I just know there's more.

I'm sitting here staring at the blinking curser on my screen, knowing that there is so much more to write about my time in Africa, and not even knowing where to begin.  I went back and read my posts from last year, and now I know why I never finished writing about that trip.  I just. don't. know. what to say.

It's next to impossible (for a non-writer like me) to put into words the things you do and see and experience and feel when you visit a third-world country like Ethiopia or Uganda (or any other).  I sit and I ponder, and I pray, and I wonder what in the world I'm supposed to do now.  And putting it all into words?  I just don't know how.


Chuko Weyama, Ethiopia



(through the bus window :))

I've read several blog posts over the past few days, written by my fellow teammates about their experiences during our trip, and they are all so eloquent!  Perfectly describing not just the facts, but their thoughts, feelings, and impressions about all that we saw.  Me?  Eloquent isn't on my resume.

This beautiful little girl was asking for money as we were loading the bus. :(

And this precious little boy's grandmother asked me
to take him back to America with me. :(

I can do the facts pretty well - after all, I'm a detail girl - but I think last year I over-explained every little FACT because I just couldn't express the emotions that went along with them.  I can't even explain what I'm feeling to my own self.  How can I possibly write it out here?

But here's the thing I do know.  Uganda is huge....HUGE....gigantic....in my heart.  I've known that for a year now, but it kinda tends to fade with the passing of time, you know?  You get busy with life - work, school, PTA, soccer, ballet, church, boy scouts, bills, laundry, grocery shopping, blah blah blah - and somehow the passions of your heart, when you're distracted with the cares of day-to-day life, get pushed to the back burner and start to fade a little.

We were so honored to get to help serve lunch to the beautiful children at Return Ministries!

So after spending the first week of our trip in Ethiopia, I was not in ANY way expecting the tidal wave of emotion that swept over me when our plane landed in Uganda.  Before we even touched down the tears started flowing, and I cried until I had to pull myself together to get off the plane.  What in the world?  What was that all about? 

It was overwhelming, unexpected love.  A love that could only come straight from the heart and plan of God.  A love for this amazing country and its beautiful people.  A love I can't begin to explain, didn't expect or seek out, and don't know what to do with now that I'm home.

Children living near Kampala, Uganda.

Actually, my heart is swimming in a battery of different emotions, and really, I don't know what to do with ANY of them.  I'm....
sad - because I'm not there and I don't know when I'll get to go back. 
homesick - for a place that's not my home. 
longing - to know what's going on in the lives of the people I came to love there. 
confused - about where I go from here and what I'm supposed to do now. 
anxious - for my family to share this love and passion.
frustrated - over all of the above.

My sweet friend Ashley (thank you, friend) told me, "As hard as it is, I know Jesus is speaking to you through your passion, pain and ache for Uganda.  Listen to the ache and you will hear Him."  Oh, how I love that!  It's so hard - and so counterintuitive - and so RIGHT.  Because to "listen to the ache" you have to sit in it for a while.  And be still.  And wait.  And listen.  And who wants to do that?  Not this girl!

I want ANSWERS!

I want DIRECTION!

I want a PURPOSE!

But....listening to the ache?  On one hand, it sounds so depressing.  But on this other hand over here, I just know that it's right. 

"Be still and know that I am God."  Ps. 46:10

"The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by."  Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a still small voice." 1 Kings 19:11-12

And oddly enough, it feels right, too.  Because what else am I gonna do with this ache in my heart?  Wallow in it?  Pretend it's not there?  Ignore it until it fades away like last year's passion?  No.  I want to be still, and wait, and listen to the ache until I hear Him tell me what it means.
 
Because I just know there's more.
 

And then it was over. Or not.

Apparently it's harder to blog from Africa than I thought it would be. :)

Not just because of the time constraints - we were on the go every day from breakfast through late dinners - but also because of the sheer overwhelmingness of what we saw and did every day.  Where do you even start?  It's like coming home and having someone ask "How was your trip?"  There's just no easy response.

