Bittersweet Ending

Sorry it has taken me so long to write this, every time I try and gather the proper words to describe what the Lord has done this summer. I can’t fathom them into words until now. My time here is coming to an end unfortunately. Before coming a lot of people asked me why I was coming back, why go back to the country where you almost lost your life. Yes the end of my last trip here I was in a bombing, but isn’t that so amazing? The Lord saved us and who knew that he would be bringing me back now. I am so blessed and thankful for this time here and it is such a testament of Him.  The beautiful children I am surrounded by daily and the school in the middle of the slums is why I came back to this amazing place. It will be hard to go home and not be surrounded by 24 beautiful children every day, or working at Rays of Hope doing construction. I can’t believe I have this opportunity to be able to do this. In my time here the Lord has shown me something that I have never imagined would be possible. The ability to serve here has been the greatest joy. And I feel the Lord pulling me into the mission field, which is something I feel that I have been running away from for some time. Before this trip I have tried to accomplish everything in my life on my own with out any ones help. I have tried to run from God and do it with out his help. I have learned that is very foolish of me but learning that now I feel have made me stronger. Missions has been apart of my life since I was 13 years old and not till I was 18 I was able to leave the states to Costa Rica and experience another country and serve there. In the back of my mind I couldn’t get enough but I knew that’s not what I wanted, I wanted to be in the military and protect our country. As time went on things that I wanted was not going the way it was supposed to. I was having doors shut on my dream and couldn’t understand why. I started to realize that maybe what I wanted isn’t what the Lord wanted, then two summers ago I was able to come here to Uganda. It was an amazing trip but I still allowed what I wanted and things of the World to get in the way. After deciding to come back to Uganda I allowed the Lord to completely direct my life, which I have never done before. I came with no expectations and unsure of what was going to happen. And in these few months the Lord has truly rocked my world. I would of never thought that I get so much joy out of serving someone else and doing things knowing that someone will have somewhat a better learning environment or living situation. That in it has blessed my time beyond comprehension. But also being patient in Him and diving deep into his Word has taught me so much that I don’t think I could of learned back home in the busyness of America. I have made friendships and strengthen the ones that I have and the Lord has blessed all of that. But also I realized something else that I would never of noticed before, but its not about me its not about the money spent coming here its not about anything that we worry about back home. It’s about God and how he changes people lives or situations through other people. If that makes any sense but I realize that coming from another country or another race, or different skin color we are the same people. We are created from the living God and that is so beautiful. I know I am rambling but trying to put into words what the Lord has shown me this summer is hard for me he has allowed me to realize I don’t need the nicest car, clothes, house, or tons of money. Having him and a relationship with him is way more important to me than all those things. And its crazy I came to that conclusion so far from home but I think I wouldn’t have noticed it back home in the states. I also realize that my life may not be in the states that it may be in countries people don’t usually travel to and that makes me so excited! I am so thankful for the people reading this and the people who have kept me in their prayers. Thank you for making this possible, and allowing me to be here through donations. I am blessed beyond words and through some of you am because of that. So thank you, I will be coming home the 25^th and I ask for prayers as I travel home and start this new and exciting chapter in my life that I have embarked here. Its not about me or you its about God and the Love he has for us.

Please keep Sozo in your prayers, as new things are coming that we may not be ready for and it is going to be so amazing!

Always Learning

“ This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

The days are going by fast here and God is revealing more to me in this short time than I could ask for. Sometimes I think of it as unreal or a dream, I mean I am living in Uganda being able to love on children and teach them about Jesus. The first few weeks Satan was attacking what was going on here and we were in a fight. Only to be won with prayer, it was a fight, not physical of course but spiritual. I realize that as Christians we deal with this daily we might not know it but it does happen everyday we are in a battle and we learn we aren’t alone as we have brothers and sisters of Christ dealing with the same thing. It’s a sacrifice we encounter because God sacrificed much more for us because he loves us way more than we can comprehend.

I know I probably am not making much sense but I learned something this past week I never knew before and I want to share it. Jonathon and myself are starting a bible study with the older boys here and this past week we talked about the fall of man and the sacrifices God made for us. Many of us know the story of Adam and Eve, how they were tempted by Satan and went against what God had forbid them to do. They fell to temptation and were punished by God but in Genesis chapter 3 there is something I never knew before or never really studied it till this week. Adam and Eve were supposed to live forever as it says in scripture and also it describes what God to give up because of this. So after the fall to the temptation and God told them what would happen as their punishment he made a sacrifice. “ The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, “ The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” God made a sacrifice allowing them to fall into temptation and now they wouldn’t live forever. Now stay with me please if you go to 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 Paul talks about the fall of man (Adam) and how the death came through a man that also the resurrection of dead also comes through a man. So in those two scriptures it shows how God made two sacrifices, he had to sacrifice Adam so that he could sacrifice Christ for us. I then began to think why does God love us so much? To sacrifice for us. He is so amazing and to see this in scripture I should already know that God loves me and everyone else so much but I didn’t fully comprehend that till the other day in the bible study.

