A tough few weeks

First off, you can always tell when I'm having a tough time by how rarely I write. I see that the last post I did was on the 4th, and it's crazy to think of all that's taken place since then. To begin with, I had to say goodbye to some really great friends! Judy and Malia left and then just under a week ago, I had to say goodbye to another good friend of mine, Jonah (he's the one who had broken his leg at the same time I broke my foot). Going through all the pains of goodbyes, especially with those who you may never see again can take their toll on your emotions for sure.

Along with the painful goodbyes and the personal struggles that have been happening. Ministry has also been tough. I've recently written about how there are these girls who live such terrible lives where they willfully choose to sin against God. Well, this week, I guess you could say that the prayers of "God, I don't know when or how I'm going to deal with these girls...", got answered. On Tuesday I had just said goodbye to Jonah and I had just gotten back from going and dropping Ryan and the Reeds at the half way point between where they live and Jinja, (so needless to say I was a little on the emotional side) and I had a counseling appointment. This girl came to me to tell me about how her cousin was living and how she had run away from home and so on and so forth. This girl's cousin has been coming to my Sunday afternoon Bible studies for the past two years, I knew there was something going on, but never had anything concrete about it...until now. We made the plan to do phase one of the confrontation process in dealing with sin, and so the girl and her cousin were to come and talk to me the next day. Well...on Wednesday, I waited for them to get to the church and the girl who I had been talking to found me and told me that they were on their way to come and meet with me when they were intercepted by a lady who lived near them who had had enough of what the cousin had been doing and started to beat the girl with a stick. So the girl and I hopped in the truck and ran down to where the girl was at, brought her, the girl's mom, and the lady who was beating her to the church. After about an hour and a half of talking, it was just cool because God totally was the one in control of the whole thing. The end result is that the girl has one last chance to prove herself and if she doesn't, then I'm taking her back to her mom in the village. As a way to provide some sort of control and accountability, I also now pick her up from home and take her to school and then pick her up from school so she won't have to flirt with temptation at those times....we'll see how this goes. I pray that she changes and starts to truly follow Christ, because it seriously breaks my heart knowing the life that she has been living and that she'll have to pay for that the rest of her life and if she doesn't change, she will have to pay for it for eternity as well.

Then while I was dealing with that, the names of two of my key guys were brought up as being part of that issue. So I had to talk to them as a sister in hopes that things wouldn't have to escalate to something more official.

Finally, last night, I was in the house and was informed that two girls had come to see me. I went out there and they said they needed to sit and talk about something. Their names had also been brought up while we were dealing with the first girl, and they started denying everything before I even had a chance to bring it up to them. I don't know the life they're living, but God does. They had come to try and bring accusations against another person, and it ended up with me giving them a very similar talk to what I had given the first girl and they were not expecting to have things go the way they did. But God was good and again He really just did the talking - I just was the vessel.

These things have been a long time coming. I've seriously struggled with not knowing what to do with these students for such a long time. It had always been rumors, but then it just kind of fell in my lap as to how to deal with it. In seeing these students living lives where they knew the right way to live, but instead lived to cater to the "flesh", I can now have new understanding about what our sin does to God. As I was counseling the first girl, one thing that really hit me hard what how she had welts all over her from where the other lady had been striking her with a small stick. I was able to tell her that the pain she went through with that beating was nothing compared to when Jesus was beaten to the point where the skin was ripped off of his back because of His love for her. It's really something that I will NEVER forget and I thank God for opening my eyes to the power of that example.

The book of 1 John talks about if you love God you will no longer choose a life of sin, I can point fingers at these girls all I want, but really, I need to examine my own life as well. The sin that these girls are involved with is just the same as when I know I'm not supposed to gossip or manipulate or have pride...and yet still pursue those things. As I told these girls, we are called to live pure, holy, blameless lives before Christ, ones where we are above reproach. Now as I'm telling these students that, I now need to practice what I preach.

"Open Air Preaching"

In the book, "Lectures to my Students", Charles Spurgeon devotes two chapters to "open air preaching". I won't lie when I was reading through this book and as I crept closer and closer to these chapters, I was somewhat dreading them because it seemed like the subject matter would be a little on the dry side to say the least...but boy was I wrong! It's funny because in America, we don't really get or look for opportunities to do ministry outside of our church buildings or property. If anything, we do something like street witnessing which is all well and good, but if someone doesn't want to be asked the typical ice breaker questions of, "so where do you think you'll go if you die?" or "Have you ever stolen something?", you're kind of out of luck. Spurgeon says a lot of common sense sort of stuff, yet I think it's stuff we need to be reminded of in this day and age especially. He wrote, "Not only must something be done to evangelize the millions, but everything must be done, and perhaps amid variety of effort the best thing would be discovered, 'If by any means I may save some' must be our motto..." We get so caught in our box of, "This is how we do things" that I think there is a large some of people who miss out on hearing the Good News of what Christ went through because of His love for us. That's where my excitement with this open air preaching concept comes.

As I am in the midst of reading these chapters, it was decided that our youth group would go on location and do our normal youth service in a place called Loco. It's only a couple of blocks away from the church, but there are so many kids who live there who would not come to church and so it was awesome thinking of the 70+ kids who were there listening to the youth pastor, Richard, lay out the Gospel for them...but I think that almost even more that comes the thought of the people who maybe were just listening from their houses or passing by, and the seeds that could be planted with them as well. I've come to find that the seeds sown by "accident" sometimes produce the most fruit. So it was just so cool to play a VERY small part in getting to see the opportunities getting outside of our comfort zones can bring. Now, each month our goal is to do at least one event like this so that truly, "If by any means I (we) may save some".

