His Hope Uganda

LESSONS and BLESSINGS

(WARNING - Grab a coffee, this may be the longest yet)

Hello everyone,

Somehow I’ve stayed busy enough to miss an entire Canadian summer without even knowing it.  I can’t believe it’s already September and I really can’t believe that I’ve missed a good month of prime listening to Christmas music time. I’m late getting started; I’ll have to pay closer attention next year. Here in Uganda I think it might be rainy season but these days it’s really hard to tell. As far as I can remember, it’s been raining since March. That seems like a long season.

It has been an awesome two (three?) months since I’ve last been in touch. My family was here in batches – my sister and her husband arrived the same day as my parents, and my brother and his wife arrived ten days after. My brother and sister in law were here five days, my sister and brother in law were here just over two weeks, and my parents were here about four and a half weeks. How blessed am I that my whole family was able (and willing) to come visit all at the same time? I’d say very.

We managed to stay busy enough that we barely got a day’s rest in the four and a half week span that my parents were here. They left with a few things not checked off the list, but we couldn’t complain considering the length of the list of things we did get done.

We did squeeze in a three day safari, which some may consider rest but I don’t understand how three days of waking up at five in the morning is “restful”. I had done a five day safari the first time I came to Africa and I smugly thought I had seen it all, only to be proven wrong and humbled (again). Not only did we see the typical African animals (giraffes, elephants, hippos, baboons, etc), we also got to go rhino trekking, chimp trekking, and see several massive crocodiles on a beautiful Nile cruise. We stood just a few feet away in the wilderness from a group of loud, possibly very angry, chimpanzees and from a baby rhino and her mom (who had clearly eaten too many beans for breakfast because she couldn’t stop gassing). To top it all off, we even stood close enough to touch Dr. Jane Goodall, who we met at our campsite. And we didn’t even have to trek her.

The safari was great but in my opinion not at all the highlight of my family’s time here. Since this ministry began in April of last year, I had been dreaming of the day that my family would be able to come and experience Uganda . Yes, my parents had been to Uganda before but in different circumstances and under a different ministry. This is a different Uganda, one that God has led us to and that I believe is the start of my new life. And I know without a doubt that my family’s support and blessing has been instrumental in making this happen.

For fifteen months I had been waiting to introduce them to the hundreds of people whose lives have been touched by HHU. For fifteen months I had been waiting for them to see for themselves what God is doing and what they’ve helped do. For fifteen months I had been waiting to introduce my Canadian family to my Ugandan family. Fifteen months was well worth the wait.

Some people find it hard to justify spending two thousand dollars on a plane ticket to visit a third world country knowing how much good that two thousand dollars would do for people on the ground. I understand why people would have that hesitation but I wish I could explain how much it means for those people on the ground that someone would come so far just to visit them. When Ugandans see mzungus, they never think about how much money it may have cost to get here. Instead, they think about how they must have risked their lives to come and how much they must care in order to do that. And they appreciate that more than words can say. But sometimes a dance by a not fully clothed, non-English speaking, eighty-some year old grandmother says it all.

While they were here, we were able to complete our fourth house for a boy in our program named Osuman and his family, thanks to generous donations from Osuman’s sponsor and another family in our church. Although we didn’t have as much time to help with labour as we thought, my dad and brother in law, Devin, managed to get in half a day of vigorous labour carrying bricks and shovelling sand (I think they still have the scars to prove it) while the girls rode in comfort to the airport to pick up the rest of the family (equally as vigorous, I assure you). The house, a two roomed 21 by 11 foot brick building proved to be a blessing in more than one way.

Obviously, it is a blessing to Osuman and his family, who now have a safe, secure, and permanent structure to call home. But building this house also ended up most likely saving the life of one of our dearest family members and my beloved seventh daughter – Clooney. This calls for a story.

A couple of days after the completion of the house, Osuman’s grandmother came by to thank us. She brought us a chicken in appreciation for the house . We debated whether or not to eat the chicken that night but in the end we decided we may as well (I hate keeping chickens because they poop too much and make too much noise and I already have eight kids and a dog who do that). So, we enjoyed chicken for supper. 

I have to explain that the only one who enjoys chicken more that Uncle Eman in our house is Clooney. I know it’s not recommended to feed chicken bones to dogs in Canada, but here we feed Clooney everything. God clearly made Ugandan dogs with stomachs of steel. Clooney can eat the bones, feet, and head of an entire chicken (or two of three) within minutes. She LOVES chickens.

