A Peaceful March

March 2019

March is coming to a close soon and we are still in the USA!  Spring is on the way here in

the mountains.  Daffodils are coming up and the trees are blooming.  Many of you have been asking.  We are prolonging our stay here this spring for various reasons and due to the Ebola situation in DRC.  We read the most hopeful report this last week with fewer new cases over the past 5 weeks, compared to earlier in the outbreak.  There are no new cases in 10/20 health zones affected during the outbreak, of which Nyankunde is one of them.  Just when things seemed to be looking up, there was a 6mo baby diagnosed with Ebola in Bunia, an hour from us.  Babies always get this disease from an adult so there for sure will be others.

We are enjoying our furlough and getting lots done around the house.  It is a blessing to be able to focus on friends and family, enjoy the outdoors, and all the freedoms that we have in the USA.  I wake up every day thankful to not worry about fevers, possible isolation/quarantine and malaria.  There is a peace in knowing this. Emmanuel has been able to attend preschool with his peers and seems very well adjusted.  He calls his friends at school “his kids.”  This may be related to the fact that he calls his nanny “My Ziga,” when here name is Maziga.  We are thankful to see him advancing in English immersion through this local preschool. He is getting to know his grandparents much better.  He taps his feet to bluegrass music and says that he lives on Buck Mountain, but is quick to say that he is going back to Congo.  It is a beautiful thing to hear him fondly talking about his friends on both sides of the ocean.

Planting flowers together

We are truly "tucked away" in the woods.  There are a lot of fun backwoods trails around here, great for exploring with an all-terrain vehicle. It is funny how a destination can be only 4miles away, but it takes 45 minutes to travel there.  We are discovering the area and finally sorting out the peaks visible from our front deck.  Emmanuel is learning how to fish.  He hasn’t caught anything yet, but he casting and seeing the fish up close. There are so many things to learn outside at this age.

Emmanuel and all of his schoolmates and teachers

We just returned from a trip to Thailand where we enjoyed medical conferences, meeting new people, and reuniting with friends practicing medicine throughout the world.  We scouted out the night markets.  There is fresh juice on every corner.  Coconut juices come in coconuts, not in cans!  We love coconut!  It is hard to get a bad meal in Thailand!  Thailand is a funny merging to modern and traditional cultures, very colorful and exotic.  The gardens are absolutely exquisite!

We were able to visit two national parks just outside of the city where we were staying, with beautiful vistas.  Unfortunately, Thailand has huge problems with air pollution so due to smog we were not able to see as much as we were hoping to.  It is the burning season so the air quality is particularly poor.  Emmanuel and I had a fish exfoliation treatment in a local spa.  You submerge your feet and allow little fish to remove dead skin.  It sounds kind of gross, but it is fairly common in this area so we had to try it.  Overall it was wonderful to learn new things and get up to date on medical practice. Emmanuel met lots of new friends and loved his teachers.  What a highlight!

We have felt blessed to live in a home and have a stable stay in the US.  We have had the time to re-connect with old friends and make new ones.  Our church here has been very supportive and kind to us, loaning us a vehicle, and intentionally coming alongside us.  We have had time to go exploring and enjoy being together as a family.  It seems like there is always a new project, something to be fixed or improved.  It has been a season of peace and discernment.

Thanks for keeping up with us.  We seem to write more often from overseas.  We would love to see you in person.  Keep praying for security and abatement of fear that keeps Ebola going.  Pray for the continued ministry and work of Nyankunde Hospital to provide for the medical and spiritual needs of people in the area.  Our hearts are very much with our friends and colleagues in eastern Congo.

-Pray for Emmanuel’s educational growth and feeling well adjusted here in the USA.

-Pray for God’s blessing of our family.

-Pray for the completion of the hospital chapel.  It is being completely transformed and it is wonderful to see this in pictures.

 Blessings,

Lindsey for the Coopers

Our little Buck Mountain helper!

EB Jeffress Park

The Cascades

Happy New Year from the Blue Ridge Mountains

January 2018

We have officially been back in the US for about 6weeks now!  We apologize for the lapse in blog postings.  We are doing fine and nestled down in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina for the wintertime.  We are living in the mountain home we bought last year, a completely unexpected blessing.  A friend recently said “I love that often when you come back from Congo you get to be in the snow.”  It hasn’t been intentional and isn’t always so convenient, but it has been fun for Emmanuel to experience snow.

