His Hope Uganda

Hello. It’s snowing. Not in Uganda, sadly, but here in Calgary where I am enjoying the view from my sister’s couch. I don’t think I ever really appreciated snow until I moved to Uganda even though I thought I did. I also don’t think I ever really appreciated the sun until I left Uganda and came to Canada in the middle of the winter.  Thankfully it’s a mild winter.

I’ve been back in Canada for almost three weeks now. People always ask me how it feels to be back in Canada and I tell them that I wish it felt strange but it doesn’t at all. I haven’t felt any culture shock coming back to Canada in a long time, probably because not only do I know what I’m coming back to, I actually look forward to it now. I don’t battle with guilt like I used to because I’ve come to realize that I do need a break and it’s not a crime to enjoy hot showers or good food while I’m here. I don’t have access to those things much anymore and I think it would be a crime NOT to enjoy them. And I certainly appreciate them.

However, it is a struggle in some ways. It’s so easy to get caught up in myself here and things that really don’t matter (like the fact that George Clooney has a serious girlfriend who isn’t me) and it’s a trap that I fall into every time I’m here. It’s easy to get too comfortable. It’s easy to lose focus. It’s easy to get distracted. And it’s scarily easy how quickly I can put God on the back burner. That’s my biggest struggle and my biggest frustration.

But let’s move out of Canada and back into Uganda. The beginning of the year was blessed but also very very busy. I don’t think I’ve ever been so busy in my life. We accepted 43 new students into our Child Sponsorship Program, two more then I originally planned which is a miracle considering it could have easily been twenty. We are also supporting a young man who is in his second and final year of a plumbing course. In total, that makes 91 students.

That may not sound like a lot but it sure felt like a lot three weeks before school started. 91 students meant buying 91 pairs of shoes at the market in town (every student had to come with us to try the shoes on), 131 pairs of socks, 91 tins of shoe polish, over 130 brooms, 240 rolls of toilet paper, and well over $1000 of school supplies. It meant a day of sorting through all those things and dividing them up according to the individual needs of each student.Almost every student, depending on which school they attended and which class they were in, got a different number of pens, pencils, books, brooms, and so on.

It also meant bringing 34 students for interviews, getting uniforms and sweaters for 43 students and passport photos for twelve, as well as paying school fees at eleven different schools and spending hours in line ups to pay fees at four different banks.

It was a busy month (I didn’t even mention the time consuming hassle of picking up dog poop every day). But very worth it because by the time I left, every student was in school with everything he or she needed. Praise God as He deserves all the glory for that.

Before I continue, I want to address one quick thing. Many of you have supported HHU by joining the page on Facebook that my sister set up a couple of months ago. I owe her a huge ‘thanks’ for setting it up and I think it’s a great way to spread the word about what’s happening in Uganda. However, I do sign on through her Facebook every once in a while to see what’s happening and I was shocked to discover something that my parents had posted at the end of January. As most of you now know, I had an issue with a “pimple” (as my mom put it) on my face. The issue was that I tried to kind of pop it (unsuccessfully) and ended up with a nasty infection that caused me swelling and unthinkable pain for quite a few days. I ended up on some pretty strong antibiotics and thanks to those and your prayers it eventually healed but it was a really scary couple of days.

I would like to defend myself by saying that I still don’t believe it was a pimple (even though three doctors and every person in Uganda that I know has told me that it was). I am convinced that it was some kind of insect bite that was going to cause swelling and pain anyway and that I am only guilty of speeding up the process. Auntie Christine did say at one point that she thought it might be a maggot and I actually prayed for days that one would come crawling out of my face, just for the sake of my pride. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case because that would have been such a cooler story (not to mention much less shameful).

Back to things that matter.

I hope you have come to realize how much I love Uganda and how much I love Ugandans. I would not be living in Uganda if I didn’t. But sometimes life in a different culture gets tough and I get tired of people’s judgments and expectations. I can completely understand why people act the way they do and in some ways it’s justifiable considering the number of hardships that people have to face. I’m sure that if I were Ugandan, I would have the same attitude towards Mzungus as they do. The toughest situations to deal with though are not the ones where people expect something or even ask for something, they’re the ones where people take something. Schools are a good example.

Private schools in Uganda are more of a business than anything else. There are a lot of teachers and headmasters who are corrupt and looking for any way to make money for themselves. We now work in seven different Primary schools. In the past year, at least six (that we know of) have at one point or another ripped us off. Whether it’s been as minor as refusing to give us our $1.15 in change or as major as stealing $200 through lies and false costs, they have almost all done it.

