June 23, 2012

June 23, 2012      Ok, so I wanna start this blog got by talking about you all.  Y'all are the foundation of my drive to come here and my continuous support.  Without all of you this journey would be a lot tougher.  Your prayers, encouragement, and support keep me going here.  Just to know that all of you are interested and reading and praying for me pushes and motivates me!  And I know the Lord is motivating me through your prayers, so thank you all so much!      2 Corinthians 12:9 is a perfect summarization of Gods grace and love for me here.  It says "Gods grace is sufficient, for His power is made perfect in weakness.".  I came to Uganda with a hope of learning how to fully trust in the Lord and grow and move forward in my life leaving the bad stuff behind and striving for a new good future.  Even more, I came with a desire to be taught.  Taught by the people, taught by the Lord, and taught by the other missionaries.  Little did I know, the Lord had/has similar plans for me but has been going about it differently than I would have hoped- the hard way.  Sometimes we have to learn the hard way in order for there to be a lasting impression, right?  My time here slowed down a little bit yesterday and my friend Sarah and I were able to go into town to a small coffee shop and read.  While we were there we both put our iPods on and zoned into our own thing.  I think it was one of the first times that I actually sat and focused solely on what the Lord is doing in my life here and what I've been/ continue to learn.  Now, if you know me you know that I'm somewhat selfish in different areas of my life.  I have found that coming through here as well at times and hate it.  I've been consistently praying for the Lord to restore me and give me patience and direction and trust in every aspect of my ministry here and my relationships I've been forming here.  Now this is gonna sound very simple and most of you will probably be thinking duh, but I'm gonna share it anyways bc I'm not sure I've really learned this until now because I've been living it.  First let me start by referencing back to the bible verse I mentioned.  Sometimes the Lord has to completely break us down in order to fully restore and heal us.  Towards the beginning of my trip and even still now sometimes I feel completely helpless and weak when it comes to helping these people, being homesick, and really trying to discern the Lords will for me here. In the beginning I completely questioned my whole purpose here and went as far as to ask if this was even in His will for me or if I selfishly decided to go because I knew I needed it in my life.  I have been through some very frustrating, irritating, and heart breaking situations here that have made me angry, cry, and again question my purpose here.  But through all of it I constantly feel the Lords presence and love for me and all these people here.  It's been an amazing and simple lesson for me here to remember that the Lord here is the same as the Lord in America.  He loves these poor, hurting, broken, joyful, loving, amazing people just as much as He loves me.  How can He not? In my opinion, He should love them more because of their unfailing and unceasing love, trust, and faith in Him.  Now after all those scattered and random thoughts I'm gonna go back to the simple lesson I was gonna say I've learned.  No matter how broken, hurt, upset, or weak I am if I come to the Lord and surrender it to Him in full faith and trust that He is the Lord of all things and can strengthen me in and through it then he will be faithful to me and restore me.  My emotions are a roller coaster here, which is hard at times but I'm also so thankful for it because I have not become complacent or desensitized to my surroundings.  We are told to rejoice in our sufferings because when we are weak, then He makes us strong.  The Lord is restoring and preparing me for my future everyday here and I'm so thankful that we have such a loving and faithful Lord that He promises us those things.        If you're sitting there thinking about how random and maybe nonsensical that all was I apologize!  I taught on that stuff in AWANAS today and felt compelled to share, if not for you all then maybe for myself to read in the future when I get discouraged.  If nothing else, I pray that this could be an encouragement for you in tough times.  We don't always know it or think about it at the time, but when we're going through hard times the Lord always has a purpose for it, we just need to be patient and he will reveal it in His perfect timing.  I love you all and thank you for your love and support it's really doing amazing things over here :)      

