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

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

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

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

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 40^th 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

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

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