I've been home almost a month now, and I haven't really known whether or not I should continue this blog. I created it for the sole purpose of keeping everyone back home informed about my travels, but now that I'm home, deleting it almost feels like I'm saying I'll never go back, which is certainly not true.

Everything about being back in America is weird to me, and since getting back, I've been thinking so much about the different cultures and languages throughout the world. As content as I would be to study those two things for the rest of my life, I went to a college, erm, Christian group meeting would be the best word I can think of for it, but anyway, I was there tonight, and the speaker was talking about the culture of Christ, and how that is the only culture to which we are obliged, and, of course, for us it is no obligation, but a blessing and a desire. It only affirmed the thoughts which have been so strong in my mind since getting back to the States, which are that as interested in culture and languages as I am, those two things originated at the tower of Babel, as a direct result of a great sin. All the different languages came as a punishment because mankind was gathering together to work against God, and then, because of the communities formed by those who shared a language after this, cultures began to form.

I'm not really sure where all of this is leading, they're really just half-formulated thoughts  that I felt the need to write down, and it's probably too late for me to make any real conclusions, but it's certainly interesting to think about, as fascinating and amazing as all the different cultures are, to make sure that we as Christians are only living in the culture of Jesus.

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011. Today is the day that I have been anticipating for so long, first I couldn't wait for it, then I dreaded it with everything in me, then I couldn't wait for it, and then, I began dreading it again. But here it is, and in exactly twenty four hours, I will be sitting on an airplane that will take me from Africa back to America, with my six suitcases all checked away and millions of wonderful times behind me.

It's funny, looking back at my first month here and how all I wanted to do was to give it all up, to go home, to go back to college and all of the things that I left behind, and even throughout my DTS, there were definitely times that I thought I'd made the wrong decision in coming here, that I would have been so much better off staying home, that what I'd gained was not nearly enough to compensate for what I'd lost. But now, on the eve of my departure, I can say without a doubt that coming to Africa was the best thing that I've ever done with my life, and my only regret is that I have to leave so soon. I've spent the past week looking for some loophole, any loophole, that would allow me to stay, but there are none, and unless God puts a very blatant and un-crossable roadblock in my path tomorrow, I'll be back in America within forty eight hours. I can't say that I feel total peace about going home, even during my quiet times when I've been begging for peace and clarity, I haven't really had any resolution on the matter, but at this point, I'm okay with that. My faith in God is such that, if it's really not the time for me to go then He will keep me here, and otherwise, He will pave the way for whatever my next path is.

Tonight was the best possible send-off that I could ever have asked for. I spent the majority of today stressing, preparing, and packing, and moping around Africa doing the whole "this is the last time I'll ever...", so that by the time I finally got back to the base, I was in a terrible mood, and slinked off to my room for a pity party, and when Lucy had to go off to take care of some things, I felt even worse, and very nearly called it a night and went to sleep at seven, until Joe came knocking on my door to ask if I wanted to go for a walk. I was so happy to have someone to hang out with, so I happily went along with him to Dr. Tim's to get medicine for his stomach. Only, when we got there, Dr. Tim wasn't there, but everyone else from the base was, and they all jumped out and yelled "surprise" and apparently, Lucy had been planning this all day. It was more wonderful than I could have ever hoped for, we drank tea and ate cake and everyone spoke and then I had to get up and awkwardly speak while trying with everything in me not to start sobbing, and then when everyone else left, a few of us sat around and talked about all the fun times we'd had, and just how amazing everything here had been. It was an absolutely perfect night, and it meant more to me than I can ever express to hear these people, all of whom I've grown to love so much, give me such kind words and encouragements. I wish I could have adequately described to each individual in that room how much they've meant to me over the past six months, but I couldn't then and still probably couldn't now if I tried, there's just too much to it all, maybe in another six months I'll be able to fully grasp the impact that everything and everyone here has had on me, but for now it just seems to immense to even think about.

