Laying it Down at His Feet

About 6 months ago, I got on a plane to Africa. It was at this point that my boyfriend Jeremy moved into my computer. He is this... thing... on Skype or Facebook chat, and I’m not sure anymore if he is a real person or if he is some robot who lives in my computer. A few months after I left for Africa, this robot person got on a plane to Iraq where he’s serving with the US Army. 

It’s actually been amazing how well we’ve been able to keep in touch. Even with the time difference, when he was still in Murrica and I was in Africa, we managed to Skype on his lunch breaks, which was evening time for me. We’re now in the same time zone, and he works the midnight-8 am shift, then sleeps in the day, which still works out for us to get to Skype in the evenings. I am so grateful for having been able to keep in touch so well. I don’t take it for granted. I don’t envy the way communication was for those at war, or for those on the mission field, hundreds of years ago, or even 20 years ago. Technology is an amazing thing. 

The problem, though, with this robot who lives in my computer who resembles Talley, is that I rely on getting to see him every night. Iraq is pretty uneventful these days, so he’s relatively safe compared to other deployments in the past, and on most days he’s just around the base being bored out of his mind. But there are times when they go on missions around, and I don’t hear from him for a day or so. I try not to worry, but it’s impossible not to at least be a little concerned, and it’s difficult not to let my imagination run away. All I can do in these times is pray and trust that God will take care of him. 

On Monday morning of this week, I arrived at the children’s home to teach English, to find that one of my students was not there. My stomach dropped as I was told that she had run away from the home with 3 other girls. They had run off during church the day before. 

I couldn’t understand it. These girls were good girls. One of them especially, who was in my English class, was so bright, was such a leader to the other kids at the home, and she was so strong spiritually! She was always asking to read the children’s Bibles, she knew her memory verses and Bible stories, and was always helping out at fellowship time. 

Then one day she was gone. They all had just run off. Dwelling Places is not a prison. If the children want to run away, that’s their choice. But like the prodigal’s son, there is much grieving when a child runs away. Not only are there the feelings of worry for the children and that they would just be safe and come back, but anyone who had any part in the kids’ lives is feeling a jumble of other emotions. There’s the sense of failure, that we could have done something to prevent it. There’s the feeling of futility, that we’re putting in all this effort to alleviate the problem of street children in Uganda, but what’s the point when they just run away back to the life they came from? There’s hurt, regret, betrayal, misunderstanding, among so many other things. 

So I cried and prayed with some of the other teachers and social workers. Thankfully those girls did actually come back later that day. Unfortunately it was with the police. They had found them... of all places... at the airport!!!  The airport is about 35 kilometers outside of Kampala! Apparently they had begged for money until they had enough to get on public transportation to the airport. I got mixed stories, that they were going to a beach party on Lake Victoria, or that they had gone to the airport thinking they could get on a plane somewhere, and another story that one of the girls was looking for her brother. Who knows, but the fact is that they didn’t come back by their own will, so please pray that they will not choose to run away again. 

The same day that these girls ran away, Talley didn’t appear online for a couple of days. 

I had no choice but to rely on God and to trust him to take care of all of them. “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet you heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” (Matthew 6: 26-27). 

God is definitely teaching me about relying on him. There's no denial that so many things are beyond our control, so what's the point of stressing over it or worrying? It's always easier said than done, but God has never let me down. That doesn't mean everything is always easy. God doesn't just take away the hardships in life; rather he equips his children with the resilience to handle the trials. And he asks us to lay down our worries at his feet, because he is in control.  

A typical evening-- Slyping with Jeremy by lantern light because the power is often out at my place

Africa... does something to you

Africa fills your heart with such joy and such sorrow like no other place on earth can.

You spend time with the children at the children’s home, ones who have been rescued from living on the street or in a bad situation with their families. You teach them in the interim school, you lead fellowship time with them, sharing songs, stories, and prayers, you are bombarded by 20 pairs of arms hugging you every time you walk in the gate. You leave after time spent with them and find that you’re smiling the whole way home and you didn’t even realize it.

Then one day you arrive and discover that 4 of the girls have run away from the home. You cry and pray with the other teachers and women who take care of the children. You worry not only for the safety of those girls and pray that they will return, but you hurt for the women who take care of those children. You know all they are feeling is failure, misunderstanding and discouragement, and you feel the sting of it too. You feel as though there should have been something you could have done to prevent it, even though it’s beyond your control, and you also feel the futility of all the work you’ve done for all the children, for it to only be met with ingratitude and the children returning to the life from which they came. 

