echoes

so i don't really know why i'm writing here right now. I'm not in uganda......I'm definitely not in uganda. I'm in strozier library. Which is a much sadder place. I just miss writing. I haven't really written a thing since I got back. I haven't really processed much of this stuff since I got back. There are no categories here for talking or thinking about Uganda.

man I miss it so much I cry sometimes. I miss it so much. I miss it so much. I have now been here a little longer than I was in Uganda after the group left and that is so sad to me.

I wanna get out of here. out of this country. off of this continent. away from this cell phone.

no one is probably out there to hear this shout, as it tumbles down the canyon wall into the abyss,

and all that comes back from that beautiful shout is a fading, withering echo.

and then it's gone.

that's what happened to Uganda. It came back like a withering echo.....and now it's gone.

Home

Well, as some of you may know, I am home.

I am sitting in the office in my parents house. I am showered. I am clean. My clothes have been washed. I found a small stowaway bug in my luggage.

The trip is almost complete. Now there's just the part where I tell everyone all about it a thousand times. I can't wait. There is so much to say.

I will say this, I am going to slowly reimmerse myself into life, so if you don't get a phone call as soon as you'd hoped, be of good cheer my friend. Things take time.

It's strange being back here, where everything is clean and everything is available and easy. Suddenly I'm reflecting on the time I spent in Uganda as a past tense thing, and it's sort of uncomfortable. I feel as if I've abandoned Uganda for a hot shower and a bowl of cereal.

I'm going back. I don't know when, but I am.
I was trying to explain kampala to my parents last night. My mouth moved 100 miles a minute and I stumbled over my words and spouted them out desperately. There are no words.

And yet I am using so many words.

Here is an excerpt from my journal the day we flew out of Entebbe.

I was writing the story of how I came to buy a small book:

The story really starts, if we're going to be quite honest about it, at the dawn of time, but for the sake of brevity, I'll start with just this afternoon.

Lisa and I were picked up from the Namirembe girl's hostel at 5:06 pm by a man named Steven. Lisa has been my travleing companion in Uganda now for two months. She's blond, she's beautiful, witty. She's one of those "scrapbooking" types. Steven is a medical lab technician, Ugandan, who runs a small clinic in Entebbe. He has a very thick accent and a low rumbling pattern of grunting, which makes it difficult to navigate a conversation.

The Namirembe girl's hostel is home to a number of Ugandan girls, school age, who stay in bunks at the hostel while they get an education in or near kampala. They must be very dedicated, because around the time the rooster begins to crow in the morning (4am), we hear them clamouring into the study room. Ugandans are morning people. They're also tea-taking-types. At eleven, everything stops, and everybody takes tea. They hide little electronic kettles in closets and office cabinets, waiting for tea time, and then---out come the cups and the water and the milk and the conversation.

The hostel is run by a man named Patrick, tall, lanky, with skin like an aging plum,very separate and yellowish teeth, spectacles and graying, wiry hair. He is kind, he is warm, he speaks slowly. The first night we came back to Kampala from the hospital, I saw him walking around in wide, slow strides, searching for a girl from room 31. A few minutes later when i was in the showers, I heard him shuffle in in his silk robe and slippers and his warm, fatherly voice echoed in the concrete washrooms--
"Heh-DOH?"
I answer and he immediately knows I am not the one from my accent--distinctly American and curt, not melodic or slow, like Ugandans. He mutters worriedly to the security guard outside the washroom.
"Dih guhl eehn druum 31 aast fahr pen-killehrs uhnd naw I aave tem uhnd I con-you to such fahr hah...."

And I feel more at home as I picture him in his bathrobe finding the girl with the headache or the pain and caring for her like a father---here, family connections are about love, adoption and tenderness, not biology.

So Steven picks us up at five, before the sun goes down because it's dangerous enough to drive in Kampala at all, let alone at night. There are a thousand motorcycle taxis called boda bodas and they strain through the traffic in the overcrowded and dusty streets like sand through fingers, sliding around and through wherever they can, not wherever is safe.

