My Favorite Part

This week began the best and most precious aspect of my semester.  CHAIN is an organization that offers a home for orphans and the blind while also giving them a quality education. 

Children

Health

Advocacy

Intervention

Network

Every Thursday for the next 10 weeks I will be spending the day with over 100 precious children.  Children with disabilities are often overlooked in Ugandan society, even more so than orphans, so CHAIN has the goal of speaking worth into these children while offering life skills.  They want to ingrain these children with the fact that they matter to God and to society, for we all have something to offer.  I am looking forward to the time we are going to spend together and investing in these precious kids. J

Poverty, Famine, and Joy

  Poverty is the absence of hope. When thinking of poverty in this perspective it is very hard to look at Uganda as a “poverty-stricken” country. Ugandans are very gracious and live life in a way that gives every person (even children) value. The biggest difference between Ugandans and Americans is their humility in times of worship. At Uganda Christian University we have community worship (chapel) twice a week, and it is the highlight of my week.  The way students here approach the throne of God is inspiring. I get chills from attending worship….not because I’m in Africa, but because I experience God in a different way in this place.

 

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.  Matthew 5:3

Grace is the famine of our lives in America.  I feel that all too often we do not come to God in the humility that is being exemplified by our Ugandan brothers and sisters. When I think of Uganda, I do not think of their lack of financial resources, but their being poor in spirit.  They are able to look at the nothingness we have all arisen from and thank God for bringing them out of it.

 Joy is a response of the heart, not an adaptation of circumstances. The people here have next to nothing, but their lives reflect otherwise.  The joy and love of those I have encountered thus far here in Uganda is overwhelming.  Never before have I experienced such hospitality and humility.

As I prepared to come to Uganda my main thoughts were how I could help while I’m here, not what I could learn or get out of it, but to my surprise, I have learned more in the past three weeks about grace, change, life, and humility than I prepared myself for.  Africa does not need our help; they need our friendship.

Friends encourage in times of poverty, thrive off of mercy in times of famine, and keep love deep within their hearts for one another.  That is what Africa needs….it’s what we all need. 

Just a typical weekend in Uganda :)

This was my first weekend to be at home here in Uganda, and it involved quite a range of activities.  Saturday consisted of helping make lunch and dinner for the day, which is an adventure in itself.  Our kitchen is outside in a small tin building....it consists of two "stoves" (3 bricks with space to put fire wood in between).  I spent a solid hour peeling matooke, which is "the food of Africa and Heaven" according to my Ugandan mother....we eat it for lunch and dinner.  It looks like a weird banana before it's peeled, and once it's cooked it looks like a heavier version of mashed potatoes.  Speaking of potatoes, peeling them is another job I've taken on.  Potatoes, or Irish as we call them here, are also served with the majority of our meals....even for breakfast sometimes.  So after peeling lots of matooke and potatoes, I butchered a chicken...that was an experience in itself :) One that I'm hoping to never relive.  I spent the rest of the day playing with my little brother and doing homework, but even playing is different here.....Enoch has no toys, but views the world as his playground.  I admire the freedom in that.

Life is life no matter where you live it

Although this semester is quite a bit different than my typical time at Williams, it's still life.  I still have to wash clothes....just by hand.  I still eat in a cafeteria for lunch everyday...there's just a lot less options (rice, beans, and bananas).  And I still have a family.  I'm pretty sure my family will be my favorite part about my time in Uganda.

My Father, Reverend Henry is the pastor for the Church of Uganda and looks two times younger than what he is.  My Mothers name is Irene, and she keeps the house all tied together along with Rev. Henry's two sisters: Jessica and Bekah.  Jessica is 24 and Bekah is 22...they do most of the cooking.  Irene and Henry only have 2 actual children: Enoch (age 5) and Elezar (8 months).  Our house has three bed rooms, two bathrooms, one "kitchen" sink, a living room/eating area, and a small room for ironing clothes.   In Uganda it is very common to take in extra children/teens as well, so my family not only has Jessica, Bekah, Enoch, Elezar, and me living there, but 2 young men as well.  The two guys live in a small building behind our house, but shares meals with us.  They are all absolutely precious!

Although I'm used to dorm life, spending the evenings helping make dinner and playng with my little brothers is the highlight of my day.  Life is still life here in Uganda....it just looks a little different.