At some point in the near future, I want to write some beautiful, retrospective kthing about how much these past six months have meant to me, and everything they've taught me, and just how incredibly blessed I've been by every single second I've had in this place, but for now it's late and my eyes are starting to hurt and I'm typing too loudly, I'm worried that I'll wake everyone else up, and even though my sheets are packed away, it's still my last night in this bed, my last night in a mosquito net for a very long time, the last time I'll fall asleep to rats in the ceiling or sheep outside the window or bugs buzzing in my ear or people speaking Lugandan in their sleep, and while all of these things are something I would have hated so many months ago, they now feel like home, and I want to enjoy every single moment I have left of it.

Pictures from our outreach in Zanzibar.

Kelli, Lucy, and me on the Indian Ocean for our birthdays.

Being blindfolded for our birthday games.

Our outreach team, celebrating my and Kelli's birthday.

Zanzibar night sky.

Our outreach group.

Queen of the Masaai warriors.

Our little room in Zanzibar.

The first round of outreach pictures, there are millions more to come. These are all from a bus window, taken on the thirty hour drive from Jinja to Dar.

Kenya, first thing in the morning.

Mountains of Tanzania.

Masaai men. 

It's our first day back from outreach, and already we're in Jinja, drinking chocolate milkshakes at the Keep and looking through the millions of pictures from the past two months. As incredibly glad I am to be back in Uganda, I do miss the outreach. It was such an incredible time, and just looking back at everything that happened in my life and the lives of my brothers and sisters on the DTS in the past two months, it seems unreal. This morning, right after base worship, the group got together and just had a chance for everyone to share what happened on them while on the outreach. The group from Barara had a lot of good things to say, and I was surprised at how encouraged I was by their success, and generally just how happy I was to see them again. I didn't realize how fond I had grown of everyone during the lecture phase, although for sure, it was nothing compared to how close we all got on the outreach. The thought that, a week from now, all but two of the people who I now think of as family will have left Uganda absolutely kills me. As excited as I am for what's next for me in the beautiful land, it's going to be such a different experience without all of the amazing people that God brought into my life five months ago. As much as Hopeland is my home, everyone on the DTS is my family, and everything about this week seems completely perfect, everything is back to normal and if I could have my way, I would want it to stay this way for years. Almost immediately after we all got back, Scovia was prancing around the room naked, and Kari was asleep early, asking us all to turn the light off, and we got chips and chapati and moaned about having to wake up early this morning, and it all just felt so perfect. Five months ago, I could have never imagined that I would feel this way about Uganda, but God has just completely changed everything that I thought was me, I can truly say that He has taken this time to begin forming me into the person that He created me to be, and in this new life, I think I could live in Africa for twenty more years.

As exciting as it is to be home, I'll have at least four more months to blog about how much I love Hopeland, Uganda. I want to begin writing about the outreach, because it really was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had, but I really don't even know how to begin explain everything that's happened in the past few months. If I start listing off all the things God's taught me, I'll be here typing until Friday, but it seems like such an injustice to try to summarize it all. So, at least for now, I'll just try to describe the main events, and I'm sure as what I'm about to experience and learn builds on what I've been learning, I'll go into much greater detail.

So, the first three weeks of our outreach were spent in Zanzibar, and I'm pretty sure that I wrote a quick blog entry from there, but it was just such a hard environment for the beginning of our outreach. I don't think any of us were really prepared for what we faced in Zanzibar, but it definitely taught us a lot. The island was predominantly Muslim, and the ones who weren't Muslim were too afraid to ever say this. This proved to be a big problem for us, as we were walking around trying to tell people about Jesus Christ, no one wanted to be seen talking to us or showing much interest in what we were saying, and for good reason - the Muslims burned three churches during the three weeks that we were there, simply because they were getting too loud about their faith. So we faced an incredibly hostile group of people, and just the spiritual environment of the island was oppressive and dark. Every night, as we went to sleep, we could hear the drums of the witch doctors and the chants from the mosques, but we woke up at five every morning and countered it all with Swahili praise songs and prayers. This spiritual tug-of-war really taught me a lot about how much exists beyond what we can see, but it also how to work through it, and despite everything that was happening around us, I think that Zanzibar was the first time that I really learned how to talk to God, and how to truly have a relationship with Jesus. It was absolutely breathtaking, to watch God work in such an impossible-seeming situation.