I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to not be able to trust the schools that we’re working with, especially knowing that trust is the reason we got into those situations to begin with. I have been told several times (mostly by Ugandans) not to trust people in Uganda and it has always bothered me that people are so reluctant to trust others. However, it was my willingness to trust people that gave them the perfect opportunity to take what they could from me. I have to admit that I made it easy to do at first. I let too many moments pass when I should have said something but I didn’t. But I’ve also taken a stand several times only to come out on the losing end, making me more frustrated and bitter.

The hardest thing for me to deal with in Uganda is the fact that I will never be a Ugandan. I can learn the language fluently, wear as many skirts and gomesi’s (Ugandan dresses with wings as my dad likes to call them) as I possibly can, and eat posho three times a day but it won’t change one simple fact – I am white. I could learn the names of every person in my village and be an auntie to all of their children but I would still be different. As much as I long to and as hard as I try, I will never quite fit in.

I will always be white.

Sometimes it really doesn’t bother me. But sometimes it drives me crazy.

I find one thing ironic in all of this. For 24 years it seemed like all I wanted was for someone to notice me. I wanted to stand out and be different. I thought that my life would be so much better if only I could catch someone’s eye.

Now, for the past three years, all I’ve wanted to do is blend it and not be noticed. I want to be equal and invisible and I think my life would be so much easier if only I wasn’t so different.

Isn’t it great how God teaches us things?

I think what I’m learning is that I shouldn’t be so worried about whether or not I stand out or fit in or what colour I am because God made me exactly as I am for a reason. And I shouldn’t care what people think of me because His love for me will never change. It shouldn’t matter where I go because He will always be with me. And I should stop thinking about where I fit in because I am His.

Yes, I could easily come up with a lot of reasons why I hate being a North American in Uganda and I can grumble on and on about the hundreds of times that I’ve been taken advantage of. But being white has also brought me a lot of blessings. And when I really think about how God is able to use me, a lone Muzungu in a different culture, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Many of you have asked about Auntie Christine, thank you.

As you probably know, Christine was being spiritually and sometimes even physically attacked by Satan, who over the past year was coming to her at night and telling her that he was going to take her life. He tried to convince her that she would not live past the age of 26. Although her faith never wavered, she was really struggling to find the strength to endure Satan’s opposition. I requested prayer for her in an email a few months back and I wanted to update you on her situation.

She turned 27 on January 22^nd. That night she felt a cold gust of wind enter her room and she knew that she would hear the voice again. Instead of threatening her however, he said that he knew that a lot of people were praying for her and that her God is a working God. Because of that, he told her she had won and that he would not take her life.

It was amazing to hear and it is such an incredible example of God’s power and protection. We are so thankful for your prayers.

However, after that victory came more struggles. Christine recently found out that her aunt has placed some kind of curse on her. Witchcraft in Uganda in very real and apparently her aunt has done this before to two other family members, who have both since passed away. Christine said that her aunt has sent demons after her and that she has been physically attacked a couple of times in the past month. The good news is that when she gets attacked, the demons flee when Christine shouts the name of Jesus.

Christine has clearly been chosen by God to do amazing things for Him and Satan knows that she’s a threat. I know that she will make it through this but I can’t imagine how difficult and scary it must be for her. Please continue to pray for her safety and protection as well as physical, emotional, and spiritual strength. And pray that these attacks will stop once and for all. Thank you.

God has provided for us in ways that I can’t even believe if I think about it too much. From favour in the government to our staff to the kids we work with to finances, everything has been so blessed. Please continue to pray for us as we move ahead, especially because we need wisdom to know when and how to expand our work. Please pray that He keeps us humble and that we would always find ways to give him the glory in everything we do.

As for me, I need motivation and inspiration as well as divine intervention as I try to raise support from businesses over the next couple of weeks before I head back to Uganda.

Thank you for your invaluable prayers and support.

If you know anyone who would be interested in sponsoring a child through His Hope Uganda please contact me or my parents. We are still looking for sponsors for about 18 beautiful Ugandan kids and trusting that God already knows who they are.

I was able to go snowboarding a few days ago and it was a perfect day. I will never get over how beautiful the mountains are here. It is such an indescribably amazing feeling to be sitting on the top of a mountain, in the middle of a spectacular range of mountains. But it’s an even more amazing feeling by far to know that not only am I loved by the one who made those incredible mountains, I actually have the honour of knowing Him personally.

Have a wonderful week and thanks for reading. Much love, Kimi

Hello!

Since I’m too late for Merry Christmas I will stick to Happy Holidays. Hope everyone is enjoying them. I know I have been because they’ve been a good excuse to do absolutely nothing. Christmas holidays are a procrastinato’rs dream come true.

We had a great Christmas here. It was my second Christmas in Uganda and I tried to get into the holiday spirit by putting up a tree, cut down from the bushes around our compound, on December 20th. It died on December 20th but for some reason it’s still in our sitting room, looking festive with its one string of lights and two short strings of garland. Charlie Brown would be proud.