Another tough goodbye

When I first got to Uganda (two years ago today), Ryan had told me that there was someone named Judy who I was destined to become best friends with. Now, looking back on the past couple of years as our friendship has grown, it's very tough to think that I'm going to have to say goodbye to one awesome "big sister". She's been with me through the trials of life in Africa, finding who I am here, and just the drama that comes with being friends with a 24 year old. She's put up with so much from me and in five days I'm going to have to say goodbye to her as she and her daughter leave to return to America. This summer has been incredibly hard in the goodbye department and having Judy leave as the summer draws to a close just kind of bookends the tough goodbyes. I'm so thankful for the friend God has blessed me with and on top of that, He's brought an awesome little girl into Judy's life that has become one of our little family as well. I'm going to miss these girls so much, and I'm not sure how I'm going to be able to adjust to life without them, but I'm so excited to see what God has next for them as they embark on this new chapter of life back in the States.

A night of R&R

Yesterday morning I left bright and early for a little trip to Sipi Falls to meet up with Ryan and give him a couple of things he had been needing. I had been to the falls before, but yet again, it just took my breath away. It's so green and the mountains are just so awesome with the clouds and the waterfalls dotting the surface as you look at them from a distance. The place we stayed is the exact same place I had stayed before right after my birthday. This was cool because it served many important purposes: 1) allowed me to see my buddy, 2) allowed me to get away after an absolutely insane week, 3) helped celebrate my cast being off as well as my two year anniversary of being in Uganda (it's the 29th of this month). It was just just really cool to just escape and bask in God's absolutely amazing creation. It was funny because last night, we were watching a movie shot in Hawaii and I told Ryan, "Can you imagine living in a place like that!?" to which I realized a very similar landscape. It was just awesome being in that awesome place, getting to drink coffee, and not get any phone calls! It was 24 hours without responsibility and it was GLORIOUS!





Here's one anecdote from the trip that I think several of you might enjoy: So we went to this very little island in the middle of the river and sat down to put our feet in and just hang out. It was perfect because my foot was needing to be iced and that water was stinkin' cold! As we were sitting there I kept feeling something kind of poking me but I thought it was just a stick or something so I just kind of ignored it. Then Ryan noticed that on a rock in the river there was this cool little crab and I'm not joking, I totally said, "as long as he's over there he's cool". Pretty much right afte that, I felt the poking feeling and looked down and there was this angry crab was trying to pinch my leg!!!! I may or may not have freaked out pretty badly just because it was so unexpected, and as Ryan said, "Only I would get pinched by a crab in the middle Uganda"

IT'S GONE!!!!

Hallelujah!!!! I am free indeed! After six of the most intense weeks of my life, my cast is finally off and I'm able to progress towards living a "normal" life. On Tuesday afternoon, I got the call from my "cast man" that I could come in bright and early on Wednesday morning to get my cast off. He was laughing at me because I was giddy I was so excited to finally get it off.

Here are a couple of pictures for you about the process. The first one is a view of the "exam room" where he does his work. It was funny because when I was trying to swing my leg around to the other side, half of the table collapsed.... The other picture is one of the super fancy job the kids in my life did on decorating this newest cast. And finally, the last one is of the special little saw they used to cut the cast away, that I mentioned in a previous post.







Thank you all for your prayers as I've gone through this time. I'm still not 100% yet, it's still very sore and swollen and I still have to walk with one crutch just to offset the weight a little bit, but it's beautiful to not be lugging that thing around. Being able to take a normal shower, to not have heart palpitations when it's raining, and to not hear "sorry" all the time when I walk down the street are just a couple of things I'm enjoying right now. I'll be honest though and say that although it was harder at times than words can express, I wouldn't take it back for anything. The lessons God taught me and the relationships that I have formed during this time are priceless and if I had to break my foot for these things to happen, then so be it.

Sympathy pains

Being on crutches in Uganda is definitely something few people can truly relate to. Or come to think of it...most people I've talked to have said they've NEVER had to be on crutches before, some even have said they wished they could break their leg so they could experience crutches...ummm can you say CRAZY!? It's funny thinking of how few people have had the joy of experiencing the pain, inconvenience, feeling of uselessness and laziness that comes from being on these dreadful things, but God is good...and in the midst of my self pity, he brought someone to join the party. A friend of mine decided he'd be nice and break his leg about three weeks after I broke my foot, so needless to say, he gets to rock the crutches too. The only thing is that his crutches are metal and a whole heck of a lot bigger than mine. It was seriously just hilarious though having the two of us together in the same location, because here you really never see people on crutches. I appreciated the sympathy pains he is still having to endure...but I definitely have rubbed it in the poor guys face that I'm getting my cast off TOMORROW!!!!

Uganda 101

So here is a random lesson on a couple of things that are commonly seen here, that I kind of forget to tell people about:

1) This is our super sturdy construction. Amazingly enough, you don't hear of as many accidents of buildings collapsing on people as you might think.


2) This is one of our versions of a taxi - we call it a matatu. It's a white van with blue checkerboard around the sides. The only way they seem to work is if you cram about 5 more people in than the van is licensed for, and the driver dodges in and out of traffic, cutting off every possible person, honking his horn to make sure you know he's there, while the guy who works with him shouts out of the window, the next location, "Kampala, Kampala, Kampala!!!!!"

I think that may be enough to get you started, but be ready for more lessons... For the record, these things are just a part of life, but I was trying to kind of wrap my mind what it's like for someone who's never experienced Uganda before, but I really do LOVE this beautiful country!