We pass the mosque, huge and shining, the most beautiful thing in the city, heavily gated and manicured. A shining monument, a dream among the orange tinted streets and buildings, the trash littered trenches and war torn doorways. The city looks like a place destroyed, abandoned, dying---and yet the Africans are here, they have no where else to go. This is their city, their home, their hope. I feel conspicuosly white as I tumble down the streets on the back of the boda--and my heart hurts as I realize more and more, in the faces of the taxi drivers and street vendors, that I am a visitor in their world, that I may never understand life here, that I may never get in step with the pulse of this plot of humanity because I am of the privledged white race. I am perceived of as elite, easyand powerful.

And yet, in the middle of it all, the swimming and screaming African continent, with all its tears and all its mysteries, joys, in all its shrouded beauty--I feel more powerless than I have since I was a child.

We roll past the mosque, toward Entebbe, out of the city and across a brief stretch of country side. Stacks of avocados and mangoes pass by under floating faces, confused and then smiling at our white skin through the window. I feel alone and sad to be leaving Uganda. Strangely, I wish I could stumble through another labored conversation with an African just to get to the part when you both start laughing and smile, shaking hands as an African high pitched, soaring sigh eases the nerves and settles your heart in a feeling of friendship and ease.

I have more to learn from Uganda--the land and the people.

But now we're continuing toward Entebbe, to the airport to begin the journey home, the long transatlantic hop to home, where the comforts of wealth will bother me more than ever.

After a confusing exchange with Steven, the driver, it becomes clear that we are making one last stop. Steven runs a clinic near Entebbe and he wants us to stop, so we can see it. Come see my clinic, he says, you never know what the future will bring. Let us start friendship now, perhaps you come back.

So, we go. And there is one tree with a tire around the bottom and patchy green grass, beige buildings with beds inside, a surprisingly clean and tidy facility, surprisingly empty too. We are led into a small room where a man sits behind a desk, and we are told to sit please. So we sit please and without fail, the man behind the desk produces a visitor's book. Very strange phenomenon in Uganda. Everywhere you go, they have a visitor book and you're expected to sign in and write down your address and your signature and where you're from. I have yet to fully grasp the visitor book concept.

A short visit later, we are on the road again, and we arrive at the airport with five hours to spare. WONDERFUL

We get some instant coffee from the bar in the lobby, which, like many things here, bears the lingering essence of colonial Britain, with its cup and saucer, proper appeal.

We somehow manage to survive the checking in process, with its subtle African, laid back flavor. It takes a while and it's a little uncomfortable when the airline employee is genuinely interested in your stay in Uganda and what you were up to. The no-nonsense, no frills, American approach to service leaves you vulnerable to shock at contact with sincere and warm service here in Uganda. We've lost our sensitivity and gained a whole new vulnerability by our hard appearances and way of life.

After being in the bush for so long, where you will not see a cappuccino for miles, it's shocking coming into the airport terminal, where there are shelves upon shelves of tax-free goods, strategically lit, displayed, available. This is foreign now, as images in my mind of beggars without limbs impose themselves over posters of beautiful woman on all fours, selling fragrances.

THIS is uncomfortable. The comfort is uncomfortable.

We have time to kill, so we wander around the shelves and shelves of fragrances. Some are one hundred dollars, about two weeks pay for a man with a decent job in Uganda. As we smell each one, Lisa accidentally knocks one and we both watch as it falls to the ground and against the white marble. It shatters with a sharp, clean ringing sound---and then silence. For a moment.

I feel the cool perfume on my foot as it is rapidly evaporating and we look at one another, mouths gaping. I peek at the box. On the nose, $100 of tax free accident.
You know what we're both thinking at this point and so does the employee on the other side of the store. So we wait. This is a wonderful strategy for those who have no idea what to expect--which we have been very often since visiting in Uganda. When in doubt, wait to be addressed.

