June 27-29 - Long one!

Well, we finally made it back to the land of internet access. We're currently at the Paraa Lodge in Murcheson Falls National Park. Going on safari int he morning!

This one's long, but it's about 3 days worth.

It’s Ken----This morning before our scheduled Friday activities, KIU students Patrick, Millicent and I, along with Kayla & Pastor Kennedy headed down to Texas City to deliver Bibles to several of the people we had met earlier in the week.

Our first stop was to call on Rita, the unemployed unwed mother with a 3 or 4 month infant & the teenage sister with the badly infected eye. This very shy, beautiful (both physically & in spirit) young mother immediately welcomed us in to her tiny home. On our first visit her baby had no clothes & was just wrapped in a blanket. Right away we noticed she had purchased clothes for her baby with some of the small amount of money we had left her. Her sister came out immediately upon our arrival (she had been very reluctant to come out on our initial visit). She had obviously received medical attention as her eye was very red, but the swelling in was completely gone, as was the pain. On our first visit, Rita received Jesus as her personal savior. We gave her a Bible & Pastor Kennedy prayed & asked the Lord to bless Rita and her family. As we walked up the hill toward our next destination I happened to look back & noticed Rita peeking out of the house through the blanked that substituted for a door. For the first time she had a smile on her face.

Next, it is off to follow up with Jackie, a 22 year old (who looks 14), caring for a 1 year old. Her sister is now with her & there are 2 babies in the very small household. Both Jackie & her sister are “Born Again” and have no short term needs. On our earlier visit Millicent had stayed with Jackie’s baby while Patrick & I had accompanied Jackie to the closest ultra, ultra mini mart (shack) grocery (bulk food) outlet. We pray for the family & head to our next destination.

It is Olivia, another single mom, we next visit. She accepted Christ at our last visit. Kayla presents her with a Bible. Millicent prays for Olivia & her baby. I take a picture of Kayla & Olivia then with Kayla, Patrick, Millicent, Pastor Kennedy & Olivia. On a humorous note---- I try to take a picture of Olivia’s baby, she shuts her eyes, I try again & she shuts her eyes again & begins to cry. I feel very bad, I can’t believe I make the baby cry. Kayla and the others get a good laugh out of it.

Every prayer request from these precious children of God include the desire for a godly man to marry & care for them.

Our last stop is to follow up with Nadia the 20 something daughter of a Kenyan Muslim Lady who the mother truly believed was possessed by an evil spirit. That the Muslim mother would invite KIU “Born Again On Fire For The LORD students Patrick, Leena, Maria, Manu & I into her home to pray for her daughter is difficult enough to explain. On Monday, as we waited for the Nadia to return to the home before we met with her, the five of us prayed outside the home for God to use us as HIS vehicle to cast out the evil spirit if one did exist. One of the KIU students was fearful we could be vulnerable to the spirit. I must say that there is so much I do not fully understand about this issue, but I do know as believers we are fully protected by the Blood of Jesus. Additionally, we agreed we serve an awesome God & must have faith, that if it is His will His miraculous power (when you pray in the name of Jesus Christ) can accomplish anything. Inside the house, the daughter was very meek, distraught & frightened & told of a recurring dream of delivering a baby & immediately throwing it to its death to the ground. We all prayed in the name of Jesus Christ for the spirit to be cast our & for healing.

Now, today, we were returning to follow up. Nadia met us at the door. She was a totally changed person. The meekness & fear were gone, as were the dreams. She was smiling & very happy. We entered the home & Pastor Kennedy prayed for both the mom and Nadia. As we left, the Muslim mother asked for Millicent to befriend Nadia. Pastor Kennedy assured the mom that Millicent and/or other KIU students would return.
Look, I know virtually nothing about the spiritual world or spiritual warfare, yet I believe the Word of God makes it clear evil spirits exist and they know and tremble at even the name of Jesus Christ. Did Naudia have an evil spirit within her? We’ll never know and it is not really important. What I do know is that the name of Jesus is most powerful. We saw a totally changed young woman who appeared to be filled with a new spirit---the Spirit of our Holy Father, healed by the name of Jesus.

I want to say hi to my nine grandchildren (Max, Andrew, Lucy, Maya Rose, D J, Lily, Sophie, Violet & Jack) who I miss very much & love dearly. To say that the little children of Uganda have captivated the hearts of Kayla, Erica, Sam & Katie & all the guys would be a gross understatement! Everywhere we go all four girls, plus Nick, Kam & Alex are literally swarmed by the kids, some as young as the age of two. Yesterday, as we left one of the schools, two little girls clutched both index fingers of Kam & were prepared to go right into the bus with us. I can’t but help think of my precious grandkids & how the Lord has blessed my family.