So when we gave Clooney her plate of bones for supper and she refused to eat, we knew something was terribly wrong. Clooney refusing chicken is like me refusing chocolate, it’s just not normal. We could tell she was very sick. We phoned our vet, who proved faithful in agreeing to come at nine in the evening. We discovered Clooney was too sick to even stand and we had to carry her inside the house where we waited (un)patiently and nervously for the vet. To be honest, the vet really didn’t seem to know what he was doing (this is a guy who gave her a shot to prevent her from getting pregnant, which is still a bit strange to me) but he gave her some shots and told us he would check on her the next day. The next day she was back to normal.

The vet told us later that she had gotten some kind of viral infection and was very near to death. She would not have lived through the night. And we would not have known she was so sick unless we had eaten chicken for supper. So, I need to say a huge thank you to those two families (they know who they are). You gave a family a home AND you saved our dog. AND we got to eat chicken. Thank you.

My family also had the opportunity to mingle and eat at the beginning of August when we had a huge party, our biggest yet. Until then, we had been throwing parties for families in our program in halves – one party for the old families and one party for the most recently supported ones. This has made it easier to handle, especially for the cooks.

However, feeling courageous (or crazy perhaps) with six more mzungus to back us up, we decided to go all out and have one BIG party. Of course, because we mzungus can’t cook Ugandan style, the number of cooks actually remained the same at three, but the number of people doubled to somewhere over two hundred. Really unfair, isn’t it? I thought so but the cooks didn’t complain, despite the fact that they had to stay awake most of the night to keep the fires burning and check on the 21 chickens, 20 kilograms of meat, and three huge saucepans of rice and matooke (bananas) that were cooking. Have I mentioned we have a great staff?

In the end, the party was a huge success. We didn’t run out of sodas and the food was enough to feed the hungry people seconds and even provide a meal for some street children who were curiously watching the festivities from the gate. And my family got to “meet” everyone (meaning I pointed at people and said “That’s Mama Martin in the red dress” and “There’s Aisha’s grandmother and sister over there”).

We also somehow managed to give out all 90 sponsor gifts and letters, while taking pictures and shooting videos, to kids over a period of about three weeks. Even more amazing than that is that we managed to get 89 of those kids to write letters back to their sponsors (I mailed the 90^th back last week). Considering half those kids are under the age of seven and can’t write a letter without someone sitting with them and helping them, it was a pretty amazing feat. But well worth it.

The other highlight of my family’s visit was the” in-God’s-perfect-timing” opportunity to help a young boy named Eliasa and his grandmother.

I don’t know if you’ll remember but there was a teacher who came to our house last year with a list of children that she was looking to help, many of whom are now in our program. This teacher came here a few months ago and said that she had been walking one day and she passed an elderly woman carrying a child with a “big head”. She told me that she was so upset that she went home and cried. Not knowing if we could help but knowing we needed to try, I told the teacher that if she could find the woman, she should send her to our house.

About a week later, the teacher came back to the house with the grandmother and her grandson, Eliasa. Eliasa had been born a normal boy but when he was two weeks old he got cerebral malaria and the infection caused his head to become very big. Since then, his mother passed away from AIDS and his grandmother has been the one taking care of him. Eliasa is now two and a half years old and his head is probably three times bigger than it should be, causing him to be mentally handicapped and also extremely heavy. This makes him very difficult to care for but it hasn’t stopped his grandmother from doing a wonderful job.

We didn’t know what to do but got the name of a hospital in Mbale that we were told might be able to help. So we told the grandmother that we would look into it. To be honest, I didn’t expect that we would be able to offer any help to them at all.

A good friend in Mbale who has been invaluable in the past proved to be a blessing again by not only confirming the information about the hospital but by letting us know that he knew the place well and assured us they would be able to help. Praise God.

Fortunately, my parents and I were planning a trip to Mbale anyway and it worked out perfectly that we would be able to bring Eliasa and his grandmother with us. The hospital,run by CURE, is an amazing place. It is an American run Christian hospital that specializes in children’s brain disorders. When we got to the hospital, there were three other women waiting with children who had the same problem as Eliasa. You can imagine how Eliasa’s grandmother must have felt knowing that there were other people going through the same thing as she was. We found out that Eliasa has a condition called hydrocephalus which can be treated by surgery and physiotherapy. We also found out that most children die from hydrocephalus before the age of two if it is not treated (Eliasa is already two and a half) . The day we arrived, Eliasa was given a blood test and CT scan which confirmed his condition and also showed that he had severe malaria. He was admitted immediately.

One week after he was admitted, Eliasa underwent his first surgery. Five days after that he was back at our house in his grandmother’s arms. He goes back for his second surgery at the end of this month and he will continue to go back for follow up surgeries and check ups for years to come.

