Walking on Familiar Ground

Well, I am back.  I have been back for about two weeks now.  Back in America, back in the company of my family and friends, back in my office, where all of my books and ministry tools are, back in the comfort of my bed and the presence of my dear family.  I’m back.  Back from the red dirt and sweat that constantly covered me in Uganda.  Back from the smells and sights that are uniquely Ugandan: the smell of burning fields for instance, that remind me of a certain burning substance I used to smell at parties before I knew the Lord (I sat in a worship service in Jinja and mentioned to someone that I had not smelled that smell in church since the tent days at Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa).  I am back from the yellowed eyes and flashing smiles of the beautiful Ugandan orphans I met.  Back from the intermittent to non-existent electricity and the sight of boda-boda motorcycles clogging the streets.  I guess I am really back.

It’s always an adjustment when I come back from a mission trip (especially one to the Third World).  People don’t go on trips like this for their own benefit or to see change happen in their own lives (at least they shouldn’t).  But somehow, the missionaries are always impacted and never the same. I have not known anyone who has gone as a missionary to the poor and hurting people of the world and come back unchanged. A trip to Uganda, or Bangladesh, or El Salvador, Or Tijuana gives you some perspective.  I know it does for me anyway.  It leaves me thinking about what really matters in life and what is really just a distraction.  It makes me view my own situation of wealth and comfort in the States, with different eyes.  There is the temptation to feel guilty for how I have been blessed and even a nagging desire to chuck it all and go live a simpler life in another place, where a little love, a little money, a little effort can go a long way to changing a life. I have come to realize that when we Americans speak of being blessed, by comparison to the underprivileged of the world, we are usually thinking in terms of material things like money, homes, cars and toys. Or we may be thinking about less tangible things like families, political freedom, education, and the like. And of course, those things are wonderful blessings, if we see them as coming from God and intended for His wonderful purposes.  But unfortunately, for many of us, these things have blinded us to what really matters.  How many hours do I sit in front of my big screen T.V.?  How much of my attention goes to rooting for my favorite sports team or surfing the web for no apparent reason, or shopping for more stuff?  It is sobering when I think about it. And I pray that God will help me to overcome the waste in my life and truly live for Him 24/7.

But I also need to remember that God has seen fit to place me where He has placed me and to give me the life He has given me.  I am called to live for Him wherever I do it.  While so many of the people of Uganda suffer from poverty, malnutrition and disease; we wealthy Americans, with our great medical care, comfort, education and opportunity have our own challenges to overcome.  Americans are often blinded by our circumstances to the point where we find it difficult to focus on God.  After all, there are so many distractions here!  Someone in Uganda warned me about the culture shock I would experience back home.  I wasn’t sure what was meant by that.  But now I know.  When I got back here, I hit the ground running.  Everything here happens so fast and there is a non-stop conveyor belt that brings things our way, one after the other.  It is hard to find a moment of solitude; not because such moments are unavailable, but because such moments are somehow less enticing than the busyness and rush I have built into my life.  For example, as I type this, I am sitting in a Starbucks near my home.  I am waiting for a church member to arrive for a meeting we have scheduled.  Starbucks has much of what I need to get my work done: a place to plug in my laptop, free internet, and lots of coffee.  Here, there is a constant line of people coming and going (most of them in a hurry).  As I watch them come and go, I wonder where they are coming from and where they are going.  Are their worlds thin and empty or are their lives filled with significance, by the God who loves them.  Of course, I know that God created them for significance, but too often, they have bought into the lie that the things that don’t matter much, are all that really matter. I long for God’s touch in their lives as much as I long for God to transform the Ugandan church and heal Ugandan orphans.  After all, this is where God has placed me today.  These are the people He has called me to love and serve today.

Today, this is my mission field

                 I preached in this village last month

And while I pray about how to address the problems in Uganda, I need to be more focused than ever on how to address the hurt and need in the lives of the people around me today.  Here’s the bottom line: God has called us all to be missionaries and we are already in the mission field.  I want to serve Him well today in the field in which has placed me .  I pray that you will do the same.  As we walk this walk, I know that God will change our lives and change the world through us.  After all when you walk with Jesus, it is always and adventure!