Also that God sometimes has to bring us out of our comfort zones to truly speak to us. But why though? Why can’t he speak to us in our comfort zones? Because the way I see it now is that following God isn’t comfortable it isn’t easy, that’s why it’s the road less traveled. He had to take me across the globe for me to understand how much he loves me. And as I sit here typing this I can truly say that I am so blessed as everyone else should be how lucky are we to be loved by the amazing creator when we definitely don’t deserve it. We turn on him, we push him aside because we are so busy in our lives and sometimes we hide that we even follow him. But still he is there and embraces us, to me that is the coolest thing and for some reason it is finally clicking in my head the seriousness of his love, which is crazy because I have known about it since I was young.

The other day one of the girls here who since the day I got here and everyday since I have been here hugs me for about five minutes at a time. She called me her dad, which I think she knows I am not because she is a little older but also because I am white and she is not. But it wasn’t about the fact of that it was the fact that she loves me and I love her as I love all the other kids but she expressed it in a way that I couldn’t comprehend. I mean I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t want to be like “no I am not” with a smile on my face but I just embraced it as a beautiful experience. So that’s how I think about it with God he created us yes but in an earthly standpoint everyone of us has a father but God loves us and we should love him enough to call him dad. I know this might not make sense and I don’t know how to make it sound easy to understand but in the end God loves us and makes sacrifices for us everyday so we can do as he has called us to do, To be fishers of men and share his gospel.

Yesterday was one of the best days here so far, we went to a baby’s home in Kampala and were able to love on precious babies that may not have parents or do but their parents can’t take care of them for whatever reason. We also did some painting in one of the rooms, but we were getting ready to go and get lunch and come back to finish the painting. Then our friend who works there asks if we would like to take babies to lunch we were taken back by it because we didn’t want to be rude and say no but we were nervous at the same time. So we started getting things ready to take three babies with us to eat lunch and spend time together, also one of these babies was 5 days old which is crazy to think we were taking him to eat with us. And being so little they just slept while we ate but what an experience to have walking with beautiful babies and spend time with them getting them out of the home and letting us love on them for an hour or two. We were so nervous because what if something happened thankfully nothing did but we were just to cautious I think and it turned out to be an awesome experience. Then after leaving the babies home we went back and bought popcorn and sodas and had movie night at one of the houses with the kids. They were so excited because they don’t get this treat as often as some kids do in America. So after dinner we sat there eating popcorn and drinking sodas watching a movie as a family. The age didn’t matter, the race didn’t matter we were a family and spending time together as one. It turned out to be an amazing day and it reminds me of how blessed I am to be given the opportunity to be here.

Again thank you for the prayers and support from all the family and friends. Sozo is having an adventure run as a fundraising opportunity. If whoever reads this please keep the event in your prayers that everything goes well and that it turns out to be a great experience for everyone signed up or the people making it all happen. May the Lord bless each one of you this week.

The last two weeks

Thank you to all the family and friends who have supported me to my trip to Uganda. I have been here now for almost three weeks and it has flown by, I am hoping the rest of my stay doesn’t go by so quickly. The last two weeks have been busy and very exciting, God is truly moving here and to be apart of it is one of the greatest blessings. I am fortunate enough to be able to see where Sozo got its start, when I first came to Uganda was two summers ago and when we got here we had the first seventeen for about two weeks. And now in 2012 we are getting ready for the two-year mark and to see what all God has done is somewhat overwhelming. There are now three homes, and around sixty kids and when I first got here two weeks ago, it was very emotional. Not in a bad way but just being able to see what God has let happened and the people involved it is purely amazing. The first week was sort of my observation week things are different now schedules are set and paces are made. I did not want to automatically jump in and possibly mess up the system that was created to help these beautiful children. And it is awesome to see kids do stuff with out being told it’s almost or is part of their nature to just do it. In America it is not like that most of the time. Then the first week was up and then the second week started fast with two teams coming in for their spring break trip, one from Alabama and one from North Carolina. And myself being on my own I just wanted to help as much as possible and be able to assist the new visitors and get whatever they needed if the staff here were busy or something. And being able to get to know each one of them and see their hearts burst open with love and comfort for the kids was just an honor honestly. It was different than any other one-week trip I was apart of even though I am here for five months I felt apart of the groups that were here.