June 12, 2012

June 12, 2012      Hello everybody!  I'm so sorry it's been a little while since I've updated, we've been pretty busy with traveling, safari, and the team leaving over the past couple days.  I hope everyone is doing well as we are here.  The team concluded their crusade on Wednesday evening and we left for safari very early thursday morning.  I don't want to complain over and over about the actual bus and trip there and back, so I'll leave it at this- we were promised a new van with air conditioning and the van the driver brought was very old with NO air conditioning.  We traveled 8 hours there (first 3 hours on unpaved, pot hole covered road) and 6 hours to Kampala after the safari (first 2.5 hours on unpaved BUMPY road).  In case some of you were unaware, I get super car sick, so I was a little uncomfortable.  For about 40 min of the drive to kampala on the napped road there were swarms of tse tse flies, so we had to drive with windows up in the scorching heat with no air conditioning! All we can do is laugh about it now, but it sucked!        As far as the safari goes we definitely had an adventure!  We got there thursday afternoon and quickly had lunch and went out on our first game drive.  It was the perfect weather and we were out until dark, so it was just beautiful.  We were greeted at the park by elephants and around sunset of our night game drive we came n contact with a herd of about 50 giraffes that were about 50 feet away from us.  We were able to get out and walk towards them, which was amazing.  Giraffes are my favorite animal and it as such a "wow moment" to be up close and personal with that many giraffes in their natural habitat.  The next day we went out very early at 6 am for a morning game drive that ended up turning into a half day game drive haha.  Game drives in general normally go about 4 hours give or take a few, but we ended up being gone for 6.5 hours on ours.  About 4 hours into our drive our van got stuck in the sand in the middle of the tall grass region.  All I could do was laugh the whole time because the guys were literally using sticks they found around us to try and dig the sand out from under the car, and then all 9 of us would try pushing it out to no avail.  It really was pretty funny and definitely an adventure.  The guide didn't have service on his phone so we waited 45 minutes until another truck came driving down the path-I'm sure you can imagine our excitement!  Again, small world because the people that saved us were from Colorado and have been living in Kampala.  So after that we made our trek back to the entrance of the park.  Before we got stuck we actually got to see a 3 legged lion that lived in the park.  It was so neat because I rode on top of the van the whole time and we literally got 10 feet away from it and it just sat there and stared at us for a little bit.   The rest of the safari was good and we got to stay the night in Kampala which was a lot of fun because I haven't had an opportunity to spend a lot of time there.        Yesterday (Monday) was our much needed off day, which allowed us to catch up on sleep and get ready to get back into a routine.  I'm so happy to start the routine back up today and have a sense of normalcy back, but I really enjoyed our time with the team!  Today at school I found out Eva wasn't feeling well again, so she walked back to the clinic with Amanda and me and we found out she has a very high temperature and has to get treated for malaria.  Poor girl screamed and cried when they went to put the needle in for an IV, but luckily I managed to sit there and hold and comfort her again.  I took a little pb&j picnic in to eat with her and we watched Rio on a laptop while she had her treatment in the clinic.  I love that child so much it scares me to think about leaving her :/.  Please continue to pray for that precious girl.   I miss and love all of you and really really appreciate your prayers.  Sleep has been troubling again a little bit so please pray for peaceful nights as well! Thank you all!      

June 6, 2012

June 6, 2012    Ok, I'm gonna try and catch y'all up.  Sorry it's been a little while, since the teams been here we haven't really been able to get the Internet up bc there are too many people trying to use it!  It's definitely been an eventful couple of days with the team here, which has been good but exhausting.  Sarah and I got to take Monday morning off, which was so nice because we went to the pool in town with our friend Kristin.  In the evenings we've been doing what's called an open air crusade.  Basically it consists of live music with dancing and the preacher here from Florida with the team preaches a short message.  It's definitely been a new and fun experience.      Tomorrow morning Sarah, Katherine, Bosco, a family with the team, and I will be heading up north for safari.  We'll be there from Thursday until Saturday.  Katherine said we could go out for 2 or even 3 land safaris (if we have time) and 1 water safari.  Saturday afternoon we'll leave and head to Entebbe to drop off the team at the airport.  Saturday night the rest of us will stay the night in Kampala and head back to Kamonkoli on Sunday.      Now to the real stuff.  Last time I was here in 2009 I became very fond of a little girl (unsponsored at the time) named Eva.  When I came back this time I was so excited to see her again and find that she's sponsored now.  She's 8 years old and goes to the primary school that i teach at, which is exciting for me because I get to see her everyday!  Monday evening she came to the crusade with a black eye and a swollen jaw.  Katherine asked her about what happened and she told her that she had been beaten by her grandmother who takes care of her.  Now, I've also been told Eva is a very stubborn child and may have fought with her title sister, BUT there is still no excuse for that type of beating... At least not in America.  Pastor Charles took a look at her and told us to take her to the dentist to get looked at.  Sunday morning when she came into church it was 5 times more swollen than the day before, so Bosco and I took her straight into town to the dentist.  The dentist took a look at it and decided the tooth had been knocked loose and was infected, which explained the severe swelling.  He said he would have to pull the tooth in order for the infection and swelling to go away.  Now, I absolutely hate the dentist, so when I heard that I got scared but decided I wanted to play the "motherly" role in the situation and give her a sense of safety and security.  I stood right next to her holding her hand and stroking her arm calmly telling her it's ok.  The dentist proceeded to pull out this huge needle to numb her gums with.  Now, in America we get numbed with a topical numbing cream before the needle, but not in Africa.  So this little 8-year old girl is sitting in this chair screaming as the dentist puts the needle in her gums and I'm rubbing her arm and trying to soothe her while Bosco has his hands on her shoulders trying to comfort her.  I have never in my life seen a child in that much pain.  It was heart wrenching for me to watch and listen to, but I knew if I lost it it would make it even worse for her.  The dentist had to inject her twice with the needle and she screamed and cried the whole time.  While he was waiting for the numbing to take effect she just sat there crying and I was holding her the best I could n that chair trying to comfort her.  Finally, she calmed down but only until he pulled out this huge tool to pull the tooth with.  She started crying again and was gripping my hand and as soon as he got hold of that tooth and pulled she screamed a scream that sounded like someone was being severely tortured.  I lost it, just started crying.  Luckily, my face was behind her and she didn't see me and I gathered myself before she saw me.  After the tooth was pulled she just cried.  Now to preface what I'm about to say I need to tell you that Eva isn't a very affectionate child.  A lot of the children here love to be held and babied, but not really Eva.  I assume that it's a result of a lack of love in her home life, which has probably hardened her, which breaks my heart because she really is a sweet girl.  So anyways, after her tooth is pulled we go get in the car and I pulled her up in my lap and just held her (probably more for my comfort than hers) and she slowly stopped crying and laid her head on my chest.  We just sat there quietly the whole way back to the village.  I decided to take the responsibility of giving her her medicine for the next 4 days because I didn't wanna try and rely on her grandmother to be responsible for it.  So everyday for the past 3 days I've had the opportunity to bond more with her and she is almost completely recovered! The swelling is gone and her beautiful smile is back!  If you wanna see Eva I have a picture of her on my Facebook.  I wish I could adopt her, I would do it in a heartbeat if I could. I know I love that child.    So that's just one of the many many stories of children in this village and another eye opener of the differences in cultures.      A side note for everyone, there is a brand new clinic right in the village on the compound where we live that was fully funded by a doctor from Huntington, west virginia! How cool is that?!  Anyways that's all for now, safari tomorrow! Miss and love you all :)