Good?  Amazing?  Incredible.  Overwhelming.

Life changing.

Sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean.

How many things in life can we say truly are Life Changing?  Meaning, they truly, literally CHANGE your very life?

Remember my New Year's Quest to Be Different?  I pray with all my heart that the last two summers I spent in Africa will absolutely CHANGE the way I live my life.  Because it needs to be changed.  I don't for one single second believe God allowed me to go on these two incredible journeys so that I could come home and say, "Wow, that was amazing," and go back to life as usual.  What would be the point in that?

I don't know what that means, or what it looks like, or what it will entail going forward, but I'm going to be praying for it with all my heart.  Because I want to be different.  And I want my family to be different.  And I want us to MAKE a difference.

And so.  With that, let's talk about Africa. ;)

Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Day two of our adventure (see day one in the previous post) was supposed to be THE BIG DAY, when we would visit a leper village near Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, called Korah, as well as a community that was literally built on top of the trash dump.

Look at this picture below.  Do you see the people there?  Those people don't VISIT the dump every day to dig through the trash.....they LIVE there.  Are you getting this?  They LIVE in little shacks and shanties that they have built from pieces of tin and cardboard - right. on. top. of. the. trash. dump. (oh, and all those flecks you see in the sky?  vultures.)

They live there every single minute of every single day.  Their children are born there.  They scrounge through the GARBAGE to find food to feed their families.  Truly....truly....stop and think about that existence for a minute.  Your family.  Your children.  THIS is why we can't go on living our lives blind to the rest of the world.

The government of Addis has recently closed the trash dump to groups (gee, I wonder why), and so we weren't allowed to visit the villagers who live there.  We were, however, able to visit Korah, which began as a leper colony right next to the trash dump.  About 75 years ago, the government established Korah as a "throw-away" village, where lepers were cast out of the city to live in seclusion....exactly like in Bible times. 

Today there are thousands of people who live in Korah (the last estimate I read was 130,000), and they are considered the lowest of the low.  They are so "forgotten", in fact, that many people in the capital city of Addis Ababa - of which Korah is a part, a burrough, if you will - don't even know it EXISTS.

The children coming to greet us! :)

Let me tell you a story about one of the children of Korah.  His name is Sammy.  Both of Sammy's parents were lepers.  His father eventually died of leprosy, leaving Sammy alone in Korah with his mother and sister.  When Sammy was about 12 (14?) years old, a Young Life team visited Korah, and Sammy met a man who took an interest in him, and through a series of events, eventually helped Sammy find Jesus, get out of Korah, and get an education.  [You can read more of Sammy's store here.]

Sammy has now returned to Korah, and he's making it his life's work to change the lives of the people who live there.  He has started a ministry called Great Hope, which has several arms under its canopy: a feeding program; a daycare where moms can leave their children while they work; a ministry called Mission Ethiopia, where the women of Korah make bead necklaces to sell and earn money; another ministry called Project 61 that secures sponsors for the children of Korah, whereby they can get out of the village and attend boarding school; and he's just now starting to build a coffee shop RIGHT IN THE VILLAGE, where visiting teams can buy coffee (brewed or unbrewed) to help support his other ministries.

And he's 26 years old.

THIS is someone whose life was changed, and who is doing the most he can to make a difference in the world.  A huge difference.  I am totally amazed at all he's doing with the opportunities God has given him.

Meet Sammy.  What an incredible (and handsome!) young man of God.

So...what did we do in Korah?

Walked.
Saw.
Played.
Loved.
Learned.
Changed.

We walked through a large portion of the village, playing with and loving on kids along the way, greeting the villagers with "Selam", which means, "Peace".  We touched and hugged and held hands with lepers - those who may not have felt the love of human touch in many, many years.  We had the humbling honor of being the hands of Jesus.

We watched women hand-spinning cotton into thread and then watched the men hand-loom the thread into fabric, creating with their hands the very sustenance of their lives.  I loved this.  Loved witnessing the way God has brought provision to this forgotten community and given them a means of supporting themselves and their families, when before there was no hope but what they could find on the dump.

