Redemption Stories

I look at them as they sit in a row watching cartoons. One who landed here some seven years ago knocking on death’s door, one whose body is ravaged with cancer and the other who is only just crawling out of the vice grip of four years of starvation. They inspire me these boys. The first I met at age two, he had been nursed back to health by the loving family that took him in, but still showed telltale signs of abandonment. I remember the first time he wrapped his chubby arms around my neck and how his adoptive parents told me I was the first white person besides them that he wasn’t afraid of. Earlier this year he walked down the aisle of our wedding as a sure and confident ring bearer.  His is a story of redemption.

The other I met a few short months ago abandoned by his mother because she couldn’t afford the treatment he needed and didn’t want to see him die from the cancer that ravaged his body. He became fluent in English in a couple short months and I came to fall in love with his sense of humour. I sit back and wonder how a boy that was left to die, a boy who has not even seen a decade on this earth and whose body is ravaged by cancer can somehow be that witty. My heart wells up as I think that I don’t want to say goodbye to this precious one anytime soon. I want to hear his jokes and see him play for many years to come. I somehow wonder how his story would be different if he had been born somewhere else. Into a family that was able to get him treatment sooner, into a country that had the technology he needs. And somehow I am reminded not to focus on what might have been but to find joy in the now. In the laughter as they watch cartoons and in the joy of riding to church with Uncle Paul and Auntie Jaimee as if riding in our car instead of their regular car is some kind of grand privilege.

The third one I have only just met. His body and his brain ravaged by starvation, he is now receiving loving care. He has started to blossom and it brings me joy. Nobody knows if or how much ability he will regain after so many years of neglect, but I see joy in the faces of those who have come to love him at each new milestone.

I sit back and I praise Him. I praise Him for writing me into the pages of their story, even if only in a very minor way. I feel as though I somehow bear witness to some kind of sacred miracle as I watch these and so many others. And somehow God uses these three to remind me of His redeeming love. As I sometimes struggle through my days in this foreign land, I expend my energy surviving an unfamiliar culture and I can become numb to the people around me. But this Father of mine, He has this way of showing me Himself in so many unexpected ways. In boys watching cartoons and in the ways each of them has been redeemed. He writes their stories even as I don’t know how they will end. He reminds me He is good, forever and always.

The Power of Helping Just One

Sometimes when one lives surrounded by poverty, it becomes easy to become accustomed to it. To no longer see the need that is right in front and all around you day by day. Sometimes it becomes disheartening and it seems like the little I can do is a drop in the ocean. Sometimes I don't want to see it and sometimes I choose not to.

But sometimes I am reminded that even if all I can do is a drop in the ocean it still somehow matters. The child I am sending to school has a chance at a future she never otherwise would have. Lucy, she is my drop in the ocean today. She is what reminds me why little things matter.

My friend Hannah and I go running in our neighbourhood several days a week. There are many dogs around, some stray, some owned, most of them roam free. Being an animal lover it is hard for me to see the often poor conditions the animals are in. I miss playing with dogs because most of them here are trained to guard and are not friendly to strangers.  But there was this one. . . she always ran up to greet us and wagged her tail. Once she became familiar with us she came to greet us with unbridled joy. She was a ray of light in what sometimes felt like overwhelming cross cultural challenges. She made me smile, she made me laugh and I came to look forward to seeing her.

I hadn't seen my black dog friend for a few weeks, and then she came out. Painfully skinny so much so I am not even sure how she supported her own weak frame, but she was just as joyous as always. It broke my heart. I finished my run upset and unsure of what to do. So I called my husband who suggested I bring her some food and call the one and only animal shelter in Uganda. So that is precisely what I did. The next day, the manager of the shelter came out to investigate. The dog wasn't there, but he was determined. His commitment to helping animals in this country inspired me.  This man loves his country and is passionate about teaching his fellow Ugandans what it means to love and care for animals. He told me he would be back and to call him if the dog showed up.

The dog was out the next night when Hannah went for a walk, so she called the shelter and out they came. They collected her, took her back to where she would be cared for and I somehow felt relieved. She was just one, but she was mine. She was my drop in the ocean. One of them at least. It made me so happy to know she would receive veterinary treatment, food, and hopefully someday soon a loving home to adopt her. I wish we could have adopted her, but our apartment won't allow dogs.

The shelter asked me to choose a name, and I called her Lucy.  Because she exhibited the same strong spirit as my favourite character from the Chronicles of Narnia. She is a survivor.

We went to visit Lucy on the weekend and she is doing much better. When we arrived she was out being walked by some high school volunteers. She is happy, she is fed, and she is receiving treatment for a number of things, and then she will be spayed and put up for adoption.  She is my happy ending and it brings me joy.  Thank you to the Uganda Society for the Protection of Animals for their tireless work and their passion and commitment.

She remembered me!  A sweet reunion!