When I first met KIU student Rose, I told her how excited my granddaughter Maya Rose (age 11) would be to know one of the African College kids shared her name. So too will be Sophie (age 7). Jack (age 2) is likely too young to get it, but someday will see a picture of KIU student Jack and then I will tell my little Jack what an awesome young man KIU student Jack with the infectious smile is.

KIU student Rose has claimed me as her grandpa as have several of the other KIU girls. I now have grandkids on two continents!

The next time I come to Africa I very much so, want to bring my soon to be 14 year old grandson Andrew. It is now 11:15, we leave for Gulu at 7:30, so I’m off to” hit the sack”.
Thank you Ken. I want to take a moment, by the way, to acknowledge how much I’ve come to admire Ken on this trip. I’ve seen a childlike yearning and desire in him to learn, to grow in God. It is truly remarkable.

We did the last two school assemblies yesterday in partnership with Omega. Sam and I missed the first one to allow her a little more time to recover, so I’ll check around and get someone else’s perspective on that one. The second one was at a school quite close to Omega. It went well, but the attendance was pretty severely hampered by a simultaneous soccer game between the students and teachers. Those that did attend were probably the least responsive I’ve seen. Branden asked them a yes/no question and no amount of cajoling on his part could get anyone to answer either yes or no.

We were then to wrap up our time with Omega, spending some time with their people back at their church. Our original understanding was that they wanted to discuss how youth ministry is done in the US, see if there was anything that we could give them in the way of tips, scripts, etc. The understanding morphed along the way to be that we would be discussing ministry “strategies”. Then it was to be a discussion around issues confronting the church in Uganda, and how we would deal with it in America.

Once we finally got there, we found out that it was to be a discussion around one issue – homosexuality. There have apparently been a couple of high level scandals in Uganda involving pastors being forced out of the closet, pastors accusing each other of being homosexuals (I got the impression that perhaps some of these accusations were groundless). The session started off with one of the Omega pastors (Frank) going into a pretty impassioned statement about how homosexuality is evil, against the laws of God and nature, and how they feel it is threatening the church. It is evil and they have to fight it with all their might. They also sent out a bunch of photocopied news articles for everyone to pass around. He made it quite clear that Omega feels that this is the biggest issue facing the church in Uganda.

Discomfort. Lance, Branden, Ken and I all made comments to them about how it is vital that they differentiate between consensual homosexuality and homosexual rape. How they also need to separate the act from the person – that you must continue to love the person. You must not ostracize anyone completely but rather need to help them heal and love them. I pointed out to them that homosexuality is only a tiny piece of the sin in the world and the danger is with focusing on it is that all other sin is ignored. I pointed out to them that the church in the US has made this mistake – devoting almost all of its societal efforts on homosexuality – and it has resulted in so many other sins becoming acceptable behavior, even encouraged behavior. Aaron and Branden both pointed out that their focus should be on fostering solid families with faithful partners.

Frank was dutifully taking notes and at the end of the session read back the pertinent points that he had heard. I’m sad to say that it seems to me he only heard the things we said that affirmed their stand.

On a final note for this morning, my portion of the funds from Lance’s supporter did not make it to Gulu. My heart continues to be burdened for Mother Mary’s orphanage. I told everyone about Baby Esther the other day, and there is a picture here on the blog of her sitting in Sam’s lap. While we were there, I heard someone make a comment in passing that she has had a lot of medical problems. Well, yesterday I asked Kennedy about it. He said that she is HIV positive. So my portion of the funds – along with an additional contribution – went to Kennedy to help with her medical costs.

June 27 – 3:40 pm

Well, we made it to Gulu. The horror stories that we’d heard about how nasty the road up here would be turned out to be unfounded – there were a few spots with some potholes, but for the most part we moved along well. The trip seemed to go much faster than I had anticipated.

Final tally of the KIU Students/UFC staff along with us – Kennedy, Antony, Aaron, Brian, Evelyn, Lillian, Patrick, Emmanuel (Manu), & Sophie – and we love them all! We love their spirit, we love their sense of humor, we love their dancing, and especially we love how much they love God. We keep telling all of them that we want them to come to America to see us. If Brian can get his visa to study at Mississippi St, we’ll make it happen. Kennedy will make it over at some point, but we so badly want to introduce everyone to our friends. Several of us mzungus have been finding ourselves speaking with their accents. We love how they pronounce “God”. I can’t type it, we’ll have to imitate it when we get home.

