Reunion - June 2024

UCU Canons Reunion Address - Jason Mehl - 29 June 2024

UCU Sports Complex, Mukono, Uganda

I lived and worked at Uganda Christian University (UCU) in Mukono, Uganda from 2003-2009. In late June of 2024, I returned to UCU for the first time since I left in a hurry for reasons beyond my control. It is impossible to make up for 15 years worth of lost time in two weeks, but being welcomed back and hosted by so many old friends was one of the greatest blessings I’ve ever experienced. In the middle of my visit, we had a reunion that began in the afternoon sun at the UCU Sports Complex, during which we played, hugged, talked, laughed, cried, feasted, and shared stories until the sun set. Under the lights, we ate, and many speakers blessed me and the small crowd with encouraging, kind, and generous words. When I was invited to speak, the lights went out and phone lights twinkled us to the close of the evening. Below is a written reproduction of what I spoke into the midst of the glittering galaxy of treasured old and new members of the sacred UCU Canons family, which I cherish as my own.

Thank you all for getting here. Some of you came from far away at great expense to you and your families. Thank you for that. It’s great to see all of you--from near or far. And it’s best to see you all greeting each other and enjoying each other again after so many years. This week has already been one of the best times of my life.

Thank you all for your kind words. I am humbled and grateful. I’m sorry that I might talk for long, but I’ve been away for 15 years and I feel like I need to share share two things that require some explaining and processing and I do not want to miss out on this opportunity to share with all of you--OG’s and current Canons.

The two things are: an apology and a correction. 

THE APOLOGY is this: I am sorry for leaving you abruptly in 2009. I will explain this in greater detail later, but it is the most important thing so I am saying it first. 

THE CORRECTION is this: I did not build this (UCU Sports Department and Complex). You did--all of you, together. 

Over the last several days, and in what some of you just shared, many people have thanked me for “building this.” When people say this, I tell them, “It was an honor and a pleasure and I’m so happy to see that others are continuing to make it grow.” But the truth is--the truth I know and see clearly is--that you, the players who were here  when I was coaching, built this. 

Even better, the bigger truth is that God built this for us and through us for others. That’s what God does. That’s our story. But I want you to know that more than me, YOU built the Canons and UCU Sports, along with all of the other student-athlete players and coaches who were here, starting teams and leading teams in those early years. My role was to be the ill-equipped, weak one whom God uses despite weakness.

That’s what God has done with his people throughout history. Think about Abraham. God promised him that he would be the father of many generations. He was 90. Then he had to wait 10 years before his old wife gave birth to their first son, Isaac, when Abraham was 100. It didn’t “make sense.” Think about Moses. God came to Moses in the desert and asked him to free the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Moses was afraid, nervous, he didn’t speak well. But God used him to free his enslaved people and God kept the covenant he made with Abraham. God does this all the time so that people who are paying attention will know that the HE, GOD, YHWH, is the power behind the goodness, deliverance, and restoration he promises. 

And that’s the story of UCU Sports. In 2003 I was invited to come here to work as a Writing and Study Skills lecturer. That’s the only thing I’m officially qualified to do. I played very small college basketball in the US, but I had never--still haven’t--been trained as a coach or sports administrator. I met Stephen Noll when I was traveling through California and he invited me to come to teach at UCU as a missionary if I could raise the money for my salary. I raised the money and came out. I had no other plans--no other job opportunities. I was glad to be able to come to UCU to see if I could teach. 

Then, as “32” (one of the OG’s) explained, circumstances led to me playing pick-up games on a tiny court with about 50 guys. After we played they asked me to coach. I said, “Yes.” Then, Stephen Noll, VC at the time, asked if I would develop a Sports Department. I said, “Yes.” Then, NUSFU asked us to play basketball on broken rims at Namboole. I said, “No!”

That was it. After that, there were many moments of “Yes” and some important moments of “No!” and here we are. Many of the “Yes” moments resulted in many of you being here. I asked the UCU Administration to help us with scholarships. They said, “Yes.” As only he can, God introduced me to Mugabe and Jeff and I invited them to be the first two UCU students on sports scholarship. They said, “Yes.” Then they invited many of you. You said, “Yes.”

