Sweet Summer 17: Week 1, Day 4 Companies have long used lofty campaign slogans to sell their products. They promise a better life, freedom, happiness. They’re idealistic and sell a lifestyle more than the attributes of the product. Can sharing a Coke and a smile really teach the world to sing in perfect harmony? I’m not so sure. A few …
Understanding Unyama
Everything I’d ever known or felt about the work I do was shattered and turned upside down exactly one year ago. I remained in Uganda after that summer’s mission team had returned home. I was to distribute 50 beds to children in a village called Unyama — a few kilometers from Gulu, just outside a dilapidated displacement camp from the …
Yesterday’s Orphan
I love Veronica’s story because it was the story that brought what we’re doing in Uganda to life. Four months ago, I kicked off my shoes and, in a long skirt and bare feet, hauled a 100 pound bucket of rocks up a steep embankment out of a quarry. It was difficult, but I needed to know what it was …
Child Labor
The words strike at the heart of everyone who hears them and have such an insidious connotation. To us, they indicate self-righteousness, slavery, and an absolute lack of value of human life. But when you hear the words come out of a mother’s mouth about her own children it takes it to a new dimension. Veronica is a 51 year …
The Necessity to Know Each Other
Tonight I arrived in Uganda for the tenth time in six years. I remember the first time I set foot on the rocky Ugandan soil. I could literally feel a difference in the air; like there was a barometric pressure that told I was on the other side of the world. Uganda is in the throes of a new election …
An Update on Lillian
Many of you have asked for an update on Lillian (click here to read Lillian’s full story, “Healing in the Story”), the child with the spinal cord injury that has left her crippled and incontinent. We actually visited her in Uganda just prior to the Gala on November 19th and learned that a widow has taken Lillian into her home …
Wendafresht
Driving through yet another community of dilapidated mud homes in Ethiopia, I saw a child across the street with her back to me. I recognized her immediately as Wendafresht, a precious girl I had met last November, and unbelievably, I picked her out from the many thousands of children. I shouted her name and jumped from the van, and she …
25 Days
Buckled in, once again, this time to Ethiopia. I just enjoyed the longest stretch of time that I’ve been the USA in several months — an incredible 25 days. In those 25 days, my children went back to school, we said goodbye to one family member and welcomed the newest family member to the world. It’s been a very full …
Apathy
Poverty looks different here. When I think of poverty — the extreme poverty that eats away at a human’s existence — I think of bellies distended by malnutrition, calloused feet hardened from miles of barefoot walking to fetch contaminated water, and children rummaging for scraps of food. There’s civil unrest and brutal massacres that have left communities traumatized and shattered. I …
Farewell Gulu
I want to be honest with you. For the first time in my life, I did not want to go to Uganda. I didn’t think it was necessary, and I had become hardened to the work God had called me to. I had convinced myself that by going to the office every day and by advocating for the least and …
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