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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

It is with very mixed emotions that I write to tell you about the last couple of months here in Namibia. So much has been happening that is wonderful and incredible, but here at the holidays we are really missing our family and friends at home. It is not that we haven't missed them before now, just that holidays bring a special kind of homesickness.

One of the reasons we are so homesick now is that my sister Monica had her first baby about two weeks ago on December 6th. We are new aunt and uncle and will be missing Max's first Christmas. He is a beautiful baby and Monica and Phil (her husband) are awesome parents. Please pray for them as they experience all the joys and challenges to come.

So it has been almost 2 months since our last post. It is not that we have had nothing to tell but that here in Namibia, especially in Windhoek, November and the first of December are extremely busy. It is just turning from spring to summer and the schools are out for their long summer break before the new school year begins in mid-January. December through mid-January is also holiday time for most of the country. By the second week in December most government offices have closed and people have started travelling. Many people go to the coast (where we spent a week) and others go to their traditional homesteads in the North. Really everything has to be finished for the year by November. Some of the highlights of November were Thanksgiving with a group of new friends from the U.S. Embassy. You know its not really a holiday unless you are an American. The Loaves and Fishes Christmas Party. As you may remember Loaves and Fishes is the homeless feeding program of the Cathedral. It provides food every Wednesday for around 40-60 homeless people from our community. It also provides a hot meal one Saturday a month. This year we expanded its mission to also provide medical vouchers for basic healthcare. At the end of the year we have a party for all the regulars and give them gifts of clothes and basic self care items. It was a great party. The last, biggest thing for November was the Bishop's visit on the 30th. Bishop Nakwatumba came and baptised 11 and confirmed 32 in a three hour service with more people sitting outside than inside. In fact we did the baptisms outside so that more people would be involved in the service.

The month of December started off with a bang. On December 3rd we celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary. Nothing big. Just a toast and plans for our two week trip away from Windhoek.

Most everyone we talk to about living in a foriegn counrty tells us that it takes at least 6 months to get used to your new place. We are just shy of 6 months and unless something huge happens in the next 4 days I think it may take a little longer. We decided that mid-December would be a good time to get away from the city and travel a little on the way to our friend Lukas' wedding in the North.

We left on the 8th of December and drove through the bush to Swakopmund on the coast. We spent a cloudy and cool week there before heading North to Twyfelfontein for a couple of nights of camping on the banks of the (dry) Aba Huab river in Damaraland. The drive was amazing and Twyfelfontein is home to the largest collection of ancient rock carvings in Africa. Some of the carvings are over 6000 years old. One of the coolest is the Lion Man carving depicting the shamanistic belief that they could change into animal form. The feet and tail of the lion have human hands with five fingers. You can also see giraffe, rhino, springbok and quite a few other animals in this carving.

After two nights under the stars our trip carried us further North through terrain that reminded us of our trip through the Southwestern U.S. a few years ago. We drove several hours to just outside the Okakweyu Gate of Etosha National Park. Etosha is a huge game reserve that many people say is the best in all of Africa. After this trip we would have to agree. We spent two days in the park and saw an amazing array of animals. The two that stand out the most were the lions and the elephants.

Rather than tell the whole story in one long blog post we will post a more detailed story and a web album after the first of the year. But here are two photos that will sum up our experience. The first is of a massive old bull elephant that came out of the bush and straight toward our car. Penny took this photo as we were backing up the road. He walked right in front of our car and over to a mud hole in the road to spray himself with mud. We sat less than 20 feet from him for about half an hour. He never seemed to care that we were there, only that we were between him and the mud hole.

The second photo is one of about 50 we took of a pride of lions lying just off the side of the road. We were acutally on our way out of the park when we saw two cars parked side by side in the road. We wondered what they were doing and as we drove past them looked down and saw a male lion with two females and two weaned cubs lying under this tree. We sat and watched them over the next hour. We were never more than 30 feet from them. Over that hour one of the females went out to the bush and caught a jackal puppy and the male mated with the other female. It was like we had stepped into an episode of Wild Kingdom or were on National Geographic.

