Uganda 2009- a rather long and very honest.

Uganda 2009
I had every intention of this post being practically just a copy of my diary, but when I discovered I had written over 100 pages and that translated in to over 50 A4 pages and no one would bother to read a post that long, I decided against it! So for full unpublished works ask me and I might let you have a gander.

So anyways Uganda was positively one of the best, most challenging, hard work, exhausting, emotional (though without much actually crying), reflective, evaluative times of my life. I learnt so much about myself, my life, my blessings and most importantly God, I am soooooo blessed.
Since coming back there have been some little things that have been amazing to me-for the first time ever! Running water all the time is one of my faves- it’s just brilliant! And I’ve never really appreciated it before.

The trip has helped me understand a lot more of how blessed I am to have the parents I have willing to give me so much and I realise how little I have demonstrated my appreciation in the past-bad Jet! I also have realised how selfish I am- more about that later!



Food

I have great like for food and was quite excited by the prospect of our first Ugandan meal –a couple of days in, so, much to the astonishment of the rest of the team I managed to finish my whole plate. Little did I know at that point that this would be the food we ate for the rest of the trip and it has to be said yesterday it was nice to not have eggs and bread for breakfast and some form of stew with matoke, rice, posha, mashed potatoes and cabbage for lunch and dinner.

One unforgettable night I killed a chicken, yes you heard me right, after dinner (while we were camping in Gulu) Hannah and I were on the way back from a good chat over washing hair in bucket by the pump when we bumped in to the others wandering back to the tents carrying 5 chickens, Catherine informed us that we would be killing them. After much contemplation when Vicky asked who would be up for doing it, I surprised myself by saying yes! Pastor Richard demonstrated how to do it, and after Mark had done his I stepped up to the plate. You had to stand on the wings, and legs hold the head and saw it off, with a rather blunt knife as quickly as you could- 3 cuts Richard said, I think it took me 3 1/2. Then you had to grab the neck to stop the blood spurting everywhere as the chicken twitched. ‘You’re mad, or that’s disgusting’ you might be thinking to yourself right now. My response would be that I would feel hypocritical if I could happily sit down to my dinner and not be physically capable of killing my meat. I wanted to prove to myself I could, and let’s face it, how many chances do we get here to kill chickens. Where in Uganda everyone from the age of 5 knows how to and can do it. It has to be said the chicken we ate for breakfast the next day, having killed, plucked and in Dan’s case gutted was the nicest chicken I have ever tasted!


Team

I honestly still can’t believe we managed to successfully have a unified team for an entire 30 day trip, barely any arguments whatsoever. All praise for this must of course go to God. It was amazing to have such honesty and friendship in a group of such different personalities unified by love of sport and love of God. Helped along with the amazing leadership of Vicky and Mark


Testimonies

One of the things on the trip that has been such a privilege was having the opportunity to chat to the Ugandans from ‘sports friends international’ about how they became Christians. So many faith building stories I was particularly struck by Papa’s and Nations’. Nations was brought up in a Muslim family and one day he woke up and heard a voice tell him he needed to get saved, so he went and spoke to the head boy of his school about Christianity and he led him to Christ. He returned to his family and his father said ‘If that is what you choose to believe you are no longer our son, you can no longer live here and we won’t pay your school fees’ Nations wondered where he could go so he went to the church, hasn’t seen his family since, dropped out of school and has been living in the church sleeping on the floor for the past 6 years. During those six years he said he has woken up and heard the voice tell him he needs to go preach the gospel to others. So he has been serving with sports friends international, he has practically nothing materially but he has such joy and passion. I think I finally understand what it says in Romans about how those who are poor should rejoice because they are spiritually rich.


Challenges

There have been oh so many! For this part I’m going to copy out of my diary

Monday 20th July 2009
I cannot help but feel that I had become incredibly lazy in my walk with God. If you really love someone, you shouldn’t fit them in in your day as an afterthought. I have been so challenged by these Ugandan’s who are so joyful and Jesus is all they have. I realise that I need to put God back in the driving seat of my life, as opposed to the front passenger who I listen to when I choose, and sometimes choose not to. I would always refer to myself as leaning on God, but being here has questioned me as to just how much?! I knew I trusted him for salvation so why do I struggle with the everyday day to day things?! I’m coming to realise just how as a sinner I was so unworthy of salvation. As the pastor said at church yesterday he had a dream where he was on the operating theatre and an angel was to perform an operation and pulled out these giant shears, (like you would use for gardening ) and squished his entire body and out of it found a very small lump that was good, and the angel said ‘this is alright, we can use this bit.’ It challenged me so much. I guess before coming here I thought I was alright as far as the ‘God stuff’ is concerned but since being here I realise how much I had neglected my relationship with the person who loves me most. How much of me he deserves yet how much my selfish heart would hold back.
I am so selfish, always thinking about me, not pointing to Jesus by thinking of what I can do to be a blessing to others. There are people in the East of this country living off rats and I’m worried about how large the slice of pizza I get is.