We all worked, we all played, we won, we lost, we won some more. That was it. That’s how God used YOU to build this. This is yours--the facilities, the trophies, the community, the brother and sisterhood, the love--it’s amazing and beautiful because of God and because of you and the love God has given you to share.

The love brings me back to the apology. Again. I’m sorry that I left abruptly and without an explanation. I had developed a relationship with all of you. I’m sure that leaving like I did at least challenged that relationship with most of you. I think it damaged that relationship with some of you. I know things became difficult for many of you in different ways. I’m sorry.

But God knows what he’s doing and he’s always working things out--he’s always working us toward RESTORATION. Adam and Eve sinned in the garden. Things had to change then, and they did. But since then, God has been working on RESTORING our relationship with him.

I Peter 5:10-11 - [10] And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. [11] To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.

This is God’s work. It’s what he’s always been doing and always will be doing, FOR us THROUGH us, for each other, for his kingdom.

Now, let me try to explain why I left. I couldn’t explain any of this at the time because I didn’t understand it. Now that I understand more, I’ll try to explain. I left because I developed Panic Anxiety Disorder and I needed to be RESTORED. For the last year-and-a-half that I was here--from August 2007 until I left in April 2009, my body was doing wild, unpredictable things at unpredictable times. I lived with constant fear that became panic, dread, and almost became despair. Normal life and work became more and more difficult each day, until they became impossible.

First, I’ll tell you what anxiety disorder is. It is a condition that affects many--1 out of 5 Americans, Europeans--people in the wealthiest “most stable” countries in the world. Put simply, it is a condition that develops when someone experiences normal anxiety for a period of time and does not handle it well. In my case, I was trying to do too many things perfectly for too long without rest, but more importantly, without acknowledging my weakness. After enough of this, my brain began to treat any form of difficulty as if it was life-threatening and my body began to respond with panic attacks. 

Here’s how it works (again--I didn’t know any of this was happening when I was experiencing it). Imagine right now, in the dark where we sit, that three lions came running down those stairs toward us. What would you do? You don’t know what you would do. You can’t plan for that. Your body literally will not let you think during those moments. Your cognitive brain shuts down in those moments and your AMYGDALA takes over and tells your body what to do without you thinking. You’ve probably heard of “fight or flight” instincts. This is how fight or flight happens. The amygdala is a piece that is in all of our brains that works involuntarily. We can’t control it or manipulate it in anyway. It makes its own memories according to its own rules and it controls your survival instincts and your adrenaline. As soon as the lions are visible, the amygdala recognizes them as a threat to your life. It instantly shuts down the cognitive brain and sends a signal to your body that you will die in the next few minutes unless something extraordinary happens. At the same time, it floods your body with adrenaline to help you accomplish something extraordinary--fight against something that is stronger than you or run away from something that is faster than you. Thank God there are no lions, but also thank God he’s made us with this extra energy when we need it so we don’t have to be walking around all the time wondering what we should do if lions attack.

You’ve all experienced this adrenaline rush many times. In games, you’re often not thinking. You’re playing with desperation because you know that losing is like death and you don’t want to lose and your training has trained your body and your brain--including your amygdala--what to do in certain situations when loss (death) becomes possible. You get that extra burst of energy or strength to get a steal, a rebound, or block a shot that saves the game and it feels like it saves your life. 

BUT … if you’re having a panic attack, things are different. You’re not playing a game and there are no lions attacking, but you’re so deeply worried or concerned about something that your amygdala kicks in, and does its thing and suddenly you are full of adrenaline AND your body is being told that you are about to die. This is what a real panic attack is. You’re being flooded with adrenaline but there’s nothing to fight or to run from. The unnecessary adrenaline rushes through your body--your heart begins racing, your breathing gets fast and heavy and your body does many crazy things--goes numb, twitches, cramps us, goes cold, goes hot, sweats, shakes. For me this is/was often severe chest pains and headaches. Usually, after 3-10 minutes, the panic calms down, your cognitive brain takes over, and things gradually normalize leaving your body very tired. 

When you know you have anxiety disorder and you understand how your body is working, panic attacks are very difficult (your body is convinced that you’re about to die) but you can recover from them, manage your thoughts as well as possible, and not live in constant fear that you might actually die the next time one of them hits.