You are invited over to a friend’s house for lunch, and spend all day in great company as food is slowly and laboriously prepared. You appreciate the time and work that goes into preparing food, and enjoy the relational nature of this culture, that it’s about time spent together, not about the task at hand. 

You leave with a full belly and a full heart from the relationships you’ve been building, but on your way home, you see children sitting on the street in the dark with their hands held outstretched, and there the sorrow comes. What can be done? You can’t give to these children once you know what happens with the money they collect. It goes to someone who is making a fortune off of these street children, charging them for a place on the floor in a shack in the slums to sleep. You can’t encourage that system by giving them money, but you can’t just leave the kid there, cold, hungry, and alone. You work with an organization that is doing something about it, sure, but there are still so many kids out there.

You go for a nice trip to Tanzania, you learn a lot at a conference and network with other missionaries, you spend a few days relaxing on the beach and come back refreshed and happy to see your friends. 

You see your boda driver, happy to see him after a few weeks, and ask how things have been in Kampala. He gives you news that his brother died. That he was on his way to buy a plot of land, and since Uganda still pretty much runs on cash, not credit, he was carrying a lot of cash on him to buy the land. Some people found out what he was up to, and stopped his boda under some false pretense that the boda was stolen, then beat him to death and took his money. 

You get to interact with these kids and see their growth one-on-one. You watch the 180 degree turn some of them make from when they first arrive at the home. You see one girl turn from the loudest, most stubborn girl, to one who is a real leader to the others. She has her moments of defiance still, but she is also always keeping all the other kids on their toes, making sure they’re behaving and doing their chores. You even get to teach her, and she writes you sweet letters that brighten your day. 

Then she goes back to her home for the school holidays, and asks you to accompany her there. You see where she came from, suddenly you understand. This girl ran away from home to live on the streets. You know it must have been something bad to make her choose a life on the streets over life at home, but until you see it, you have no idea. You meet her mother, drunk beyond her senses at midday, you walk through the filthy house with dirty clothes and dishes covering the floor, with nothing but a wet mattress on the floor for the kids to sleep on, and anger and sorrow swells inside you. 

Shortly after I had arrived in Uganda, another American here was asking me how I like it here and that sort of thing. We were talking about how great our experiences have been, and I remember her saying, “Africa… does something to you.” And I remember thinking, “Yeah, that’s the only way I can put it. It definitely does something to you. Something amazing. I can’t put it into words, but that’s it.” 

I think now I may know a little something of what it does to you. It fills your heart with joy and sorrow to such depths that you never even knew were there, in a way that I’m not sure any other place on earth can do.

Victories in Drama

I’ve been writing over the last few posts about some of the “victories” I’ve had over the last few days (although the victories are always God’s, aren’t they? For from him and through him and to him are all things. Romans 11:36). Well one thing that has been coming along really well over the last couple of weeks is the work I’ve been doing with the older youth in drama. 

About 2 weeks ago, I finally started a project with them that I’ve been wanting to start for some time. I’ve been wanting to lead them in writing their own play, then performing it. I wanted them to pull from their own experiences or from other general experiences of DP kids—life on the streets, in the slums, etc. This way they would have real ownership of the play and would be able to voice some of their own stories. 

This project has been on the back burner for a long time for many different reasons. Honestly I very strongly doubted my own ability to lead such a project, and I also doubted the youth’s interest and ability. I don’t have any experience in writing scripts, much less in leading a group to write one together! And when I started it, would they slouch in their chairs and stare at me over the top of their eyes, refusing to participate like teenagers are just so good at doing? 

I’ve also been working with a local volunteer, and between cultural and language barriers, I had a hard time getting him in agreement and understanding over what I wanted to do. He was bringing in lots of other scripts for them to do, which I didn’t necessarily have anything against, especially because it’s always best to be working alongside a Ugandan person, so that way when I leave things don’t just fall apart. But eventually I had to sit down with him and say, “Look I’m leaving in a few months, and I want to do this project. We have to do it now because time is running out.” So we agreed to start it. 

Then... 

the students went on holiday. Back on the back burner for another month. 

Well now they’re back, and I knew I had to jump in with both feet the first day they were back, or it would never happen. Still unsure how exactly to drive this boat, I faked confidence and started with having the group brainstorm themes that could appear in the play, such as child neglect, alcoholism, drought or floods that lead to poverty, etc. Then we brainstormed possible settings, then took a majority vote, finally deciding on Katwe, Kampala’s biggest and worst slum. We also came up with some characters and traits, such as an alcoholic dad. It’s going to be a cheery play, can’t you tell? 