After Zanzibar, we got back on the ferry and went to Dar Es Salaam for five weeks, and that's the time that I really count as our outreach. The difference between the ministry in Zanzibar and the ministry in Dar was absolutely night and day. In Dar, the entire church rallied around us, and supported us in everything we were doing, and even the people we were talking to just seemed so eager and interested in what we had to say. It was so refreshing, so just have the freedom to work as we felt God was leading us to, and our work there was a huge success. We had two weeks of door to door, and I don't think a single day went by that someone didn't receive Christ, which was just so encouraging after our struggles in Zanzibar. We then went into a week of sermons, followed by a week of open air crusades, which we so great and powerful. By the last week, the church had grown exponentially, and everyone there had such a fire for Jesus about them, it was one of the most amazing transformations I've ever experienced. As much as I loved watching the people in the area falling in love with God, it was my own transformation during this time that meant the most to me. God really reached out to me, in a way that I had never known before, and my relationship with Him really, truly became a relationship. It stopped just being in my head, and flowed into my heart. He taught me how to truly love and respect people, He taught me what it really meant to have faith and hope in Him and His word, and He really begin to teach me what it means to live in and with His Holy Spirit. It was incredible, I really learned to lean on God for everything in the past month or so. Everything that I learned and experienced was really put to the test on the last week of my outreach, when I was faced with something that I knew I could absolutely not deal with. I was broken, scared, and totally hopeless, but that's when God proved to me His greatness, when He really finalized everything that He had been teaching me about faith and hope by showing me that it was nothing that I could work towards, nothing that I could attain by myself, but instead something I would have to fall back on Him for. As soon as I learned that, as soon as I truly experienced the kind of faith and hope that I know He wants me to live in, I realized that I could handle absolutely everything that life has in store for me. It was the most freeing realization ever, because no matter what happens or doesn't happen, I can always fall back on God, and with Him, nothing will ever be too hard. I guess it's nothing new, I didn't really come to any brilliant conclusions, it's the stuff that we all grow up learning in Sunday school, but the difference is that it's finally become real in my life, it's no longer just words or an idea, but it's a life. And of course, through all of this, He was also teaching me a million little things about how to live, to love, to believe, but in comparison to the realization of the full greatness of God, all of those don't even seem worth mentioning.


So, in a short summary, that has been my outreach, and hopefully will really lay the foundation for what's to come, both immediately here in Uganda, and in the future, whatever that may hold. I thank God so much for what an incredible experience it was, and what He's done to revive a life that I had never before considered worth living. In the past five months of this DTS, the Lord really took time to teach me the beauty of every single day, and showed me what a blessing it is to live this life, to live it for Him.

I've managed to find a few minutes of internet in the middle of Zanzibar, however, the keys stick terribly, there is no spellcheck, and I've got fifteen minutes left, so I'm going to make this incredibly brief.

Outreach is going really well so far, we've been here for a little over a week and we've got a week left on the island before we head off to mainland Tanzania, a place called (and I know I'm not spelling this right) Dar Es Saalam. It's really hard here, pretty much the whole island is Muslim and so there's an incredible resistance to what we're here for, but today really felt like a breakthrough, at least for me. We broke off into small teams, and I was with one of my friends from Uganda so that they could translate English/Swahili for me, and we stood on the corner of a road and just talked to whoever would listen. It was hard at first, I feel so intrusive trying to sit people down and tell them what I believe and why they should believe it also, but it got easier as I gave it to God, and in the end of the two hours, I had gotten to preach to thirteen-some Muslims, and one of them even ended up getting saved! It was an incredible experience, and exactly the encouragement I needed at the moment.

Being here, here as in Zanzibar, but also just in the outreach environment, is really challenging everything I've ever known or experienced, but it's also taken me on a whole new level of trusting in God and of loving Jesus. Because I've left everyone in my life that I care deeply about to be here, I've had to completely turn to Jesus for everything, to be there for me and to love me through it all, and it's been amazing. I want to go so much more in-depth into all of this, but my time is incredibly limited.