We also had the opportunity to serve with our hands by painting three rooms of the building where the women of Mission Ethiopia make beads out of clay and paper, and then use those beads to make necklaces which, again, they can sell to provide income for their families.  A wholesome, alternative means of income.  Alternative to....the things they were forced to resort to before.

Spinning cotton into thread.

Weaving the thread into fabric.

One of the rooms we painted. :)

Making clay beads in their lovely new blue room!

And, maybe most importantly, we were changed.  Hopefully forever.  We learned that life is about so much more than anything we normally think about on a typical day in America.  We learned that following Jesus is about so much more than just dressing up for church and attending Bible study and picnics.  We saw with our own eyes what it means to BE the body of Christ.

Please, please take a few minutes to watch this video about Korah.  This isn't our team - but it will give you a very good idea about what Korah is like (and you'll see Sammy several times in the video as well! :)

And then take a minute and ask God what He wants you to do with what you've seen.  Share it?  Tell others?  Facebook?  Blog?  Sponsor a child?  Find other ministries to support and get involved with? 

Because I promise you, whether you get involved with Korah and Great Hope Ministry or not....I know God wants you - wants all of us - to do something.

Once our eyes are opened we can't pretend we don't know what to do. God, who weighs our hearts and keeps our souls, knows we know and holds us responsible to act. Proverbs 24:12

Hello from Africa!!

You will have to excuse my incoherence - I've only slept a total of about 6 hours since the time I woke up on Tuesday morning!

My adventure began eaaarly Wednesday morning at 4 a.m.  My sweet friend B had offered to drive me to the airport in Dallas to catch my flight to Washington DC. God was so obviously working on my behalf throughout the day! The details are tedious, but the highlights include Him leading us in the right way when we got lost (!), getting me to the airport on time despite being lost, faithfully walking me through getting my bags checked without paying the baggage fee (they're not supposed to charge you when you're connecting to an international flight, but the ticket agent was not convinced of that!), getting me to TWO flights on time despite running late, and allowing me a 3rd bag for free when security made me check it! Thank you so much for all of your prayers - they have been so obvious in my life the past two days!

I flew from Dallas to Charlotte, NC, then from there to Washington DC where we spent the night. Thursday morning our awesome team of 23 left DC for a 12 1/2 hour flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where we arrived at about 7:15 Friday morning (we are 7 hours ahead of Washington DC). We had a few minutes to drop our stuff at the guest house, and then we were off to visit the beautiful ladies at Fistula Women's Hospital (photos are not allowed). This is the amazing hospital from the documentary "A Walk to Beautiful". Have you seen it? If not, you should definitely try to track it down (I know it's on Netflix, and maybe Hulu(?)).  This place and the care they give to these women is AMAZING. You may have even heard of it when Oprah visited there about 7 years ago and made a rather hefty donation. :)

After the hospital we had a DELICIOUS home-cooked lunch at our guesthouse and then everybody crashed for naps! :) About half the team just left to visit an orphanage, about 1/3 of the team never woke up from their naps, and the rest of us (3) are blogging/emailing/facebook messaging. :)

Tonight we have dinner at a local restaurant, and tomorrow is THE BIG DAY when we will be visiting and loving on the people of the village of Korah, which is literally built on top of a trash dump. For real. So did you even know that there truly are people whose whole existence consists every day of digging through the trash that the trucks bring in, in order to find their sustenance? Meaning their food. And maybe a few salvagable trinkets they might be able to sell. Other people's trash and leftovers.

We in America have no. i. dea.

I would love to have your prayers for myself and my team over the next two weeks. We have already heard so many stories of God's faithfulness just in the 2 days we've been traveling so far. He's been so amazing and gracious! I'm hoping I'll be able to update here a little better this year than I did last year, with the help of the awesome treat I posted about last week. :) Most likely, though, my posts will be short and sweet due to not having much time in the evenings, and also because there are 23 of us trying to use the very limited wifi all at once.

