Encouragement from half a world away

          Well  the last week or so, really the last two and a half months, have been full of learning but this week I feel I have learned something that I want to share with everyone back home. After journaling about it I feel that this lesson is as much for all of you as it is for me and as I am too lazy to reword everything I am just going to type everything that I wrote. I don't know what brought all these thoughts on but I am so glad to have gone through this thought process for myself and I hope it will inspire and encourage some of you back home.Hope everything makes sense, I am not going to be editing, again I am just too plain lazy today.  Here goes...

      " This morning I was reading Natalie's blog and thinking, " Wow! I wish I was having experiences like that. She sounds like a real missionary!" The thing is we are here together, doing mostly the same things. I am here, living in Uganda, taking a discipleship training course,doing my best to live for God. Whenever I talk to people from home they always want to know what/how I am doing. They always say things like " you are touching peoples lives," or " you must be helping so many people" but in reality I do not feel like I am doing anything all that spectacular. I am simply living in Africa. I do not feel like some super spiritual missionary, I don't have stories about masses of people coming to Christ, or demon possessed people being freed. I am simply living and loving those in my path, and if I am honest even doing that is not always easy. I always have an excuse why I can't reach out to someone, ( for example language or cultural issues, I don't want to break a rule that I may not know exists ) the hard part is doing it anyway. Back home they ( various pastors I have heard a t events like breakforth) you do not have to be in a different country to be a missionary. All you have to do is step out of the doors of the church. I always used to think that though that might be true the ones who go overseas were more important, more special, more likely to do great things. I realize now that I was wrong. I still love overseas missions and think perhaps I would like to do it again someday after 360, but you don't have to leave " normal" life to be an influential missionary. You just need a burning desire to live every breath for God and a love for him that cannot be quenched. Though I am supposedly on a " missions trip" I am just now learning what it means to be a missionary, and it has nothing to do with where you live."

      This is my prayer for all of you back home. That you would see the amazing power you have to be a blessing to all those around you. We live in communities that need the LORD!!  You do not need anything that God has not given you to make a difference, he has created you to be his hands and feet on earth. There is nothing more special about those of us who travel to another country, we are simply following where God has asked us, but he has called each of us where we are at. I believe that if he has not called you to leave your country of birth to be a missionary then he has called you to be one at home, in your community, among the people that you see every single day.  He can use you and he will! If only you will come to him lay all the worries of what it will mean to be his disciple at his feet, leave them there and then step forward with Him as your guide.  I hope this was encouraging, it was my desire that it would be, if it was offensive I apologize for how it was received but not for what I said. I believe that God longs with all of his being to use each and every one of us but he will only use as much of us as we present to Him. He will not force anything upon us, so now it is up to you what you will do. Following him, being his missionary does not mean that we never fall down, but it does mean that we get back up with the help of our savior and continue on. In closing I feel like it would be appropriate to share a poem that I wrote on the 29 of June 2011:

The time is right

take that step.

The world is at your feet 

dare to go forward.

All you have ever known,

is about to change.

All you have been taught,

will be put to the test.

Open your mind to the things you have never known.

The time is right

take that step.

The world is at your feet

dare to go forward.

Dream big and you will find

everything that you were meant to be.

If you take a leap of faith,

anything is possible.

Never forget all that was, 

move into the future to find all that can be,

the world is at your feet

Spread your wings and fly.

         

Babies and Power Outages

 Well I know that I posted just yesterday but currently the power is out ( a common occurrence)  I am sitting in the complete darkness and writing in my journal about this day is more trouble than it’s worth. So instead I will sit in front of my computer so that I am utterly blind to anything but its light and tell all of you back home.  Today has been probably the best day that I have experienced since coming to Africa, maybe that is an exaggeration but that is how it feels right now.

                Today the North group ( me ) was sent to God’s Grace Orphanage. If I had a choice I would never have left. This three room house is the home to 120 children. As an orphanage it is run completely on donations and most days the children only have one meal. Many other days there is no money for food and they do not eat at all. Regardless I will not soon forget the sight that awaited me as I turned the corner to get there. A little girl hair in little braids that were sticking out in all directions , black flower print dress came running full speed down the hill and into my arms. Immediately I was swarmed by dozens of little girls, all clamoring for a chance to hold my hand, or my arm, or just wrap their little bodies around my waste and not let go. I literally could not move and more than once nearly fell over from all the children pressing to come near to me. I felt that today I experienced a true piece of Uganda. Don’t get me wrong I love Watoto with all my heart and am so glad to see all that God has done and continues to do, and I fully believe in the way they have raised the villages to be a family, but that is not common. I get the feeling this orphanage is the true Uganda, the more common way orphanages are run. Watoto is a well-established and amazing organization, God’s Grace is new and has completely captured my heart.  The children are so full of love and smiles and just hunger for a little bit of love.  Within the first five minutes of us starting worship one baby began to cry. If there is one thing that I have learned about myself while being here it is that crying, scared, tired, or just plain cuddly children are my specialty. Thomas immediately picked him up and handed him to me and within thirty-seconds ( I am not exaggerating) his sobs were hiccups and he was asleep on my shoulder. Thomas even turned to comment that that did not take long.  I was very sad when one of the adults took him to put him in bed. However that was not the end of my baby experience! When the first one was taken from me I was handed an even younger girl, and once she was happy enough to be on her own another crying little one came to my arms. When that last one fell asleep she went completely limp. Even walking around and passing her off to others did not make her flinch in her sleep.  By that time all the kids were ready to play a game and I had many little admiring girls waiting for me. They were so beautiful and I love them with all my heart! I cannot wait to go back and love on the again. I wish I were in a position where at least one of them could become my own little girl forever, but alas I am not. I can only pray that each of them finds the love of a mommy some day and grows up knowing their worth.