As for what we're actually doing here, it's twelve of us, leaders included, staying in a few rooms from the house of a Muzungu who occasionally comes to the island to work with a church, which is located right next door. Er, well, currently in a circus tent type deal, but when they get a real building they will be right next door. We're doing a lot of ministering with the church, preaching on Sunday services as well as Friday and Wednesday ones, and we're working together with the leaders of the church for our ministery around the island. We've been mainly focusing on door-to-door, as that seems the most effective way to reach individuals here, but next week we should be heading into the market places to do some open-air type things. We're incredibly limited in what we can do here, because the island is almost all Muslim and they tend to burn churches that get too out of hand, but with God all things are possible, so there is no doubt in my mind that great things will come from us being here.

I'll post more about the island, the ministry, and everything else when I can, and expect a lot of pictures as soon as I get back to Uganda and my laptop.

Love and blessings.

Just for the record, beginning a blog post is an incredibly awkward thing. It's not like an e-mail, where you can begin with something funny or personal, or even just hey, because a blog isn't really directed at anyone, it just kind of exists on the internet. So, awkwardly talking about the awkwardness of blog posts seemed like a good way to start this one, since I initially went to start with “well,” but then realized that was how I started pretty much every blog post since I got here. Wonderful.

Anyways, everything in Uganda is going incredibly well right now. Our DTS is in intense preparation mode, since we leave for outreach next Monday. I can’t believe how quickly it’s gone by, I remember the first month or so that I was here, when it seemed like it would be an eternity until mid-November, but here we are. Tomorrow is our last day of lectures, and in whatever free time we have, we’re practicing skits, dances, and songs to present while on outreach. It’s exhausting, because we’re still getting up at 4:40 in the morning for prayer, and this morning I was completely unenthusiastic about pretty much everything about today, but during prayer time I was really convicted about my attitude, and I realized that if we want to make any kind of difference in Zanzibar, I need to go into it with a completely positive attitude, no matter how exhausted I am. I just used about ten commas in that sentence, whoops. I’d blame it on exhaustion, but really, I think I have a bit of a comma problem, please excuse. Another grammatical shortcoming, er, maybe just an English language shortcoming, I’ve found myself talking more and more like an African lately, hence the previous “please excuse.” I do it a lot less when typing, because I have more time to think out what I type, but in regular conversations I’ve started to leave out everything but the words absolutely necessary to convey the point I’m trying to make. I didn’t realize it until the other day, when I said to Ansie “No, you keep,” and Will was like, “Lindley, she’s white. You don’t have to talk like that.” It’s just a natural way of speaking at this point; but I really hope that I can resume speaking in complete sentences by the time I come home.

I’m not really sure when the last time I updated my blog was, we currently have no internet (I’m typing this in Word so that when we do get internet I can post it quickly before it turns off again), so I can’t check, but I think it’s been a while. A lot has happened in the past few weeks, but I can’t remember anything incredibly noteworthy. I preached in an African church for the first time last Sunday, on Halloween. It was an absolutely incredible experience, and God really blew me away with what He did through me. Going into it, I was over-prepared, with four or five pages of meticulously taken notes on what it meant to have a relationship with God, and carefully drawn out charts illustrating the connectivity of the various relationship aspects; however, as soon as I got up there, God took charge of the message. I don’t remember looking at my notes even once – the general idea of the message kept with my original plan, but God completely used me to say what He wanted to say. It was truly amazing, and when it was over, I realized that I seriously need to trust God more, even in little things like that. That doesn’t mean not to prepare, that would be stupid, but at the same time, I need to not over-prepare. I need to give Him more room to work, leave more space open to trust that He will work through me, because if it’s not through Him, it’s entirely worthless anyway. It tied in so well with what He’s been teaching me the entire time I’ve been here – the importance of complete submission to Him, in every part of my life. All in all, it was an absolutely amazing experience, and I can’t wait to do it again both during and after outreach. In addition to being completely floored by God’s desire to use me to speak His words, I was, as always, struck by the beautiful hearts of the people in the church. I don’t think that I ever fully understood the joy of praising the Lord and just being in His presence until I came to Africa, and it still amazes me every time. Being at this church on Sunday, it was one of the most authentic worship services I’ve ever attended. It was small, only about thirty people, forty being generous, and most of them were under the age of fifteen, but the love and joy in that room, not only for God but for everyone else there, it was the most beautiful thing in the world. After the message and the worship, I discovered that it was “giving day,” and so I stood there, the only white person within miles, and received gifts, money, salt, fruits, and other things, from these amazing people who had next to nothing, but not, as is so easy to come across in Africa, because I was white. Instead, it was simply because I was there, because I was loved. It was convicting to the extreme, but not in a bad way – I think it was probably the first time in my life that I’d been convicted with absolute joy. I realized that, here were people who didn’t have enough money to buy pants for their children, giving away everything that they had to bless other people, and in doing so, bless the Lord. It sent me into a spiral of thought about money and love and giving and blessing, and I honestly have yet to completely sort it all out, but it made me realize, on a very basic level, that love is something that can be given to anyone, without knowing them or anything about them. It seems so simple, but it changed my outlook on pretty much everything in my life, and will hopefully change the way I live my life as a result.