Hannah and I with our Sweet Lucy

What joy!

Lucy is happy at the shelter.  She will make a wonderful dog for someone.

A few others were happy to see us too!

Nutella and Crossing Cultures

The other day my husband asked me why I was buying 5 bags of breakfast granola. I replied quite sensibly that because last time our local supermarket ran out of breakfast granola it took 3 months for more to come in.  I have been learning that living in a foreign culture can cause you to do strange things. . . like hoard breakfast granola.  In fact, we were walking past the garbage bag aisle and I told Paul that it was sure a good thing I bought 2 years worth of small garbage bags last time they had them in stock because they have been out for the last 2 months.

Now don't get me wrong, all of these idiosyncrasies are a reflection of me and the fact that I am a stranger in this wonderful land, and not of what Uganda lacks.  Because, it in fact lacks very little. There are many marvelous things you can get here, amazing tropical fruit being one of my favourites.  And the local food is very good, and much more readily available than breakfast granola. I have been enjoying it more and more and discovering variations to different dishes that I appreciate. But for someone who was not born here, I also sometimes do miss things from home.

We went grocery shopping yesterday and they were out of Nutella.  Now that may not sound like a big deal, in fact I never ate Nutella when I lived in Canada. But it has become some sort of survival food for me here, and I told Paul that I must get Nutella before the setting of the sun.  And so, 3 supermarkets later, we went home with both Nutella and our sanity. In fact, in supermarket #3, not only did I find Nutella, but I found a small piece of heaven.  I found one lone container of fresh strawberries. For the first time in 8 months, I tasted the juicy red goodness of a small handful of strawberries.  Strawberries, oh how I have missed thee. I lamented last month as my Facebook Newsfeed was filled with pictures of juicy red goodness from Canadian U-Pick farms. And The Lord saw the desires of my heart, and led me to the one and only container of strawberries I have seen.

Sometimes living in a foreign land is hard, sometimes it is wonderful, sometimes I just want to stand in front of the empty Nutella shelf and burst into tears, but I am learning to take one day at a time, to be more flexible and to let things go (not always easy for me). Uganda is making me into a better version of myself, Nutella or not.

Nutella and Strawberries. Heaven on Earth.

In addition to Nutella and Strawberries, Running also helps keep me feeling like a human being when challenges of being in a foreign culture arise. I love running in Uganda.  It makes me feel alive.

The Broken and the Beautiful

Somehow I remember it with alarming clarity. Every last detail of my first visit to Northern Uganda in 2011. I remember the way the heat was oppressive in the height of dry season, but even more than that I remember the way the broken edges of all that I saw followed me long after I left. I remember the haunting eyes of young men who were former child soldiers. Something that really can't be described until you look into the depths of such a soul. Eyes that are devoid of life, light sucked right out are something a person can never forget. Walking down the streets of Gulu and seeing empty eyes, bullet and stab wounds and broken souls. It somehow brought me to my knees.

And so it was with those memories I made my way back up to the Northern reaches of this country last week. I hadn't forgotten the fragile hope I saw even among all that was broken. There are some things Joseph Kony can't take away. Fragile hope is somehow sprouting up among the ashes. I saw that fragile hope once again. This time somehow stronger and more firmly rooted than I remember it 6 years ago. I attended a supper with the town chairman who tells us "In 2002, it was the height of insurgency, we slept to the sound of bullets. Children walked kilometers into town from their village to try and avoid abduction. In 2005, the bullets started to silence, and in 2006 we found peace. Some of us, we risked our lives to go find Joseph Kony in the bush, to try and find peace. And now peace is what we have. We want healing, we want restoration. We want to re-build."

These people who are strong and resilient, but somehow still broken, I see in them the ability to rise up above their circumstances. They encourage me to persevere and to do hard things. In meeting them, I find myself inspired; wanting to find courage and endurance, they remind me to keep on running. To dance like nobody is watching.

Hope for the Weary

I can sense it the moment we pull away from the city limits. Life here is hard. Among the beauty, the rolling hills, and the gorgeous canyon, people toil and wrestle with the land. I sit back and realize I am seeing all this through my very Western eyes and I want to know more. I want to see and know the lady who labours hard under the weight of a heavy burden. I want to know and understand the children who run alongside the road. I want to know the young boy who herds his cattle, and where does he find his joy. It almost seems I have somehow gone back in time. The scenes idyllic, peaceful, and yet what do I know. As we cross the Ethiopian landscape, there is much I don't understand, much I want to know.

