In the Hen House

Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8

Over the past week if I wasn't at school teaching, I was home building a chicken house.  It's kind of a long story, but that's why you're here right?
Last Saturday I went to visit my friend Venance's mom on her farm.  Venance is one of the bus drivers at our school and his mom was one of our custodian's up until December when she retired and moved out to her farm to work the land there full time.  Venance, Anitha, Joseph and I took a public bus to the small village outside of Morogoro where Mama Venance's farm is located.  The bus ride probably should've taken forty five minutes, but any time the driver saw pedestrians on the side of the road, he stopped and the conductor encouraged them to get on.  This doubled the time of the trip and the number of passengers that should safely be on a bus of that size.  But after an hour and a half, we made it.  Venance called two piki pikis (motorcycles) to give us a what I assumed would be a short ride out to the farm (I should've learned by now that it's never safe to assume anything is going to take a short amount of time in Africa).  With two passengers and a driver on each piki piki we traveled over thirty minutes off of the main road, riding up steep hills and down even steeper ones.  About ten minutes into the trip, the 'road' disappeared and the driver followed a narrow, winding dirt path the rest of the way.  Every time I thought we were getting close, we peaked another hill and I saw nothing but dirt path in front of us.  Finally, we reached the farm and Mama Venance greeted us with huge hugs and an even bigger smile.  Her land was expansive and at the top of the hill overlooking it all was five small structures made of mud bricks and sticks with thatched roofs where she and her sister along with some of their children are now living. 
Andrew, Venance's younger brother, served us sodas and breakfast rolls while we sat 'making stories'.  Mama Venance showed us where she is sleeping as well as the TV room they have created where people come from around the area and pay to watch soccer games.  The bathroom was a small roofless building with a piece of fabric as a door and no running water.  After visiting many people in their homes as well as the Maasai communities we serve, seeing homes like this is not surprising to me anymore.  But as I sat looking over Mama Venance's home, I thought about the homes I had visited in the US, and even my own home in Morogoro.  How we strive to make our homes look and function perfectly.  It seemed rather silly to me as Mama Venance led me around her home with such joy and pride.  When we had seen the last room, she told us it was time to see the farm.  We struggled to keep up with her as she quickly walked down the steep hills and wound in and out of large patches of corn.  She took us to her cashew trees where we found the nuts that were ready to be picked and cooked.  We picked ears of corn and Venance piled them high in his arms as we continued to walk.  We circled the entire farm, able to see Mama Venance's home at the top of the hill from every angle.  We saw banana trees and papaya trees, watermelon and tomato plants, covered with a stick structure built to protect them from the incredible African sun.  The last thing she wanted to show us was where she goes to fetch water.  At this point I was covered in sweat, getting a little dehydrated, and my shoes were filling with sand, but Mama Venance, 65, was marching full speed ahead so I wiped the sweat from my forehead and kept on walking.  About ten minutes from her home we came upon, not a well, but a deep hole where water surfaces.  Mama Venance grabbed a make shift bucket made out of a long stick and an oil carton that the community uses to draw water and climbed down the handmade dirt steps into the hole.  She drew water up, one carton at a time, and filled two buckets we had brought with us from home.  The water was dirty and with every carton she poured the gray soil swirled to the top.  I watched her shaking my head, eyes wide with shock that this was the only water available for my dear friend to drink.  But Mama Venance just laughed.  "Amna shida, kawaida!" (Don't worry, it's normal!)
Two buckets of water in tow, we headed back to the house.  Mama's sister pulled out a straw mat and some fabric and we laid on the ground, exhausted, enjoying the evening breeze.  She also brought us some glasses of rain water that they collect regularly for us to drink while she prepared dinner.  We had an appetizer of roasted cashews that we had picked earlier as well as roasted corn on the cob.  They both were delicious.  For dinner she served us ugali (stiff porridge) and fish with a salty red sauce.  While we ate together I asked Mama Venance some questions about her farm and she told me the history of the land as well as how she began farming there.  We talked and laughed as the sun dipped lower into the sky.  Venance called the piki piki drivers to come and get us and Mama Venance told me to come with her to the front of the house.  She pulled out a bucket of chicken food and began to feed her many chickens, looking at each of them carefully.  Finally she grabbed one by the wings and held it up to me.  "Gift!" She was giving me one of her chickens.  I looked at Joseph.  "How are we going to take this with us on the bus?" He laughed and Venance came around the corner with a cardboard box.  Andrew helped his mom to tie the legs of the chicken together and they set her in the box.  Venance told me these were good chickens and when we get home Anitha could kill it and we could eat it.  I looked at the chicken tied up in the box and immediately decided we were not going to eat her.  I asked Mama Venance if I could keep her for eggs instead and she got a huge smile on her face.  Anitha, Venance, and Joseph laughed, not quite able to understand why I didn't want to eat such a good chicken.  I named our new chicken Henry, because she is a hen.  Yes, I know Henry is a male name, but in Swahili Allee is a male name, so it seemed fitting that my chicken should have a male name too. 