Jinja-

Every trip of missions that I have been apart of back home usually has one day of relaxation a day to do something we might not do at home. Well about two hours north of Kampala is an area called Jinja and is one of the starting places of the Nile River. We went to the Nile and baptized some of the children that haven’t been baptized before because most of them were already baptized before. And I have been to some thing like this back home, either at a church or a creek but never in Africa or the Nile. This time was different you could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit strong which I have never felt before at something like this. Every time a child was dunked in the water the other kids who had been baptized before would smile and laugh but not a laugh as if they were making fun but, a laugh of joy. These kids get it they understand what this meant and what they were starting with Christ, not saying in USA kids don’t but I feel that some baptize their children because that’s just what we do like a habit. You could see the joy and happiness of the kids that were dunked and wow it was so amazing to be there for that and witness something that was different than what I had seen before. There were also a few people from the teams that were baptized and it was the same as the kids pure joy and excitement and in a way it’s indescribable because it was just a period of time that God had orchestrated perfectly for it to happen.

Washing-

There is a school that Sozo has partnered with and I helped with on my first trip, the school is called Rays of Hope. It is located in the slums of Kabalagala and it has around three hundred kids that go there and the joy they have in their faces every time I am there is something you never see in America. Most of these kids don’t have a real family, which means they live with a caregiver. A member of their family who takes care of them but most don’t even want to take care of these beautiful children. Most of them are abused physically and sexually daily and live in awful conditions, so going to school for them is an escape and somewhere they can eat. Yesterday we went and washed the feet of all the children and gave them flip-flops. I have done feet washing before and but it was with people I knew that I was comfortable with, and now I am washing a kids feet who can barely speak English and I don’t know if he or she even wants me touching their feet. But it was one of the most beautiful and humbling experiences of my life. There are a few sozo boys that go to Rays and I was able to wash their feet, which was awesome. And then this one boy who I don’t even remember what he looked like or his name, but I was washing his feet and told him that Jesus loved him and he responded saying that Jesus loved me as well. And in that moment what do you even say to that? Here I am some spoiled kid from America that grew up with everything I could ask for or wanted washing this little boys’ feet and he tells me this. And probably he has nothing, nothing of his own that he can call his own, and he tells me that Jesus loves me. In a way I felt like I didn’t deserve him to tell me this not that I am better than him because I honestly know that I am not. But I guess I just felt that this boy probably struggles every day to survive and with a big smile on his face tells me that it was humbling to be reassured that yes Jesus loves us all. That day is something I will remember for the rest of my life, and also is one of my highlights of my small time on this big earth.

Going back-

Most of you know reading this that on my first trip here to Uganda, a few others and me experienced something you only see in movies. We were involved in a bombing at a restaurant during the final match of the world cup. Well after leaving the school and grabbing lunch we decided to go back to the restaurant and see it, and inside I realize wow that was somewhat of a bad idea. The past year and a half since that happened I had been strong through it all not really affected by it. The only thing that was hard for me to understand was, why? Why me why was I spared and the fourteen that lost their lives at that restaurant wasn’t? I understand now, that God has a plan for everything whether we understand it or not. Well yesterday being strong and holding back all emotions was not on my mind then. As soon as I walked through the gateway where cars would park it all came back every single thing it was like it was happening again. Everything that I saw was in front of me even though it really wasn’t, I stayed there for a minute or two and decided to quickly walk out and go back to the van we were traveling in. It just finally hit me and almost broke me, which isn’t a bad thing but seeing where we were sitting in proximity to the bomb I shouldn’t be alive right now. I mean honestly being feet away and have people sitting further in the room than me that was severely hurt or killed and I walked out with a small scratch. That night during prayer after devotion a started crying a little I guess I just want to know. God is most high and he makes things happen for a reason and I have complete trust in him that he made things happen the way he did but, I am no one just a kid from America no one special or with a title. But we were protected that night and the tears last night were in true thankfulness of my Creator and being able to be back here in Uganda and be apart of the doors he is opening is a gift that I can’t compare to any other gift I have received.

I just want to say a thank you for everyone praying back home and for all the support I have received. I ask for continuation of prayers not only for me but also for the staff here, the beautiful children we have and Rays of Hope. God has big things planned for Sozo, thank you for letting me be apart of it.

