Welcome to Uganda

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven… I have seen the task which God has given the sons of men with which to occupy themselves.

Ecclesiastes 3:1; 10

On Monday, I said goodbye once more to Gabon, to all of my dear friends and to everything that I’ve ever known in Africa. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be going back to Gabon though I hope that someday the Lord will lead me back there, but if not I know that my time there has played a huge part in shaping me and that I will always pray for my family there. I have to praise God because leaving was more bittersweet than hard. I knew that it was time for me to say goodbye and while I knew I would miss those I was leaving behind, I was ready and excited to see what God had ahead of me. 

These past five days have been full of firsts for me. The first time I’ve: been to Uganda, camped overnight in a village, pumped and carried water from a well, helped make mud and build a mud hut, gone to sleep covered in red dirt and mud, washed my clothes by hand, spoken in a secondary school (high school), given my lunch to someone else. These are all things that will become part of my everyday life and soon I won’t even realize that I didn’t always live this way. Already, I love that this is how I’ll be living for the next two years.

Only a few hours after I arrived at the house early Tuesday morning we left for the village Zirobwe where we stayed till Thursday afternoon. This is the village that Empower A Child works heavily with and has a sponsorship program that some of the village children are in. I will be spending three days out of each week in Zirobwe. We also spend Sunday there as well.

This past week in we were working on building a mud hut, which requires a lot of water, bricks, and dirt. Since we go to the well to fill water getting enough to make mud and to cover the inside and outside of the structure takes a long time. We worked on it for two days and we still haven’t finished. It’s been a while since I did hard manual labor and though it was tiring, I loved it! If you haven’t pumped water from a well and then carried it back a ways then you might not realize how hard and exhausting it is to do so. I’m pretty sure that by the time I leave I’ll be a lot stronger! I actually really enjoyed making the mud, imagine stomping on grapes. After the mud was the right texture we carried it to the hut where it was thrown on and the smoothed out. Most of the time I just carried the mud to those who were putting it on, so my mud tee-shirt was soaked through in mud, literally!

In the late afternoons we go into the middle of the village have a children’s program, where we have worship, a lesson, some sort of craft, and game time. We had around a hundred children (maybe more) and then many of the adults hang around and watch and listen to us. It’s absolutely amazing.

It goes from really hot and sunny to pouring down rain here, so while we were in the village we had a pretty hard rainstorm.  We were all huddled under the tarp which covered our tents, freezing. At one point we had to dig ditches around the tents so that water didn’t get in. Some of the children were there with us and so we gave them our hoodies. It was something that didn’t require thinking twice about, why would I be warm when there is someone next to me who is cold, especially a child. I have never been happier to be soaking wet, drenched in dirt, and freezing. 

Yesterday was the first day I spent back here in Kampala and we went to a secondary boarding school. We had the chance to work with Youth Quake who was having a sort of conference there. During one part of the afternoon we broke up in to levels, I was with S2 (senior 2), and talked to the children about the importance of finishing school and pressing on. I was surprised at first when we walked into the room, because there were about 60-80 children between the ages of 14-20. Here you don’t move up a grade until you pass the exams at the end of the year. After introducing ourselves and sharing some of our testimonies we had the chance to take questions and just encourage and give some practical help to these children. And even though at first it was a little intimidating I was so glad to be a part of it!

 I’m still adjusting to things here in Uganda which are different than in Gabon, smaller things like the fact that it’s cleaner and that they drive on the wrong side of the road, and bigger things as well such as having another language to learn! I really do like it here and I am super excited to see what God does in this next year. 

One thing I’ve learned is that with each season God brings us into He teaches us new things and we see and learn new ways to serve Him and live the life that He has called us too. This is the beginning of a new season for me and I have a lot of learning to do. 

There are some moments in life that you know really matter. They might be small or simple but you know that you are doing exactly what Christ has asked His disciples to do. And just in the few days that I've been in Uganda I've already experienced some of these, like when I held, prayed over, and rocked to sleep that precious baby in the village who was so soaked through that when I gave her back to her sister both my shirt and tank top had been soaked through. But that didn't matter to me, I smelled and couldn't shower for the for the next two days, but all I cared about was that I was able to lift that small child up in prayer and offer her the same love that Christ gives me daily.

 It's the times that you seek only to love someone and you forget about everything else that the Lord is able to use you to the fullest. This is my desire for my time in Uganda that I might learn to show that same love to each person whom the Lord brings my way, knowing that this is the reason that I am here. So, that whoever that person is they might come to know the greatness and depth of Christ's love.