On Sunday, Joseph and I began making plans to build a house for Henry.  We searched Google for different designs and after settling on one, we sketched out the dimensions and calculated the amount of timber we were going to need.  We made a list of supplies and on Monday we went to town to purchase them.  The rest of the week I watched (and somewhat helped) Joseph assemble the house, looking more and more like the picture every day.  Anitha decided we needed a male chicken as well so that Henry could lay eggs more frequently so the other bus driver, Baba Rhoida, brought us a male who we named Coco.  After watching them for a couple days, Anitha decided that Coco was too small and if we were going to keep him we needed another male.  Venance brought us one more who we named Poa Poa (Swahili word for 'good').  So now, what started off as a potentially delicious meal has turned into three pet chickens living in quite possibly the nicest chicken house in all of Morogoro.  Life is funny sometimes.  Today, one week after we started, the chicken house is complete and Henry, Coco, and Poa Poa will get to sleep soundly in their new house tonight! (See pictures below)
While I was busy working on my chicken house, the United Methodist Church was at work discussing and voting on their stance on ordaining and marrying openly gay men and women.  Before this conference, the UMC did not allow openly LGBTQ men and women to become pastors or get married in their churches.  I tried to stay apprised of what was going on, seeing different videos and updates posted every day up until Tuesday evening when I saw the official vote posted.  There will be no change to the UMC's stance on gay pastors and gay marriage.  Now if you supported this choice, you may want to stop reading now, because what I am about to write is not meant to encourage you.  The decision that was made was encouragement for you, and that is enough.  What I am about to write is for those who, like me, prayed for a different outcome. 
When I saw the result, I felt similar to how I did the morning I found out Donald Trump had been elected.  I wasn't surprised.  I wasn't angry.  I just felt sad.  I knew deep down that the Methodist Church wasn't ready.  Heck, the Methodist church wasn't even comfortable clearly stating that women are created equal to men and in the image of God.  I knew deep down that the majority of the Methodist church would choose to exclude a large and expanding population of people out of fear and out of discomfort and they would do so using the word of God as their defense.  Just as I knew the majority (questionably) of our country would choose to side with a man whose remarks about women, people of color, people in poverty, and people with disabilities I refuse to even repeat due to their vulgarity and offensiveness.  And I felt sad, not because what I believed to be right "lost", but because I knew that people that I love, people that I respect- they supported these choices.  They chose hate and fear and exclusion over love and trust and inclusion. 
I have been a pastor's kid my whole life.  I have attended thousands of services and in turn heard thousands of bible passages read and thousands of sermons given.  In many of those services I heard the words, 'God is love', 'all are welcome', 'love your neighbor', 'care for the poor', 'take care of the widows and orphans', 'look out for those excluded', 'the first shall be last and the last shall be first'.  Never, not once, did I hear the words 'Jesus said to love all, EXCEPT homosexuals, immigrants, people of color, people of poverty, victims of abuse, and those who have done things you don't agree with.' NEVER.  And maybe the response to that is, well I do love them, I just don't think they should __________ (fill in the blank).  But is that the love that Jesus calls us to give? Is that the love Jesus gives to us?  Does God really say to his people, 'I love you, and I know I created you and I called to preach my word, but you're (a woman, homosexual, a person of color) so either change who I created you to be, or just keep that calling deep down inside and do something else instead.  If I had created you to be a straight, white man it would be a lot easier for you, but I didn't.  Sorry.'  I honestly don't think so.  That is not the God I know.  And that is not the God that I see in my brothers and sisters in Christ, homosexual or not.  We as Christians have made it our mission to spread the word that God's love is for ALL and that you need just to come AS YOU ARE because that is who God created you to be.  We as Christians have made it known that we are followers of the one true God, but we are not God and it is not our place to cast judgement on His behalf.  As a straight white woman, I have never been forced to change who I am, or told that God wouldn't love me as I am.  I am who I am because it is who God made me to be and I believe that to be true for all people and I can't imagine being told I had to change who I am to be loved by God.  I have to believe that is true for those who voted to exclude homosexuals from the Methodist Church.  They have never been asked to change.  They have not faced discrimination from their churches and they have not been told that they were going to hell for being who they are.  If they had, surely they would understand, right?
There is one more thing I know.  I'm going to continue to love all people.  That's what Jesus tells us to do, and I'm sticking with it.  I highly doubt that when I get to heaven God is going to tell me he is upset with me for loving everyone, not just the people it was easy or convenient or was comfortable to love.  I pray that you, too, choose to side with love. 

Mungu Akubariki,
(God bless you)

Allee

Anitha, Mama's sister, Mama Venance, Me, Andrew, and Venance

Mama Venance with her chickens

Mama Venance retrieving water

Our chicken house (pictures of chickens coming soon)

Google images chicken house