T.I.A part 2

It is still unreal to me as I write these words 3:30 in the morning preparing to go to Uganda today. Since leaving two summers ago I have always wanted to go back just never knew when, one day in December God provided a day to arrive and a day to depart from Uganda and I have no explanation for those dates and that makes it perfect. God has allowed me to experience a lot of great things in my short life, and its crazy to say that I am going back to Africa. The time coming up to now I have been worrying about little things and wondering if I would ever be able to go on this trip. I have been funded fully and have the support from amazing friends and family, this is such a blessing I am in such awe of HIM and this just doesn't seem like its happening. Last time I was in Uganda there was an agenda, this time no agenda only to serve. Making impacts on the people and community of Uganda is more important than an agenda and being able to be apart of that is a gift far greater than any thing.

This is a short post because I still have many things to do before I leave, I will try and do a blog once a week to share experiences on this new chapter in my life.

2012

Happy New Year and happy holidays! Wrapping up the two month holiday period makes quite a few people relieved, I know I am. This is now a new year, where we all set goals to do something new in our lives. Lose weight, no more soda, spend less time watching T.V, Etc. Why can't things we do differently be like; be in the word more, go make disciples among nations, do a kind deed each day. Sometimes we use our possessions or our (idols) as a way for us to change ourselves. Why can we not use the time of preparation for a new year to create a better relationship with Christ? I am in preparation for a new chapter in my life, where I will be going back to Uganda and serving the people there. I have a lot of memories of that great place God created but always when I think about it, the ending memory is the tragedy on July 12th. I know a lot of people have blogged about it, but I never did and this is where I want to do it, a year and half later.

It was the beginning of our last week in Uganda before returning home of an amazing two month adventure in a new place. The World Cup tournament was going on just a few countries below us and everyone in Kampala was soccer crazy for that time. So being american we followed our team and would watch them play at different restaurants and shopping centers. One place had a huge projection screen placed on a patio with great chips ( french fries ). We would go there often because it would never be crowded and was always a great atmosphere to relax. So this time our group went to a pizza place which is weird that we would be eating a pizza place in Uganda but it was great food. So after we ate we were going to go to the Ethopian Village, the place with the huge projection screen. Well our ride was late so we were kind of late to watch the game. This time the restaurant was packed out! We couldn't find a spot to sit anywhere except for this room off to the side with a smaller T.V meant for children to sit. There was seven of us and we fit perfectly in this room with a few other Ugandans enjoying the game and drinking mountain dew. This was the final game of the tournament so it was a very close game and very interesting. Everyone was having a great time and it was getting close to half time and we were all getting ready to get up and walk around to stretch. The half time whistle blew and the next think I know there are screams, smoke, dust, glass, and my ears were ringing. Unsure of what happened the boys of the group gathered the girls against the wall away from the open door because what occurred we were unsure if it would happen again. Gathering our thoughts and things in such a frantic time we believe at the time minutes after that a bomb or explosion went off. Well a decision was made to get out of there and get somewhere safe. We went through the rubble and got to the street where everyone was screaming and sirens were going off. It felt like we were in a movie it wasn't real. We all checked ourselves and made sure we were not injured and by the grace of God only a few of us had just a scratch on us. Jay Clark and myself made a choice to go back in the restaurant to see if we could help and soon realized we were not ready for the sight we saw. It looked like a war zone something you would never think you would see in life. We decided to join back with the group and call our ride and get to the Sozo house as soon as possible. Luckily we were all able to fly back home two days after and be rejoined with our family. Come to find out after, we were apart of three bombing attacks made by terrorists. Where we were 14 people died, and in another spot 80 people died. And to have 7 people walk out of there unhurt and only being protected by a 6 inch thick wall is God. All this time has gone by and this is something I still think daily, how we were saved from such a tragic event.

The year of 2011 was one filled with new things and meeting great people. I am thankful to be able to be a foster parent during some of that time and living on an Indian reservation.

As we prepare for this new year lets all try and do something for Christ or for others that we may not do in our everyday life. This week is Passion 2012, I am so excited and thankful for the opportunity to be able to worship with 20 thousand other people and lift our Creator above all else. I came upon great scripture this past week that really has been on my heart the past few days.

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal. 2:20)

As we celebrated the birth of Christ last week, the day of joy and giving but the true meaning of the joy and giving to the celebration, is the crucifying of Jesus Christ. He was sent to earth to save us and only one day to the calendar is spent thinking of that. Shouldn't we always think of that?

I am excited for what 2012 is to bring and the new experiences for everyone. This could be the best one yet, lets live everyday better than the last and forever lift God up in worship!