A man comes over and nervously communicates non-verbally, then another comes to sweep up. I notice the perfume has soaked my pant leg and the thought begins to develop that I will smell of this particular fragrance for the entirety of our journey---over 24 hours. After some time, the first man reappears to break the news.

"You pay fifteen dollars."
"Fifty?" we reply in unison.
"nonono fifTEEN."

ohokgreatalrightfinelet'sGO.

Nervously, we quickly make our way up to the counter before we cause any more problems. To soothe the subtle uncomfortable nature of the situation, I grab a small notebook from the rack.
This way, at least it was a customer who broke something and not an anonymous pair of careless American girls who terrorized the fragrance section. After all, we must represent the hoard of good consumers at home on OUR VERY OWN CONTINENT CALLED AMERICA.





Also,

next stop: India.

THE END IS NEAR!!!

Well, the end is near.  

I'm sitting on the bed, looking at my bulging duffle bags and honestly, I feel pretty crummy.  

We're leaving tomorrow morning after chapel for Kampala and we'll spend a week there before flying back to the States.  I'm all mixed up.  Part of my doesn't want to leave Uganda, part of me really misses home, part of me totally does not want to go back to the busy-ness and the complicated nature of life at home, both practically and socially.  And then there's another part of me that just sort of feels nothing at all.  

I just really like staring at mountains everyday, reading my Bible with a cup of coffee.  I don't want to go home and dive back into all the busy-ness.  There are so many distractions, I didn't realize before how much I didn't notice or feel them....until suddenly they are all not there and I can breathe.  

I like Uganda.  I don't want to come back.  It's confusing though because in my mind, I'm already home...and yet I'm here...in Uganda.  It's an identity crisis of sorts.

Also I'm tired of discussing the election with British people.  

So let's reflect for a moment.

....I'm coming home in a little over a week.  My life is changed, my soul is altered, I'm going to have weave in my hair........let's just say I will never be the same.  I've eaten goat.  I've eaten chicken liver, chicken gizzard, fried banana cookies cooked in less than desirable sanitary conditions, kasava, one thousand chapati (a pancake of sorts made with lots of oil), a billion mandazi (a doughnut like thing fried in oil).  I've eaten matoke, pumpkin, sugar cane, dodo, and lots and lots of toast.  I have also drank more soda while I have been here than I have ever in my life.  (that includes middle school)  oh yeah and I also ate a fruit that no one knows the name of.  

And you know what?  I really have enjoyed all of it, except the chicken stuff....really gross since in Uganda, many chickens are not actually fed and they just go around pecking at whatever is layin' around (trash, stones, other trash).....so it was sort of disgusting.

I had a really terrible day today.  I went to the maternity ward to see if I could actually witness a birth before I leave, but I was totally discouraged by one of the UK elective students and then I felt like I was in the way because I'm not a doctor......so I got really sad and this all compounded on the homesickness and the not wanting to leave Uganda feeling and I went and sat behind the building and cried for a bit.....

and then I realized that there were a bunch of Ugandan women sitting on the sidewalk just across the way and they were all staring at me, shocked.  White people cry?

So I decided I would make myself feel better and go buy some soap for my friends in the fistula ward.  So I went down there and carried the huge box of soap on my head and we sat and stared at each other since we can't speak the same language, but I felt better because they're my friends now.  

You know in high school when I used to feel discouraged like that, I would go to the mall and shop.  

How things have changed.  

They really have.  I won't be the same when I get back.

Don't give it up

Some of you may know and some of you may not but I used to read tarot cards not too long ago.  I think I started reading them my senior year of high school and I stopped a little over a year ago.   Some of you may also know this:  I have a tattoo on my shoulder.  The tattoo is a tarot card.  I got it right before I stopped reading them.

