[This wonderful blog with all the pictures can be found here: https://amycook.theworldrace.org/post/wrecked]
Day five in Uganda: Our team of ten piles out of a little van and walks up onto sixteen children singing and clapping for us. Huge smiles spread across their faces and their radiance almost hides the dirty and ripped clothes they are wearing and the dilapidated shelter behind them.
This is the first family we visited in Kassanda, Uganda but not the last. A jarring yet typical situation for many of the families here is what we walked up on, and I can honestly say I will never be the same after witnessing everything I have here.
Part of our ministry this month is visiting the families our church supports to encourage, pray for and uplift them. This is something I have done in many countries, but what I have experienced in Uganda is vastly different from anything else I have seen. These families have nothing, absolutely nothing and even as I write these words I am getting a sick feeling in my stomach thinking of what they’re probably experiencing at this very moment.
The first family we visited was a young mother and her sixteen children. She is a widow, as her husband died of HIV a few years prior. She is also infected with HIV and many of her children carry it as well, contracted upon birth or breastfeeding. As the disease takes ahold of her, she barely has enough energy to function during the day but must somehow provide for all the children under her roof. Not all these kids are hers, but she has become their caretaker.
In Uganda, men typically have several wives and if the man of the family dies, the most recently married wife is responsible for taking the children of all the other wives and carrying for them. We’ve met many large families containing dozens of children with a young mother in Uganda, and this is why. Since HIV is ramped in Kassanda (60% of the population carries the disease), widows with large families are the norm, not the exception.
We arrived to visit this first family as the mother was cutting up a few cassava plants to boil and serve to the children for their meal of the day. Pastor Vincent pointed out to me that this meal is barely enough to feed all the children, but it is all they have. Pastor also showed us their “bathrooms” which are small holes in the ground without any privacy.
Diseases are easily passed throughout this area due to unsanitary conditions for fecal matter. The children in this family all sleep together in a little room, on a dirt floor. They wear the same ripped and dirty clothes day after day and since there is no money for diapers, children who are potty training do not wear pants. Many of the children have little white sores on their heads and I asked the Pastor what this was, “ringworm” he said. Yet another infection that is easily spread and running ramped among the little ones here.
The children laughed and smiled while we sang and played with them, but I fought back tears the entire time. I was desperately trying to be strong but found myself overwhelmingly wrecked.
Just wrecked.
I’m not writing these words to elicit an emotional response from readers, so please don’t misunderstand me. I am writing all of this because is a very real part of our world, and it is all truth. Real people are living this reality day in and day out, and most of us go our entire lives without even knowing about it – so I am delivering a message.
I visited many families that day and was met by the exact same situation time after time. Young mothers with HIV caring for a multitude of children in a small, dirty shelter and without any provisions. They sprang to their feet to meet us and lit up to receive these interesting white visitors, but I felt (and still feel) completely unworthy. They are fighting for their lives every day and in a few weeks, I will be sleeping in my comfy bed back in America.
I don’t know how to handle all the emotions in my heart and the heaviness I’m left with because my eyes have been opened, but I can honestly tell you I will never be the same again. I will never eat a meal without thinking of those who don’t have a meal, I will never go to the doctor without the realization that modern medicine is such a blessing and I will never put a clean shirt on my back and not remember the tattered clothing of all the little children in Kassanda.
So what now?
I’m asking the Lord for answers because my humanness has left me lacking. This is what He’s given me so far and these are the promises I hold onto for the people living in this reality, and for myself.
Matthew 5:3 – “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for him.”
Although most of the world doesn’t know these families, the Lord sees them. He blesses them, but those blessings may not be in this lifetime. Christ has not forgotten them, and their poverty might be what brings them closer to him and into his presence.
Matthew 6:19-21 – “Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will be also.”
Treasures that can be enjoyed for all of eternity far outweigh treasures of this world. Because this life is all we know the things of this world seem so precious to us, but Christ calls us to think higher and focus our hearts on the eternity that has been promised to us.
Matthew 19:30 – “But many who are the greatest now will be the least important then, and those who seem least important now will be the greatest then.”
Jesus did not come into this world as royalty or with riches. He was born in a trough that horses drink out of and spent his life traveling from town to town and without many possessions to call his own. He was not a king as the world sees a king, and he wasn’t born into an affluent family. Jesus lived a life that many today would see as impoverished.
This was purposeful, to set an example for us.
He humbled himself to live a life showing us that the provisions of this world will not satisfy, and we should not find our satisfaction in them.
Probably not a coincidence that I’ve been reading Matthew this month.
The Lord is teaching me not to find worth in what this world has to offer because one day, none of it will matter.
He’s showing me that He does see all these families and is preparing a way for them in heaven, if they choose Him, and all the troubles of this world will one day be forgotten.
These truths are what I’m holding onto.
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I’ll be back in America in nineteen days but honestly, I don’t feel like this is true. I am so absorbed in Uganda that I feel like I’m never going to leave (don’t worry I really am coming home in a few weeks, I promise).
For now, this village has captured all my senses and I don’t think America will become a reality until I’m sitting on the plane, in route. So until then, I will be completely here.
— don’t be mistaken, my heart is overjoyed at the thought of seeing my family and friends again and falling into familiar hug after familiar hug. I can’t wait for that.
Sending so much love amongst my very real words to everyone back home,
<3 Amy
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more info about the ministry we’re working with can be found here:
