Upon coming home to our tiny village of Kosikiria the last week of January, Katy and I were not feeling the zeal and romantic fervor for missions and living in Africa we first felt when we arrived in Turkana in 1999. Nope. We were feeling the heat, the dusty wind; the pressures of a community that expects too much from us. No matter what we give or how we help, more is always expected from us. We could feel the lightness of the last couple weeks of vacation time with visiting family quickly evaporating. The burdens of the community and of living in the desert were returning, uncomfortably hot and dirty, on our backs.

Of course, there was the usual course of things not working when we arrived home—the refrigerator wasn’t cooling, the solar batteries weren’t charging high enough, one of the hand pumps in the village needed fixing, a tire was going flat. I ignored them all and walked around the house to check out the garden.

The grass that we had been working so hard to grow in our garden was finally growing—it was tall and thick; a beautiful sight in the desert. I wanted to forget about the tire and the fridge, take my sandals off, and stand in the thick, cool, lush grass for a while. My plot of grass, literally a yard, in the middle of Katy’s garden is one of the hobbies that keeps me sane here; that keeps me here. The grass is a grace that God provides to let me know that even in the desert He enables growth. It’s a beautifully soft Bermuda grass that was coaxed to grow from seed purchased in Nairobi.

I went to greet Nakamu, our neighbor who watered the garden while we were away—to thank her for doing a great job. She informed me that in the last couple days she had killed two sand vipers, poisonous snakes, who had come to enjoy the shade of my grass. So much for kicking off my sandals and plunging my toes into the thick grass! There would first need to be inspection and trimming.

I would be lying if I told you that Katy and I haven’t been considering a change of occupation in the last few months. While I love teaching and working alongside the Turkana church leaders, there’s a lot more to living here than the teaching. And it’s the “a lot more” that’s wearing us out, both physically and mentally.

Our first evening home some of the area church leaders came to visit me. It’s always ominous to see a group of men waiting for me outside the house. This is not normally the greeting I receive when we return home. They had come to tell me the news. I had been cursed… again.

This time it was the old man of the village, Anyik, who had visited a diviner to have me cursed. In the two villages our family has lived in Turkana, there has always been a strained relationship between me and the one or two old men who are the self-proclaimed leaders of the area. I’ve come to see this as a natural occurrence when the message of Jesus enters a new village. The Gospel frees people from the bondages of power and oppression. Those who make a living off of power and oppression are never happy when their good life is threatened. The church is very threatening to these folks. To have people in their village say that Jesus is Lord and that true righteousness comes only from Him subverts their authority.

When Jesus said that His mission was “to bring good news to the oppressed; to bind up the broken hearted; to proclaim liberty to the captives,” he was proclaiming what the good news still does today. The message that Jesus proclaimed led to the freedom of the oppressed and also led to his death at the hands of those who were in religious and political authority. In the villages of Loupwala, Kosikiria, Kalbata, and Nakalalei, I’m Christ’s representative—both for the proclaiming and the attacks. It’s part of the job. Thankfully, I don’t have to physically die to fulfill the mission God has called me to do. Jesus has already atoned for the sins of the world through his death and resurrection. There may be a time when I am called to physically die for Christ, but as far as I can tell, it is not a requirement for the salvation of the Turkana.

So here I am; cursed yet again. The good news is that Anyik had to visit three diviners before he found one who would be willing to curse me. The first two didn’t want to curse me because of the good things I occasionally do for them. The bad news is that the diviner who took the money and did the curse was baptized about a year and a half ago. I watched as she went in and came out of the water, participated in the worship service, and shared in the body and blood of Christ. It was because of her decision that many in the community felt free to make a decision to follow Jesus.

Maybe her decision hasn’t lived up to her expectations; maybe the diviner business is not so good these days with people praying to God on their own about the minor difficulties of life; maybe the small children in her home were hungry that day. Whatever the reason, she took the payment and performed the divination.

I have no idea what the actual act was. That’s part of the power of a curse. The power of knowing what made the curse happened belongs to the diviner. If I wanted to counteract the curse, I would need to find another diviner who knew how that diviner did things so that he could undo the curse. Thankfully, I won’t be looking for a diviner—I already know the great High Priest Jesus.

The church leaders came that day to tell me about the curse. It was a curse that was done to make me leave Turkana and not return. And to tell me that they already prayed about it, and that I don’t need to worry about it. It’s beautiful to see growth in the desert.

They also came to tell me that while we were gone longer than usual (because of our vacation time), people started to think that maybe the curse was working. Maybe we weren’t coming back. Just imagine if we had decided enough was enough during our visit with family. What if we had resolved to return to Turkana to announce to our team and the church leaders that we were done and would be leaving in the next month or two. These were real possibilities and scenarios in our heads and words over the holidays. Thankfully, we had resolved to return to Turkana and do the job God has called us to do here.

The church leaders also came to tell me about Anyik’s daughter. A married woman, she delivered her first child the week before we returned. The child was fine, but the mother was not. The CMF nurse we employ in the area was called. He worked hard to treat her, but she needed to go to the hospital. If we had been here, I would have taken her to the hospital in my truck. Instead we delayed, and she died four days after delivery. As far as everyone in the village was concerned, Anyik was to be blamed for causing us to delay.

Anyik came the next day to greet me. We shook hands and he asked if I had heard about the bad thing that had happened. Before replying, I pondered whether he meant the curse or his daughter dying. I told him I had heard about his daughter. He said it was very bad. I asked if there were any other problems. He said there was hunger at his home, so I gave him some money to buy food for his family. That was all. He walked away to look after his animals.

We’ve been praying for protection from this curse and anything else the evil one throws our way. I found two more vipers, one in the garden and one outside our front door resting under the dog’s empty water dish when I picked it up. I found both of them on the same day, and came very close to them before I saw them. I went to get my snake killing stick and crushed their heads as God said I would in Genesis, rather uneventfully.

We’re also praying for more commitment and strength to continue with the tasks for which God has called us to Turkana. God has called us to be here now, to do this job; to mend my relationship with Anyik; to continue the growth of the church leaders; to visit with a baptized diviner who would curse me.

I trimmed all the grass in our garden to a nice, safe, short length. And I’ve finally rested my bare feet in the grass-- after careful inspection.