When we arrive at our site, they are there. There are children whose names I can't pronounce. There are elders who want to know who I am. There are boys herding cattle and leading donkeys, and somehow for some brief moment in time, I enter the fray. I am an outsider standing within. The children are curious. Some of them know some little English and they are eager to practice. They ask my name and they practice it. They ask who is my mother and their lips struggle as they practice "Looow-raaaaain."  "Your Mother is Loooow-raaain."  And they smile. One boy who knows more English than the rest tells his friend what to tell me, and his friend comes up to me and says "you are stinky" as his mischievous friend peels over in laughter, the poor boy who told me somehow unaware of what he just said. Boys will be boys, and somehow in this foreign land so far from the place I call home, that makes me smile. The young girls who want to pose for pictures their smiles full of joy, it fills me in the best of ways.

A young girl with a baby comes up to watch. At first I think the baby is her sibling, but then she tells us through a translator that it is her son. That she was married at 10 years old and bore her first child at 16. And I struggle with what to do with that. With how to understand ways that are foreign and seem wrong to my Western eyes. All I can do is ask that she finds the joy of the Lord. In all that is heavy, and hard to understand I may never fully know or grasp. But I can love the people in front of me in that very moment. I did not come to "fix" but to love and to somehow be part of some kind of design that will hopefully make life in this community a better place. And soon after that I see it. A young boy walks up to me and asks me to take his picture. I can see it clear and shining in his eyes, Hope is there. It is here in the middle of this village full of things I don't understand. It is in the eyes of this boy who stands before me, quiet and tentative hope in his eyes and his smile. It is there in the boy full of mischief who puts his arm around his friend, and later skips on home with joyful strides as he pulls a flattened yellow jug on a string. He skips joy, he speaks mischief, he radiates life.

The director of the ministry I am there with, gives some of the boys who helped us dig holes for soil tests a small bit of money to buy some treats. They divide it equally and go buy one bun each. They follow us to our car, skipping, smiling, so very happy with their one lone bun. And I am reminded to find gratitude. To fight and claw my way back to giving thanks in the midst of all that is hard, in the midst of the challenge of living in this foreign land, I can give thanks.

And then we go and we visit the elders. The forgotten ones, that have loved and laboured hard. And what's a girl to do when a granny that doesn't speak her language wants to hug and kiss her on the cheek? Nothing but smile and hug her back. To hold tight to the joy in the moment and to know these, all of these, are the ones that matter.

And as we drive home, we file past scores of trucks with UN army tankers. I am told they are coming back from Darfur, a region with bloody violence. And I wonder yet again where finds this joy? And suddenly, I am reminded, it is in the eyes of the children, the eyes of the granny, it is all around me if I will take the time to look. To be reminded that in my own small story I have this blessed and amazing opportunity to be part of something so much bigger than myself. Soli Deo gloria.

Among the Inspired

I sat back and wondered today why I haven't been writing more. Because some way somehow writing seems to set free the deepest thoughts in my heart. But then it also uses my realest emotions, and sometimes writing just leaves me feeling spent. And at a time in my life when just making it through the day seems to sometimes take every ounce of strength that I have. It seems my days are filled with driving through some kind of ordered chaos, trying to figure out how to cook with unfamiliar food, or trying to convince my husband that having a cat is a basic human right, and it seems there is not always reserve for digging into the deepest parts of myself.

Life is settling into some kind of routine here and I like that. Because somehow knowing what the day might look like calms me down in the midst of so much unfamiliar. But then again life is always full of surprises. I can tell you honestly that I love it here. And that doesn't come as a surprise to me. I loved it here long before I ever knew I would one day call this home. I loved the culture, and the people, and Uganda was somehow part of me even before I knew this would be my story. And even still, there are some days that are incredibly hard. There are moments I miss the crispness of winter air, and the crunch of snow beneath my feet in a silent forest full of towering white birch. I miss the wide open prairie skies, the vibrance of canola fields in July, the sound of resisting water as I paddle a canoe, the juicy goodness of a fresh strawberry. There are some days when I feel like I am a failure at this business of living in another culture. Sometimes when I misunderstand or am misunderstood and I want to know what it is I need to do or who I need to be in order to befriend and be loved.

And yet even in and through all this sometimes messy transition and fumbling finding my way, I am reminded about the ways my Ugandan friends have inspired me in the first place. I remember returning to Canada inspired by their joy and their resilience. And I am inspired to find that same resilience in me. The ways these people and this country first inspired me are the very things I need to find in myself. And I will, I know I will. Perhaps not all at once, and perhaps not without making another mistake or two, but I write this as a blessed woman, surrounded by people full of patience and grace. Willing to love me as I am. Sometimes I just need to remind myself of that. In some kind of way perhaps being in a cross cultural marriage does add some unique challenges, but somehow the Good Lord knew, that as I lived in this corner of the earth that the very Ugandan that I married would be exactly what I needed. Some kind of buffer between my Canadian self and the culture I am trying to understand. Someone who would so patiently love me and remind me that I don't need to morph myself into someone I'm not in some kind of feeble attempt to be accepted. Someone to remind me that I can live in Uganda in all my Canadianess, love the people and the culture and be loved in return. And somehow in the middle of it all, the soil on these red dirt roads is causing some kind of lasting change deep within who I am.