 

Walking With Lions and Hippos and Crocs…Oh My

We left Jinja on Monday morning, before the sun came up.  The people of this place have made a big impact on me.  I pray that God will continue to make a big impact on them through the pastors and Christian leaders we have been training. It was at once thrilling and saddening to see Jinja in the rearview mirror.  I have been missing my family and the people back home where I live (not to mention In-n-Out Burger and Starbucks).  But now I will miss the people of Jinja.  As we once again entered the insane traffic of Uganda, I prayed.  I prayed that we would somehow miraculously arrive alive at our next destination (Uganda – especially Kampala – wins the prize for the craziest traffic I have ever seen).  And I prayed that God would water the seeds that were planted in Jinja and leave fruit where we have walked.  Please join me in that prayer.

Once on the road, we were headed for a 7-½ hour drive to Murchison Falls National Park, in Northern Uganda.  It is a 3,000 square mile game reserve on the Nile River.  It took about 5 hours to get to the entrance of the park and another 2-½ hours on red clay roads (if you can call them roads) to go the final 35 miles to our camp.  Along the way, we saw families of baboons and assorted other animals.  We were thrilled, thinking that this might be all of the animals we would see.  Boy, were we wrong – more about that later.  We arrived at the Red Chili Rest Camp, only to find that our accommodations had been messed up.  It took awhile and a fair amount of frustration and prayer before we finally had a place to sleep.  With that under control, we boarded a boat and traveled 2 hours up the Nile to Murchison Falls.  It was spectacular; so much water being forced through a tiny opening and then crashing to the lower river, below.  Along the way, we saw and photographed elephants, warthogs (they all look like Pumba – I kept waiting for one of them to shout, “Hakuna Matada”, but sadly, none did – even the game warden called them Pumbas), Nile crocodiles, hippos, and all sorts of gazelles and other such land animals along the shore.  It only took an hour or so to come back with the current.  After a very long drive and an afternoon on the Nile, we were all tired.  Most of us slept well, in spite of our meager accommodations.  Jim Poorboy had a Hippo grazing outside of his tent and keeping him awake all night.  Hippos seem harmless, but they are the number one killer of humans in Africa. So we are glad to still have Jim with us.  In the morning, we had a banana and a bottle of water and boarded a ferry across the Nile for a land safari.  It was amazing!  We got to see all of the animals I just mentioned and then some.  I took a picture from about 15 feet away from a full-grown male Giraffe.  We also got to see a pride of lions from only about 40 feet away.  Our guide told us that this was incredibly rare in the park.  So we were thrilled. It was the adventure of a lifetime.  A zoo will never be as good to me again. 

After the safari, we headed back to the road for the long and insane drive back to Entebbe, Uganda, to a hotel near the airport.  By the time we checked in, we were all covered in red dust.  Our van windows had to be open the whole trip (the tour company decided to give us a van with broken air conditioning).  We looked like homeless wanderers when we walked into the hotel for check in.  Our faces were dusty, our clothes were dusty, even our luggage was covered in red dust.  But nobody at the hotel seemed too shocked.  I guess they see this kind of thing all the time.

Being constantly covered in dust made me think of the original disciples of Jesus.  There was a saying in those days: “May you be covered in the dust of your Rabbi”.  It meant, may you walk so closely behind your Rabbi that the dust from the road would stick to you as he kicks it up.  I think we all feel a bit like those 12 Disciples today.  We have been walking with Jesus, across Uganda.  I think we all feel close to Him.  We can hear His voice as He leads us from such a close distance.  I know that I, for one, will never be the same.  The dust of Uganda washes off, but I pray that you and I will know the joy of being covered in the dust of our Rabbi – Jesus Christ every day.

We get on a plane in a few hours. After we take off, we will be in the air for something like 22 of the next 25 hours. It has been a wonderful adventure. I thank God for each person who prayed for me and I ask you to keep praying for the people of Uganda.  When I get home, the adventure will continue.  After all, when you walk with Jesus, it is always an adventure.

