January Prayer Letter

Touch me
Take me to that other place
Reach me
I know I’m not a hopeless case
-- U2: “Beautiful Day”

Dear Friends, 28 January 2008

Our last letter, written at the end of November, was all about Christmas in Bundibugyo and our intentions to leave this place sometime in early to mid 2008 for a year-long furlough in the U.S. A day after that letter was sent came the horrifying announcement that the mysterious illness that was killing people in the Kikyo area of the district less than 20km from us was Ebola, in fact a new strain of Ebola. Within a few days we closed Christ School (a week earlier than scheduled) and shifted the family to take up residence in Kampala for two months. The weeks that followed our evacuation were terribly dark times as we heard of the spread of the dreaded virus, experienced first-hand the panic in the rest of Uganda, and swung between hope and despair as each day we waited for news of our teammates and friends who we left behind. Then came the awful, the unthinkable: our friend Dr. Jonah Kule fell sick and died, Jonah who had spent years as a medical assistant and recently as a doctor serving his people in the district. And in the midst of our grief our fears turned to our team leaders, Drs. Scott and Jennifer Myhre, who like Jonah had also been in contact with Ebola patients, especially Scott, and we wondered if this dreaded virus which was killing many health workers in the district would also lay claim to missionaries. Meanwhile, Savannah started presenting high fever and febrile seizures with convulsions. We knew it couldn’t possibly be Ebola, yet there was still that fear, however irrational it may have been, that was not allayed until she was diagnosed with a UTI and started responding to treatment with antibiotics. I can’t overstate the terror and despair of those days, yet with each passing day there came hope that Dr. Jonah’s final words, a prayer that no more people would die from this disease, would be prophetic. And now we see that the grim initial forecast of lack of containment, of spreading to the rest of Uganda and across the border to Congo, of killing hundreds in Bundibugyo, and of lasting well into 2008, has not come true (and no one from Christ School was infected). There have been no new cases in the past month, and by the time you receive this letter Bundibugyo will almost certainly be officially declared Ebola-free. The loss has been great, but we also know that it could have been much worse.

In the past two months we have also been dealing with painful decisions about our departure. We had a difficult and trying 2007 that took us to the breaking point, and just when we thought we were getting ready for a 6-week rest before heading down the home stretch, then came Ebola, the one more thing that trumped all else that had happened in the past year: my father’s passing, Louisa’s malaria scare, the lightning strike at Christ School, closing Christ School for two weeks due to student riots, Savannah’s possible dysentery and later malaria. We considered all the options from leaving immediately and not returning to our home in Bundibugyo at all, to staying until our previously planned departure date of late April. What we finally decided on, after much anguish and many tears, was for Kevin to go back to the district for the last two weeks of January to prepare Christ School for the new academic year due to start as scheduled on February 4th, then for JD and the kids to come in early February, and for all of us to leave and turn the school over to the Pierces’ capable hands by mid-February. We are scheduled to fly out of Entebbe on February 20th, touching down in Charlotte where we will stay with JD’s parents for about six weeks. In early April we will begin our Great American Field Trip Adventure, our own family GAFTA that we have been planning for nearly a year, which will take us coast-to-coast from April to June. By the beginning of July we hope to be settled in our house at 2320 Englewood Ave. in Durham.

As we look at the month ahead a mixture of emotions overwhelms us. There is the impending pain of separation, from the community of missionaries who have become our family here in the field, and from Christ School, especially the staff, which our lives have grown with over the past ten years. The school has been transformed from a bushy place with no structures and a humble beginning with 30 students to the present size of 26 teachers and more than 350 students, and while our family has gone from two to six, there is the personal growth in our faith and marriage and family life that cannot be quantified but is more real than any numbers associated with the school. We know that as we end this part of our spiritual journey, we are beginning another; nevertheless, our life here and the life of the school are like two vines that have been growing side-by-side, and splitting them feels like a ripping apart of our very souls. I am treasuring these last days of our term in Bundibugyo, yet the pain is so great that sometimes I wish I could just jump ahead a month and be done with it. The last ten years have been a tremendous privilege of service and at the same time a heavy burden, a burden that we have never been free of even during holidays and visits to America. Now comes the time for us to lay that burden down and to rest. We know you will be there to catch us. As always, please continue to keep us in your prayers.

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits,
And in his word I hope;
My soul waits for the Lord
More than watchmen for the morning,
More than watchmen for the morning.
-- Psalm 130 (RSV)

Love,

Kevin and JD Bartkovich
Email: KevinandJD@Yahoo.comBlog: www.kwegesiya.blogspot.com