Ezra & Me

Ezra lives in Bushenyi, a Ugandan town about 30 km from Mbarara. Twice he has played Aaron to my Moses, interpreting my English into Runyankore so that pastors could understand my attempts at teaching.

The first time we worked together was in 2002. A pastors’ training conference was held in his church building—a cinderblock structure with a few straight back benches for pews. I taught and he translated.

Ezra is a bright young man and a good pastor. I suspect his knowledge of English vocabulary is probably a sixth or seventh grade level. That made teaching with him a challenge. Besides having to weed out the many metaphors that flow naturally from my life experience and that would have spoken clearly on my home field and finding instead comparisons that would make sense to rural African pastors, I had to choose my words carefully.

I had to find simple words. Not because Ezra is simple. It was just a language thing. Like someone would have to speak in the simplest Spanish if they expected me to tell someone else what they were saying. Even then I’d probably get most of it wrong. That’s a challenge for a teacher, but a good one. Be simple. Be direct. Be clear.

Last summer Ezra and I teamed up again. This time the meeting was at the University Baptist Church in Mbarara. More pastors were present this time, perhaps fifty. On Wednesday of the week Ezra confided in me that he had spoken with his wife and learned that their young son had contracted malaria. He could not leave to be with his family until Friday when the bus would take him back. He asked me to pray for him.

I placed one pale white hand in his dark black one and laid the other on his shoulder. I asked our Father to heal my brother’s little boy and to give his wife the peace of Christ. On Friday we parted ways again.

A couple of weeks later Ezra found his way to an Internet connection and sent me a brief note through his Yahoo! account:

“Greetings from Bushenyi more especially from my family. How are you and how is your family? In Bushenyi we are okay and thanks be to God for He has healed my son and my wife. Robert, thank you so much for your prayers towards my family when they were down sick and by the time I come from the Seminary I found they were okay and that showed me that really your prayers worked.”

I was grateful to learn that his boy would be ok. I sent him an English Bible through Amazon.com (isn’t this an incredible century to live in?) He emailed me a note of thanks:

“Once again I thank you for the present you sent to me through Postal Office. I really appreciated so much. My the Almighty God bless you and may His Loce, Joy and Peace be with you always.”

Ezra sent me another message by email last week. He said:

"Praise the living God! and greetings from Bushenyi Baptist Church members. Let me hope that everythig is okay. Here in Bushenyi we are okay ecept that we had just lost our brother and he has left us with 6 children, 3girls and boys. So we trying to see how they are going to be looked after. In fact we need your prayers because he had died of AIDS and some of his children already infected by the disease."

Send my greetings to your family and keep prayiny for us that God should give us a vision of how we are going to take care of those children.

From Ezra, Bushenyi Baptist Church.

AIDS and poverty in Africa are not academic topics for me. It is about my friend, a pastor whom I have worked alongside in the Kingdom. It is about children being left without parents. It is about a man of God and his wife who hardly have enough for themselves being asked to take in six more children, some of whom are HIV+.

How many times do you suppose that this situation is multiplied in Subsaharan Africa? I called Senator John Cornyn’s office today, at the suggestion of the ONE Campaign. President Bush has submitted a 2007 federal budget that has important increases in the international affairs line item. (You can call 1-800-786-2663 and be connected to your Senator’s office. The ONE.org website has information on what you might say.)

Will calling a Senator help? I honestly don’t know. I do know that the ONE Campaign has made a difference. 400,000 people in Africa are on life-saving treatment today because of America’s historic commitment to the fight against AIDS, and billions of decades-old debts are being cancelled, redirected and monitored so these nations can educate, immunize and feed their children.

Prayer will help. It is not just something I CAN do it is something I MUST do. Yes, I must pray for Ezra and his family and the millions like him. And I can pray for Dr. Larry Pepper and his ministry and those all over Africa who are battling this plague. But I must pray for the leaders in government in wealthy Western nations to see that they have a role to play in Africa's future. I must pray to be able to see that I have a role to play as well. I must pray for the plague of complacency and the hypnotic power of our affluence to be overcome in my life. I must pray for God's Kingdom to come, for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

I’m going back to Uganda in June. I’m eager to visit with Ezra.