 

Well, now that the Lord has taken me to Africa, I think I may finally understand what the image means in the larger story of my life, and what the image means in the stories of the lives of the women in the fistula ward, and what it means in the life of any person who has come to know Jesus Christ, and in the life of any person who hasn't. 

 

            People always ask me what it means and it’s probably the question I really hate the most because honestly, I don’t really know how to explain it very well.  There is no short version.  In fact, I hate the question because it confuses me, and it’s usually asked by a stranger, someone who I was never really ready to share the following story with. 

 

But I think I’m ready to do that now.

 

There was a particular season of my life when most of my relationships were abusive.  I allowed myself to be controlled by people not because they were directly causing me to behave a certain way, but because I allowed their presence in my life to cause me to believe in my own powerlessness, helplessness, and inability.  This is the essence of the meaning of the tarot card.

The eight of swords.  This card means captivity.  The woman in the image is blindfolded and bound, standing, of her own accord, in the mud.  She is not struggling.  She is not freeing herself.  Her captors are nowhere to be seen, and yet, there she is, alone, trapped in a fence of swords.  There is a building in the background, representing the place she has been cast out of.  She is in the wilderness, and she is completely isolated.

 

But this is not the image on my body.  The image on my body is upside down, which changes its meaning.  When tarot cards appear upside down, or reversed, whatever the original meaning of the card was when it was right side up, is blocked.  I wanted it this way because I didn’t want the meaning of this card to follow me around for the rest of my life.  Looking back on my life, I saw how oppressed I was, and continued to be, and I always wanted to remember to fight this trap.  I didn’t want to be controlled by anything or anyone anymore.  I saw the image of oppression and I rejected it.  What I wanted was freedom.  I wanted liberation.

 

 Liberate: to set someone free from a particular situation (especially slavery or imprisonment) in which their liberty is severely restricted; to free a country, city, or people from enemy occupation

 

So I started searching for this.  I started searching for freedom, but I couldn’t find it on my own.  Sometimes it feels like I didn’t find it until just yesterday.

 

The women in the fistula ward know what it feels like to be controlled by your own feelings of helplessness.  They were such promising women, hopeful for so much, and then something terrible happened to them, they lost their child.  But they lost something else too, something slipped through their fingers without their even noticing.  They lost respect for themselves and their dignity when they began to believe the lies people told them.   They began to blame themselves.  They began to blame themselves when other people began to blame them.  They believed the lies. 

 

If you were a good enough woman, like your own mother, you would have pushed hard enough and you would have your baby now.  Instead, you’re damaged.  You’re leaking urine right now because it’s your punishment for failing.  The only thing left for you to do now is take your punishment.

 

My version isn’t that different.

 

If you were really capable of love, you wouldn’t have been in so many failed relationships.  If you were really worthy of love, you would be loved, but nobody loves you.  Therefore, it’s your fault.  It’s your punishment for being damaged.  You’re damaged.  The only thing left for you to do now is take your punishment.

 

Yours may not be that different either.

 

You’ll never be the same after _________________.

You’re divorced.  Only selfish people get divorced.

You can’t go back to school, you’re too old.

War damages people.  You’re damaged.

Your dad always said you were_____________.  He’s right.

It was your fault when __________ died.

It was your fault when ___________________left.

 

Those are the lies that keep you standing in the wilderness, wearing the blindfold, accepting the punishment and the isolation.  These are the lies that keep women from accepting the love and redemption of Jesus Christ.  These are the lies that keep women hiding in villages on mountaintops leaking urine.  These are the lies that kept me believing I could never be beautiful again, the lies that made me want to cut off all of my hair and rid myself of anything that made me beautiful, because I believed I wasn’t. 

 

I didn’t want these lies, but I didn’t know what redemption looked like.  I didn’t know Jesus was what I was looking for.  I was like a lost sheep without the truth.  Jesus looked like He had nothing to do with my life.  He was just some historical figure, completely unrelated to what I was feeling.  In fact, most of His people didn’t really look like the sort of crowd I wanted to be associated with. 

