Home

3 weeks after setting off for our third visit to East Africa, we are now home.  Uganda has become another home for us, and as it is with anyone who has more than one place they love to be, we were sad to leave but happy to be back in San Diego.

This years trip was incredible.  I spoke to over 1000 people in 10 different settings.  Ali taught 20 hours of photography at a vocational school.  We held several meetings with the staff and social workers in an ongoing effort to strengthen our child sponsorship program.  We took over 300 photos of children in our program and helped each of them make Christmas cards for their sponsors.  We gave money from our church to help build their church.  We handed out donated clothes.  We worked hard.  We rested.  We had fun.  We experienced heartache.  We are already planning for next year.

Each time we come home, I wonder what it is we have left behind.  What difference did our being there make?  Will it last?

One evening we were driving back to where we were staying from a long day of speaking at a conference.  It was just the driver and myself in the small van.  The streets were bad, full of potholes.  And they were narrow.  School had just let out all over the village so the streets were filled with uniformed children walking home.  As we sped down the dirt roadway, swerving frequently to miss the holes we hit a girl.  

That's right, we actually hit someone.  And the driver refused to stop...he didn't believe me that we hit her.  But we did, and my side mirror was the evidence for it was now folded tight against the car.  I rolled down the window and pushed back the mirror.  I looked back to see the damage that we had caused, but the dust was too thick.  I was angry with the driver, we should have stopped.  For much of that evening I wondered.  How was this young girl?  Did we break her arm?  Did we just hit her swinging bag?  Was she okay?  Was she injured?  Would she be able to get help?  And I'll never know.  

I've never hit anyone before, and I hope it never happens again.  But people do come in and out of my life often, and rarely do I get to experience the influence, the impact or the "damage"  I might have.  As we flew out of Africa, I prayed that our being there made a lasting, positive influence in the life of those we interacted with.  Money, clothes, sweets, card games, conversations, laughter, special gifts, hugs, soccer games and just being there...caring.  It is my hope that when the dust settles from our whirlwind trip, we can look back and know that our lives have touched others, some for eternity, some for brief moments of joy and all in a positive way.

The challenge is, that this hope doesn't end when we get home.  Life is this way for all of us.  We bump into people, we cross paths with others every day, all of us do.  And we can either run them over or lift them up.  And so I will continue to look over my shoulder to see what is left behind from the many interactions that I have everyday, and I hope you'll join me.  Because its not just people in Africa that need it.  We all do.  And hopefully our paths cross soon.

Good firsts

We are up early this morning so we can begin our packing for the long journey home. I look forward to getting back, but I also find myself more unsettled than normal to leave. Several of the things we have been working on are incomplete and its difficult to leave things "unfinished." But it's not just the projects, the people here are family. The children are our kids and the adults are our brothers and sisters. Uganda has truly become a second home for us and we love spending part of our lives here.

This is our third year to come to Uganda, and I was thinking last night of a few first time experiences we had this year (we still have about 14 hours until we leave so anything could happen).

This is the first year:

1. I have not agonized over Perez. It has been awesome having him here with us as our son rather than us as his sponsor.
2. We did not stay in a hotel. There is now a 3 bedroom apartment on the school campus and we stayed there. It is great to be with the kids from early morning to late night. We especially had fun throwing small parties each night for many of the kids.
3. I have not fallen deathly ill on the last day of our trip.
4. We have not been involved in a traffic accident.
5. We had good and fairly stable internet connections to keep this blog alive.

Thanks for thinking of us, supporting us and reading our ponderings over the past three weeks. We will share more on this site in the days to come, until then, from Uganda with love, Steve

A Dropped Kid...A New Sponsor

We came on this trip hoping to find a new kid to sponsor...turns out we found two.  We decided to sponsor Biryeri Eron as she just graduated from Primary school and is moving to Secondary.  She is also Perez's cousin and they grew up together.  She was previously sponsored, dropped, assigned to a new sponsor and then we asked if we could sponsor her so Perez could stay connected to the family.  It all worked out and we just told her that we were her new sponsor and she just beamed.

