Suffering/
What the heck am I doing here:
First
AIDS meeting:
January
8th, 2010.
And
yet, my heart still breaks, I see the hope,I see the future but it
isn’t here yet. It will be.
“It’s
not easy being positive, Anna. People… they… point the finger at
you, but you must still love them. It is not easy. Most are widowed.
Orphaned. It’s not easy. God is the only one who understands us”.–
Jean Oceng.
——————————————————————————————–
Enter
Odama Vincent and his mother.
He
has HIV. His father is dead. No shoes, no clothes. He is dying. You
will assist him? she
asks me.
I
can pray. I tell her.
Myself-
I have nothing. HIV also. The boy is sick, dying. You will assist
him?
All
I can do is pray.
We
pray.
Amen.
We
you be here on Friday? I
ask.
No,
no father. We are all alone. She
says.
No…
um.. will you be here on Friday?
I explain the days of the week.
Yes.
You will assist him then?
I…
don’t have anything to assist him, but I can pray. I can pray. I
say, holding back tears.
Mmmm.
And
then she turns and walks away…
God,
what good am I doing here, really? Just shoving in their face that I
am white and healthy? What good does friendship do. You alone can
meet their needs… do you heal HIV?
Of course you do.
Suffering:
The true Lord’s Army.
January
10th:
“Those
were hard times,” Pastor Johnson says, his eyes gazing at the wall,
his mind in another time. “If you meet someone here who says that
they did not lose someone in their family to Koni, they are lying.
Everyone lost. Some lost everything. Everyone lost something,
someone. The community lost innocence…. they would take the
children…. the young children… they would take them for a month
to train, and then take them back to their parents home and force
them to kill their parents, or they would be killed…. those were
dark times. Join or die. Many people died… not just died… but
were tortured… many people were boiled alive, and the families were
forced to eat each other… those were dark times…”
We
sit in silence for a few minutes.
Then
Pastor Johnson, probably after he saw the look on our faces in the
tears in our eyes, says, “but now… that is history. It is
history, because God was not silent. He heard the prayers of His
people. Now, we are free. We are free.” He says this with a smile,
a genuine smile.
my heart.
My
hope for Uganda: that the Lord would restore the years that the
locusts have eaten. For too long Satan stole children and robbed them
of their innocence, creating a broken army. My prayer and vision is
that this generation of children will rise up and become the true
Lord’s army- an unstoppable force of young people that bring life
instead of death, hope instead of fear, freedom instead of slavery, a
group whose passion for Jesus outweighs the world’s passion for
lesser loves, lust. A group that stands in the midst of persecution
and pressure. A group that changes society instead of being changed.
An army of young people dangerously in love with the Lord, who go to
the ends of the earth to make His love known. I can see it. I
proclaim it.
Praise
God, let it be.
