17 April 2011

UNDER THE WATERFALL:
Patrick ButlerThere is a good reason Christian Sunrise services are a vital part of the Easter tradition. It balances out the bunnies, eggs, hunts and candy often associated alongside this Christian observance. But oddly, some of the very people who might be most engaging of Easter are not.

Let me tip you off to a man you will come to recall the rest of your life if you meet him. If you are a resident of Dallas or Lufkin, Texas, Shreveport, La., or points in between, I recommend that you seriously consider traveling to see and hear the Rev. Emmanuel Nnyanzi, who returns soon to Uganda from his first trip to America.

It will be a lot harder to learn from this man of mercy and grace by traveling on a couple of nine-hour flights to Uganda and a six-hour trip down rut-ruined dirt roads to Emmy’s orphanage and school, rather than drive a couple of hundred miles by good-old USA paved freeway. It will cost much more, too.

Do it now is my advice.

But Nnyanzi — “Pastor Emmy” to those who know him — will be in the Tyler, Texas, area until May 1. To put this opportunity into perspective, if Corrie ten Boom were still alive, would you travel to see her today? It is my conviction that people such as Pastor Emmy, who is taking care of hundreds of orphans in Uganda without a day off or a salary, are ones who are going to change the world — perhaps in the same way Ten Boom did by forgiving her Nazi captors who killed her sister.     

I remember meeting Corrie ten Boom in Amsterdam in 1975. When I met Ten Boom, I had no idea who I was talking to. I had not heard her story of imprisonment in a Nazi death camp because she hid Jews in her home. All I knew was that my Netherlander friends called her “Aunt Cory” and she had a pretty good presentation. Later, after viewing the film "The Hiding Place” in Amsterdam, I realized I had been talking to a spiritual giant whose authority and power from her place of forgiveness was nothing short of awesome.
 
Since that experience, I’ve paid more attention to whom I was meeting and what they have done with their lives.
   
“Pastor Emmy” reminds me of meeting “Aunt Cory.” He is a unique individual who has escaped bitterness in situations that would make the average American stand on the steps of the White House with protest signs, demanding equal rights and vociferously declaring that their treatment was unjust, unfair, unwarranted and unacceptable.
    
There is no denying the “rightness” of human rights. No one wants to turn the clock back to the bad old days of oppression of the poor or helpless. But the question turns — as it did to Corrie ten Boom during World War II — to what our reactions will be when unjust and evil leadership takes control of what is just and good. 

Enter Pastor Emmy and his remarkable ministry despite injustice, rejection, denial of extensive formal education, resources, financial support and influence ministry leaders need. The only friend Emmy had, it seemed, was God. Evidently that was enough to save him — from destruction at the hands of others, and at his own hand, long enough to capture the attention of Texas supporters of his Parental Care Ministries.
   
Last Sunday, in Tyler, Texas — a deep South town in the middle of the "Bible belt" — Emmy revealed to hundreds of rapt well-to-do Texans that he’d almost committed suicide as a desperate teenager. Now 43, Emmy hugged dozens of his audience in the lobby afterwards who wished him well, blessed his work and filled out cards to sponsor one of his 600 orphans Emmy, his wife Sara and the staff of his Parental Care look after.  
   
I’ve met career ministers in my reporting years who were easily offended, bitter about their denomination, suspicious and guarded. Emmy displays none of those qualities, though from the American perspective, he would have plenty to complain about. We might enocourage him to get a hold of a lawyer. Instead, Emmy got a hold of God.
 
The results have been better, in my opinion. He told me how he escaped bitterness.
   
“I read the story of Joseph,” he told with a calm complexion and big smile, “and finally realized that all I have passed through was so that God could make me a better person. This took me about three years to realize. I also realized bitterness would kill me. In my life, I’ve been able to say as Joseph said to his brothers who thought him dead, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”
 
This is a secret so many of us need to know, that we may survive — and thrive — in this life.

Emmy will be in East Texas all week. For more information about where he will be, and to get a real blessing from the real McCoy, visit the Web at www.pcmonline.org. 

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