They had wasted half of our time the first day by being late (surprise surprise) so that’s all we had time for. I was a little thankful actually, because I wasn’t entirely sure what to do next! So the next time we met, we first dealt with a few questions like what we want to communicate to the audience, what we want them to think and feel so we could have a little focus. Then we started working on a plot outline. I had doubted their interest, but they were fairly participatory. A few just slouched in their chairs and didn’t input anything, but there were enough coming up with good ideas to create a general outline for the plot. By the end of the hour, we had a plot! I was kind of surprised how easily it had come together. I don’t know if it will be a quality production by the time it’s put together, but hey it’s something! 

Ok so Africans do theatre very differently than Americans. I guess that’s a no-brainer; it’s a different culture, why wouldn’t a cultural custom be done differently? It took me awhile to realize some of their methods because the plays they were doing were in Luganda, but I soon realized that the “scripts” the local volunteer (Kasozi is his name) was bringing in were not scripts as we know them in the West with specific lines for each character to memorize and follow directly. What he was bringing in was like one page for the whole play, with key action points jotted down. 

Kasozi would pick a few people, tell them, “You’re this character, you’re that character, this is what needs to happen in this scene.” Then they would just go at it and I swear you could think they had been rehearsing for months. They’re just naturals. Africa has always been a story-telling culture, so it’s ingrained in them somewhere to be able to just tell stories like this. 

If they weren’t doing something how Kasozi thought it should be done, he would step into the scene and show them how to act it, then have them do what he did. This felt like nails on a chalkboard to me at first. From all my training in drama, one of this biggest things you’re taught is to never ever ever show someone how to act and just tell them to mimic you. Directors (good ones anyway) are supposed to find the right words to get you to find the action from within and blah blah blah. Ok so I had to just let go of this. I’m not here to change the way an entire culture does theatre. You’ve got to look at the big picture in times like these. Is it working for them? Yes. So just go with it. 

So this has all worked out to be tremendously helpful in the task of writing a play together. We came up with maybe 10 or 12 key points in the play, then the next time we met, it was enough to get on our feet and start putting it together. There’s no need to get tangled in actually writing a word for word script. That could get really tricky and tedious working as a group anyway. As long as each person knows what’s to be accomplished in any given scene and is capable of getting it there, we’ve got ourselves a play. 

They perform better in Luganda, and while we may have to eventually perform it in English, for now they’re putting it together in Luganda. So Kasozi has mostly taken over with directing it as they improvise through each scene, which is great because I finally feel like we’re working together on this rather than our conversations from a few months ago where he didn’t seem to understand at all what I had in mind. 

I’m watching the play sort of magically appear before my eyes, and it’s truly inspiring. 

Victories in Surprise Teaching

This last week was a week full of highs, although all I can do is be aware that it was a high and that we can’t just ride on those, thinking they’ll never be accompanied by lows. You can experience those kinds of things if you’re here for just a few weeks. You can run on adrenaline for that short of a mission trip and ride on all the highs, but for my 8-month assignment, I need more stamina than that. 

Still, it was a pretty sweet week. My week started off Monday morning with a miscommunication. What morning doesn’t start that way? No surprises with that anymore. I was told that there was a meeting with the education team, and what I thought the woman had told me was that she wanted me to be there. No, what she thought she had communicated was that she would be in a meeting and wanted me to teach her class for her. 

Again, a surprise teaching assignment. Again, nothing new. So I trotted down to the class and did what Uganda has been teaching me the hard way: wing it. And the beautiful thing? It was easy and comfortable. 

I remember last term, I had asked the teacher to come and observe that class, to see how school is done in Uganda, before I started teaching. I showed up to observe, and the teacher didn’t show up, so I ended up teaching. I remember that day, being so frustrated that the other teacher didn’t come, and floundering around in the book for something to teach them. 

This time, I had already been teaching that class for a term, so I know their level, their personalities, etc. So it wasn’t difficult to pull a few teaching activities out of my hat and just go with the flow. 

The rest of the week involved all sorts of things like that. In teaching both that class and another class, I felt like I knew what I was doing. Even if I hadn’t prepared a lesson in advance, I felt confident in the way I was presenting it, and the students understood it well. Time with the youth in drama was going well and I was stepping up in leadership, where I had previously just kind of observed. I finally started a project with them of leading them to write their own play, which had been on the back burner for months. Time spent with the kids was fun and meaningful, whether I was at the children’s home for fun, fellowship, or to work on the puppet show. The puppet show is coming along nicely, and the kids are having a lot of fun, arguing over taking turns to hold the puppets. 

