Maggie's Chapter

This blog chronicles the exciting and often harrowing adventures of our family in Uganda. With this post comes the beginning of another amazingly beautiful chapter. A chapter with a devoted mom and dad and a stellar and, should I add, dashingly handsome older brother. But first, the introduction and the history of the little girl you will all soon fall in love with.

[Enter Maggie].

We met Maggie "officially" on our trip to Uganda last spring. We have seen her around the complex of Victor's school every year we have travelled. Come to find out, I have three years of photos of Maggie that I never realized would carry the meaning they do now. Maggie is 7...or so we think. As is the case with many children in Uganda, the age or birthdate doesn't seem to matter so much. Based on experience with Perez, the details of her past will slowly unfold into her future and along the way we will see the intricate workings of the master weaver. Until then, here is what we know.

Maggie is the youngest of a family of 6 children. She has three older sisters and two older brothers...well, I should say had two older brothers. One of her brothers, Julius, passed away 4 months ago. He died of aids at age 11. Such is the heartbreaking reality of Maggie's story. From what we understand to be true, Maggie is the only healthy person in her family. Her mother battles repeatedly with severe sickness, her siblings are destined for the same end and her father wants nothing to do with any of them. Her two oldest sisters are grown up and live with their husbands, her oldest brother lives 30 minutes away at a secondary school and Maggie stays with her mother and closest sister, Sylvia, in a small home in Mukono. Maggie and Sylvia carry the load of going to school, doing the day to day chores and caring for their mother. It is only a matter of time before Sylvia begins secondary school and Maggie is left at home alone to care for her mother. Needless to say, it is only a short matter of time after that that Maggie will need to care for her other siblings as they begin to get sick. It is a strikingly sad picture for a child. A future we believe no child was ever intended to have.

[Enter "The Sign" from God]

Maggie was on a list of potential new members of our family. A list 5 or 6 long of kids we are drawn to for one reason or another. We prayed for them as a group, prayed for them individually by name, held their pictures next to our pillows at night and wept for the sheer thought that picking one meant we were not picking all the rest. Things moved forward like molasses. Paperwork timing beat a world record, but this child thing was too much to handle. There was no halo of light shining over one child's head, no situation worse than another that would compel us to choose quickly. Until Julius died. That took the situation from future reality to current reality. From head to heart. We broke. God gave us our daughter and we are moving full steam ahead.

The chapters are being written and they are sure to be exciting.

As it stands now, we are totally finished with paperwork on both Uganda and U.S. sides and we are simply waiting for a court date. We hope that will be in March...and sometime (we pray less than a month...and yes we are also crossing our fingers) we will be bringing our little girl home. There are many pages between the part about the court date and the part about bringing that little girl home, but we are skimming that part for now to get to the happy ending...or even better...a happy beginning.

from Uganda (in mind and heart) with love,

Ali