Teleportation

No we didnt figure out teleportation and no we were not deported. But somewhat the abruptness of being plucked from Bundibugyo to America in less than 72 hours sort of feels that way. 

On June 5 we got an email about a flight leaving Uganda on the 16th, 11 days notice. We slept on it and decided we should take the flight. Without interns, without the conference, without a certain end date but beginning to prepare for departure by starting goodbyes, we decided 10 days was enough notice and we didn’t know when our next chance would come along (of course today we saw an embassy email about a flight next week). So we had 10 days to prepare, pack, wrap up job hand off and contract writing, and say goodbyes. It felt like plenty of time. It kept us from dragging out goodbyes too long, more than 10 days left like an emotional long suffering for my brain to fathom. We left Bundibugyo on the 15th, drove straight to Entebbe, one night there and then the pool briefly to celebrate a very cool 11 yr olds birthday and then to the airport. Wet bathing suits in suitcases is a reoccurring theme in my life. One last dip in the ocean or lake before hoping in the car to drive home. 

So we got on a plane, a very delayed plane. Three hundred people stuck in the airport with no restaurants open for food or water for sale and an unknown amount of time waiting for this plane that was always twenty minutes away made for some angry people. Some arrived at noon for a flight that was scheduled to leave at 6 and didn’t leave until 11. Hangry men argued with the Ethiopian airlines staff incessantly starting around 8pm. To their credit we were told to arrive FOUR hours early... just to wait an extra five. 

We got on the plane. We made it to Addis Ababa and after two security checks and a temperature screening we got on the second plane. Sadly there were about one hundred people who had boarded already (coming from other places) and been waiting on all of us late ones for 5 hours while we were stuck in the airport in Entebbe waiting for that “arriving in twenty minutes” plane. I felt less cranky about our five hours than theirs - the 17 hours in one plane turned into 22 for them. 

We stopped in Dublin for fuel only (no one on or off) and I don’t remember more than opening on eye to peak outside. Don’t remember what I saw, too sleepy. Ike saw horses at least. 

And then not long after we were in Dulles. 

Plucked from one place, our big concrete house full of memories and bugs, deep in a jungly humid village in western Uganda, plopped into another place, still full of concrete but with more steel framing, shiny cars and smooth roads, empty sidewalks with no children yelling Mjungu and “I am fine!” All of that in less than 72 hours. 

And from the airport, a four hour drive to a cozy cabin in West Virginia surrounded by frolicking deer and the sound of a shot gun firing not too far off. 

It’s an odd phenomenon- that you can get from one side of the earth to the other so quickly and with only so much as an 8 hour car ride, two plane rides, and an airport pick up. And that all five of your bags can make it (mostly in one piece) despite your lack of trust in the airline. AND that we just packed up our lives into five suitcases, moved back across the world and are now sitting comfortably reading in a house with no concerns for stable electricity or water outages (but we do make eyes at each other when the fridge motor gets quiet. Electricity PTSD is real). 

It’s all a little odd, bewildering per se. 

We are returning to an America that’s different too. 

Wreaked by change in multiple ways. People have been cooped up since March and fearful of physical human interaction. Emotion about racial inequality is finally bubbling up and people are demanding a change. 

I do think it’s safe to say all of this is uncharted territory. 

Do missionaries normally have two weeks of quarantine alone between leaving the field and seeing their loved ones? No. 

Is it recommended that you transplant yourself/your family to America after not going farther than a few miles from your house for the last solid three months? No. 

How do you converse with supporters at the tail end of a pandemic and the beginning of a racial equality movement all while we are in culture shock about how smooth the road was on our drive over? I don’t know. 

Please don’t hear any of that as a complaint. We are thankful for time to quarantine and decompress together. We are blessed to have safe spaces to do this and to be able to get on a plane and come back to America. We think it’s high time that our country work on the deep wounds of racism and start talking about real equality and meeting the real needs of Americans (praise hands for funding real and needed public health responses instead of expecting the police to manage it all). 

But that doesn’t make it easy or comfortable or known. But that’s not what we are promised in Jesus. We aren’t promised comfortable, cookie cutter, or by the book life experiences. 

We are promised the presence of the Holy Spirit. The grace to mess up and to still be loved. The mercy for our sins to be wiped away and for each day to be a new one. For the blood of Jesus and his resurrection to give us hope and to be our identity. 

“It is in fact more important for us to know what God did to Israel, to his son Jesus Christ, than to seek what God intends for us today.” - Bonhoeffer (in Life Together) 

At first that quote hurts - I am convicted that I do often think that way about day to day life. But at second glance it’s peace giving. It reminds me where my hope and trust should be found. Not in the momentary circumstances, not in the details of my schedule or plans or interactions. But in what God did, is doing, and will do.