In other, far less life-changing news, the internet is back on. So I’m going to end this post, and go reply to e-mails and all of that lovely shenanigans. I’ve only got internet for one more week, we’re not allowed to bring laptops to Zanzibar, so this will probably be one of my last posts on here for a while, but I will resume posting as soon as I get back to Uganda in January. Although, probably not right after we get back, since my mom will be coming to visit then (!) and I will be spending every waking moment with her.

One last thing, please keep our outreach teams in your prayers, especially these next few weeks as we make the transition from learning to applying. We’ve already had a few problems as a team, the family members of three people in our team are currently in the hospital, one is undergoing an operation, another has malaria, and the third, the child of a lady named Diana, is sick but we’re not sure with exactly what. So pray against sickness, but also against distraction, and also, as always, for protection, for God to be with us and to guide us in everything that we do, as we have no idea what we’re about to go into in Zanzibar. Mukama yebba zibwe.

A few pictures from last Sunday at church. As always, they're about a week and a half late. Sorry.

With several children from the church after the service.

My African son.

The pastor's roof, which is in need of some serious repairs. 

Well, we finally have both power and internet on the base, and although I should be using this time to write my sermon for Sunday, I wanted to give a quick update on life here at Hopeland. We're in the final stages of the lecture phase - our last week of actual class is next week, and after that, a week of team building and preparation, and then we're off to Zanzibar. It's been really rocky these past few weeks, both in the DTS as a whole and in my personal walk, but things seem to have smoothed out pretty well by now, and I really feel like we're ready for whatever awaits us on the outreach. Every free moment these days is spent working on skits and Swahili songs to present in churches, and today we started waking up at five in the morning for group prayer. I'm really hoping that five in the morning becomes a little easier to deal with as the time goes on, since we'll apparently be up praying every morning during outreach as well, but today was pretty rough. Even though we turned the lights off at nine last night, getting up this morning was nearly impossible. If it hadn't been for my and Lucy's brand new Masai blankets, which are amazingly warm for such thin pieces of fabric, I don't think we would have survived at all. The freezing African mornings are hard enough when the sun's up, but before sunrise it's even worse. So, after prayer and before lectures, Lucy and I had to absolutely beg Msaki for some coffee so that we could stay awake for class. He gave us some, and it was actually wonderful - I've never been much of a coffee drinker, but African coffee has so much sugar in it that it's absolutely delicious. Of course, we were shaking for the rest of the day, but at least we were wide awake! I'm going to have to buy some when we go into town tomorrow, otherwise there is absolutely no hope of making it through these next few months.

In other news, I'm preaching this Sunday, and I'm both excited and nervous. I'm speaking on relationship with God, based entirely on what He's been teaching me these past few months, and I'm planning on sharing bits of my testimony and the things that brought me to God, which will be the first time I've ever done that in front of a group of people. So, please, keep me in your prayers, and hopefully the Lord will use me in a way that will absolutely blow me away.

