Home from Iraq

Dear family and friends,

I am grateful to be home again and healing from our Christian Peacemaker mission in Iraq and Jordan. And yet I long to be in Baghdad with our Iraqi sisters and brothers in these days. Remember that they dwell in the land and line of the children of Abraham and Sarah in a civilization centuries and millennia older than our own.

There is so much I want to share with you but will only share briefly for now. I hope to write a longer epistle of this amazing and unusual Lenten journey with Jesus. And it truly was a Lenten journey! Perhaps you found yourself on that Lenten journey with Jesus heading toward Jerusalem in some way with me. That indeed is what Lent is meant to do to us -- to take us with Jesus where we don't expect nor really want to go.

I arrived home late last Saturday night, April 5, after a 30 hour day and two flights from Amman to Seattle. A telling witness to western corporate life for my travel home is the difference between how Royal Jordanian Airlines and American Airlines treated me enroute. For about $400 RJA changed my ticket and put me in the best first class seat I have ever seen on the flight from Amman to JFK in New York. They took wonderful care of me in the first class lounge and getting me through customs and to the plane on a wheelchair as well as on the 12 hour and 40 minute flight to New York. AA wanted $1480 for a first class seat from JFK to Seattle even though there were seats available. So I endured the pain of a regular seat for a 6 hour flight at the end of a long wearing day.

It was so good to worship here at Seattle Mennonite Church and be with everyone again Sunday morning, even with a lot of media present. A late afternoon phone call with my parents and siblings and in-laws in Iowa was very good also. I long to talk personally with each one of you and respond to all your cards and phone calls and e-mail messages. I am so grateful for your love and prayers. I have been able to respond to only a few of the 500 plus e-mail messages so far. Please know that I hold you in my heart with prayer and gratitude.

My first week home is primarily recuperating from injuries, seeing doctors, and doing a little bit at church to get ready for this last Sunday in Lent and begin a Holy Week with Jesus and the Church. And yes, there have been innumerable media calls as well.

The next 6 weeks will continue to be a recovery for me. I have a broken thumb, sternum, rib, and a chip in my shoulder (Not on my shoulder!:-) all on the left side. So moving and laying down are painful (Hey, I don't like to sleep anyway!) I can't even drive until a lot more healing takes place.

We are grateful to receive word on Thursday, that the 13 members of the Iraq Peace Team who stayed in Baghdad are safe. Our Al-Finar Hotel was directly across the street from the Palestine Hotel where media folks were staying that got shot up by the US Marines a couple of days ago.

Here at Seattle Mennonite Church we have a lot of prayerful processing yet ahead of us as we share our sense of God's amazing grace and our experience and emotion through the journey of these past weeks. I hope we can find ways to do that with others of you as well. I will be doing some traveling and sharing this story in the months to come. I will work that schedule out with family and church leaders here. I know I cannot fulfill all requests but I welcome exploring it with you or a group in your home area if you want to contact me by phone or e-mail. I plan to meet with church leaders early in the week to begin planning this schedule so do let me know ASAP if you are interested.

As we enter Holy Week I encourage you to read and prayer often with one of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' Passion. And bear in mind and heart what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said with prophetic truth nearly 40 years ago: Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows. That is more true in the twenty-first century than ever before. Our life and faith and ministry is not for today alone. It is forever.

May the Peace of Christ be with you!