Wednesday 22nd July 2009
I find it amazing how when you come to a place like this you are compelled to examine the life you have been living, so out of context that you really gain some perspective. I was in a meeting once where they said something like if you own a fridge you are in the top 15% of the world’s wealthiest people. It is so easy in the UK to think we are the rule and coming here and seeing houses where an entire family live in a room made of mud that’s about half the size of my bedroom in Hastings. It suddenly brings a whole new perspective on facts like that.


Sights

We have seen some amazing things! On the flight we flew over the Sahara desert-it was stunning, sooooo much sand! Lightning storms were pretty spectacular forked lightning that illuminates the whole sky. We went to the Murchison falls where the whole of the river Nile squeezes through a gap about 4 meters wide, the sheer power and wonder it inspired in me! We stood there transfixed I said to Catherine, I cannot understand how people can see things like this and not believe in a God who created it! Then of course on safari we saw many a fabulous animal, including baby hippos, lots of crocs, heards of elephants just chilling, loads of giraffes including two walking so elegantly with the sunset just behind them-so picturesque!


Living

I’m not going to pretend it was always easy! The accommodation at the African bible university where we stayed for most of the trip was fairly basic but comfortable enough-freezing showers and the water got randomly tuned off, or would come out the tap bright red! When we were on safari we were accompanied by bats in our room and cockroaches in the hole in the ground toilet, you try squatting with cockroaches crawling around-eww! Then from there things got even more basic, there was a while the next day, when we’d travelled north to Gulu where we didn’t even know if we’d have a tent to sleep in or if we’d be under the stars. The person welcoming us to Gulu informed us that ‘All snakes are poisonous and will bite; some will just kill you faster!’ The night after in the tents we were woken by Vicky yelling ‘its not waterproof’ my tired brain was very confused as Catherine thought she’d said ‘it’s not water’ and I wondered what the wet stuff soaking me was! Mark came in to inform us that there was river slowly forming around out tent and we’d be under water in a few mins, so had to move! Fortunately we were living on a building site where the was a house being constructed so we moved to sleeping on the dust floor squished up next to each other but at least it was dry, the boys meanwhile had moved in to the bus! After the 2am wakeup call it was encouraging to have Isaiah 40 read at devotions (‘such a good psalm’-Catherine) before heading off to clear a path to the well – I think we all became quite skilled at using hoes!


Colossians

We spent an hour every day having team time in which we took it in terns to (in twos) prepare and deliver a bible study on a few verses of the book. I discovered a love for the word of God that I haven’t felt in a long time; it’s just so full of great stuff. It was great to have the opportunity to really get stuck in to it as a whole team, to debate topics, and discuss how we should apply it to life in Uganda and life back at uni! Colossians 3v17 being a particularly challenging verse. Also the encouragement that Jesus is sufficient and we need to keep our eyes constantly focussed on Jesus. It is so true that when I look back at life, the points at which I had this focus, everything else fell in to place and priorities were set right. If you do everything out of thankfulness to Christ ‘attitude of gratitude’ it’s amazing what you accomplish and with what joy!


The bible and books

As I have referred to in the previous paragraph I developed a greater love for the bible, it’s so key! In my quiet times I read through Roman’s –so humbling but gave me such joy that I am saved, and God chose me! Flitted through some other bits of the bible, all very good stuff-the sermon on the mount, the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, and a bit of James.

I read 3 whole books and a bit of another while I was away. The first of which called mere Christianity by C.s. Lewis it was really good at providing new angles to look at things like God being out of time, etc that are difficult concepts to grapple with! It ends with the wise words:
‘keep back nothing., Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay. But look for Christ and you will find him, and with him everything else thrown in.’
It was good as these words complimented the lessons we were learning from Colossians about keeping your eyes fixed on Jesus.

Another book I read was by C.S Lewis called ‘the four loves’ It challenged me in ensuring that my love for God needs to be proportionally so much more than my love for anyone else.