Our minds have been thinking a lot about what we left behind in Nyankunde.  Just before Christmas there was a Ebola confirmed death in our village.  A pregnant women from a village where there are active cases was admitted and promptly died.  Many of our staff members were exposed and it was a scary time.  Mass ring vaccination occurred within 48hours and since then there have been no other positive cases.  It is a huge blessing that no one contracted the disease, and a reminder that medicine is a risky occupation.   This women was tested and had a safe burial.  Funerals are very public events and often when Ebola spreads to the community.   This was completely avoided.  We continue to pray for eastern DRC and our village.  I have posted several articles about the situation in eastern DRC and the risk Ebola poses to central Africa.  They are very sobering articles.  Here is one of the links:  https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/15/ebola-has-gotten-so-bad-its-normal.  This is the time for the international community to rally around this outbreak.  This week Samaritan's Purse has officially opened an Ebola Treatment Unit (ETC) in the neighboring community of Komanda.  Here is a video about the center:  https://www.samaritanspurse.org/article/ebola-treatment-center-now-open-in-the-democratic-republic-of-the-congo/.

What can I say after this?  My life right now nestled in the mountains is in stark contrast to my life in eastern Congo.  I have a hard time reconciling the two.  There is no real way to transition in words.  Pray for me as I struggle with this from afar.

Now I will transition to the Blue Ridge Mountains.  This is a place where fog is prolific, ice falls off trees and accumulates like snow, and wind is amplified at higher elevations.  Our son Emmanuel was literally blown over going up stairs to our house the other day!  The climate can be extreme.  In our first week home we geared up for our first major snowstorm.  More than 2 feet of snow fell over about a day just plastering the trees with white powder.  It was really beautiful!  We learned several things during this storm: park at the end of the road (not in the garage), have an alternate mode of transportation (and even heat if power is lost), chainsaws are useful to clear downed trees, and generally don’t plan to travel. Up here they use a grater to clear roads of snow, as snowplows can’t make it up the hills.

We have had the blessing of both of our families visiting these last few weeks over the holidays.  We are thankful for this uninterrupted time together and realize what a rare occurrence it really is!  There was lots of cookie baking, learning old recipes from my grandma, and play when my parents visited.  We got my mom and dad in the side-by-side 4 wheeler once each!  We rode a holiday train and Emmanuel received his very first train set for Christmas!  Then Warren’s brother’s family and sister came for a visit.  We did lots of hiking, movies, cooking, and catching up.  In the evenings Warren has worked on the insulation and drywall of the upper room of our garage.

After a month’s work on the garage, the upper multi-purpose room is finally finished!  Warren has done an amazing job with very little help.  He is largely self taught and gifted with his hands.  It will be nice to have a place to store our things when we are not here as well as having office space.   I am more of the interior decorator who wants to change things around inside.  I enjoy running most of the time, but I have learned that running in the hills is serious work and commitment!  One feels like a superstar running down hills, that is until one turns around.  Confession:  sometimes I call for a ride home from the base!  My uphills are improving slowly.  No complaints...we love living on Buck Mountain!  Today was a typical afternoon of exploring the trails around us on foot and 4-wheeled side-by-side cart, spotting deer and turkey.

Emmanuel has made some nice friends here, but his heart misses his friends in Congo.  He loves looking at our photo book from DRC and showing friends and family his life over there.  We are trying to still read and pray in French.  It is fun to hear him say he is from Nyankunde.  It has been a blessing to be more or less in one place this time, as last furlough we traveled so much and it was hard on him.

We are looking forward to a trip to Thailand in a few weeks!  It will be lovely to reconnect with friends and fellow missionaries around the world.

We would love to connect with you during our time in the States.  Send us a “hello,” we would love to hear from you!

-Pray for an effective response to the Ebola outbreak in eastern DRC, for the field hospital in Komanda.
-Pray for wisdom for us to know the timing of our return.
-Pray for our family as we adjust to living in the USA and our spiritual growth.

Blessings
Lindsey for the Coopers

A November Newsletter

Cross cultural lessons, some profound and others less so

NOVEMBER 11, 2018

Our goat Elsa had two beautiful babies this past week

THE HAMBURGER:  A LESSON IN CROSS-CULTURAL COMMUNICATION

Just when I thought I was being clear..

Cross cultural communication is always interesting.  There are misunderstandings, some annoyances, but in the end it is mostly funny.  Let me share with you my experience ordering a hamburger in Bunia last week.  Warren was like, “Of course the waitress did that!

