honoring a mentor-friend: John Mogabgab

At Ken's Sushi with John Mogabgab during a quick, 24-hour visit to Nashville in December 2012.

I thought of John often this past summer and intended to call. I wanted to know how he and his wife, Marjorie, were doing; how his lovely elderly mother, Babs, was faring; what editorial projects he was working on; and more. And I wanted to update him on the parts of my life that don't make it into newsletters. It had been a year since my last State-side visit and keeping up well via email between in-person visits wasn't John's strong suit. So I planned to call. But a summer full of apartment-hunting, moving, travel, and work, added to the 7-hour time difference, meant I never got farther than transferring his phone numbers from my US phone into my French phone in preparation for a spontaneous chat.

The last of my biggest summer travels took me to Togo for a week in early August, then on to Abuja, Nigeria to visit a friend for a couple days, and finally to Lagos, Nigeria to visit another friend. In Abuja I'd been mostly internet-less, so I was happy to fire up my smartphone upon arrival chez my friend in Lagos and connect to their wireless internet. Once connected, Viber alerted me to new messages from my American friend Nicole who is now living in South Africa and used to work with John.

The first message, sent the day I left Togo, told me Nicole had recently learned that John was gravely ill. The second, sent the day before I received it, carried the unbelievable news that John Mogabgab was no longer residing this side of heaven. He and I would not be having the catch-up chat I'd been planning for months now.

:'-(    :'-(

Sometime in 2003-ish when I was slinging espresso at a Music Row Starbucks in Nashville and was beginning (barely beginning) to launch my freelance writing career, I discovered that several of our customers worked at the Upper Room publishing house down the street. We began talking writing when they came for their daily (or more than daily) coffee. Finally, I one day gathered up the courage to ask Steve, the publisher at the time, if I could have a formal meeting with him sometime when I wasn't on the Starbucks clock.

He readily agreed. And when I arrived for the meeting, I discovered that he'd made plans to introduce me to many of his editors. That meeting led to a long-standing relationship with and a variety of work for the Upper Room. Unfortunately, John Mogabgab, the editor of Weavings spiritual formation journal, wasn't available that day.

But no matter, because when John next came to Starbucks, he apologized in his gracious, gentle way and suggested that we meet for lunch soon. We did. And what began as a one-off networking meeting morphed into a professional mentoring relationship morphed into a life mentor-friend relationship morphed into being an almost surrogate parent for a girl who lived not-so-near her actual parents.

Thus proceeded years of regular lunches together. Sometimes John's equally exceptional wife, Marjorie, was able to join us. Sometimes not. Most often we met in the cozy book-lined dining room at Alektor Café, a café-bookstore-gift shop run by an Orthodox priest, until it closed/relocated. Afterwards our usual choice was Ken's Sushi, where lunches with John transformed me from sushi novice to sushi lover.

John has been one of my most consistent mentors during the past decade of the windy vocational path I travel, the one that finally brought me to France two years ago and is often filled with big decisions that don't readily follow worldly wisdom. With his height and girth and thick gray-white hair and beard, his physical presence is strong, yet it's tempered by a scholarly gentleness. His relationship with the Lord runs deep but never descends into spiritual platitudes. His counsel is wise and never pushy. He acknowledges the challenges and paradoxes of faith but never seems disturbed by them.

One of my favorite quirky traits of John has been his capacity to reference just the right pearl of wisdom at just the right moment from just the right saint/great thinker/religious leader. Partly I'm enamored by it because remembering quotes is not one of my talents. I always picture his head as containing a giant quote Rolodex that automatically whooshes around (with appropriate Rolodex card-flipping sound included) and falls open to the perfect bit of wisdom for whatever I'm wrestling with. Part of what was beautiful about this quirk is the way it subconsciously reminded me that the beliefs I claim didn't just spring up yesterday. Along with John and all these others that he could quote, I'm part of a long, world-wide lineage.