As we reached the outskirts of Kampala, we noticed a grocery type store with a big crowd of agitated people gathered out front. It was explained that this is basic Ugandan justice. The police in Uganda are so corrupt that you can pretty much get away with anything as long as you can bribe the cop. Because of this, if someone is caught shoplifting, the neighborhood takes over dispensing justice. They’ll gather around and beat the bejeebers out of the perp. Antony & Kennedy informed us that these beatings even result in death on occasion. So shoplifting in Uganda is not a good idea.

The trip itself was pretty cool once we got out of Kampala. We were stuck in a traffic jam for about 15 minutes there, but otherwise things moved along well. The highlights:
• We stopped at a “rest area”. The Ugandan version of a rest area is a place where the guys could go off one side of the road a little ways into the trees, and the girls could do the same on the other. While we were all stretching, the younger dudes were showing off – Aaron picked Lance up and carried him across the road. I asked him why he didn’t carry me! There were a few foot races and Branden actually beat Manu. Of course, this was after Manu had already raced Nick, Alex and Kennedy.
• Shortly after getting back on the bus, Michael slowed way down. There was some type of black faced monkey standing at the side of the road looking at us. Branden had been talking about wanting to see a monkey, so he got his wish.
• Soon after that, we started seeing baboons all over the place. I’m pretty sure there were a bunch of pictures taken.
• Then we crossed over the Nile. It was breathtaking! Whenever I think of the Nile, I think of it as the Egyptian version of the Columbia – flowing steadily but unremarkably through the desert. This far south it is nothing of the sort. Already a huge river, it was beautiful as we saw a waterfall and many rapids all over the place. Again, I’m hoping we can get some pictures posted of it. Lots of “oohs” and “ahhs” on the bus.
• We passed many different villages along the way and saw plenty of the traditional grass roofed African dwellings. As we were entering Gulu, we started seeing large groupings of these. Kennedy pointed out that these were some of the IDP camps.
• As we drove through one fairly secluded area, Kennedy also pointed out that this was not a particularly good place to have you vehicle break down. There is apparently a tribe that still practices cannibalism.

So we arrived in Gulu and parked in front of the bank downtown. Kampala actually has a downtown area with a bunch of impressive large buildings, shopping centers, etc. Downtown Gulu is paved, but is quite dusty with old store fronts, lots of the usual shack-shops, drainage ditches with lots of trash, etc. Branden pointed out that the store front across the street had a sign on the top that said “C&P 1962”. I thought that was rather cool since that was the year that someone very special to me was born! We waited around for about half an hour while Kennedy & Aaron tracked down our “host”, then re-boarded the bus, turned around and went back up the road about ¼ mile where we turned onto a dirt road and headed into a rather shady looking area.

The hotel we’re staying in – the Transa Rock Hotel, however, is pretty nice – nicer than I would have expected from looking at the town. All of the mzungus have their own rooms (with the exception of Branden & Katie). B&K are on the top floor (4th) along with Antony & Aaron who are sharing a room and Sam. Originally Sam was down on the 3rd floor with Kayla & Erika, but they were side by side at one end of the hall and Sam was at the other. Dad didn’t feel too comfortable with that arrangement so I asked Ken – who was in the room right across the hall from me – to switch with her. I therefore now have her right across the hall and Ken is down on the 3rd floor with the girls to help keep an eye on things. The boys & Lance are all down on the 2nd floor. The rooms have beds, nets, fans and small desks and chairs. The bathrooms have a toilet and a shower head. There is also a large plastic bucket that you put under the shower head and stand in

Most of the KIU students are staying in a set of rooms surrounding a small courtyard out back. My room also has a private balcony overlooking the neighborhood out front. The balcony is a nice touch, but the view isn’t all that attractive. The house directly across the street has a dirt yard, a couple of clothes lines full of clothes, and about half a dozen turkets wandering around. As I look further I can see a neighborhood that is definitely a step up from the slums of Kampala, but would also definitely be considered slums in Portland. Lots of kids running around, some with clothes on, some without.

We’re heading to one of the IDP camps to distribute some food here in a little bit.

June 28

I believe we just experienced the worst, shortest night’s sleep since arriving in Uganda. We were all victims of a confluence of “Uganda Time” time last night.

