Many of the Ugandans are very shocked to see white people. they can't believe that we exist. when the children shake hands, sometimes they rub our hands to see if it is paint. we frighten them, i think.

When they look at me, the children, with their eyes staring unbroken into mine, I can feel a desperation to speak to them, to be able to tell them how I got here and how I have longed to meet them---of all the people back home who sent me here.

I want to tell them that I regocnize the pain in their eyes. That I know their sorrows and their lonlness, but they are afraid and they shy away and many of them do not speak English and so I wave and I say "Biira" which means second born girl. I say it because they recognize it and they smile so brightly and laugh because a tiny shred of the mystery between us has been illuminated.

And I know nothing else in Loconzo. I know hello goodbye thank you. But when you see a hiding little dark child shining at you from behind something, you don't want to sayhello goodbye or thank you. You want to say come here hug me i love you i am safe you are the light of the world.

But clearly I don't know any of that so I wave and I smile and I gesture with my hands to come here, but the child hides and refuses to come because he is afraid, because he is so shy.

And to him, I am a wonderful thing, an unbelievable thing, white terrifying mysterious hard to understand and unapproachable.

There were somany of them, so many children: young people my age, some a little older, tiny ones. They stare and they stare and they stare at the mystery but we cannot speak because their english is limited and very hard to understand and I don't speak any loconzo.

And my heart breaks. My heart within me breaks and I feel such sadness and longing and mourning that I cannot do much but cry, embarassingly.

The separation here between us is great, but I know that the love of God binds us. I know that when I hear them singing, when I hear them praying---I can recognize the spirit there.

God longs for us as little children. God is desperately heart broken because we will not come to him---because we are afraid and unsure and we hide---and the Lord calls and calls and calls but we do not come. And his heart breaks.

It was so painful in such a strange way I had never felt before, to be unable to communicate with such a precious thing....and I think that is how the Lord feels about us. When we will not approach him, his heart breaks so greatly because he cannot even tell us that his heart is breaking. That is what lonliness is. Lonely in our sorrowful separation from what we long for.

God came chasing after us in the person of Jesus Christ--coming down onto the earth so that he could learn our language and give himself a name we could cry out. He pursued us in our separation from Him because that is what God is. God is a lover pursuing recklessly. He is not an approver of violence or poverty, or the cause of evil. The Lord is the healing, not the wound. He does not permit war and violence and nakedness because he is callous or unfair. He redeems it because he is love.

And he is doing it today. And I am honored to be used by Him.

God is robed in inapproachable light and he is terrifying in his power. He is unfathomable and penetrating. In his righteous scrutiny he reveals our poverty and our pride, our anger and malice. We feel shame and we feel fear and we want to run and hide because before God, none can stand in their evil deeds or plead a case for themselves.

But the Lord is not a punisher and we have nothing to fear because his wrath has been satisfied in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with the Father and Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen

PS
thank you for all your comments. it is good to know there are folks at home hoping. I love you all, and think of you daily.

also, i took many pictures, but because the African internet is fickle, I was forced to withold all of them.