I'm still in the process of figuring out exactly how long I'm going to be staying here in Africa. I've been getting more and more serious about the idea of doing a School of Biblical Studies in September, but if I were to do that, I would probably come home for the summer at least, just to spend time with my family before I'm gone for another year. I know, without the slightest doubt, that I'll be spending a large amount of time here in my life, I'm just not exactly sure where that time will fall. I am, as the Ugandans say, slowly by slowly learning the language, and it is my greatest hope to one day understand it so well that I'm able to teach English here to the people who don't have the resources to learn it in a school or with a private tutor, but again, I'm waiting on the Lord to discover exactly when all of this will happen. I still have a commitment to go home for at least a month to fundraise for the lovely orphans in Karpinsk, Russia, so whenever I think about trying to schedule and plan all of this, I get a little bit anxious, but I know that God has given me all of these desires and alerted me to all of these needs, so again, I am fully trusting Him to tell me where to be, and when to be there. I can't wait to see how He works it all out. One travel plan that is certain, however, is my upcoming trip to Egypt. I'm not exactly sure when that will happen, but we're planning on the end of January, a bit after DTS graduation. Lucy gets three weeks vacation time from her Year for God program, and I know I'll need a bit of a break to clear my mind after getting back from outreach, so we've decided to save up our Christmas money and take a week long trip to Egypt, to see the pyramids and just relax. We're going to try to work it out so that we can stay with a YWAM base in Egypt, and since we've (as a total answer to prayer) found round-trip flights to Cairo from Entebbe for $420, tax included, that would make the total trip unbelievable inexpensive. So, from Uganda to Zanzibar to Egypt. And then, who knows. It's so exciting, to see how God is working everything out right now. If you had told me a year ago that I would be traveling all over Africa, I don't even know how I would have responded. Yet, here I am. Just another testament in my life to how wonderful the Lord is.

Some pictures from our trip to the source of the Nile River this weekend.

In the car (!) on the way to the Nile.

The girls and Bosco, right before we got on our tour boat.

The Nile.

Just meditating under a memorial to Gandhi. You know.

Here are a bunch of pictures from our amazing ministry trip last weekend. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get them up, we've hardly had internet at the base at all this week.

The church we visited last Sunday.

The children in the congregation. 

Will preaching. This was actually during a pause in the preaching, I felt like it would be disrespectful to actually take a picture as he was speaking.

Will and me at the pastor's house for lunch after the service.

Well, we’ve officially entered into week eight of lecture phase. I honestly can’t believe it, today in small groups when Msaki told me that we were leaving for outreach in four weeks, my jaw dropped. I remember all too clearly the first few weeks of being here, when I was literally ticking off the days, counting and re-counting how much longer it would be until I got to go home. I guess that’s just another example of the incredible transformation that God has been working in me during this amazing time in Africa, and I praise Him greatly for it. The more I think about it, the more excited I become for what I know He is going to bring for me after this period of training – He’s already given me a small taste of what it feels like to live a life dedicated to serving Him, and it left me absolutely craving more and more. There’s still so much to work out, but I’m fully relying on God for all of that, He’s already brought more together for my life than I could have ever imagined was possible, and I know, because I know Him, that the best is yet to come. All I have to do is wait on Him, trust in Him, and be open to whatever path He has in store for me, and He will work everything else out according to His perfect plan.

I’m not really sure where to start in explaining the things that God has been doing in my life in the past few weeks, but since I’ve been so terrible about responding to e-mails and all else lately, I feel like I should include everything in this post, so I apologize in advance if it’s terribly incoherent or not at all cohesive.