After leaving Etosha we continued driving north to our final destination Rev. Lukas Katenda's wedding. Lukas' wedding was a three day event that started on Thurday night at his homestead. Acutally it started that night at Lukas' and about 200 kilometers away at his bride's father's homestead. The night before the wedding family and friends get together to eat a freshly killed cow and to dance and sing through the night. We spent about 4 hours at Lukas' that night and did just that. Ate meat from a handmade traditional bowl and danced with the family and friends. We hit the bed about 1am that night.

The next day was the wedding day. It was supposed to begin at 9am. This being Africa we did not even arive until 10am and were almost the first there. The wedding actually began at 12pm and ended about 4pm. It was a traditional Anglican wedding with lots of singing and speeches after the official service. After the wedding comes the bride's reception at her homestead. We got there about 6pm and followed the procession of singing and dancing to the tree. It is traditional for the new bride and groom to go to a nearby tree for more speeches and the giving of gifts from the bride's family and friends. After the tree service everyone heads into the homestead where huge tents have been assembled for the reception. But this is just the fist of two massive parties. The second takes place on day 3.

The bride and groom do not stay together on their wedding night. Instead the next day the groom goes and gets her and brings her to his homestead and another day and night of parties begins. I have downloaded quite a few photos from the wedding to this web album Lukas and Aune Wedding Photos Web Album I hope you enjoy the photos. If you have any questions about what you see please ask. There are so many details to a traditional wedding ceremony in Ovambo culture I could never know them or write them all. But we did learn a lot from the elders of the tribes and we may be able to answer a few questions.

It would be very easy for someone reading this blog to get the impression that driving around Namibia is just one big safari adventure. Namibia is a beautiful country, both naturally and its people, but this beauty can mask the ugliness of abject poverty and disease. As we travelled through the small towns and villages we were met with experiences of terrible suffering. People of all ages were scratching out a meager life selling trinkets on the roadside. We passed one cart pulled by donkeys that had a wheelchair strapped to the back. Children at every stopped begged for a dollar (about 10 cents U.S.). Most of the country lives like this. 60-65% live on less than $2 a day. We drove past children drinking from puddles of water on the roadside. There have been recent reports of cholera. Namibia has a particularly virulant strain of Malaria called falciparum. If not diagnosed early and correctly (its symptoms are like the flu) it attacks the brain can lead to death. Every night after we left Swakopmund we slept under a net took our medication and sprayed ourselves with Peaceful Sleep bug spray. We only drank only bottled drinks and carried all our own water. One part of the wedding celebrations that very few people know about it that, when you get married you are expected to feed anyone who shows up and given the high poverty rate hundreds of people showed up at Lukas' wedding looking for food. And they were fed because they were part of the community. This trip across the country goes into our conflicting experiences in Namibia. On the one hand beautiful on the other ugly. On the one hand happiness and joy on the other pain and suffering. Remembering that every 5th person we met was probably HIV positive.

We are now back in Windhoek and preparing for Christmas services. Christmas Eve Mass is at 11pm and Christmas Day is 830am. We have decided to spend a quiet Christmas at home and make a few dishes to make us feel a little closer to home. We want to take this opportunity say thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past year. It has been a time of unbelievable change in our life and there have been quite a few times over the past 6 months that we had no idea what we were doing or why. And almost every single time we were at our most lonely or hopeless or homesick someone wrote us an email or called us on Skype to say hello and remind us we were not for. Other times we would be reminded of how many people were praying for us and supporting us financially in our ministry. You have helped us so much over the past year. Next year is going to be full of more challenges. I will be starting work on our theological training program (January 4-10 is orientation) and Penny will begin working with the diocesan HIV/AIDS program and continuing her work with the after school program. Please continue to remember us in your prayers and we will write again after the new year. Love, Penny and Jeremy