The full cost of his treatment was 750,000 Ugandan shillings. It covers all his costs while he is staying at the hospital, including food, blankets, sheets, and even soap, as well as ALL of his surgeries, appointments, and treatment. It may sound like a lot, but 750,000 is only about $370 Canadian dollars.

We don’t know what Eliasa’s future will look like but we know that he has been given the chance to have one. The most difficult thing to deal with is not that the grandmother couldn’t afford the 750,000 shillings to pay for his treatment, it was that she couldn’t even afford the 18,000 shillings to get to Mbale to try and get the treatment. In two and a half years, nobody has offered to help, probably because nobody ever thought they could. To be honest, I probably would have been one of those people who had passed her by had it not been for a woman that we know whom God has given a heart of compassion. She has encouraged me again and reminded me that we CAN make a difference if we have the eyes to see and the heart to try.

I will keep you updated on Eliasa’s progress. It is an amazing story and further evidence that God is working through this organization. He continues to use us in ways I would have never imagined and it is so exciting. It has been a blessing and an honour to be able to share this experience with Eliasa and his grandmother, who are both very special and beautiful people and we can’t wait to find out what God has in store for them.

I can’t tell you how exciting and amazing it is to be able to see God working in people’s lives through what we are doing. He is changing people’s lives and hearts in ways that are sometimes obvious and other times more subtle, but there is no doubt that He is doing it.

But I think that among one of the most drastically changed lives is my own . I explained a bit in my last email how much God has changed me over the past ten years but I also have to give Him credit for what He’s done in the past two years, since all of this began.

I have been told by people back in Canada and by my trusted staff here in Uganda that I have matured over the past year. I’m going to assume that’s a good thing and say thank you for those comments. I am also going to say I sure hope I’ve matured because I was never really very “mature” to begin with (I blame my friends for that – you know who you are).

Now, I’m not sure how normal people measure maturity, but let me share some of the signs that I’ve seen that show I’ve matured in since living in Uganda. For example:

1. I’ve doubled my intake of Metamucil (wait, does that make me more mature or just older?). This may be due to the fact that I’ve switched flavours and discovered that the sugar free pink lemonade kind is a cool and refreshing, although somewhat chunky, treat. It’s quite tasty.

2. If having eight children (five over the age of twelve) isn’t mature enough, I now have eight children AND a dog.

3. I have stopped watching “Hannah Montana” (the show of course, I still watch the movie) and have now moved on to more mature shows. I am now addicted to the Mexican soap opera “Hidden Passions”. And it is as bad as it sounds.

4. I have gone from a skirt-wearing hater to a skirt-wearing addict. I feel like one of those “trendy” women that I always used to see and wish I could be more like. (athough, I don’t think they have the habit of accidentally flashing people when they sit down or stand up from sitting on the ground. I’m still working on that.)

5. I will admit I still sleep with a stuffed dog, the same one I’ve had since I was six. Probably not too mature, but I did actually wash him last week, which felt very grown up.

6. I have yet to tackle the language, mostly because I’m lazy and not into learning, but my Luganda has matured in the past year. One sign of this is that I have learned to say “Jesus heals” as opposed to “Jesus smells” like I said the first couple of times. I think God’s proud of me for that.

Those are just a few examples of course. I may not be there yet (wherever “there” is) but I am sure on my way. Maturity, here I come.

How much I’ve matured or grown I don’t know for sure but I do know that I am not the person I was a year ago. God has taught me a lot and I have grown in Him so much and I feel so thankful for that. I have learned to trust Him more, to listen to His voice, and to talk to Him more. It has been an experience so amazing but at times very difficult. But with each step I grow and I know He’s slowly using every moment to refine me, which is an honour.

As many of you know, I have been going through a difficult time these past couple of weeks. At first I think a lot of it had to do with my parents leaving, but I know there’s more to it than that. I reached a point about one week ago where I completely broke down. It started with a week of depression, spent locked in my room in tears every day. It felt like all my frustrations and loneliness and the pressure of everything (that I was putting on myself) built up to the point where I couldn’t take it anymore and at the end of the week I phoned my parents in tears, telling them I was moving back to Canada.

It began with me trying to stand alone, feeling the weight of everything on my shoulders, and being too proud and stubborn to let go and admit my weaknesses. It ended with me on my knees, where I belong, broken.

I sent out an email asking for prayer because I knew I was under attack and needing support. I want to thank you for your prayers because I have definitely felt them. Thank you too for your encouraging emails, I needed them.

But I also feel like I need to apologize because part of me was too honest and a lot of what I said was said in frustration and anger and even in an attempt to seek some kind of credit or praise that I don’t deserve.

