“NO!” I wanted to cry, “Not them! Not my friends.”
My vision for Uganda was simple: to become one of them. I wanted to live, eat, work, play like the people did.
I got dirty playing “football” for two hours in the red muddy streets. My fingers got blisters from hand washing clothes with the girls. I looked like a white rapper for days after children sat on my lap and braided all my hair. I got laughed at for carrying water from well. The locals were hysterical as they watched the ”mezoungoo” carry something heavy. And I loved every second of it.
I connected so deeply with this people. They began to feel like family. We stayed up most nights playing cards, laughing, and telling stories. But, it was then when I was so close that I began to learn the hard truths, and by then the truths were too close to home.
It was evident that they were living in poverty. I knew that by the sights around. But, my stomach dropped when I heard these phrases said casually in passing.
“Yeah, you just get used to feeling hungry because sometimes we have to use the money on other things.”
Or
“Some seasons there just isn’t food. Now its plentiful so we eat as much as we can now.”
“Not them! Not my friends” My heart was shouting. I didn’t want these people I had come to love to ever have to go hungry like that. All my life I’ve been aware of poverty and compassionate towards the victims, but this was different. Because, they weren’t an article in a magazine, or a headline about world hunger. They were my friends and they were sitting across from me. I realized the blow is a lot harder when you become one of them. Your heart hurts a lot more when you fully love. I also realized that I couldn’t solve all their problems.
But, then next church service before I was going to speak the Pastor asked some people to say some things they noticed about me. One girls stood up and told the congregation about one day when we were painting. Some paint had dripped onto the concrete ground. So, when I finished painting I took a rag, got on my knees and wiped up the paint. This girl told everyone that she was amazed by what I did.
I was humbled. She didn’t talk about the sermon I had preached, the guy I baptized, the Muslim I led to the Lord, but the paint I cleaned up. My greatest shining point wasn’t solving world hunger, but cleaning up paint off the ground. It was living life with a people. My greatest works are when I get down low, when I forget myself and serve. People won’t tell of the things I consider noble, but of when I lived among them. How I was with them; how I laughed at their jokes, cried for their pains, peeled potatoes with them, and played their games. They don’t need another absent hero, they need a present friend.
“The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. John 1:14
Finance Update: Thank you all for giving so sacrificially towards this cause and journey that the Lord has me on! To continue on the race I need to be at $11,000 this month. And I working towards being fully funded by March. If you feel led to give you can do so online by clicking on the “support me” tab.
