I'm alive! :)

I wrote this in the beginning of February:

I was just laying on my bed, having so many thoughts in my head, when I realized it might be a good outlook to write a blog and thus share those thoughts with the general public. That’s usually a good idea, right?

I have been helping out most days at Smile Africa, the orphanage I have mentioned in previous blogs. It can be a very overwhelming place: hundreds of kids, a lack of proper care, horrible home situations, more need than any one organization can handle. I came home crying the first time I went there. Over the months I have become more accustomed to things though there are still parts which are overwhelming. I’ve been so proud of the other missionaries who work there, especially one girl named Kayla. She has been at Smile since October and she is just a natural there. She loves the kids there more than you could imagine and is constantly thinking of ways to improve their situation and contributing in any way she can. The biggest thing she does, I think, is just love. She is quite an inspiration to me. I have become good friends with her over the past few months and it has been a huge blessing. God has used us in each other’s lives in ways we never would have imagined. Every day I am excited to see her and spend time with her as we take care of these little ones.

I am mostly in the baby room, and I have met my favorite baby. He only started coming about a month ago and his name is Paulo. He is just the cutest little thing EVER, with a big dimple on his right cheek and a little gap in his front teeth. When he smiles there is nothing you wouldn’t give this kid, I swear. I fell in love with that kid I think the second or third day I saw him and we’ve been inseparable since. Just try to take him away from me! Haha. But he is just adorable and I can’t get enough of him. He has had trouble going to sleep at naptime so finally I tried the baby burrito. I don’t know if anyone is familiar with this. It’s something I learned at the last preschool I worked at. You wrap the baby in a blanket tight enough so they can’t move their limbs (it’s not as cruel as it sounds!) and then just hold them and rock them until they eventually have nothing for it but to fall asleep. It works every time for Paulo! So it was great to discover that.

Recently I have discovered more of Paulo’s home situation and of course it’s a heartbreaking one. His parents are both still alive and they live with him in a very poor neighborhood just a 5 minute walk from Smile Africa. There are several buildings with many little rooms within them, and usually each family stays in a room all together. It’s a very cramped and dirty and sad existence, especially to the western/American eye. I have met both of his parents now. His mother speaks no English and his dad speaks enough to have a simple conversation. From what I can gather and what I’ve heard, they are both alcoholics and my friend Kayla has even seen his mom holding Paulo, stumbling around drunk and clearly not taking proper care of him. It’s extremely likely she beats Paulo, which I can’t even think about or I get really angry and frustrated and sad. What makes a parent to beat their 9-month-old baby, I cannot imagine. When I think about the situation Paulo goes home to every day I want to cry or throw something or demand justice. Yet he is one of hundreds just at Smile, which then multiplies throughout this town, country, continent, and ultimately all over the world. I don’t know of any country that doesn’t have a problem with poverty, though I know some cases are more extreme than others.

All of this and so much more goes through my head and I wonder what to do. I wonder how much difference we are making, a few girls at an orphanage helping a dozen babies, when there are so many more who will go hungry or get abused or die that day, that we won’t even get to, that we aren’t even aware of. I keep having the starfish story come to my mind. You know, that story about a man who goes out to the shore of the ocean and begins throwing starfish back in to safety as the tide is going out. Someone asks him why he bothers because the shore is littered with starfish and there is no way he is even going to make a dent in the number that need to be rescued. But he answers that even if he only threw one back, it would mean life for that starfish. Whichever ones he can help, he helps. And he focuses on those, not the ones that he can’t reach. Hopefully others will come and help and make a dent in the number of starfish rescued, but that man is not responsible for that; he only does what he can. I feel like that’s a decent picture of what we are dealing with here. Sometimes we talk about how frustrating it is, how overwhelming it is to think of all the suffering people there are that we won’t get to. But mostly we think of how we can continue helping the ones we have in our care, the ones who are put in front of us. It makes a difference to those “starfish”, to those children.

I know handling any of this would not be possible without God being the anchor of my soul. That is a picture He has brought frequently to my mind lately, that He is what anchors me to the truth and to hope; my constant comfort when all others fail me. I can’t imagine trying to navigate this life in general, and especially the last year in Uganda, without knowing He is my rest, my strength, my Savior.