Well I’ll finish this post for now, from a combination of my brain being fried, and knowing that if I go on it will be another forever-long post. Omutwe gakooye! (My brain is tired!) So I’ll save more for another post later. 

A few prayer requests: 

I’m heading to Tanzania for a couple of weeks! Praise God for the chance to go-- I’ll be spending a week at a conference, then enjoying a few days in the unbelievably gorgeous island of Zanzibar!! Pray for safe travel, that the conference will be fruitful in the work I’m doing here, and that the vacation will bring me back here with a renewed spring in my step to finish my last few months here. 

Continue to pray for the investment I’m making in these kids spiritually. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in “What are you doing? Are you actually accomplishing anything?” that we lose sight of why we’re here. Pray for focus and relationships that draw others closer to Christ. 

Even though I just said it’s not about the things I’m out to accomplish, I am nevertheless in the middle of a few projects-- the puppet show with the younger kids, the play with the older youth, teaching English, and working in the office to prepare the older youth to live self-sustainably. Pray that those things continue to go well!

Victories in the Small

Everyone learns to walk and eat and talk, but you never think anything of it. Then suddenly you arrive in a foreign culture and you have to re-learn everything. You're suddenly told that the way you dress, eat, drink, talk, walk, sit, etc is wrong. Of course those ways aren’t wrong, they’re just different. But the culture you’re in perceives things to be a different way than the one you’re used to, so if they say it’s rude to wear shorts or eat standing up, even if those things are completely normal in America, you just have to adapt. 

A Week in the Life: Recap

Well there you have it. There’s an average week for me. I don’t always have a hot shower and things aren’t always easy or comfortable. I’m not always on an exciting adventure that is filled with sunshine and laughter. It involves laundry, grocery shopping, washing the dishes, and tedious office work like anywhere else. A lot of conveniences from home are found here such as a washing machine and restaurants just like you’d find in America. You can get M&M’s or Snickers or Pringles, or take your computer to the Mac store if you’re having a problem. Shoot, I celebrated my birthday with burgers and fries! I still get some funny questions or comments with people seeming to think I’m in a mud hut somewhere in the bush. But Kampala is a very modern city, and while it has its... charming characteristics that make it almost a different world from the US, my daily life isn’t too different. (Although they’ve never even heard of Starbucks or McDonalds here, which makes me very happy!) 

Sometimes, yes, my days are filled with crazy things that spring up like one of our youth who had a baby on a boda, or a mouse hunt in the apartment. Sometimes a trip to the grocery store means being stuck inside for 3 hours to wait out the rain while your ice cream melts (true story-- happened a couple of weeks ago. And even on the boda ride home, the rain started again and we had to seek shelter for another half hour). Somedays hours of my time are wasted going on trips into town that end up not being fruitful for reasons like the power is out at the store and they can’t mix paint for me. I’m frequently on carb and banana overload, and miscommunications due to the language barrier or cultural differences or both are to be expected every day. Even when I make a special effort to be late to events, I still find myself waiting hours for them to start, and my days frequently end very early because power outages tell my body it’s been dark for hours and it’s time for bed at 9:30 pm. 

But my days are always filled with joy, whether it’s from hanging around with our youth and teaching them about the Bible, or walking into the children’s home and being tackled by 20 kids. Or by attending fellowship time and hearing them sing praise songs and watching the little ones fall asleep on the benches when we pray. Or by singing sweet songs to them and watching their faces as I catch their attention by throwing their names in to make them songs like “Jesus loves the little Lucy’s, all the Lucy’s of the world.” Or something as simple as bouncing them on my knee or tossing them in the air and hearing the unadulterated laughter of a child that is unequaled by any other sound in creation. Sometimes it’s a boda guy I use regularly who actually looks out for me and gives me his coat when I find myself caught in the cold rain completely unprepared. Or a personal testimony of God’s goodness shared in staff devotions. 