First we ordered 2 fish and chips and one hamburger and fries.  There waitress seemed to clarify the order and asked, “You want three orders of fish and chips?”  I repeated myself, asked about adding cheese, and she went to the kitchen to place the order.     This seemed normal.  Then she came back to show me to the cheese cooler so I could a cheese and how much I wanted with my burger.  

Next she brought out a plate of fish and chips.  No hamburger.   I said that I didn’t order fish and showed her a picture of what I wanted on the menu.  She said, I will be back.

She returned with a huge bun with a piece of sausage on the inside, other veggies on the “burger” and a plate of cheese,  no fries.  We pointed out that it was sausage and not what we desired.  It felt a bit rude but I didn't want to eat that.  At this point we cancelled the order and I started eating Warren’s food.

She came back again and said that they would order the beef!  I said “That’s ok,” knowing that this also would probably be different than expected, and lunchtime was over.

What did I learn? Things are oftentimes different than our think.  Burgers are hard to come by in Congo. Rather than say, “we don’t have that,” the cultural thing to do is to serve something else for your customer.  Warren was right, I should have understood what she was saying without saying it directly.  

Hmm. Always a learning experience.  Always humbling.  I still left a tip.

GRACELAND & REFLECTIONS ON CROSS-CULTURAL MINISTRY

One of my favorite albums of all time is “Graceland” by Paul Simon.  Even as a child I loved this album.  There has always been a depth, a certain poetry, varied instrumentation, voice and otherwise.  In the story about the making of the song Graceland, Simon shares some profound lessons about collaboration from making music in South Africa.  Some say that it is one of his best albums.  Why is that?  I think this is because of the collaboration, a mixing of styles and language.  This is a lesson that I learn over and over again here in Africa.  As a Westerner I find myself taking pride in my own independence and accomplishments and humbled by my African neighbors interdependence and assistance of one another.  Out here independence is a weakness, truly a WEAKNESS.  It is more about who you are and how you work together with others that really matters.  We accomplish much more together…watch the movie credits from a favorite movie and see how many people participated.  Everyone had a part.  The Graceland album reminds me too that there is great richness and discovery of uncharted waters when we work together.  Allow me to share a few of Paul Simon’s ideas from the making of Graceland.

He starts out with a certain drum traveling rhythm and a South African (who always plays major chords) adopts a minor chord on the guitar….trying to imitate Simon’s style.  The pedal steel guitar is a country instrument but also a West African instrument and thus music thereupon, a blend of styles. “The Mississippi delta shining like a national guitar.” 

It became a traveling song, not about one culture or another.  Not South African, not American either.  Rather the song is a new creation, a collaboration.  It is about listening to each other, and making associations.  Then, and only then, one can play music that fits into another culture.  There are some beautiful lessons here in life.  Check it out if you don't remember the song "Graceland."

Living life cross culturally is a merging of cultures, an adaptation.  Ministering to others, through learning and communicating effectively in another language requires incredible adaptation and understanding.  It is what the apostle Paul did when he said in 1 Corinthians 9:20-23:

"To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became like one not having the law(though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law), so as to win those not having the law. 22 To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. 23 I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.  

Like music, the church of Jesus Christ deepens in as time goes on with people of all languages and cultures.  The Church is like a piece of music that has the same underlying theme, but more and more complex parts and instruments.  I love this analogy.

CHAPEL UPDATE

Over a week ago the hospital officially broke ground on the chapel rehabilitation.  There is a 

lot of excitement and interest as it is in a very public place.  We have heard people say things like, "It's finally time!" and "We have been so sad to walk by this building in ruins for so long."  It has been inspiring to see the Congolese making bricks and doing some fundraising of their own.  The hospital is grateful for a very generous gift from Redeemer Church in California that has allowed this first phase to move forward.  Phase 1 consists of completing the walls, roofing, and flooring.  This should be done in the next 3-4weeks.  We are awaiting funds to complete Phase 2 which consists of the finishing work: plumbing, electrical, windows, doors, furniture, etc.  If you are interested in giving to this project, please contact our mission at:https://www.healthservicecorps.org/campaigns/nyankunde-hospital-fund/  or contact us privately at warrenandlindsey@gmail.com

PRAYER REQUESTS

-Pray for the chapel rehabilitation as it moves forward.  Pray that the project will bring spiritual encouragement of our staff.  Pray that God would be glorified in this.

-Pray for the continued fight against Ebola in Eastern Congo.  Pray for an end to the fears and insecurity that fuel this outbreak.  It remains a critical situation.
-Pray for us as we prepare for home leave in about 2 weeks.


Many blessings,

Lindsey

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