AIM International - Europe - Bridget's Bunia Blog 58

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Bridget's Bunia Blog 58 | The Mystery of the Incarnation

Bridget's Bunia Blog 58 | The Mystery of the Incarnation

The Mystery of the Incarnation

There was a look of intense concentration on his face as he moved the hands around the cardboard clock face figuring out 24-hour clock times and their equivalent 12-hour expressions in English.

If his shaved head would grow hair, it would sprout grey. And his face was weathered from many years. He was no 20-year old, but the esteemed pastor of the thriving town church taking some of my classes to prepare himself for further studies in Kenya.

Some of the students at ISP/CECA-20 are older, experienced men. They have held teaching positions. They are fluent speakers of many languages. And here they are stumbling through the wrong use of English prepositions, using strange tenses and weird 'frenchisms'. You feel for them. Not for the 20-year olds, full of confidence and ego. But the older men. Why go through this humiliation? Doesn't it reduce their dignity?

But the Master didn't think so as he humbled himself to become a human and to grow in wisdom and to wash feet. His dignity wasn't reduced. Nor theirs as they seek to follow in the footsteps of the Master teacher.

Don't do anything from selfish ambition or from a cheap desire to boast, but be humble toward one another, always considering others better than yourselves. And look out for one another's interests, not just for your own. The attitude you should have is the one that Christ Jesus had (who said): Whoever makes himself great will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be made great. Phil 2:3-5 & Mat 23:12 With good wishes for a new year of growing like the incarnate Son of God - in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men.

Blessings,

Bridget

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About Bridget Howard

Bridget Howard’s first recollection of Africa is being shown slides of termite hills in the Belgian Congo during a Sunday school class. “From a young age I had a sense of purpose from God that I would one day teach in Africa”.

Bridget is not one to freely give out her age but it occasionally does slip out that she first went to Congo to work 26 years ago when the country was still called Zaïre. Her first assignment was as a teacher at Rethy Academy, the Mission’s school for children of its members. Her next assignment was as a school inspector in Zandeland where, as she puts it, she: “cycled around inspecting teachers and outside toilets of the church schools!”

Following evacuation from Congo as a result of the fighting that errupted around the Great Lakes in the wake of the Rwandan genocide, Bridget worked at Aim’s International Office in Bristol. She returned to Congo in 2005 to teach English at the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique in Bunia. The ISP exists to prepare students to teach at secondary schools run by the CECA-20, Aim’s partner church in Congo.

Since her return Bridget has been sending her ‘blog’. She admits that ‘composition’ was not a favourite lesson when at secondary school but writing has become less of a chore as she told friends back in the UK of her daily experiences of life in Africa. “Maybe it’s an exalted sense of my own importance as being ‘From Our Own Correspondent-like’ I can pretend to be Aim’s very own Kate Adie!”