Courtesy of my un-talent, I can't quote most of the great things John said to me over the years, but one question--a simple one, really, yet a profound one--that occasionally pops before me again at important crossroad moments and that I hope I never forget is this: "What can you do with your whole heart?"

That's a question I hope to continually hold before the Lord, pausing in thankfulness for John's influence in my life when I do.

---
John, I'm sad that my impending visit to Nashville won't include another visit with you! But thank you for your gracious generosity to me and for letting God work through you to give to me. Thanks for sharing your life and thus being a marker of God's faithfulness in mine.

where in the world did 2007 go?

Or perhaps I should say, Where in the world did I go in 2007? As the clock launches us into a new year, I find myself wondering, Where in the world will I go in 2008?

After spending Christmas week with my siblings and their families, I've traveled with my parents back to their home in Kansas. It's good to be here and to feel like it's the closest I've currently got to a physical home. Even though I didn't grow up in this house and don't know which kitchen cupboard holds glasses and which one holds bowls, at least the bowls and glasses inside the cupboards are the ones I grew up drinking and eating out of.

I've unpacked my clothes, and tomorrow I'll start sorting through files and bills and other fun things. Nothing like celebrating the arrival of a new year with file folders! Yippee!

This is a thick time of life. There's so much opportunity, yet so much to be done in order to capitalize on it. There are so many unknowns, yet I don't want to rush too quickly through to the other side of them, back into the known (though my life tends to linger mostly in the unknowns even when things are in order).

I'm glad for the short days this time of year and glad that we get to live in Advent and Epiphany during the dark, cold season, in contrast to my African friends. Somehow those conditions outdoors are good for cozy reflection and prayer indoors.

It's been good to be with family, to have them ask me about my travels, my impressions, my experiences. It's good to talk about it. Yet, I understand somewhat what some of my missionary friends in Africa said about how hard it is to explain things to people, how hard it is for people who've never been to Africa to understand stories about Africa. But I guess that's probably true of anywhere.

Now that I've reached a place I'll get to sit still in for a little while (though this month is sure to speed by faster than I was when I got my last speeding ticket ;-) ), I'm able to better feel the yearning to go back to Africa some day, more than once and hopefully sooner than later. But, it's not time yet, and I don't yet know what will be the particular context for my return trips.

These past months have taught me some good and important things about the vocation and calling God's made me for. But, pieces of those lessons are still a little unclear, dangling just out of reach, not quite grasp-able. I look forward to taking the steps to reach those dangling things.

One of the little things I can do in the aftermath of my Africa months is pray for and with new friends across the ocean. It's challenging to stay informed sometimes, but it helps when I get emails from folks in Kenya asking us to pray for their country. More than one of the countries I visited during my travels was gearing up, like the U.S., for presidential elections. Kenya is the first of those countries to hold their elections. Many were hopeful that Kenya could be a model for fair and peaceful elections and governmental transition. However, that hope hasn't been met positively. Please join our Kenyan brothers and sisters in praying for their country, for an end to the chaos that has erupted following the vote counting, for tribalism not to divide people, for truth and peace.

May 2008 be a year that God's grace and truth and mercy are newly absorbed by places and people that have dark histories.

more cousins!!

It's hard to see in the small version of this photo but the red roofed buildings in the center of the photo are the buildings of Edwaleni, the Free Methodist mission station my grandpa Carl Rice grew up on. My great-grandparents Silas and Mabel Rice ran a technical training school there, teaching things like auto mechanics, carpentry, and tanning.

Edwaleni was set in the middle of beautiful, rural, green rolling hills.


Five Rice's standing at the gate entrance to the main Edwaleni grounds: Lauren and dad Jimmy (my dad's first cousin) and James (back row); Carole (James' wife, another cousin-in-law :-) ) and me. James and Lauren are my second cousins. James' dad, LeRoy, was Jimmy's older brother. The general consensus seems to be that I look the most like James and maybe a bit like Wendy (see below). Something about the Rice eyes that have gotten passed on to our generation. My dad and bro have them. James' dad had them. And some other people before that had them.