However, when this began happening to me, in August 2007, a month before Lily was born, I didn’t know what it was. My first panic attack was on the way home from Lugogo after a  game. Lorraine, Celia, and Brenda were in the car riding home with Louise and me. My fingers had been going numb off and on all afternoon. I’d never experienced that before. I told Louise about it and she told me that she had a friend whose daughter experienced that once and she went for treatment and they did an MRI and found out that her spine was deteriorating. When I heard that, my Amygdala took over. I got dizzy, began sweating. I pulled over, gave the ladies cash for taxi’s, and Louise and I switched places and she drove me to the International Hospital. I thought I was having a stroke or a heart attack. So did she. We spent a few hours in the hospital--Louise was 8 months pregnant with Lily. The doctors told us there were no issues with my body at all. That I needed to rest. For the next year, these kinds of episodes kept happening, mostly I would have severe chest pains and think I was having a heart attack. I saw many doctors and they did many tests and all of them said I was okay and needed to rest. It was basketball season. I took a few days off here and there, but we kept practicing and playing.

In July of 2008, mid season, I lost my voice. Many of you remember. For four months I couldn’t talk. In October, one doctor found a lump in my throat. A few days later he went in to do a biopsy on the lump to see if it was cancerous, but the lump was no longer there. After this, Louise realized she was exhausted. I still couldn’t talk. She’d been working, taking care of Lily, and taking care of me through all of my medical scares and she couldn’t do it anymore.

Louise needed RESTORATION. I needed RESTORATION. We didn’t have money to travel, but her friends in Ireland told her they would pay to fly us to Ireland and find us a place to stay for a month. Even though the league playoffs were starting here, I agreed to leave for Ireland for the sake of Louise, Lily, my life, my wife, our marriage, and our family. 

I could tell stories about that month in Ireland forever, but I’ll only tell you the short version. We took Lily and were there for one month. The second day we were there I met a 92-year-old Irish Anglican priest who was also a counselor/therapist. Even without a voice, I was able to explain my situation to him. When I told him I’d been living in Uganda for five years, he told me he used to live in Uganda--in Mukono! His first job as a priest in 1946, was teaching at Bishop Tucker Theological College! We knew the same buildings, the same trees. This was one several ways that God was telling me he’d been paying attention all along and planning my RESTORATION. In our first meeting, that priest, Dick McDonald, taught me The Jesus Prayer and encouraged me to practice saying it while breathing deeply, slowly in and slowly out. The prayer is: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a miserable sinner. I began breathing and saying the prayer for 15 minutes twice each day. Two days later, my voice returned completely! It had been gone for four months and it returned in two days!

For the rest of that month, I met with Dick McDonald twice-a-week. Through those meetings, I was able to learn that I’d been working incorrectly and thinking incorrectly for years. Even since before I came to Uganda, I’d developed patterns of thinking and handling difficulty that were unhealthy. Subconsciously, I was taking some things way too seriously. When I came to Uganda and started working with you all, I became INSTRUMENTAL in the lives of other people. That had not been the case for me before. Other people, many of you, in one way or another depended on me. I was not afraid or intimidated by this new responsibility. I was honored and wanted to honor God and you by not letting you down. I was not thinking about much of this. I was simply saying “Yes” often, “No!” sometimes, and trying to make you better people and win games. Then Louise came along. I became instrumental for her (and her for me). Then Lily was born. I was instrumental as an actual parent, a brand new way that some of you can now understand. Then my aging parents moved out to live and work at UCU--I had already been too instrumental in their lives for my whole life without knowing it, and them coming to UCU created another burden I thought I had to carry. All of this new instrumental life led to new opportunities to take new things too seriously. As I did, without knowing it, I elevated the stakes too high. In all of those categories of life where I had become instrumental, I had convinced myself, subconsciously, that success meant life and failure meant death--in everything--games, relationships (with you all, with my family), scholarships (players coming to UCU, me trying to get players to the US). I was taking all of this too seriously. I cared too much.