The Rwandan Birthday

Being right on the equator, it gets bright pretty quickly, but I managed to wake up and make it outside just in time to see the most incredible sunrise…..for some reason everything is just more spectacular in Africa. I cannot possibly think of a better way to spend my birthday than the day that followed. On Sunday, August 28^th our team of students woke up planning to spend the morning worshipping with our Rwandan bothers and sisters.  Having been to several (culturally) different churches, most of Sunday’s activities did not come as a surprise to me.  Just like any church service, we sat and stood multiple times for worship, prayers, scripture reading, and finally sat in expectation of the message. After the sermon, there was a special act of worship; a dance.  After a while the dancers had us join in, sorry my fellow Baptists! ;)  This was awkward and uncomfortable for us, but the act in itself was beautiful.  The freedom these people have in Christ is evident far beyond their time of dancing.

The emphasis of our trip to Rwanda was to learn about the Genocide, and we saw several effects of it first hand at church that morning.  One woman even had a 4 inch long machete slash on her forehead….the people there almost act as if the genocide itself never occurred, but the scars and the memorials remain. 

For the next three nights we stayed at a Catholic guest house outside of Kigali, and there was a memorial right outside our room…..less than 20 years ago people were slaughtered right there.  I don’t understand how people can act as if nothing ever happened.  Even the woman with a gash in her head did not seem to doubt God’s goodness and plan through it all.  

Although this birthday was spent learning about the death of others, I have never before seen so much life.  

The Here and Now

After spending 25+ hours in the air, we arrived in Uganda around 7 p.m. (East African time) last night.  We stayed in the dorms of UCU (Uganda Christian University) for the night to prepare for a busy day ahead. Today has been filled with meetings, meetings, and good food.  Tonight I will meet my host family and spend the evening with them.  Tomorrow me and 29 other students will head to Rwanda for the week.  Since it is the “winter” season  over here, we are wandering around in 80 degree weather….not too bad, if I may so say myself.  I am greatly anticipating what the next 4 months hold! 

Leaving is hard, but going is easy.

Over the past week, saying goodbye has become difficult as the time to go to Uganda approaches.  I hate sad, sappy moments when everyone feels like life will never be the same, but I guess they are right.....Life will never be the same.  Today I realized that life never being is the same is a good thing.  Some people adapt to change a little bit better than others, but I think it's more about the willingness to embrace change rather than change itself that really, well, changes us.

What brought this to my attention is a passage that I recently shared with a friend as I was dealing with leaving.  In Matthew chapter 4 (verses 18-22), Jesus calls his first disciples.  In verse 19, Jesus gives them a simple invitation: "Come, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men". The response of these fishermen blows me away.  Verse 20 says "At once they left their nets and followed him".

In bold obedience, the first disciples dropped everything they owned, knew, and loved to follow the calling of Jesus.  I can't imagine the thought process of these men! To give up everything immediately.  I wish we all responded to God's callings in this type of obedience!!


 At this point in time, the disciples had no idea the adventures that would take place in their own lives as a result of following the Savior.  On the other had, they also had no idea of the heartache, disappointment and punishment they would face.

In my own life, whenever I have to make a decision, I think about how it immediately affects me-not the end result.  I wonder which of these is more of the disciples thought process.  If I were on the boat that day when Jesus called them to drop everything and follow him, I would have hesitated, just like I did when I was beginning to apply for the Uganda trip.

I knew being accepted for this trip meant leaving everything I knew and everything (and one) I loved.  That was my first thought, not the end result.  I knew that leaving in itself would be one of the hardest things to not only do, but also explain to everyone else.  I will never forget the response of the students at Central when I told them I was going to Uganda for a semester.....they focused on the immediate effects as well.  With disappointed faces, I heard "you're going to leave us?" over and over again.  That broke my heart.  I tried to explain  my leaving in a positive way by saying that it was only for a semester, or that I would be doing mission work, but no matter how I said it, my leaving meant things were changing: that life would never be the same.

The disciples may not have known what to expect as the end result of following Jesus, but their instincts at the time told them it would be worth it.  I knew leaving everyone would be hard for me, but I knew that going to Uganda would be worth it.  The disciples learned in one day what took me 7 months to realize: Leaving is hard, but going is easy.  When you are doing what you know you are supposed to do, it becomes worth it, no matter the cost.  For the disciples, this meant leaving their family, friends, jobs, and a consistent life, and they did it anyways-yet we hesitate at even the smallest beckoning of the Holy Spirit out of fear; we fear our plans and our lives getting interrupted.

I pray that we all become obedient to God's leading-even if that requires leaving and going, because even if we don't like it, life really will never be the same.