Prison and Jabez

                                

                Again I find that so much happens in a week, or in this case two, that I can never remember it all. As I am sure that, though you are reading this blog because you enjoy it and want to know what is going on in my life; you also equally want to get something accomplished today and do not want to spend countless hours reading. So I will not even try to say everything that has happened but here come the highlights.

                On Tuesday I went to prison. I will admit that it was not an experience that I had been looking forward to.  On Tuesday morning when my group was given the subject which we were to preach about, mistrust, I found myself quite happy to take the back seat and settle in for a day of observation as I don’t speak Lugandan.   However God had other plans.  Either that or my lack of patience got the better of me. Whichever way you want to look at it. Growing up I have always been taught that when you are given a task you “giver all” and get it done to the best of your abilities whether you like the task or not. I am learning that this is not the case with all people. Needless to say when no one in my group would volunteer for any of the jobs, speaking or leading worship time,  I may have lost my patience a little bit. I did not get angry or throw a fit but I did let it be known that we only had half an hour left to plan and we needed to get this done! Long story short I ended up being delegated to preach. Again this did not make me overly happy as I don’t like speaking in front of people and I was even less thrilled about having to speak through a translator, even if it was my friend. Add that all to the fact that I had less than half an hour to prepare and I was in instant panic. In went the head phones and out came the paper.

  I would love to be able to say that I got there and it was an amazing experience with some incredible supernatural God moment where I lead numerous people to Christ but that would be a lie. I ended up going to the women’s side of the prison with three others and after speaking for about ten minutes (half of the time allotted to me) I was done. Debbie stepped in added to what I said and then we had an extended prayer time. That was probably the best part, I don’t know what was said for the most part, or what it was that touched  the women but I noticed that as they prayed many were crying. One woman caught my eye and I very much wanted to sit on the ground with her and pray, but for reasons that make no sense to me now I did not.  I did prayed while everyone else did and I wanted to reach out and touch these women in some amazing “missionary” way but in the end all I did was share a smile with the one and then leave.

                 This week I am learning a lot about, well a lot of things. One thing is about opportunities. We are always presented with opportunities and we always have a choice if we are going to act on them or not.  Sometimes not taking them has a large impact but more often than not it is simply that we have missed the chance for something great. Our lives will not be horrible because of it, but we will have missed some of the blessing that God would have loved to pour out. I think this may have been the case at the prison. I had an opportunity to share Gods love and didn’t,  I missed out, and perhaps so did this woman though I cannot speak for anyone but myself.  God has been teaching me since then not to think about how it will look or what others will say, take the opportunities he presents me with!!

  On Friday a friend loaned me a book on the prayer of Jabez. I was pretty excited to read it as I have often heard about Jabez but I have never studied it or thought much about how it pertains to me. When I got home that night I sat down and started it, by then end of the evening that little book was finished. I was so challenged by it and I learned so much! At the beginning of the book I was taking notes but by then end I realized that I could not write everything that I was learning and being challenged by on my little pad of paper, so I just kept reading.

                                                 And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, “ Oh that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that you would be with me, and that you would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain! So God granted him what he requested.

                                                                                                                                1 Chronicles 4:10 NJKV

                Did you know that the word “indeed” in Hebrew is the equivalent of putting five exclamation points at the end of a sentence, and to ask for blessing is to ask for supernatural favour?  Jabez was not asking for just a little bit here, he was asking God to give it all to him. He did not just want a little piece of the cake he wanted the whole stinking thing.  I mean wow!!! This guy had nerve, right?  The author of the book, Bruce Wilkinson, put it this way,

                                “ Is it possible that God wants us to come to him with the same happy ( ok slightly crazy) confidence [ like that of a child on his birthday] and ask Him to give you the very best he has for you?”

                That kinda blows me away! I mean think about it, God wants to bless us. This is the God of the universe, the one who made the stars in the sky. He spoke “let there be light” and bam! There is the sun shining in all its brilliance. HE WANTS TO BLESS US!!!  We can go to him and pester him like a little kid on his birthday who just wants to rip into all those brightly wrapped packages and ask for his blessing! If that is not enough take a look at this other quote,

                                “ A blessing from God is something you feel… he might give you “stuff” but he is ALWAYS reaching for your heart… God always blesses for a purpose.”