We also decided, by the pulling of heart strings, that we needed to take on Kitenda (the boy in the photo).  He's been around every year that we have been here and we usually smile and wave from afar...maybe saying a few "How Are You"'s and a few "I'm Fine"'s.  But this year was different.  It seemed as if he hung around us a lot more, not saying much but just trying to be around as much as possible.  I started talking to him when he was writing a letter to his sponsor.  It turns out he had just been dropped by his sponsor (and he didn't know because the social workers are not telling the kids to save them the heart break).  He asked me if I knew his sponsor and if I could send a special message to her.  It's really hard when you know bits of information that you can't share.  I told him that I did know his sponsor and I would love to send the special message.  At that point, I knew I wanted to be his sponsor.  I told him a few days later that he had been dropped, but only because God had a different plan for him.  Through out the past two weeks we have spent as much time with him as possible and have tried to gleen as much of his past from him and others that know him.  Turns out...his father abandoned his family 9 years ago and left his mom with 8 kids, one of which is deaf and requires special help.  A few years ago Kitenda started acting out.  He was totally unruly and defiant and started getting into a lot of trouble.  He basically has the characteristics of a street kid.  A lot of anger, bitterness, and hurt.  His mom thought it would be best to send him to a school where he could be raised better.  So he ended up at Victor's...and I truly believe God has saved him from a life of trouble.  He is timid, gentle and respectful with a little of an edge and a heck of a good soccer player.  He has so much potential.

We stopped by his house today to see where he lives and to meet his mother and siblings.  We were warmly welcomed into a very "humble" home by his mom and a bunch of kids who are all related somehow.  I got to share with her that we were his new sponsor and she got to share with me the dreams she has for her son.  It was a really cool moment.

I got back to the school and told him that we visited his mom and saw his home, he kinda started blushing and said, "You did what?"  It's kind of unheard of to visit a child's home without telling them first.  But he was happy that we got to share a little more of his life with him.  I'm super excited about a new beginning for him and I know that God is blessing what's going on here.

I can't wait to get home and show you the pictures of other kids who have been dropped so you all can pick them back up again and give them a new beginning.

From Uganda With Much Love To Share Today...Ali

Behind Every Success Is A Story Of Struggle

Up until this point we've shared a lot of happy endings (or maybe beginnings).  I think we do this to lighten the emotional load a little.  And honestly, while we are here, most everything is positive.  The kids are happy to see us and we bring a little fun to the mundane daily routine.  But, reality still exists.  Nearly everyday I carry a little more pain around with me in my heart.  Whether it be watching a child repeatedly run around barefoot because their shoes are torn, having a child lay their head in my lap because they are so faint from sickness (mostly malaria), or having the same child come to our house every morning for food and to tell me that everyday when she goes home to greet her dad he beats her with a stick.  This is the reality.  It's all fun and games until you ask the kids what happens when they go home.  They get real quiet and look down at the ground.  They give only answers to your questions with no further detail.  It is painful for them to recount their life.  They are scared and ashamed for us to know what they really have to endure.

The 7 year old boy, Lawrence, in this photo carries the burdens of someone 10 times his age.   A good friend of mine is his sponsor and Steve and I visited him at his school last year.  He lives in the outskirts of a village about 45 minutes away from Mukono.  When he came to Victor's to get his photo taken he instantly recognized me and came up and knelt at my feet (which is what all the kids do as a sign of respect) and I pulled him up and hugged him close.  He had the biggest grin!  Come to find out, the man who brought him (and two others) is a Pastor from their village and he has taken it upon himself to see that these kids are cared for.  The issue is that Lawrence's dad is dead so he only has a mom to care for him and his younger brother.  It turns out that the mom is refusing to care for him and on repeated occasions has not given him medicine sent to him when he is sick.  She is given food (not money, but food) to feed him and his brother and she is not giving it to him.  The social workers have visited his home on two different occasions and found Lawrence, alone, and caring for his younger brother.  He then tells the social workers that he hasn't seen his mom for days.  This is his reality.  

I had to excuse myself from the office so I could cry.  I looked at this little boy on my way up to our apartment and I said to him, "I am so sorry" in English.  He looked up at me and smiled, a gesture that broke my heart even more.

The stories of struggle come in every day and I continue to do the best I can to encourage these kids.  But it is hard.  Every night the kids have something called evening glory, which is a time where they sing and dance and pray.  It is amazing.  Every night they fall to their knees with hands lifted high and voice their thankfulness to God.  I wish you all could hear this.  It brings me to tears every night.  And while they are praying in Luganda, I pray along with them and all I can say is, "God hear their cries, hear their cries, hear their cries".

From Uganda with love,

Ali

For our friend Andy