Arrival

Three flights and many miles and hours after leaving Washington, D.C. on Monday, we touched down in Entebbe, Uganda last night. It was dark when we arrived, so I wasn’t able to get a good view from the sky. All of our luggage arrived on time in the right place, but it was a little lighter than what we had packed. Someone stole some Skittles and M&M’s that we had packed in a cooler for the kids. We haven’t done a thorough investigation yet, but hopefully that’s all that was taken. I hope that at least the Skittle bag was full of nothing but purple Skittles, which are not fit for human consumption.

Today we took a short drive into Kampala, the capital of Uganda, to complete a few tasks. Ross is meeting w/ Juma John, the pastor of the church in Nimule, and w/ Lawrence, the engineer of the new building project for the children’s home. Juma has been in Kampala to purchase supplies for the building. The project has been ongoing for the past three years. The money has been raised for the building, but it has been a challenge to nail down strict deadlines for progress (in some ways, Africa is not so different from the States…). We are also meeting w/ a student who used to live at the children’s home in Nimule. He was an exceptional student, so Ross’s family provided the funds for him to attend a better school in Uganda. He has a good chance at attending university next year. Finally, we are dropping off our luggage w/ Juma for him to take w/ him back to Sudan on the ground as it would cost more for us to pay for the extra weight on our flight.

I want to thank everyone who has supported the children’s home thus far w/ your donations and prayers. We had several suitcases full of medical supplies, toys, and candy (minus the aforementioned Skittles and M&M’s) for the kids. Hopefully, over the next few weeks, I can write less about daily itineraries and more about the lives of the kids that you are helping.

As I was sitting on one of our flights today, I started thinking about how different these kids’ lives and experiences are from mine. In their short time on earth, many of them have experienced more pain and suffering than I may ever see. Their poverty-stricken childhoods are completely different from my middle-class upbringing in the United States. In the eyes of the world, one could say that we have nothing in common. We do however share one very strong common bond: a savior. One thing that always strikes me on overseas trips is how big God is: bigger than the boxes I try to put Him in, bigger than my Christian ghetto, bigger than the whole United States.

I also thought about one thing that has continually popped up in the stories I’ve heard from the people who have spent time w/ the kids in Nimule, and that is their joy despite their suffering. Ross talked about how incredible that was to him when he first visited the children’s home, before he knew Jesus, before he had agreed to become director of the children’s home, even before the children’s home formally existed. These kids and the community have joyful lives that we Americans try to buy or self-medicate to possess but still can’t quite grasp. I’m interested in discovering this joy for myself.