                I have nothing else that I can say after that. Just let that truth sink in for a minute. Let it simmer in your heart until you believe it. There was a lot of other things I thought I wanted to say but as I sit here and listen to the thunder and rain outside of my door I find that I cannot say anything else right now. I am once again so amazed by God. So, cheers for now, may God bless everyone reading this as much as he is blessing me. Maybe later in the week I will write about more that I am learning from this little book but for now I trust that something that I have said will reach through the screen and touch one of you. 

                Every time that I look at the calendar I am shocked at how fast time is going! I cannot believe that it is already March first and I have been in Uganda officially for two months! Life is so good! I cannot believe at times how much God has blessed me, it is far more than I could ever deserve. These last two weeks have been really “normal” by my standards and there are no earth shattering, funny or super exciting story’s to share. I can only tell what God has been teaching me, and before anyone sends me angry messages about how everything is a good story, I do know that everything is interesting I just mean nothing out of the normal.

                Probably my biggest learning curve in the last month, and even since coming to Uganda, came last week at our Thursday night bible study. I cannot really pinpoint what made me realize this or come to the decision that I did but I came to have a new theme, not only the next three and a half months, but for the rest of my life. The theme of the year for our Watoto 360 class, and the entire church, is Fresh Start, last week I realized that along with that my theme needs to be surrender. One thing that I know about myself is that I have a hard time with trust.  I may say that I trust someone or something but ultimately I still like to be the one in control. When something matters to me I will do all that is in my power to make it happen and often I find it incredibly hard to let another step in and believe that they will do as good a job as I desire to do.  I have always said that I trust God and I know in my head that he requires me to live a life of surrender to Him, and for the last 19, almost 20 years I have done a very good job of letting myself believe that I have given everything up to God. I haven’t. He is one person that I trust completely and know will always have my best interest in mind but I still don’t give everything up to him. I still like to hold onto many of my dreams, my fears, my hopes, my future and my past. It is as if I tell God, “ok you can have this little piece of me but I am going to keep the rest”, or at other times I will say with all sincerity, “ God it is yours, take it all,” but then as life starts to become hard again I take back all that I have given to Him.  Well after last week’s revelation I can say with honesty that I have begun to truly let go. I am not perfect and both of the above situations will continue to apply to my life but I have started to truly surrender. It seems that since making this my theme every time I turn around God is showing me another area that I have yet to give up to him and each time I let something go I find that it is a bit easier than the last.  I am learning that just because I have surrendered something to The Lord does not mean that I no longer care about it, I do not throw my hands in the air and say “God whatever you want to do I don’t care go ahead,” but it does mean that though I still care deeply I do not worry. I still present my prayers and petitions to Him, and I will still labour in prayer but I no longer worry about the outcome.  This is a journey that I am just beginning and I know that there is still so so much that I have to work on, but already I have been blessed with the peace that transcends all understanding in many of the areas that I have given up. For that reason I can say with confidence that God is so good!!! He is so far above anything that I can ever understand or deserve but he loves me and walks with me every step of this journey that he has placed me on.

                To end on a lighter and fun note, last week we were again in Subbi village, this time not doing sports ministry but just spending time in the homes. I was incredibly blessed to be in cluster six where there is no shortage of small children to play with. After some wandering around I found them all and Thomas and I sat down to teach them duck duck goose. It was not exactly the game we would play at home with the kids but it was fun none the less. After that Thomas taught them all how to be monkeys by lifting them into the trees nearby and in order to keep some sense of order when they had received their turn they were to go sit with “Aunty” Jess.  There is one thing that no one mentions to you when you are coming that I have come to realize is quite important, and that is the difference between African hair and Muzungu ( white ) hair. Theirs does what it is told and does not move! It is not slippery or soft but course and when it is put in small braids ( plaits) it needs no elastic in order to stay in. Needless to say I have quickly learned that my hair ( being blond especially) is a novelty. When Thomas told the kids to go sit with me he could not have predicted that I would not move for the next forty or so minutes as I became the center of an impromptu salon.  At any one time there were eleven pairs of hands pulling and braiding and running their fingers through my hair. I have seen the pictures and it was quite a sight! With one little girl, Hope, sitting in my lap and eleven others all around me I was in my element. When Thomas told me it was time to go I was quite sad and had no idea how to get up!! It may sound easy but when you have twenty-two little hands in your hair it can be a challenge! The other somewhat funny moment came when I found that my sandals had been peed on , or as we say here susued on, by a little one who didn’t quite make it inside. Well needless to say I did not wear them until later when we could find water to wash them with. When I came back up top carrying my shoes my house mates had a good laugh at the story.

 So there you have it my last week has been normal for me, challenging, but rewarding. The two things I would ask prayer for is guidance into the future, not only for myself but all my house mates as we try to discern what God desires for us after 360. Also if everyone could keep Rashidah in their prayers. We went to visit her last week and it may be the last time we see her as she is going to try to move in with some other friends. She originally moved to the place she is now when she was expecting and was promised help with the baby. Now that she is childless she is seen as a burden and is not being cared for as she should be. She hopes to find work and move and though I am saddened by the thought of losing this friend I do understand and will do whatever I can to help her. So if everyone would pray for her I would be incredibly thankful.  May God bless you all at home, you are in my prayers and I thank you for everything, each prayer and encouraging word means the world to all of us over here.