As a result of living and thinking this way for years, my brain had become broken--the wires were twisted--my amygdala was wired to see potential problems or failures as life-threatening. However, with no lions to run from and no shots to block, my body was being flooded with adrenaline it didn’t need. 

When I came back after that month in Ireland, my voice stayed, but within a few months, the other crazy things began happening with more intensity and more frequency. In March, a doctor at IHK diagnosed me with panic anxiety disorder. A few weeks later, we left, abruptly. We went back to Ireland. I saw Dick McDonald several more times. Enough times to learn and begin to understand something I never could have imagined or understood: ANXIETY DISORDER IS A GIFT. As much as it caused great difficulty for me and many others, including most of you, those panic attacks were an alarm system inside my body letting me know that I needed to make changes in how I thought, prayed, loved God, loved my wife and kids, and decided what I could and could not do. I’m still learning this, but I know that God has used a combination of factors to help me learn how to live and serve his Kingdom better. He’s used surprise agents to help bring RESTORATION to me. He used anxiety disorder, Louise, Dick McDonald, Africa, Uganda, Mukono, UCU, FUBA, Kampala, each and every one of you, as agents of love and RESTORATION. Unfortunately, I had to leave in order to see, hear, learn those lessons.

Since I’ve been back in the US, I haven’t lived a day without thinking often about the difference between daily life in America and daily life in Uganda. In Uganda, you know what you don’t have, but you focus on what you need to get for today, you share in the struggle to get it, and when you get it, you share it. That is where love and relationships build. In the US, you almost always have what you need for today, so you don’t appreciate it. You work to get what you want--the extra things that many others have, but none of you need. If you get any of them, you quickly stop appreciating those things and focus on the next thing you want but don’t need. You don’t share much because you don’t think you have enough to share because you’re working to get the next thing you want because you’re convinced you need it and can’t rest until you have it. This is how many people in the West have so many things, but miss out on Faith, Hope, Love, Joy, and stable, lasting relationships. This is a generalization, but it’s true. And it’s connected to the reasons why the US is near the top of the list of countries with the most people struggling with anxiety disorder, and East Africa is near the bottom.

A couple of days ago I had a long afternoon with Nick, Mugabe, and Sam at Julius’s Canteen. We told stories and talked about so many things. We talked about the struggle. We talked about the tragic loss of Ogweno and Bongo. Mugabe insisted that we, as Canons, could have done more for both of those guys. They were teammates, brothers. They were in trouble and needed help. We lost them and we will always miss them, especially those who knew them best. We need to learn from this loss and do everything we can to support each other, check in with each other more. The guys who couldn’t travel here today--Eliud, Biggy, Diesel, Deus, Dan, Raymond, Brian, Toosh, Anto, Frank, Daudi, Norman, Mwanza, Mabiti, Chris, Ken, Kugonza, Macline, Flavia, others unnamed but not forgotten.

We are called in Colossians 3:12-15 to do more: [12] Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, [13] bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. [14] And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. [15] And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.

Let’s check on each other and be available. Teach each other, your children, your students, your colleagues, your players to love each other better. TEACH OTHERS BY LOVING THEM BETTER.

You have no idea how often I’ve thought about all of you. I’ve been thinking about coming back here and hugging you all for 15 years. It’s such a gift to be able to return here and spend time with all of you, without fear, without panic, and with LOVE. We’ve had difficulty, together, apart. But the LOVE we have--our LOVE, God’s LOVE--is what defines us, NOT the difficulty. Thank you for welcoming me back. As I said before, I had to leave in order to absorb the lessons you taught me. I also know that me returning here is a testimony that God, through other people, has completed an important part of my RESTORATION process.

Next week, I must leave again. I need to go home to Louise, Lily, and Moses. I want to go home to them. They’re my family. When I left before, it was early and painful on many levels. But now, it’s right. When I leave, I’m not taking love with me. You all are here and the love is here. Please keep loving each other better. As you can, bear each other’s burdens as we are called to do in Galatians 6:1-2. [1] Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted. [2] Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

My RESTORATION is not complete. Neither is yours. No one will be completely restored until we are completely reunited with God in eternity. But the love I’ve found here, this week, and today--tonight--is the continuation of our RESTORATION. I will always pray for all of you and continue to try to love you better. Thank you for loving me!