I’m sitting here in my room with the only light available being my laptop. The noise here is different than it was in Kampala, but much more intimate. By that I mean I could tune out most of it in Kampala and sleep most of the time. Here there was a nightclub down the street that was blasting music all night long – and is still blaring at 5:30 am - the roosters have been crowing, there’s a dog that periodically emits nice loud, long, mournful howls, and it is all happening right outside the hotel, which features windows that don’t close. There is also a child that was crying and screaming much of the night. The thing that has me totally baffled is how the night club manages to power the music. When we arrived yesterday the power had been off in the entire town for a day and a half, and just barely managed to flicker back on around 4 pm. There has been enough power in my room to turn the fan a tiny bit. There isn’t enough power for the lights to work, so I’m thinking that it doesn’t make sense to wake anyone up until there is enough natural light to see.

Figured out later that the night club may be the cause of much of the power shortage issue around here. Once they finally shut down at around 6 am, the lights all came back on.

Sorry – rabbit trail. Back to the effects of Uganda Time. It was decided that we weren’t eating any dinner until after the camp visit – everyone was instructed to eat some of their snacks to tide them over. This was great since that was what we had for lunch on the bus ride up. Yeah, and here I am complaining when we’ve got a veritable feast compared to the people we’re visiting.

The main point I’m trying to make about the later dinner, however, is that it turned out to be VERY late. By the time we got back to the hotel from the restaurant (they were quite slow), it was close to midnight. The English service at the church is at 8:30, so I’m expecting a lot of tired folks this morning.

The trip to the IDP camp started out with by going over to Gulu Community Church (which is where we’re attending church this morning) to meet Pastor Chris. The plan was that we were to go to the camp, distribute food and then they were going to show the Jesus film. I was looking forward to this since I had heard quite a bit about the “Jesus Film Project” a couple of years ago but had never had the opportunity to see it.

Getting out to the camp was about a ½ hour experience since we traveled probably 3 miles on one of the famous Ugandan “roads” where the pedestrians often make better time than the vehicles.

I’m going to back up a little and try to explain what little I’ve been able to learn about these camps. I say try because although I’ve been asking pretty much everyone involved with the trip to give me a historical rundown, but so far the best I’ve been able to pull is a few little bits and pieces and I don’t have access to any more detailed information. These camps were set up during the civil war that was fought here for a long time between the government forces and the rebel forces of the LRA as a place for the people who were displaced from their villages during the fighting. This war was very ugly, with the rebels frequently going into villages and committing massive brutality – women & children were a favorite target. Since the rebels were using guerilla tactics – including hiding among the population of the villages – in many cases the government told the villagers that anyone NOT in the camps would be considered a rebel. As recently as 2005, rebel forces penetrated into Gulu.

Many of these people have lived in these camps for 25 years. A child born shortly after a family arrived is now well into the period where they would have their own children, so an entire generation has known nothing but the camps. The government has now instituted a plan for them to be resettled back in their villages, however, so the numbers in the camps has dropped significantly. You can see the “ruins” of many huts within the camp left behind by those who have left.

The food distribution bags consisted of some beans, maize flower, sugar and some laundry soap – I don’t know how far these staples go, but each bag for each family weighed about 5 lbs. We broke up into groups of about 5 people each, picked up 2-3 bags each and headed into the camp.

Each group consisted of a couple of members of the US team, 1 or 2 of the KIU folks, and an interpreter. In our particular group, the interpreter was a young man of 15 named Stevenson. We were also accompanied by one of the guys from the church named Samuel. Sophie, Sam and I rounded out the team.

We visited approximately 15 huts. Every single one of them housed either Christians or people who accepted the offer of receiving Christ as their Savior. When talking to Ken later, he said the same thing happened with their group. I still find my heart burning, however, to do more, to help provide more food. A couple of those who were already Christians expressed a need for Bibles. The burden I feel in my heart continues to be that the people who are coming to know Christ have an opportunity to be discipled. Samuel indicated that they come out on a regular basis, but I still worry since nobody in the camp seemed to recognize any of the people from the church. I find myself worrying about a lot of things for these people. And all I can do from this point is to leave it in God’s hands. Maybe that’s the point.

We have not been going inside the huts as we did the homes in the Kampala slums. The distribution and discussions took place outside as it seems that is where much of the time is spent. Before we even headed out, Sam was down on the ground talking with a little boy, somewhere in the 5-8 range. He had a large open sore on his leg, which the flies were exploring at their leisure.

The people that are in this camp are from the Luo camp and the dialect they speak is Luo. This tribe spans Northern Uganda and well into Kenya. Sophie is from that tribe, but the dialect from the Kenyan territories of the tribe are different from these, so she had a difficult time understanding much of what they said. Stevenson had some difficulties since he’s still somewhat tentative with his English. It still kind of blows my mind that English is the language that they are attempting to make “universal”, but if Uganda is ever to emerge from 3rd World status, it is critical that they be able to communicate with the rest of the world, so it makes a lot of sense.