One of the biggest blessings in my life right now is the amazing ministry team, for lack of a better word, that God has raised up. I’m not sure if I’ve made mention of it in previous posts, but the past two Sundays I have had the great pleasure of traveling around to different churches in Uganda and getting to watch as my brother Will preaches and my brother Stephen translates. It’s been such an amazing experience for me, and it’s also brought the three of us together in a way that only God could have imagined – we now take every opportunity possible to lift each other up in prayer and encourage one another with the word of God, and it is absolutely causing a huge transformation in my life. For the moment, I’m simply along for the ride, I do what I can here and there but have yet to find any real significance in my involvement in this group, but I remain so positive that God will reveal something to me. For the meantime, though, I’ve found it a wonderful way to develop the servant’s heart that I so long for. This past Sunday, as Stephen and Will were sitting and talking to the pastor, I took the opportunity to help the pastor’s wife with the dishes from the lunch they had made. I think this is slightly culturally inappropriate, since they take such great pleasure in absolutely accommodating their guests here, and I practically had to force her to allow me to help, but it was an amazing experience, kneeling down on the dirt floor hand washing dishes with two women who have remarkable faith. I’ve realized through these few experiences just how far a little bit of love, a little bit of compassion, and a little bit of support can go. As the pastor and his family, as well as probably half of the children in the village, were walking us back to Lake Victoria, one of the women said something that struck me so very much – she said it was so rare to find an American woman who was so willing to converse with people like them. It absolutely floored me, the amount of respect that they place on us, even before we’ve done anything to deserve it. That’s something I had actually been struggling with ever since coming here, because so many people have the idea of the rich “muzungu” or white person, who will come in and bring financial support and save the day – but when she said that, it made me realize that respect is not entirely bad. There’s a way to use that to really, really get God’s word across, and then turn around and use our lives, our love, our passion for Christ to show these people that there’s so much more to seek than money, although, thus far, it is I who is being taught by them, and not the other way around. Experiences like these, though, they’re just so amazing and humbling and it’s incredible because this, this is really what life is about, and for the first time in my life, I’m really understanding what it means to live. I spent years and years pursuing everything I could think of that would make me happy, and as I was doing that, I was drawing further and further away from the only thing that could ever truly make me happy – the perfect love of my Creator. Now that I’ve realized that, nothing else really matters. I want to live to serve Him, in whichever way He has in store for me. At the moment, I feel like it’s simply doing more of what I am doing, and I have no doubt that, as I continue, God will continue to reveal to me the way that He has planned for me to share His love and His light, but for now, I still have some healing and discovering to do. Standing up in front of the church yesterday, I don’t know exactly what it was, but something about the drums and the Luganda praise songs, it just hit me, how far I’ve come, where God brought me to and what He took me from. Exactly a year ago, I was an absolute mess with seemingly no hope of ever getting out of any of it. I was on a constant stream of drugs and alcohol and so many other terrible things that I never knew which way was up, and all I wanted was to get out, of all of it. Now, here I am, in the most amazing place in the world, in constant fellowship with the One who created me,  and I get to spend as much time as I want praising His name and walking with Him, and it brings me pure and constant joy. To me, it’s seemed like such a gradual change that I never really paused to think about how remarkable it all was, but yesterday morning, in front of that church, I was so overcome by the absolute greatness of God that I fell to my knees, and could do nothing but weep and worship. I do not, in any way, deserve even a portion of what He’s already given to me, and yet, here it all is, and He only has more in store for me, as long as I continue to seek Him with all of my heart. It’s more amazing than I can even use words to describe; all I can say is that God is so, so good.

I have found in this place, in these people, in my God, the joy that I have longed for all of my life. I have found an absolute appreciation for life that I never had before. I have found a purpose, a way to truly be effective, something about which to be passionate. I’ve found everything I’ve ever wanted out of life, and I know that I haven’t even cracked the surface of the potential that my relationship with God holds.

This concludes another amazing week here at Hopeland. I’m not sure exactly what week we’re on, I’ve lost count, maybe something around seven? Whatever it is, there are not nearly enough weeks left for me in this place. I think we leave for outreach in exactly a month, maybe even a little bit less.

Fortunately for me, however, that won’t mark the end of my stay here – I’ve made the official decision to stay on for a bit, I’m saying at least until March, but who am I to even guess? I’m here until God tells me, no, forces me to go home, and I’m praying hard that won’t happen any time in the foreseeable future. I’ve gotten Africa in my blood; bugs, mud, and all, and I’m not sure I will ever be rid of it, I’m not sure I could ever be happy anywhere else. Of course, I’ll be happy wherever God sends me, and as long as I’m doing His work, I will need nothing else, but a large part of me is already starting to think of Africa as home.