‘The pursuit of God’ by A. W Tozer gave some wise words. When you put nearly a dozen Christians between the ages of 18 and 22 together for a month, conversation turns to the topics of great debate such as predestination in this book Tozer states:
‘God will not hold us responsible to understand the mysteries of election, predestination and the diving sovereignty. The best and safest way to deal with these truths is to raise our eyes to God and in deepest reverence say ‘O Lord, Thou knowest.’ Those things belong to the deep and mysterious profound of Gods omniscience. Prying in to them may make theologians, but it will never make saints.’
A far more articulate way to express what I have felt since I was 13 and genuinely grappled with these topics for a while! It is interesting to delve in to the bible on topics such as this, but I think we should probably direct our bible study to how we can best live out lives pointing to Christ and share Christ with all as opposed to falling in to habits of, ‘well if there Gods’ chosen people, they’ll be chosen whether or not I share the gospel with them.’ And as a result becoming lazy.

The pursuit of God talks about the story of Abraham and Isaac and ensuring that God is first above everything, this challenged me, am I genuinely willing to, like Nations give up everything for the sake of the gospel?! Do I have enough faith?! I’d like to say yes, if placed in that situation, but we can never guarantee what we would do until genuinely faced with it. However our priorities in the little things can demonstrate where our hearts are.


Skin colour

‘Is black beautiful?!’ The fact that someone asked me this question made me sad. How would the colour of one’s skin dictate their beauty?! Clarence went on to explain that here in Uganda people believe you have to be muzungu (white) to be beautiful. Before being in Uganda, never before in my life had I been faced with any different treatment or division due to skin colour. Shouts of ‘Muzungu, Muzungu’ followed us around all trip, little kids would point and shout and wave at our bus. One night after a football match one of the footballers insisted I gave him a kiss on the cheek out the window of the bus. Little kids came running at us for hugs and fought over who got to hold our hands when we made a circle. When we were at the football the professional photographer people made money out of us because people would buy pictures of them or their kids with the muzungu’s. I think at some points we got more attention than the Brazilian footballers, despite them being genuinely famous and all because of the colour of our skin. It made me so sad that people would see themselves as inferior due to skin colour and treat us as if we were special. In England I’m glad that more racial equality is displayed. It can become difficult when you get used to the special treatment, as Vicky said she was hoping whilst on the way to hospital with Ev’s who had dislocated here knee that they would get bumped to the front of the queue because of being white. It can be challenging to make sure we don’t become like our predecessors and take advantage. These people are just as valuable as we are, and we should never ever consider ourselves as better than them, even if they try to treat us as such. The balance has to be found between being disrespectful of their culture and ensuring equality and valuing their attempts to serve us. However when we went and washed an old ladies clothes or talked to people about Jesus it was a blessing to have the added authority of being muzungu as people listened to you, and valued what you had to say and for a muzungu to serve and elderly lady by collecting her water and doing the menial tasks was such a great witness, as it’s so countercultural.


Love

God is love and I love God. The alpha and omega creator of the universe loves me! That’s all the security I genuinely need, every other love we experience on Earth is merely a shadow or reflection of the love that God has lavished upon us. Many times on the trip Fordy prayed that we would fall more in love with God every day, this is my prayer too that I would daily fall more and more in love with him! –He will never leave me or forsake me, what a brilliant truth to know!


Poverty/famine/wealth

Money, what’s it really worth?! It struck me almost how the more people have, the more they want! I speak for myself when I say I’ve never realised until now how blessed I am. The salvation I have that comes from God is sufficient, but God has blessed me so abundantly more, I feel a sense of gratitude I have never felt before! I also feel a compelling desire to give more of myself and my resources to those who need it more than me, and to be a good steward with the money I am entrusted with, that doesn’t really belong to me anyway!

We spent a day helping with famine relief in the east of Uganda I’d seen it on TV the massive sacks and the people with cups dishing out rations. It has to be said I never thought I’d be the one doing the handing out. It was with faith that Gilly text the pastor from his church asking if they were able to do a collection, the response was amazing; the church donated over £1000 pounds which equated in to 25 100kg bags of maize flour or beans. The gratitude of the people brought me almost to tears. There was one moment when I looked up to see a young child gathering the beans that had fallen on the floor that did actually bring me to tears. Pastor Richard told the people that he had faith and it would rain, as we were driving away from a place that hadn’t had rain for 5 ½ months it started raining!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! God is real, alive and working, and answering prayer, so with faith and integrity and unselfish motives I would encourage you to get praying!!!