This stone is on the pillar just outside the right border of the photo above. Rev. J.S. Rice is James Silas, my great-grandfather.


Looking out from inside the old carpentry school building.

James, me and Lauren standing at Rice's Halt, as this spot is officially labeled in government books. None of the locals call it that, which is why we created a neighborhood spectacle when we climbed atop the spot named for our family.

Rice's halt is not far from the outer entrance to the mission station property. It's apparently a bus stop.

Jimmy (my first cousin, once removed), wife Mavourneen (I think I spelled it right! :-) ), Lauren and me at their house in Blythedale Beach, north of Durban.

Vourn, me and Jimmy

Today I enjoyed having coffee with another second cousin! Wendy is Jill's twin sister. Jill thinks Wendy and I might have similar eyes, and both Wendy and I think we have long necks. ;-)

Then we picked up Wendy's daughter Sarah. She turns 9 years old tomorrow! Happy Birthday, Sarah!

James, Carole and I wrapped up the evening with a movie night complete with tasty popcorn!

Just to clarify for you guys (since I don't know how to put a family tree on here), all of these cousins are children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of my grandpa Carl Rice's oldest brother Lowell. Lowell stayed in South Africa as a missionary doctor with the Free Methodist Church. His wife Marjorie was a nurse from Canada who came to Africa on her own. She and Lowell met when she came to South Africa from Rwanda or Burundi or one of the Central African countries. Other than short trips to the U.S., Lowell and Marjorie's kids grew up in South Africa.

cape town cousins

I haven't had much internet access in the past week or two, and I've got it today, so this is mad-dash-update day. Hold on! It's going to be fun!

At long last! Cousin pictures! Courtesy of the post below, I can now officially introduce you to my SECOND COUSIN Jillian (Jill) Stoltz! Note the cool art in the background...Jill's an artist even when she's not comfortable introducing herself that way! We had a very fun time visiting. Jill is just a couple years older than I am.

Jill and husband Joseph, who I guess is not officially my cousin at all (geneology.com didn't say anything about cousins-in-law), but he still gave me a hard time like any good male cousin/brother/uncle should. :-) They treated me to a little sunset cruise the night before I left. This was my first time being in a boat on an ocean. I liked it!

Cute little Hannah Stoltz, my second cousin once removed, chose me to read her bedtime stories a couple nights during my visit. Fun times! (Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of Gabriel, my smiley laid-back 6 month old cousin. I'll have to add a photo of him later!)

Jill and I visited the Aquarium in Cape Town one afternoon. This picture is from the aquarium's cafe deck.

This photo has nothing to do with cousins, except that maybe they will like the photo like I do. It was taken during my short walk on the beautiful, empty beach in Stompneusbaai (Stump Nose Bay) on the coast a couple hours north of Cape Town.

to help you and me both

As I have entered the land of cousins, I figured it was high time I did some quick research to find out exactly what name to give my relation to these folks. Geneology.com was there for me. Here's what they had to say:

Cousin (a.k.a "first cousin"): Your first cousins are the people in your family who have two of the same grandparents as you. In other words, they are the children of your aunts and uncles.

Second Cousin : Your second cousins are the people in your family who have the same great-grandparents as you, but not the same grandparents.

Third, Fourth, and Fifth Cousins : Your third cousins have the same great-great-grandparents, fourth cousins have the same great-great-great-grandparents, and so on.

Removed : When the word "removed" is used to describe a relationship, it indicates that the two people are from different generations. You and your first cousins are in the same generation (two generations younger than your grandparents), so the word "removed" is not used to describe your relationship.

The words "once removed" mean that there is a difference of one generation. For example, your mother's first cousin is your first cousin, once removed. This is because your mother's first cousin is one generation younger than your grandparents and you are two generations younger than your grandparents. This one-generation difference equals "once removed."

Twice removed means that there is a two-generation difference. You are two generations younger than a first cousin of your grandmother, so you and your grandmother's first cousin are first cousins, twice removed.