Well
once again this week has been incredible and absolutely nuts! I thought that
time was moving fast before but these last few weeks since safari have just
flown by. Every week there is something that I look forward to and then it all
happens so fast that I almost feel like it never happened! This week was no
exception.
In all
honesty last Sunday I was looking at this week and dreading most of it but
looking forward to one bright spot. I knew even while relaxing on my day off
that the coming week had the potential to be a hard one. For our Tuesday
ministry we were tasked to visiting the prison and Thursday we were sent to
Akiba, the children’s cancer home, in the morning and Mulago hospital in the
afternoon. Needless to say none of the above ministries are in my list of top
five favorite places to be. Though prison is not my favorite place to be
visiting in truth it is not all that bad. The only reason that I dislike going
is because everything is in Luganda and therefore I cannot understand a word of
what is being said. My dear friend
Vanessa translates for me bits and pieces and I can usually get a general idea
of what is happening but in truth I usually feel totally useless as there is
not really anything that I can do. This week however my half of the team was on
the men’s side of, my other friend Saul was speaking on prayer and at the end
we all stood and the men came for individual prayer. This I could do. Lucky for
me all but one of the men that came to me spoke English and it was very cool to
be able to say that in one of our least favorite ministries we were actually late
leaving because we could not stop the men from coming to us to be prayed over.
I was especially impacted by one young man who looked not much older than me.
As I had been doing with all of them I asked what his name was and what he
wanted me to pray for. I really can’t remember exactly what either of us said
but what I do remember is one of my favorite moments of the day. He told me
that he wanted to go back to school, and when I asked him what he wanted to do
after he did not even miss a beat when he said that he wants to be an
engineer. I was so blessed by this man.
I know that to most people it would seem that he is in an impossible situation
that may never be completely resolved but it was a reminder of the fact that no
matter where you go there is hope for a better future. Dreams cannot be stopped
when hope is present, no matter what you are facing, no matter how high the
odds are against you or how unlikely the condition. Dreams are what make us
wake up each morning and turn life into an adventure.
Thursday was the
first time my group has visited the hospital and though I have grown up working
in them Mulago is a government funded Ugandan hospital and therefore nothing
like what I have come to expect from hospitals at home. To say I was nervous
was an understatement. I had heard horror stories about others experiences
there for the last four months and very few god reports. I was hoping for the
best but I was not expecting it. Praise be to God though, I was not sent to the
ward full of people who had been in Boda Boda accidents ( I have heard many
hard stories about there, though I do know that they need prayer just as badly
as the rest ) but rather I was sent ( with all the guys in my group) to the post-surgery
ward. I was still quite nervous but with quiet and sweet Daniel by my side we
marched into the womens ward of floor 2B ( at least I think that was the floor
number ). I am not really sure how to describe what happened to me in the hour
that we spent at the hospital. Perhaps it was because I was on a different
floor than the one other time that I had been there, or the fact that this ward
was a little cleaner than I expected, but all nervousness left me when we
walked into that room of women. I was not exactly sure what to do but with a
quick look at Daniel and around the room I moved to the first woman that I saw
who was awake and asked to pray for her. She did not understand either English,
or Luganda so it put Daniel and I in a bit of a tight spot until her friend
came and could translate for us but in the end she was one of the sweetest and
most caring women that I have met, though I only spoke to her for maybe five
minutes and even that was through two other people. As we moved through the room of sick and
hurting people calm settled over me and something about what I was doing just felt
right. Though I was not praying anything
profound and there were no miraculous healings that happened before our eyes I
felt like I was doing exactly what God wanted me to do. Even now as I sit here
trying to describe it I find that I don’t have the right words to do so. To say
that for the first time in my life I was doing what I was created to do is not
right , because I know that God has been leading me on every step that I have
taken especially in the last year, but it comes close to explaining how I felt.
I have been doing my best to serve him 100% for the last four months and I have
been incredibly moved and touched deep in my heart by so many things, like God’s
Grace, but this was different from any other moment in my life. In a week where
I felt just empty of anything worth giving I found peace and purpose. I found God,
and once again in one of the our least favorite ministries people were so
hungry for prayer that we ended up leaving late.
The highlight of my week though was Wednesday
morning. For the last week our class has been raising money among ourselves in
order to be able to provide for some of the basic needs of God’s Grace, and on
Wednesday we were able to go and give all we had bought to them. I am not sure how much I have said about the
actual condition of God’s Grace in previous posts but each time we go my heart
breaks and then is put back together by the love of those children. There are
120 children living in a small run down three bedroom house with four adults to
look after them all. I don’t know that they ever have three meals in a day, and
it is common for them to be “fasting” so that the babies can eat what little
food there is. With what our class
raised we were able to bring them large sacks of posho, beans, rice, soya for
the babies, mosquito nets, clothes and much more. Never before have I been so
proud of my class as I was in that moment. Though it rained most of the time we
were there it was amazing to be able to spend more time with the kids and love
on them and bless them even as they were a blessing to us. The sad part is that
even though we brought them so much, it will probably not last more than a
month or two and then they will be back to the old routine of wondering when
they will get their next meal. The amazing thing is that as a house of eight
internationals we have been moved and have been begging all those back at home
to help us provide for these wonderful children. Thomas has set up a pay pall account where
anyone can send money that we can use to somehow help God’s Grace, and without
really any long term planning or trying to we have ended up with enough to feed them for a year. As we have watched God bless our rather half-hearted
efforts beyond anything that we would have imagined we have been blown away and
now find ourselves dreaming some incredible dreams for the future. None of us
want to say good bye to this ministry in June and we are now dreaming what I
like to think of as God sized dreams for how we might be able to help them more
and more. So this is my plea to everyone back home. Keep God’s Grace constantly
in your prayers, keep us eight in them as well as we seek God’s will on how to
bless them, and if anyone feels that God has laid it on their hearts to do something
more let me know. I can easily reel off a list of things that they need. J I pray that God is
blessing everyone back home as much as he has been blessing me.
