are doing fine. We had planned a long update and many photos from the past month but on Friday we had a major computer crash. We are hoping they can save our photos. We backed up two weeks ago so mostly we are ok. We are now using the Parish office computer. We hope to have our computer back in the next week or so and when we get it we will send out a big update.
Two quick notes; 1.) Thank you again to everyone who sent thigs with Monica on her visit. you do not know how much it means to us and to those you are helping. and 2.) It was wonderful to hear everyone at Diocesan convention. Your voices were beautiful and really gave us a lift. Thanks.
Two quick notes; 1.) Thank you again to everyone who sent thigs with Monica on her visit. you do not know how much it means to us and to those you are helping. and 2.) It was wonderful to hear everyone at Diocesan convention. Your voices were beautiful and really gave us a lift. Thanks.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Orientation Week
Hi everyone we hope you have had a great start to the new year. We had a rather quiet evening with some new friends from South Africa on New Years but the 2009 has quickly picked up speed. From early December to mid-January Namibia pretty much takes a break and shuts down. But now as school is going back into session people are coming back from their holiday and picking up on things they didn't finish in November.We started off the year by Jeremy going North to help with the first week of the Theological Training Program for the Diocese of Namibia. We have had the question from a few people about what it means to go "North" so hereis an explanation. North is the area of the country mostly populated by the Ovambo tribes. It was once known as Ovamboland. It is an 8 hour drive from where we live to the Anglican Center at Onekweya. It is a long drive with almost nothing to break up the drive. There are towns every 200 kilometers or so, but in between, nothing. So going North generally refers to that drive to historically Ovambo territory. The conference center is located about 10 kilometers into the bush off the main road.
As most of you know one of the main reasons we are in Namibia is to work on this theological training program for the diocese. We have been working really hard over the past six months to put the final touches on the framework or outline of how the program will run. This week from January 5-10 was our orientation. We had 49 students that showed up to begin this program. Each of them had gone through an interview process with the Diocesan Selection Committee and been recommended by their rector. There are 20 women and 29 men and 20 of the students are under the age of 25. These students will be using a curriculum from TEE South Africa. TEE stands for Theological Education by Extension. The difference in this program and other extension programs is that we wanted to give the students a sense of community and form a floating seminary. Each month students from each geographical area will gather to meet with a tutor, generally an archdeacon. Four times a year (January, May, August and October) they will come together as a large group in Seminars that will cover topics not included in the TEE program. In May we will begin our study of Anglican liturgy, music and the Prayer Book. It is an incredible group. Their commitment is already evident. Two of the students travelled over 1000kilometers to attend and most of the students slept on mattresses on the floor of old classrooms during the week. One student, Daniel came from over 70 kilometers in the bush from one of the parish outstations to attend. Only two of the students had cars so most either took a "taxi" or got a ride with someone in the program staff. I am amazed and inspired by them. I have posted a web album of photos from the orientation. Just click here to go and take a look.
There are so many things I could tell you about this week. One interesting statement came up when Lukas Katenda was talking about what it meant to be a shepherd. He asked the class how many of them had actually tended sheep or goats or cows at some point in their life. Every hand in the room went up. Each and every one of them had, at some point in time, tended animals. Scriptures speaking of Jesus as a shepherd will have a very different meaning to them than they do to most priests.
Another incredible find was to recover the Bill Yon library of books that were left at Etameko back in 1988. We had heard last year that the books had either been lost or destroyed but a little digging found them in a large room at Onekweya. They were probably 85% intact and just a little dirty. The room being cleaned in the photos is the library and almost all of the books you see were donated by Bill. The students were so excited to have their very own seminary library and we have committed to continue building this resource. Any priests that are looking for a way to clean out all those books from seminary? Put them in a box and mail them to: The Rev. Jeremy Lucas, Box 65 Windhoek, Namibia. A large box will probably cost you a couple of hundred dollars but there are much worse things you could spend your money on. Don't worry about duplicates we can organize several resource libraries around the diocese to house them. Any books about theology, liturgy, biblical studies, pastoral care or preaching. Classic books like City of God or any other standards. Just send them. They will do more good on the shelves here than on the shelves there.
Another find was a beautiful stained glass made by Bill while he was here. It is a cross laid over Africa with the words God Bless Africa across the bottom. This is part of the prayer for Africa;God Bless Africa
guard her children
guide her leaders
and give her peace
for Jesus' Christ's sake. Amen
We rescued the window from the floor of the room we cleaned out and brought it to the deanery to preserve this piece of history.
We will continue telling stories about the Training Program and its students and I hope you will realize how much your support means to the Diocese and people of Namibia. Just as a reminder February 22 is World Mission Sunday. It would be a great time to ask people in your parishes to donate to Mission to Namibia. Mail checks to 521 North 20th Street, Birmingham, AL 35213. Memo the checks Mission to Namibia.
The month of February would also be a wonderful time to organize a webcast via Skype. Send us an email and we will set up the details. February 15 will be the only time we know we will be out of town in the North.
We hope you are having a blessed Epiphany. Peace, Jeremy and Penny
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