I'd been down that road before, and the Jesus I found expected too much.  He made me feel ashamed and judged and I didn't really want that.  His people didn't look like people with hope, they didn't really look that different from anybody else I had ever met.

So I went out looking for liberation because I knew I didn’t want shame anymore, but without the good news in my life, I only found punishment, even with the best intentions.

 

I chose punishment instead of redemption.  I chose punishment because it felt like justice, but what my soul wanted was mercy.  I was looking for freedom, and you can only find that in one place.

 

The cross.

 

The Ugandan women find freedom at Kagando Hospital, because it’s a place where Jesus is healing people and giving them hope.  They make the pilgrimage because they hope that somehow there’s something better than living in shame on the top of a mountain, mourning alone and leaking urine. Some of them had been out to find it before too, like I had.  Just like I had turned to the church for hope and been sent away feeling worse, they had gone to other hospitals that made it worse, who damaged their bodies more than they were before, but the women who had come to Kagando hadn't given up hope.  They knew there had to be something better.  

 

Everybody knows deep down that they want something better than whatever it is they’ve got.  And they don’t just feel that way because that’s just how everybody feels.  They don’t feel this way because this sort of thing happens to everybody.  Everybody doesn’t feel that way.   It doesn’t happen to everybody.   It’s not just because they’re just never satisfied.  It’s not because they’re just flawed people and everybody’s flawed.  It’s not just because something that happened to you years ago will always affect you.  It’s not because you’ve made mistakes and there’s no turning back or making amends.  It’s not because you’re damaged.  It’s not your fault.  You don’t have to live like that.

 

But think about it.  If you believe that you do have to live like that, will you ever start looking for something better?

 

If you just choose to believe that there’s nothing out there that will satisfy your soul, and you accept whatever punishment feels comfortable and just, you will never be happy.

 

Have you given up that dream?  Have you stopped searching?

 

What if the Ugandan women at the hospital had given up that dream?  Some of them live alone in shacks leaking urine for the rest of their lives because they have no faith.  They’ve given up.

 

Don’t give up.  I didn’t give up.  I chose to believe that there was hope.  Hope just happened to be on the other side of the ocean, where Jesus called me to make a pilgrimage to a place where He IS doing something, where He is healing women just like me.  I don’t know where it is for you, but I know Jesus has something to do with it. 

 

Lunch

So I went to the hospital for the first half of the morning to poke around and take some photos and I got to see something cool.

Lunch in the fistula ward.

Beans in the left hand bucket, kasava in the right hand bucket.  This meal is free for the women here.
The orange bucket the woman in the back is holding is where her catheter drains to.
This is the fistula ward.

This is what the hospital looks like.  There is clothing drying everywhere, and people camping on the ground.  The wards are individual buildings connected by these concrete sidewalks.  It feels sort of like a very large family picnic.  Since the hospital can't feed all of the patients the way hospitals in the states do, patients bring attendants with them, family members who cook for them and care for them....which is why this hospital has a very large kitchen with lots of women always in it.
This is Harriet. (on the right)  She has just had the fistula repair operation the first week we were here.  Lisa and I were able to give her a Luhkonzo Bible we had bought in Kasese during the first two weeks.  
This is jackfruit.  Yes, it is actually as big as it looks.  In fact it's probably bigger than it looks.  These were small.  When you eat this fruit, you have to coat your fingers with margarine first because it's so sticky.   Jackfruit was probably on the tree of knowledge, because it looks unbelievable awesome, but then it's unbelievably messy.   No, I haven't had it yet.

It's Photo Phriday!

hey dad guess what!  i saw a huge termite hill and took a picture for you.

We saw a lion on the safari!  YAY!  it was five in the morning.  TIRED!

This is jayne and derek.  They are friends that Lisa and I met staying at the guest house.  They shared coffee and conversation with us and told us about Wales.  They have been coming to the South Rwenzori diocese for 15 years together and they have built a school here.