Stevenson is a very nice young man, but his knowledge of the world outside of Africa – even to a certain extent outside of Gulu – is pretty limited. He dreams of being a professional soccer player (as do 99.9% of all Ugandan boys).

Sorry if today’s issue is rambling a little. I’m very tired and am having difficulty putting the narrative together. As the movie started (the actual movie shown was called Paul the Emissary) started, we found out quickly that while the film was being broadcast in English, one of the folks from the church was translating it into Luo over a microphone. It drew a large crowd, and the people in attendance were very enthusiastic. Branden preached afterwards – again through an interpreter – and there was a large crowd gathered round afterwards.

It is now 11:05 am and we just got back from the church service. It was rather jarring to walk in and find a large group of mzungus already in attendance. Turns out that Teen Mania has a large group here that has been working on building something here in Gulu all week. The service was fun and outrageously energetic. The closest I’ve seen to it at Rolling Hills is the occasional moments when Aaron Doerr starts hopping around in the Spirit. We discussed it afterwards and all agreed that of all of the worship services we’ve attended, it was the most out of tune we’d experienced, and yet was probably the most joyful. Branden preached – and delivered probably the most inspired message I’ve ever heard him preach. And on his birthday, no less! I was watching a bunch of the Teen Mania kids and at the beginning it kind of looked like they were tired and prepared to be bored. By the end of it I had seen them laughing, most of them were leaning forward, totally into what Branden had to say. Pretty cool! We were kind of looking forward to chatting with the Teen Mania kids afterwards, but they took immediately headed out and boarded their bus.

This afternoon/evening we did one more school – John Paul II College here in Gulu. A Catholic school, it was by a large margin the most impressive school that we’ve visited to date. While being given a tour, it was pointed out that one of the buildings (named after Mother Teresa) houses the kids who are amputees – victims of the war. We were not given a tour to visit these kids, but the thought of it saddened us nonetheless.

The assembly that we did, however, was fantastic! As we entered the room, the kids in there were already in the middle of singing – and very enthusiastically. We joined in, then went through introductions and Branden led some worship. The kids were joining in and there were even a couple of girls in their midst who would do some type of high pitched chant in the middle of it. I have to admit that it isn’t something that I expected from a Catholic school, but they brought it!

We are all grieved by the news tonight of the passing of John Garrick’s mother. We are praying for John and his family, and I would like to post one here:

Our glorious and magnificent Lord. We bow at Your name this evening and lift our Praises to You. You are the Creator of all, and Your will, Your plans are what we truly desire. Tonight I lift my brother John to You, along with his family. You know Lord that his Mom has left us to join You, and we rejoice in that. At the same time Lord, we know that the family and particularly John will feel her absence, feel the separation that is always felt in death. We ask you that You would comfort them Lord. Let them feel Your loving arms surrounding them. We know that they will be undergoing a state of grieving, where life at times may feel like they’re going through the motions. We pray that You protect them during this period. We ask this in the matchless name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Sam’s comments:

This week has been a learning experience to say the least. Life over here in Uganda is vastly different from the life of a typical American citizen. Letting go of my organization tendencies has been a huge part of growing throughout this trip, you see, as you might already know Ugandan time means show up and end whenever you feel lead to. Visiting the schools of Uganda was an eye opener. The kids of these schools (well a lot of the schools) weren’t super engaged to what we were talking about but more interested in scheming up ways to have their new Mzungu friends “help them out”. This week however has also been a wakeup call for me as well. I have had a huge problem with worrying ever since I was a little girl. I have wanted to overcome that fear but have never let go of it. The morning that I was horribly sick those same worries came creeping back into my brain. “What if I have to go to the hospital like Nick”? “What if it doesn’t go away”? …..what if, what if, what if. After about the 5th time shoving my face into the white plastic bucket (that I had named my new best friend) I sat there and in tears choked out the words “I don’t want to be afraid anymore!” At this very moment my dad prayed for me and I felt a massive burden lift off my shoulders. Since that day God has provided me with tremendous peace that I have not felt before. I still get afraid of things sometimes but I know that God is always there right beside me. He loves and adores me and knew me before anyone else. I do not need to be afraid for God knows my future and already knows what will happen, so I trust in Him.
Isaiah 41:10
Do not be afraid, for I am with you. Do not be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.
This verse has always been one of my favorites but I never really put it to heart. The words spoken here are clear and direct but I only listen to the ones I wanted to hear. God used this verse to bring peace into my life during this trip.
Well you have already heard some of my thoughts of this week from my Dad’s conversation with me earlier in the week, so with that I say God bless you all and I miss everyone at home.