June 2, 2012

Hey everybody, so i know the last post wasn't exactly lively and I apologize I just wanna try and give everyone some sort of an understanding of the good and the struggles  here.  today I think im gonna share more about the people and food and.    I first want to start by sharing about my friend Peace.  She has really been such a blessing to all of us here because she cooks, cleans, makes us African tea, and on top of all that has a 3 month old baby that she takes care of.   She really is wonder woman to us haha.  She makes great food and is always so cautious about us being taken care of... She spoils us, but the women here are all like that, what a wonderful culture!      The food here for the most part is great.  There are some specific dishes that I'm not crazy about, which wouldn't be so bad but during a meal that meal is your only option.  There's no choice b.  they also don't really snack here so it's either suck it up and eat it or don't eat at all.  I think my favorite thing here to eat is the chapatti.  It's basically an African tortilla.  But it's 100 times better than a tortilla you're imagining because they're much denser and thick and just amazing!  My least favorite dish is goat and matoke (basically matoke is plantain).  I think I might go hungry that night.. Haha.  Unfortunately, they also like to fry a lot of stuff here so peanut butter and jelly is gonna get old... Fast.  When it comes to food here I think about it a little differently tho.  I'm sure everyone has heard the phrase "there are starving children in Africa".  Number 1., yes that is true and number 2., it takes on a whole new meaning when those children live right outside your kitchen.  So, yes I do feel like being picky sometimes, but at the same time we don't waste food here.  Being well off and fortunate enough to have some sort of meat AND a starch here is such an anomaly that it really shows me not to take anything for granted or to waste.  I only get what I know I'll eat and nothing more.  at the same time, people here know they're blessed to have what they do have.  More often than not, being poor and not necessarily even having what they need doesn't usually shake their faith.  So many times when I'm talking to women here they greet me with "God bless you" and then they'll continue on to tell me about their lives, which is incredibly interesting and at the same time very sad.  But it never fails, whenever they're finished with the conversation they 95% of the time end it with "God will provide".  I mean gosh! Just writing that gives me goosebumps!  How many times have we questioned the Lords motives or existence at home when something bad happens? Or if we get into a bad situation? Or if we don't necessarily get something we want?! I mean geez if there's anything you take away from this blog please let it be that!  They literally have nothing and they trust that the Lord will provide because He is their hope and their strength and they're provision 100%, no questions asked.  I wish we could all live with a fraction of that trust.  I mean shoot if I could take even a small amount of that faith and trust from them then I would be so blessed!  That's definitely a huge lesson that I think the Lord is teaching me while I'm here.  Without the Lord there is no hope.  You can't look into these peoples'  faces and day that the Lord doesn't exist.  Take one look and you'll see, I promise!  Yes I understand sometimes we go through difficult things, but I promise you the Lord is doing something amazing with that tough time for you! Yes it is hard to see what He's doing at the time, but have faith and trust Him because he will provide.  Jehovah jireh - God will provide! Love you all