 Jayne is an Anglican priest in Wales and Derek, her husband, is an insurance broker.  I got to see Jayne baptize 11 African babies.  The service was trilingual because she said the baby's name in Luhkonzo, marked them with the cross of Christ in English, and said Father Son and Holy Spirit in Welsh.  I cried.

Jayne and Derek treated us to lunch at Hotel Margherita, where I was able to have a coke with ice in it and look at the mountains.

This is a view from the hike that Lisa and I went on with the medical students from the UK. (below)

From left to right: Victoria, Rosie, Lisa, Morwenna, Rachel, me, and Jane on the hike.  

So this hike, was really more of an awful thing than an invigorating thing.  observe the shoes.  also it is important to note that Ugandans tend to hike steep mountains faster than musungus because they grew up trotting up and down with big bushels of bananas on their heads.  I, on the other hand have been walking only on sidewalks my whole life.  Let's just say the hike was less than great for me.

This is real live coffee from real live Uganda.  Those beige-ish ones on the left will be roasted and such.  

ASWT, our favorite supermarket.  You can buy ICE CREAM here!!!!

All of the sewing machines are treadles here.  Here is one in front of a store in Kasese. Notice the signage: All these are done as, you wait.  This is Africa

Phun!

Well this week has been pretty uneventful.  I was exhausted on Monday from the weekend so I stayed home from school.  Then Tuesday was a holiday, no school.  Wednesday I was feeling pretty sick so I did nothing but read.  And yesterday...well yesterday I was homesick.  

So, since I haven't really been doing much this week, (except for reading and feeling homesick or regular sick) I think I'm going to go down to the hospital for the second half of the morning to poke around with my camera and maybe this time, I will get to witness a birth.  

Or maybe I'll just wander around feeling useless and conspicuous because I am:

1. not a doctor

2. white

.....or maybe something wonderful will happen.

let's hope for that.

Who hasn't been touched by evil in this life?

All of the women in the fistula ward have one obvious thing in common.   They have no children with them.  In a place where most women are carrying small children on their backs or trailing beside them, it is obvious when that is missing for a woman of a certain age.  These women lie in beds alone, as a catheter hangs below them into a bright beach bucket under the bed.  They are a few limbs and a docile, slightly grinning dark face in a pile of brightly patterned fabric—skirts and sheets. 

 

The child they spent nine months hoping for, expecting joyfully, has died in obstructed labor.  A difficult labor that left their body damaged.  Their husband has divorced them.  They leak urine.  Some leak stool.  They have been lied to, told that this curse has come upon them because they were not as good a mother as their own---lazy, unable to push as they should, inadequate, not a real woman.  They are rejected, degraded, despised, poor.  They are controlled by these feelings.  They begin to believe that they are a death machine, a cursed creature, killing all things they touch, even themselves….. They believe that they are cursed. And they believe this because they have been touched by evil.  

They are poor, and they are blessed because they see the redemption of Christ.

The Lord mourns with them.  Even today He does. 

And I know He does because I see him redeeming it, healing it, making these women new women.  Repairing their bodies, healing their souls, restoring their hearts. 

 

And He’s using Dr. Frank to do this.  He’s using Harriet and Goret.  He’s using St Peters, me and Lisa, you.  He’s using you.

 

He uses Dr. Frank when he opens up their bodies to repair the fistula.  He’s using Harriet the nurse in the ward, when she explains what fistula is, when she finally tells them that they are not cursed, and that they are good women.  He’s using women at St Peters when money comes across the ocean to provide food that heals their bodies and vehicles that take them home, where they might be restored.  In time they may marry again and have children again and know the goodness God wants for them.

 

God wanted life for these women to be different from the start. 