 

Off the Beaten Path

Today was a day like no other, since we have been in Uganda.  We were scheduled for a day of rest.  What that really meant was that we would be able to do some of the things we had not been able to do so far.  We visited the Uganda Baptist Seminary, in Jinja.  Our church supports this seminary, through our missions giving to the Southern Baptist Cooperative Program.  We brought them some study Bibles and got a tour of the campus.  Although it was very modest, it was the nicest facility of any kind we have seen in Uganda.  They are currently training 400 Ugandan pastors to preach the word and lead God’s church.  The need for trained Christian leaders is one of the greatest needs in Uganda.  That’s why we came.  But trying to train over 300 pastors in a 5-day conference was something like trying to give someone a drink, from a fire hose.  We know we made an impact.  But we wished there was a better way to slow things down and truly mentor these leaders.  At the Seminary, they are doing just that.  I am excited about what God is doing at the Uganda Baptist Seminary.  But for me, that was not the highlight of the day.

We also made a tourist stop at the source of the Nile River.  The place, where the Nile begins flowing out of Lake Victoria and begins its 4,000-mile trek to the Mediterranean Sea.  There are natural springs bubbling up that add perfectly fresh water to the lake water and begin the flow of the river.  The Nile is such a significant river and the source of so much history, that it was really cool to be there.  It’s only a couple of miles from our hotel.  We paid to take a 30-minute private boat ride to the source of the Nile, complete with a tour guide.  It cost us about $4.00 each.  But that was still not the highlight of the day.

The best part of the day was a bumpy van drive to a small village on the other side of the Nile, where we visited “Amazima Ministries”.  We had heard of a young American woman who came to Uganda at the ripe old age of 18 and began a ministry to Ugandan children.  Her name is Katie Davis.  Katie was a high school homecoming queen from a wealthy community outside of Nashville Tennessee.  Smart, pretty, well-to-do, Katie had a promising future.  But she had been on a short-term mission trip to Uganda and heard the call of God to invest her life in needy Ugandan children.  So, upon graduating high school, she got on a plane and came to Uganda.  She began as a Kindergarten teacher.  But she soon founded a ministry called “Amazima” (Truth).  This ministry began feeding a few kids and helping their families to support and educate them.  Since then, Katie has adopted thirteen daughters and the ministry now includes over 600 children and their families.  They have bought a fairly large piece of land and developed the land for ministry to the kids and their families.  They get sponsorship for these children at $300 per year, and with this, they make sure the kids are fed, schooled, discipled, and kept in their family homes.  It is a ministry like no other I have seen, or heard of here. Today, we played with the kids and helped them feed over 500 of them.  They all got a large helping of chicken and beans.  Poor people in Uganda never eat meat.  But these kids get it from Amazima every Saturday, along with a worship service, medical aid, the care of a social worker, and a huge dose of love. In addition to all that, they get a bag of food to take home that will help their families feed them for the week.  Amazima also pays for their schooling.  It is an incredible ministry, led by a 22-year-old single woman who came here as an 18-year-old, with a heart to change the lives of Ugandan children. She and her staff are doing just that.  Her story is becoming well known as she recently wrote a best-selling book called “Kisses for Katie”.  It will be the first thing I read when I get home. I am so blessed to see that she has the courage and faith to follow God’s calling, regardless of her age.  I pray that the young people of Grace Fellowship (including my own kids) will follow her example of doing great things with God, while they are still young. After returning home, some of us went into a coffee house in Jinja that serves actual, drinkable coffee and American style food.  We have missed it!  While there, we ran into Brad, Katie Davis’ right hand man.  He joined us for an hour or so and helped us understand their ministry.  We were able to encourage him, but I think he encouraged us more.  I am so excited about what God is doing through Amazima.  I am humbled and challenged by the sacrificial lives being led by people like Katie and Brad.  Lord, help us all to be more like them.  They are living the adventure.  But then again, when you walk with Jesus, it’s always an adventure!