We had only 21 people here on Christmas day, small and peaceful compared to the over 100 that we had for our Christmas party on the 19th. I was blessed to be able to spend the day with my eight children and our staff as well as our neighbours, who we’ve gotten to know really well in the past eight months, and a friend of mine who was visiting from Canada. On top of that, Christmas was special for three reasons.

First, the kids didn’t want a goat this year, which meant no intestines for Christmas dinner. That was a nice treat. Second, my sister sent packaged gravy that I cooked which turned out to be the key to an almost perfect day. How I managed last time without it Ill never know. And third, I bought myself a Christmas gift a few weeks ago that has been a wonderful addition to our Ugandan family.

Clooney (named after the most handsome man on the planet) is our newest family member, an adorable little puppy who has captured all of our hearts, even the children’s although they won’t admit it. Originally mistaken for a boy, we rescued her from down the road a couple of weeks ago and when she first got here she was near death and full of all sorts of fleas and bugs. Since then, she has grown and gotten rid of all her creepy crawly little friends. She is now full of life and love and I know that one day she will be clean enough for cuddles. She knows her name and I am so excited because she will eventually be a bilingual dog, knowing both English and Lugandan (that’s more civilized than of our Wonderdog Twinkie, right dad?).

I can’t wait to meet George and tell him that I named my female Ugandan rescue dog after him.That will make him love me for sure.

Apart from preparing for Christmas, we spent most of November and December looking for candidates for our Child Sponsorship Program next year. This past year we supported 47 children, most of whom are under the age of seven years.However in the past few months, we’ve realized that there is a greater need to support children who are in higher levels of school. Next year we’ve decided to expand the number of children in our program to 88. Over half of the new candidates are in Secondary or Post-Secondary classes and none are under the age of seven.

We thought it would be best to start moving around the area before school finished in November.We also thought it would be better if Auntie Christine and Auntie Annet moved without my Mzungu presence so they went out together in search of needy families. They spent a couple of days moving around and came back with a book of names and information for me to read over.The problem was that in their movements around our village, they didn’t feel like the area was very needy. So we prayed that God would lead us to the right people.

He didn’t lead us, but He certainly led them. Within a couple of days and over a period of about four weeks, we had women and children waiting on our front step almost every day when we woke up in the morning. Some people came from villages over ten kilometres away that I’ve never even heard of, let alone been to. We don’t have a sign outside our compound but somehow they managed to find us.

Every person that came was treated the same way. We would take down information about their child and listen to their story and then we would take their contact information and tell them that we weren’t promising to help but that we might be in touch. And we told them to pray. When they left, we would decide whether or not they would make it to the next step.

In those four weeks, I learned two important things. I learned how to make quick judgments and I learned how wrong my quick judgments can be. As much as I tried to fight it, I found myself judging every person that walked through our door. We often made decisions based on appearances. If a woman came here with her hair done up and she looked really nice, we would usually just say no. It might sound really bad but we had to trust what we felt.

The second step in the process was visiting the homes of families that we felt we might want to help. You can only tell so much about a person here by how they look, but you can tell a lot by where they live. After visiting a few homes I drew up some rough guidelines about choosing children:

1. NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, SERVICE. We visited a government school in our search for children and I would say that over 95% of the children were not wearing any shoes. After that, I made sure to keep a close watch on peoples’ feet as we moved around. Oh, and if none of your kids are wearing shirts, you’re pretty much in.

2. DON’T THANK THE ACADEMY. We always ask guardians where their child went to school last because it gives us an idea of their financial situation. Some people give us names of schools that I can barely pronounce that aren’t even in the district, which usually means that the child was in boarding school. General rule if it ends in Academy we’ll likely pass you by.

3. A LITTLE TOO COMFORTABLE. In this culture, you welcome every guest that comes to your home by offering them your finest piece of furniture.For most people, it’s a small wooden or wicker stool. If you want to spend money on expensive furniture, we probably don’t have room for you in our program. Basically, if my butt doesn’t hurt by the time I leave, we most likely won’t be seeing you again.

4. WE WONT CALL YOU BACK. From my experience, most visitors who come here are bothered by the number of Ugandans who own cell phones.You can find a lot of families who can’t pay their kids’ school fees but who can receive text messages from their friends. I don’t understand this concept either, but I respect families who don’t own a phone. So, the harder it is to contact someone, the more we want to help them.