Among the inspired. A family of children I met in rural Uganda. Newly abandoned by their father, dearly loved by their mother, they were very excited about the prospect of attending school at the new facility our team was designing.

Endurance to Run the Race

It seems that every time I run in a race I gain some kind of perspective. Somehow right in the middle of it, it always ends up being harder than I thought it would be. Particularly if you are running in African heat and humidity, high elevation, and dust. Somehow this prairie girl who comes from the flatlands of Manitoba and would rather run in -30 C than +30 C is learning to adapt, albeit slowly. My heaving lungs gasp for air as I make my way up yet another steep hill, and yet when I make it to the top, tired and red faced, somehow I know it will all be ok.

So today, the runners came out of the starting gate like some kind of bullets. I felt a little silly being at the back of the pack. But I paced myself and ran at a speed I knew I could maintain. About halfway through I started passing people who had slowed to a walk because they had failed to pace themselves. You see there is something about endurance. About knowing when going a bit slower is a little bit ok. And knowing that victory is not always found only in crossing the finish line first. As I neared the last quarter of the race I came up behind a young girl who I could see was tiring. She looked at me with some kind of desperation in her face and said "Can we run together?" And so we did. Ran side by side for that last kilometre, willing each other to just keep on running. At the end of the race I asked her name, and she told me it was Mercy. And I was reminded in that moment, that even though I now live oceans away from the place I once called home, I am kind of doing the very same thing. Getting up every day, going to work, trying to be part of some kind of community around me and loving the people in my path as I do so. I may be on the mission field in a more formalized sense, but in some ways it's not really any different. And in some ways it's not at all the same. There is more material poverty on the streets in which I walk, but here, just as at home, I have the privilege of learning how to love just a little bit better. I hope that I can take each opportunity with an outstretched hand and learn from each experience. Because so far everyone I have met has something to teach me if I'm willing to listen.

The Privilege of the In Between

Somehow I feel as though I have been handed some kind of great and miraculous privilege.  That is, the privilege of living in between. In between cultures and in between worlds. And my deepest and greatest fear is that I will do a bad job of it. That I will somehow close myself off from the beautiful culture around me in the difficulty of transition and as the race becomes a marathon and my heart and my mind grow weary. My greatest fear is that I will somehow not be enough. That someday in the far off future I will land back in Canada callous and unchanged rather than someone who has had their heart shifted and poured out.

I have been reading through the pages of a book on brokenness and I am coming to realize that perhaps in all my weakness and not enoughness, I simply need to offer myself. To strip away pretense, to be willing to do hard things, and to offer myself as imperfect as I am. To have the courage to walk this road even if it means I might get hurt. The words I read are this: "Because when we who are broken give to the broken- this is giving ourselves to Him, the Wounded Healer, the Broken and Given Lover. And He gives us His open and given heart, gives us His very life, gives us union . . . communion" (The Broken Way, 50). I'm reminded that the greatest way that I can be a servant of all is to offer myself, and in an unfamiliar land that is no easy task. Perhaps as I learn to live life in a place very different from my home, I can start small. I can love those around me in small but significant ways. "Love must give to the beautiful people in the backstreets of wherever our feet land, beautiful people living near us and sitting across from us and streaming by us, and no matter what anyone's saying, everyone's just asking if they can be loved. Love gives and every smile says, Yes, you are loved. Love gives, and huge acts to try to make someone happy don't make anyone as hugely happy as simply doing small acts to make someone feel loved. It's strange how that is: everybody wants to change the world, but nobody wants to do the small thing that makes just one person feel loved" (The Broken Way, 74).

One of the greatest blessings of being here long term has been the deepening of friendships I have made on my previous visits here. Somehow these relationships can travel into territory previously not possible when my return ticket was always looming. I have made friends with beautiful people from whom I have learned so much, people from another culture who have let me into their broken places. Places so fraught with pain and hurt that I'm not even quite sure what to do with it. And yet somehow some of these people look back and say that "God is good because He has brought me through some deep valleys, He is my Ebeneezer." I remember back to my culture training and the placement of Ebeneezer stones. A stone of remembrance to mark something God has done. And I see how the great Redeemer has breathed new life into this dear friend of mine.

And so as I begin the journey of meeting new friends and figuring out what it means to love across cultures, maybe God can use this heart of mine to love a few people just a little bit, or a lot more than a little bit. Maybe I'll come home with pieces that are more broken then they are now, and yet I somehow think that the Reflection of God will be seen in all that breaks. "The greatest truths always are the greatest paradox. And what could be a greater paradox than this? Out of feeling lavishly loved by God, one can break and give away that lavish love- and know the complete fullness of love. The miracle happens in the breaking." (The Broken Way, 32).