{uggggh. I can NOT figure out how to upload pictures into a blog post on the ipad. When I click on the little insert photo icon, the "select pictures" button is grayed out. Anyone know how to do this? If not, none of my posts will have pictures until I get back home! If you're my friend on FB, I'm posting a very FEW pics there....very slow internet :) }

More to come!!

SixtyFeet came. And then they left.

Oh, what an amazing....and at the same time un-amazing....time it was!  I was giddy all week getting ready for the guys from SixtyFeet to come.  I wore my SixtyFeet t-shirt so they could recognize me at the airport, and when I walked by Judd, he was talking on the phone and motioned to me like "You're here for me."  I was GIDDY I tell you!  I felt like my junior high celebrity crush had just given me the finger-gun-wink. ;)  I could hardly concentrate on the road as I chauffeured them around all day.  Not because of them - I barely knew who Judd and Jonathan were before that day - but because of ALL of them - everyone involved with SixtyFeet and what they do.  I.  Love.  Them.  And I had worked SO long and SO hard and had SO much frustration trying to get them here.  And now here they were!  It was fantastic!

I asked the guys if they wanted to go set up the film before or after dinner, and they emphatically, eagerly agreed that we needed to go immediately after I picked them up from the airport at 2:00.  And ohhhh, how right they were.  We got to the church about 3:00, and at 4:30 we left the pastor there by himself STILL trying to get the video to work.  We went to eat dinner, and when we got back at 6:30 he was still working on it. 

The event was supposed to start at 7:00. 

At 7:15, they finally got the video working. 

Phew!  Thank You, Jesus!

The video and the presentation were awesome.  I hadn't seen the video before, and it was so incredible to see "first hand" the huge difference SixtyFeet is making in the lives of the children in Ugandan prisons.  And Judd and Jonathan were awesome.  Truly, truly, it felt like we had known them forever, and that they were close friends we were being reunited with after not seeing each other for years.  It was amazing.  We had so much fun!  And finally being able to have them here in person and see the fruit of all my efforts was just awesome. [yes, I did use all those "awesomes" on purpose ;)]


SixtyFeet board member extraordinaire, Judd Harper. :)

Not so awesome?  Hardly anybody was there!  Y'all.  I was so. sad.  As far as I know, only one donation was made, and that was from one of my sweet friends.  And as far as I know, only two purchases of their merchandise were made - one by another of my sweet friends, and one by us.

My beautiful friends Bethany and Michelle who came to share my love. :)

And that was it.

No one asked them questions.  No one engaged them in conversation.  The audience seemed completely uninvolved and unmoved and interested only in the cupcakes at the end. :(



Because of the Cupcake Kids.



Sweet Kloe served lemonade.

And now.....well, now what?

Um, I totally don't get it.  Nine months of planning and scheduling and emailing and rescheduling and looking for a place and trying, trying, trying to give up and feeling like I really just wasn't supposed to....and why?  I told God that even if this one thing was all He had for me to do with SixtyFeet, I was so thankful.  And really, I am.  But I kind of thought there would be more.  Even if not more for me, I was so sure there would be more of a response.  More people wanting to get involved.  More...I don't know...just more that would come from it.

And maybe there has been and I just don't know it.  Maybe people went to the website and decided to get involved.  Maybe people made donations or bought merchandise online.  Maybe God planted seeds in people's hearts that will sprout sometime in the future.  I don't know.

I told one of my friends it was like having a wedding without a marriage. :)  You plan and plan and plan, and then the big day comes, and then it's over and you just go on with life.

So there you have it.  My SixtyFeet adventure in a nutshell.  I don't know if anything more will ever come of it.  I don't know what the purpose was for all of it.  I don't know if God has anything else for me to do with SixtyFeet.  I don't know if we'll ever see our long-lost friends Judd and Jonathan again. 

But I know SixtyFeet and the imprisoned children of Uganda are still in my heart.  And at this point, that's about all I know. 

The end.

Jonathan, Jacob, me, Kloe, The Mister, and Judd.