5. CAN YOU CRY A LITTLE? Tears in this culture are very rare. Crying, or showing any emotion, is a sign of weakness and most Ugandans don’t do it (at least not in the presence of other people). Seeing grown women crying because they can’t contain their emotion always breaks me. It’s a good thing it’s only happened twice because otherwise we’d have 200 kids in our program next year>

Choosing children was not always easy, especially the saying no part, but it was so exciting to actually be the one making the decisions. The children in our program now were chosen by Alvin, under guidelines which I didn’t really agree with, and although I am thankful for each of them, we have struggled with some of the decisions made in the past. I really believe that next year’s students are the right ones for the program and that we are supporting families who really need help.

I’ve learned that 99% of the people I meet here consider themselves needy and I’m convinced that even the president would ask me to help his children if I met him. We went in one multi-roomed brick house that had two couches, a stereo system, and a T.V. in the sitting room and listened to a young girl who had already completed her secondary education beg for help. Five minutes earlier we had been at her neighbour’s house, an elderly grandmother who lives in a mud hut and takes care of more grandchildren than I can count. Her eight year old grandson who will be in our program next year has never been to school. Yet the girl couldn’t see her neighbour’s need, all she could think about was missing her own chance.

I remember one day when I was feeling very discouraged because we had seen a lot of people who didn’t seem needy but were telling us they were. I complained to Auntie Christine that night about how people seem so stuck on getting help for themselves that they can’t see that there are so many other people who are really in need. I remember saying that I’d only ever met three or four Ugandan people who saw other’s needs before they saw their own. I was so frustrated.

The next morning Auntie Christine knocked on my door and told me that she needed me to meet a woman who had come asking for help. I met the woman, named Jennipher, and when she introduced herself as a teacher, I immediately felt annoyed that she had come asking for help. However, what she did next shocked me.

She gave me a small book. Inside the book were the names and stories of about twenty children from the school that she taught at. She explained that since she’s been teaching there, she’s been writing down the names of the children she sees at school who are most needy. She carried the names around with her in hopes that she could find someone who could help them. She had brought that book to several clinics asking for free treatment for the children but she has not yet been successful.

Jennipher is a woman whose husband left her when she told him she was HIV positive. She now takes care of her five children alone and her salary at a government school is barely enough to make ends meet. She told us that she needs help but she knows that there are other children needier than her own. And she chooses to put them first.

We are called to be like that. We are called to put the interests and needs of others before our own. And to love others more than ourselves. Sometimes it’s easy and sometimes it’s difficult. But it is ALWAYS rewarding. And it is ALWAYS worth it.

When I came here in April last year, I was told by a very reliable source that it would take a miracle to get our NGO (non-government organization) status in less than a year. We got our CBO (community based organization) status in two days and I considered that a miracle because I’ve heard of it taking over a year. After about three months of getting organized and visiting numerous government offices (where we were blessed with incredible favour), I submitted an application to the NGO board on August 24th. Since then, I have been waiting for our number to appear on a board at the NGO office, where I have been checking every month since October.

I still haven’t seen our number on that board. But it doesnt matter now. When I went to the NGO secretary on Monday to check on our status, she handed me our NGO Certificate of Registration.It was dated August 28th.

It took four days to get our status! I know a girl who has been here a year and a half and still doesn’t have status. Let me say this again - it took four days to get our status! It may have been even less than that except that the Board hesitated to give us status in Jinja because they were concerned about my safety working in this district.

I can’t just say this, so let me shout it: PRAISE GOD! Praise God for His favour, His mercy, His love, His greatness, His grace, and His amazing power.

I know that He listens and I know that He answers. So let me make a few more humble requests.

A few weeks ago I sent a prayer request because I was concerned about my diabetes. It went out of control for a few days but things are back to normal now so thank you for your prayers. When I come back to Canada in February I need to decide what the future of my diabetes will be because being on the insulin pump is not cheap. Please pray for favour with the pump company, that they might be able to help me, and for wisdom to know what to do.

God has provided for us financially in huge ways and we haven’t even really had to ask. Praise Him for that. Please pray for continued peace and favour in the finance department and that we will be able to find sponsors for all our new children.

Please pray for continued wisdom about children in our program next year. We still have a couple of decisions left to make so pray that we make the right choices.

Please please please keep praying for Auntie Christine. She is really struggling and she has been under spiritual and physical attack. For the past year she has been hearing a voice telling her that she will die when she is 26 years old. She turns 27 on January 22nd and Satan is really attacking her right now. There have been two deaths and one stroke in her family this past week. She will be travelling to her village on Saturday so please pray for her safety and also that she will have an impact on her family as none of them are believers. God has done amazing things in her life in the past couple of months. She has been set free and God is using her and will continue to use her for amazing things. Praise Him for that but please keep praying for her protection and peace.

Thank you for all your continued prayers and support. Since you can’t be here, I hope you believe me when I tell you that God is doing amazing things through this organization and through all of your support. May He continue to shine through us and be glorified in all that we do.

What an amazing year it’s been. May God bless all of you in the year to come. Much love, Kimi