African Rainstorms

I need to go to town. We need bananas for breakfast and some plastic chairs for the veranda of our new home and I need to meet up with some partners… but it's pouring rain and thundering so it means I'l have to wait.

Housing in Uganda = the worst. BUT Taylor the new Uganda Fall CD and I just secured the HELP house for the next year. (We're changing the Uganda program to year round!) Poor guy - this is his third house in three weeks. We kept getting bad information about what houses were available and contracts were dodgy and we got kicked out of one house after two weeks until we finally landed in this beautiful two story 6 bedroom home. It's actually right by the first home I rented in Uganda back in 2011. It's been weird to walk by my old home everyday these last few weeks and remember coming to Africa for the first time and all of the wonderful people I shared that house with. Can you have too many memories in one wonderful place? I feel like I can't even add more there are so amazing experiences I've had the time I've spent in Uganda.

I'm bad at blogs. I always want to write, but feel I deal with a lot of sensitive information that wouldn't necessarily be appropriate for a public blog. It's been a year since I wrote, but today as I sit alone in our house working on some projects and waiting for the rain to stop so I can convince a boda-boda motorcycle to give me a ride into town (everything shuts down when it rains and you can't even bribe people to go out in it here) I just want to share my most recent thoughts.

On Sunday a young powerful Ugandan woman gave a talk that hit my heart hard. She spoke of sacrifice. Sacrifice for God, for each other, for giving of yourself to a greater good. I feel like I haven't done very good at that recently. I think the point of sacrifice is stretching and growth, but if you aren't sacrificing in new ways you're not really changing, right? I get set in ways and don't look for ways to do better in this I worry. Listening to this woman was so humbling. I know she has sacrificed more recently than I have in listening to her. She was powerful as she spoke of dedicating more time to God. People here are already stretched for time in ways I can't relate to. People here spend hours preparing meals on charcoal stoves, hours fetching water for bathing/cooking/drinking, hours doing daily life things that I don't even think about spending time on, and she is telling me to give more time for God and sacrifice? I've never met a people more dedicated to helping one another. Everyone here wants to help their neighbor and community - I feel other countries with more resources could take a lesson from them. When life is more fragile, you take care of each other more maybe? I just was talking to a woman the other day who talked about how her biggest worry is just making it so women in her community can get their babies to age 5 since if they reach that age their chance of survival is so much higher.  I've never worried about helping my friends' children get to age 5. I never have had to go hungry so my neighbor can have a meal that day. Everyone here is so giving. Everyone welcomes us into their homes and feeds us and treats us like family. The sacrifice here is daily and it's written on their hearts.

I want to be better in these areas. I want to have more faith.