I have been counting down the days to leave here. This past week was probably my hardest on the race. Then, one morning, all the hardships disappeared for a while.
Spencer and I got to the church at 9 to do some manual labor. Of course, things were running on African time, and at 10:30 we were still dinking around waiting for the materials to show up. Some kids came over to play with us. I have never seen a city with more kids than Busia, Uganda. The average family has 8 kids. The children could literally take this place over if they put their minds to it. We had seen these particular kids before. How did we know we had seen them? All the kids look similar, since both boys and girls have no hair and many wear similar looking tattered clothes or no clothes at all. We knew because one of them is albino. He has bright white skin and a crinkled face since he has to squint because of his eye sensitivity. He came close to us, and while he never looks happy, it was clear that something was extra hard for him this morning. He was sobbing, doing his usual squinting look. All the thoughts about how tough my month had been washed away as my heart went out to him. This poor kid gets made fun of constantly for looking different, is always sunburned, and can hardly see simply because he was born without melanin. My thoughts shifted from my own issues to simply being: what can I do to make this kid’s life just a little better?
I gave him my sunglasses to try on. His head lifted up, not staring at the ground anymore to avoid the sun. He relaxed his face a bit and even smiled. We had him take us to his house to see if we could take him to the market to find some glasses that could actually fit him. His grandmother agreed, and she came with us, along with a friend who could speak English. Brian’s mother died while giving birth to him and his dad left and hasn’t returned. So we traveled as a group to the market, passing mud huts with the smell of trash fires in the air. When we got to the market, spencer and I bargained for a pair of sunglasses, a hat, and shoes. Brian and his grandma were so grateful. On the way back to their house, his grandma kept telling everybody she knew that we had helped them and we were Brian’s dad. When we arrived at the house, they invited us into the home and thanked us. Spencer and I prayed for the whole family and told them how much Jesus loved them. It was incredible.
No matter what you are going through right now, you can be a blessing to other people. You can encourage them, you can support them, and you can push them towards Jesus. It can be all too easy sometimes to not see past our own issues. But Jesus gives us vision, He gives us perspective, and He alone is the answer and solution to the world’s problems.