 

I see the ways that war and hunger and disease have changed Uganda each day.  The people have an empty, vacuous expression, an unflinching weariness about them. When you say you are feeling sick, they are greatly concerned and ask if you are "suffering from a disease."  They have lived amongst pain, uncertainty and scarcity and their faces show this.  

The heart of God has desired something different for them.  He has desired peace and prosperity, health and plenty for them and for their children.  I am sure of this because I see the redemption of his people now.....here in Uganda.  I see their dawn shining at the hospital, in the precious innocence of the children at the primary school.  I see God working here to bring that peace out of the tragedy of war that they have seen.  He is bringing forth the desires of their hearts.

God wanted your life to be different.  He has watched the years pass, desiring to stop the tragedies and the pain, to take away your heartbreaks and disappointments---to give you the thing that would give you peace.

But human beings are cursed.  They are touched by evil.  They cannot hear the voice of God when it comes to them.  A violent and profane race, they consume the messengers of God without being changed.  It is  by the grace of God and the grace of God alone, that even one of us hears his voice calling in the desert.  

This is the business of God.  This is what he does each day.  It has been his work and his nature since the fall, since we first looked away from his face.  He reaches and He calls and He sends His servants and messengers to us in hopes that we might turn and be healed.  

 

He created us in glory to love Him completely, freely.  We broke from his love to find knowledge of ourselves, knowledge outside of God.  He sent a promise to Abraham, that He was going to win us all back Somehow.  He sent the law to Moses and to the nation of Israel to set them apart that He might Somehow win us all back.  He promised David that Somehow, He was going to win us all back.  He sent this promise in each prophet to Israel.  He sent this same promise of faithfulness over and over like a husband to an unfaithful wife who, in the midst of her affairs and unfaithfulness, continues to receive desperate love letters of reconciliation from her husband, and burns each one.  

My darling, somehow, we can be together again.  We can save this.  I still love you, we can work this out.  

But she doesn't believe him.  And it hurts so badly not to believe him, somehow, because really, she wants it to be true too.  But she won't reconcile.  It's too hard.  She's done too much now.  It's too late.

And so when this somehow, when this great "Somehow" comes to us, in the womb of a virgin, to win us all back, we burn it too.....we hang it on a cross and mock it, because we have been practicing for generations.  Even now we burn it, when we ignore the Holy Spirit in our lives calling us to return to the Lord.

Christ was the "Somehow" promised from the very beginning.  When He came to the earth and looked at Jerusalem he said this:

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!  See!  Your house is left to you desolate; and assuredly I say to you, you shall not see Me until the time comes when you say, "Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord."

Luke 13:34-35

The husband longing for reconciliation cannot go and kidnap his wife.  He cannot go and force her to love him, to work out their problems.  They both have to want it.  

God cannot reach out any farther to you without wrenching away your freedom.  And He refuses to touch that, because love is free and total and faithful and sacrificial.  And He is love.  

Which is why you are free.  You are free to reject God because he is unjust.  Because He allows evil.  Because this whole church thing is for the weak.  Because religion is a device to control the masses.  Because His "people" are particularly unfriendly or ignorant or because the church is unappealing or full of narrow bigots....You are free to bring yourself pain and separation and isolation, and to bring that for those around you, those you love.

Or you are free to choose the things that would bring you peace, to finally choose to claim redemption for yourself.  To choose love for yourself.  

Just admit it.  Admit that you are in a pile on the bed, wishing you were dead.

The Ugandans are doing it.  Why can't you?

So we're driving down the road and we feel a big bump and a loud screech.  Out the left window, suddenly we see a tire fly off to the side of the road, just barely missing a few bicycle taxis and pedestrians.  We are stopped.  We get out to see this.  Lots of Ugandans stop to help and we make four or five new friends.  This is Africa.  

Angela Kabugho at the school that her parents helped to paint. 

Ok so this is a bicycle taxi.  Imagine this, except in motorcycle form, and I am on the back, giggling.
A photograph from compline during the first two weeks with the group; the power is out.