This week was incredibly eventful, although the lessons were nowhere near as life-altering as the ones last week, this week we learned about missions work and evangelism, but Musaki taught, so really we just heard loads of stories and said “Ameena” over and over. But, all the same, I have come out of it much better than I was going into it, and the way the Lord has been working in my life this week is intense enough to make up for any lack of learning anywhere else. This week, I’ve been completely “pwned by God” as Kelli likes to say – He’s had to smack some major sense into me, but fortunately for me, after smacking it into me, He lovingly fed me the rest of it, and now, after it’s all over, I finally understand what it truly means to submit entirely to the Lord. I’m going to have to really resist getting preachy right now, I’ve just preached a mini-sermon about this to my DTS this morning, and am apparently getting up in front of an entire African church to preach the real thing in a couple of weeks, but, in short, my life is the Lord’s. He has a perfect plan, tailored exactly to fit me, with my needs and desires and talents, so why on earth would I ever seek anything else? He has given me the chance to live out every second of my time on this earth doing His will, and therefore walking fully with Him, so it’s simply ceased to make any sense to me how I could ever want anything else.

With that knowledge, however, God brought me loads of work. Surrendering everything to Him is a lovely idea, in theory, but when you realize just exactly how everything-like “everything” really is, it gets a bit more difficult. It involved making a few decisions that I didn’t really want to make, and even giving up a few things that I didn’t really want to give up, but that is all simply my lack of trust, my lack of faith.  So, that’s where I am right now – absolutely immersing myself in prayer and the Bible, trying to direct all of my thoughts, hopes, and dreams towards God, and committing to Africa for longer than I ever would have thought was possible. 

The girls, minus Scovia, before the Love Feast.

Lucy, Musaki, Kari, part of Ben, me, Miriam, and David after our baptism.

It's crazy how even the hard days here are some of the best I've ever had in my life. All morning, I was struggling so much with a number of (incredibly stupid) things, and nothing was easing the troubled feeling I had in my soul - I think part of it might have been that I kept falling asleep during my quiet time this morning, when I don't spend proper time with God in the morning, I can usually feel it for the rest of the day, like I've missed out something amazing and necessary. Anyways, so since it's Wednesday and we have the afternoon free until  work duty, I decided to take some time to go into Wairaika (I really don't feel like I spelled that one right..) and get rolex and chapatti for lunch. Luce and Kelli went into Jinja, and Will was busy with homework, so I ended up going by myself, and it was exactly what I needed... walking down the dirt roads, listening to John Denver, and just praising God for His perfect creation, it put everything in my heart right back where it needed to be. On the way, I met up with a group of Ugandan schoolgirls, I'd say they were about eleven or twelve years old, they didn't seem to understand what I was saying when I asked, but after we realized that they couldn't speak much English, and my Luganda vocabulary thus-far consists of about two or three words, on a good day, we settled for a middle ground of Swahili praise songs. It was such an absolutely beautiful experience - one of the things I think God has been really opening my eyes to while being here is that He is a God above all language or cultural barriers. I had never even though about that, but the other day, when Musaki was talking about what it really meant to be a missionary, he was saying that he can talk to his God in a million different languages, and He reciprocates accordingly, and it really struck me just how entirely vast God really is, and that was just confirmed today.

It's so beautiful here, like words will never explain. I've already cancelled my initial plane ticket home, I'm here until God absolutely forces me out of this country, and I'm praying that will never happen. I could honestly spend the rest of my life here and not feel like I missed out on anything.

Boys playing in Lake Victoria... I very nearly missed my baptism because I was so preoccupied with photographing them.

Being re-baptized at the mouth of the Nile River, quite possibly the best experience of my entire life. After an amazing conversation with one of my new friends here, in which he described baptism as the drowning of the old you and the birth of a person dedicated to Christ, I knew that I had to be re-baptized, and with that in mind, we took a half hour hike down to this amazing spot on Lake Victoria, and there I drowned everything that I ever hated about who I used to be, and became an entirely new creation, along with my twin sister Lucy (as seen in the second picture, which was taken right after she attacked me, after the actual baptism of course). Walking to the river, singing "mambo sawa sawa" with my new brothers and sisters, I felt so complete, and afterwards, walking back with a group of twenty who were all joyfully praising the Lord, I had never before felt so entirely alive. Between my perfect God and this breathtaking land, I am truly coming back to life.

A couple of pictures from one of our (nightly) power outages - the first one is the spare bed, which we use as a couch and candle holder, and also sometimes a laundry line. The second one is my favorite meal in the entire world, African chapatti and "chips" (no one from outside of America understands what a "french fry" is, apparently), which we order every Thursday night.