I never intended to say anything against the Ugandan culture or the Ugandans that I live with and work with who have become my second family. Some people expressed anger towards them for not appreciating me enough and I can assure you that isn’t true. They may not always express it in the way I want or need, but they show their appreciation in a lot of ways and I can’t blame them for any of the problems that I face.

One thing I love and hate about Ugandans is their brutal honesty. They say it like it is, no sugar coating involved. When I am doing something to hurt or offend them, they tell me. The problem is that sometimes they tell me too much. They verbally express my faults but don’t realize that I need balance in the form of encouragement or that I need time to change.

Most of my problems with living alone in a different culture stem from the feeling (not fact) that I am not accepted as who I am and that I am constantly alone and misunderstood. I have even tried to talk to them about it and they don’t seem to understand. It’s hard sometimes and it got to the point recently where I felt like my faults far outweighed my good qualities and I let myself fall into the trap of believing that I do more harm here than good. Instead of listening to criticism and taking it the right way, I let Satan use it to bring me down. And I fell fast and hard. I refused to let myself believe anything good about myself and I began drowning in my sins and my faults, to the point where I couldn’t breathe.

But I’m being refined and I’m learning even though I know it’s not over. I am thankful because I’ve learned three invaluable things.

First, my Ugandan family has helped me realize some serious sin in my life, mostly to do with anger, that I had been excusing and justifying for 27 years of my life. I have admitted it and repented and am now working at changing.

Second, I am learning that I actually CAN change. I have realized that God doesn’t want me to continue living with sin and that He can and will give me the strength and wisdom I need to overcome it. Not for my glory, but for His.

Third, and this is the one that I still struggle with, I am learning to accept not only God’s grace, but other people’s as well. I know I don’t deserve forgiveness and I know I definitely don’t deserve to be loved by the Creator of the universe, but I am. It has nothing to do with me or with who I am or what I do, but everything to do with Him. I know He wants me to live in freedom from guilt and I can’t understand it but I need to accept it.

Life isn’t easy sometimes but it isn’t really supposed to be so I must be doing something right.

One of my favourite song lyrics that I’ve far overplayed in the past two weeks is in a song by Bebo Norman (funny name but amazing musician) called “Ruins”. It says this:

“Let my ruins become the ground you build upon,

Let my ruins become the start;

Let my ruins become the ground you build it on

From what’s left of my broken heart.”

God, I am ruined and broken. But I am ready to be filled and ready to be used.

Onto page eleven now (oops) so I think it’s time to wrap up.

In other big news, we bought a car. Yeah, I said it was big, didn’t I? Thanks to some generous donors, we no longer have to struggle with cockroach-infested, ever-breaking-down, broken-doored cars . It has been a huge blessing already and I really don’t know how we managed so long without one. Thank you Lord.

Praise God that not only did we find sponsors in time for all our old kids, we now actually have people who want to sponsor but no kids. Thank you for your prayers.

Praise God for ALL He continues to do through us and in us. I would list some of the things but I don’t think you have time for another eleven pages.

Please pray for Auntie Christine. She is still suffering from a lot of physical pain because of something that happened to her when she was 16. Please pray that God frees her from this pain and that she is able to see a doctor who can help. Also pray that she is completely healed and that this doesn’t have any long term effects.

Please pray for Eliasa. Pray that his future surgeries go well and that God continues to heal him in miraculous ways. Pray for his grandmother as well. She is a Muslim and we know that this is an amazing opportunity for the Lord to work in her heart. Pray for strength and blessing for her and for her to know how much God loves her.

Please pray for me. As you know, I need strength and wisdom that only comes from God through prayer. I also need to let go of some things, stop being such a control freak (thanks for pointing that out Katherine), and stop thinking that everything is about me or that everything is on my shoulders.

Please pray for us as we make important decisions about our future. Pray that we let God guide us. Pray that we find the right students to add to our program next year and that God would provide them with the right sponsors.

Please pray for our NGO status as it expired at the end of August and getting it renewed is a long and frustrating process. We are currently waiting on three signatures in two different districts. Please pray everything goes quickly and smoothly and that God will grant us favour as He has in the past . Also pray for my Visa. I’ve technically been in the country illegally for over a month (again) but I can’t apply for a Work Permit until the NGO renewal goes in. Pray it goes through as well.

I think we’re probably all exhausted by this email by now. But next time you can look forward to hearing about toilets and goats.

Thank you for not only being willing, but actually being interested, in hearing about what God is doing here in Uganda, through our small ministry, and in my life and heart. Without you there would be no ministry and no emails (and then what would you do with the extra eleven hours of your day?).

I love you all and appreciate you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. God bless. Much love,

Kimi