Some days are filled with hours crammed on public transportation. Some are filled with taking kids to their homes and encountering their alcoholic parents and completely uninhabitable filth in the house, and seeing why a child would choose to actually run away from home and live on the streets instead. Sometimes anger at parents who choose to spend money on alcohol when there isn’t even food for their children is all that can fill my heart for the day. But anger and sadness don’t get anyone anywhere, so all you can do is focus on the positive work that is taking place through Dwelling Places. “But those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” (Isaiah 40:31)

I’m learning so much and growing so much, but I’m also a slow processor and couldn’t actually begin to put into words all God is teaching me right now. Ask me in about a year what God taught me in Uganda and I might be able to tell you. For now I’m enjoying the ride, and enjoying seeing different projects I’ve started really starting to bloom now, and seeing relationships continuing to grow, and seeing God really moving here.

A Week in the Life: Sunday

Sunday

As part of my breakfast, I had some fresh fruit. How do you safely eat fresh fruit in Uganda? Well the method used by most people I know is to add a little bleach to a bowl of water, add the fruits or vegetables, and then rinse it with filtered water. I’m not the biggest fan of using bleach with something I’m going to eat, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do!

The church I go to is pretty Western, and actually starts on time (gasp). Well, really they have 3 services and they all just run back to back, so I guess in that way it keeps them on schedule. If you come late and miss worship, hey just stick around for the next service! My church has a lot of similarities to a church in the US. The music is Western, the preaching style usually has 3 points that start with the same letter, and they’ve got things like a snazzy announcement video each week. We do meet under a tent though, since they’re still raising money for a building. And the fervor of worship (and the occasional song in Luganda which makes them really get going) and the slightly pentecostal nature of the prayer segment of the service always bring me back to the distinctly African nature of the church. 

But the teaching is usually Biblically sound, which is what’s important, and I like the church for a lot of different reasons. This week though, we had a guest speaker, and honestly I didn’t really care for the message. I wasn’t necessarily against anything he had to say, but I opened my Bible for just a few seconds of the sermon, which is a big problem for me. I think the Bible should be priority in any sermon, and the message should flow from the Bible. When you start letting it be about your personal opinions and quote Scripture when it’s convenient for the point you want to make, you head into dangerous waters quickly. But anyway.

After church, Cassandra and I went for lunch at a very Western restaurant, which is a nice break from matoke and rice. On the way home it started to rain a little bit, but since I’ve now been caught in the pouring rain a few different times on a boda, a little sprinkle doesn’t phase me. 

The afternoon was spent doing laundry-- I know, again, not interesting blogging material. But I wanted to just mention that we’re blessed enough to have a washing machine in the building! I did hand-washing the first few months I was here, which I didn’t really mind, but recently one of the other long-term missionaries in the building got a machine that they let the rest of us use. And hearing that  beep as it turns on and says “let me do the work for you” is such a beautiful thing! But then again, you have to have both water and power turned on in order to use it, and that’s always a challenge! 

For the rest of the afternoon, I moved into another room in our apartment because it’s bigger than the one I had been staying in. I’ve now lived in all 3 rooms in the apartment! 

A Week in the Life: Saturday

Saturday 

Today I went to an event for the women at church. It was a cooking class, and I thought it would be fun to learn a few new recipes and get plugged in with the women in my church. It’s kind of funny, the other missionaries who were going and I had to really analyze what time to arrive. The natural tendency in all of us was that we didn’t want to be late, but we also didn’t want to be the first ones there, waiting for hours for the others to arrive. The church is pretty Western and the services always start on time, so we weren't sure how this event was going to go. It's kind of sad though, we had to make an actual effort to be late, and still we were some of the first ones there and probably waited at least half an hour for it to start!

But at an event where you can chat and get to know people while you’re waiting, you hardly notice it. I was pretty impressed with how well organized the event was. We learned quite a few good dishes, although it was about 5 hrs long and by the end I was waning. 

Since we finally had power again and I could restock the fridge, we went up the hill for some grocery shopping, then my roommate Cassandra and I split ways. She is here long-term, so is really settling into the place. She came home a little while later with a bed for our extra room as well as a TV! The extra room is bigger, so I’m planning on moving in there. I went into town to get paint for that room, only to find that the power was out at the store. They were running on a generator, but it wasn’t strong enough to support the paint mixer. Gotta love problems like this that come up. 

To make it not feel like I wasted a trip into town, I did find a few things we’d been looking all over for, and also treated myself to some lychees! I’ve only seen them at one place in Kampala, and they were a little pricey, but that was my treat for a wasted trip into town!

When I got home, Cassandra had brought home a kitten! Her name is Mallie, and she’s super cuddly, curious, and playful. So we got a kitten, a bed, and a TV today-- exciting day.