I have been reminded lately of Romans 5:8, “God demonstrated His love to us in this: that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” That hit me like a ton of bricks this week, for some reason. It is such a massive display of grace and love, what Jesus did; there are times I can barely think of it without becoming overwhelmed with gratitude and awe. I love Him so much. I love that He redeems and sanctifies and forgives and heals and restores and brings hope to the most hopeless of situations. I serve an amazing God, and I want to continue to do so for the rest of my life.


This I wrote at the beginning of April:

I’ve been so bad at blogging and I really apologize for that. There is constantly so much going on and it has become increasingly harder to sit down and write about what is happening. I do want to become better at writing once again. Whenever you talk to me, feel free to remind me about that! It’s always really encouraging to hear people talk about reading my blogs and that it affects them in some way. I love that; it’s a big blessing.

Life has been moving on, in some usual and unusual ways. Fred has been at his new job for almost 3 months now. He likes the city and the people he works with. He is having trouble with a couple of aspects there but in general he likes the work and he’s good at it (though I am a bit biased when it comes to him :). He says he gets bored on his days off, which I think is funny! I just went to visit him for a week and that was great. I appreciated seeing where he’s living (he’s renting a small room), seeing his office and meeting his coworkers. Paul, Fred’s boss’ boss, was also in town last week with his wife Ruth, and it was wonderful to see them. They were a missionary couple in Namibia when I was there and just some of my favorite people ever (even if they ARE British!). Fred and I have agreed to get married next year and each do some things to prepare for that for the rest of this year.

We aren’t in a good position financially and Fred is still getting used to his job and the environment. After some time and talking, we agreed it would be a great thing for me to start a project/ministry of my own that would hopefully be funded internationally and begun here in Uganda. Long story short, I am planning on being in the US (mostly Phoenix) to fundraise and get the word out about the ministry the second half of this year. I do not have specific dates yet, but I hope to be in Phoenix by May or June and be there until December, then spend Christmas in Chile with my dad and family there, and be back in Uganda by the end of January. It probably sounds crazy to many people; I know it’s a lot for me to think about, though Phoenix and Chile are both places I am very familiar with! So I will be doing a bit of continent jumping this year.

I would love to give you a bit more information about the ministry I want to start, for whoever is interested. It’s funny because I don’t even remember writing about the starfish story in the blog section above; that was several months ago. Yet the name of my ministry, I decided a few weeks ago, is going to be The Starfish Project. I kept thinking about that idea of how you can’t help everyone, and you’ll go crazy trying, but that there have been specific children or groups of people placed in my life here in Uganda, and those are the people I can start with. I feel like it is easy to get discouraged when your scope of vision is too large or you try with starting to help a huge group of people. For example, if you say, “I want to get all the children of Phoenix off the street” or “I want every AIDS orphan to have a home”. Those are beautiful ideas and of course noble causes; people that desperately need help. But it is easy to get overwhelmed and swept off course when the vision is really broad. What has helped me is to remember that every person helped is valuable, and it shouldn’t only be numbers that organizations or ministries are concerned with.

One of the biggest things I’ve seen families here struggle with is paying for their children’s school fees. Even families where both parents are alive, at home, and working struggle with this issue. There is a much longer and involved story as to why this is a problem in Africa, one which I hope to share with many of you when I’m in the States. But for now I just wanted to get some basic information out to you and begin telling you about what I would like to do this year.
I want to begin getting children sponsored to start attending school, or to continue attending in cases where they have begun. I’d like to start with children that I personally know, and start out small, though I pray the ministry will grow with time and as God directs and allows. While in Phoenix I am planning on talking to as many people, churches, schools, and businesses that I can, for 3 financial purposes: 1) to get people sponsoring specific children with a long-term commitment, 2) to begin a general fund for the ministry for various expenses, and 3) to raise enough monthly support for myself as I return to live in Uganda. Of course one of the important things in going back is so that I can have more prayer support and encouragement from people that I already have a relationship with. I would love you to begin considering whether this is something you would like to be a part of, and have time with you while I’m in the States. If you have any questions, encouragement, or anything, please let me know!

I’ll finish there so that I get something out in the blog world before any more time passes. Looking forward to seeing so many of you soon! Thanks for keeping up! PS- I do need $400-500 more in order to buy my plane ticket, so if anyone would be willing to help out with that, I’d really appreciate it.