Never before in my life have I seen such contrast between rich and poor we had a couple of crazy days when the brazillions were there in which this was most obvious! The first of which, we began the day by travelling to a community where we helped an elderly disabled lady by collecting water and doing her washing. This was in an area where child and elderly sacrifice is a regular occurrence! (and no I’m not talking about them being abandoned or left to fend for themselves I genuinely mean sacrificed for good crops, rain etc!) – A hard hitting truth that things like that still happen! After that in the afternoon we went to the national stadium, and then joined the brazillions police convoy to their hotel. I went in as I needed the loo and was immediately struck that such a contrast exists so nearby! The lady we’d seen in the morning lived in a house the size of a small room. It was a blessing to have the opportunity to be a blessing to them. Seeing the look of gratitude on the face of a child that morning when we gave them a tennis ball, compared with wandering round this hotel. I couldn’t get my head round it!

2 days later we had another instance like this. We spent the morning in a prison and in Uganda they still have the death sentence, to hear a lady on death row state the words’ God is good, all the time!’ was quite something. A lot of the ladies in there were there because they had been domestically abused and it’d all got too much and they’d retaliated. Sad really especially as a lot of them didn’t know where their children were and if they’d ever see them again. We were there as with the money raised at the footy matches and potentially the Christians in sport game of two halves project they are setting up a children’s home for the children of the ladies, so they don’t have to grow up in prison or on the streets! Later that day we went to do football coaching with the Brazilians-except they were late and when they did arrive didn’t coach the girls anyway so Fordy and I spent 4 hours trying to entertain these girls, we started with football then duck duck goose, the ladder game, Simon says then Vicky told them to all go get a stick from the bushes, and we played hockey with a netball! At the end of the coaching, I had the privilege of leading a little boy to Christ!!! From there (this is where the Rich/ Poor contrast comes in) we went to a cooperate dinner –got changed in to our church stuff on the way, arrived there and Vicky poked her head round the door and said ‘they’re all wearing ball gowns!’ It was a very posh affair, delicious food, half our team that’d gone to a different place for coaching so didn’t have the bus or their stuff showed up in their shorts and t-shirts and had to wait outside for the bus. It was just the whole thing of going from being in a prison in the morning, to a place where we had to make the sports equipment from the bush to a really posh hotel where people could spare 3 million Ugandan shillings (£1000) to buy a signed football shirt! Seemed totally crazy, the way it all exists in such close proximity just the contrast was phenomenal, yet there was genuine joy everywhere I’ll go so far as to say those in the prison knowing genuine joy in Jesus had more joy than some of those at the cooperate dinner. Again with the whole you don’t need things to be happy, so long as you have Jesus! Leading the boy to Christ was amazing, with the help of Julius translating, such a privilege to know he was added to God’s kingdom that day!


Heartbroken

Or just broken-not really sure, whatever, God was at work in me! The first of which was when we went to stay in Gulu, I was so tired, so exhausted and it’d all got a bit much, we were 2 ½ weeks in to the trip, didn’t know where we would be staying that night and I felt completely broken, I had nothing left, completely run out, of patience, energy and strength. So I did what the only thing I had left to do was, and I prayed, crying out to God in my heart, and peace washed over me, especially as I was drifting off that night, when the tents had finally gone up. It struck me how as humans we wait to be rescued until we really really need saving, it’s only when we reach our lowest points that we are finally ready to let God take the wheel. Without God the flood the next day would’ve pushed me over the edge, as it was it was a highly hilarious affair!!!

The second instance was when we went to Soroti to give out aid for the famine, the moment that got me, was when I’d finished handing out 100kg of beans, the bag was empty and I looked up to see a young girl filling up a cup that she had picked up with the beans that had fallen on the floor, it broke my heart, I had to hold back tears.

The third instance was when we’d gone to a day-care centre, with 80 (normally 140) children between the ages of 2-6 their mothers work in the markets and so leave them there very early in the morning and don’t collect them till late at night! Around 50% of the children there are HIV positive. We did things like blow up balloons for them, and blow bubbles, they loved that, I managed to persuade a little shy girl who had been sat by herself to come over and after that she stuck with me like glue! Playing silly games etc–for the next 4 hours! When it came to time to say goodbye I was just walking out the gate, and looked back to see that this little girl had started crying! It broke my heart and I didn’t even know her name (language barriers and the fact she was about 3), you wonder what’s going to happen to them, will they be abused, will they die, do they ever really receive love? It was apparent that they certainly needed a little TLC.


Changed

I can honestly say I won’t look at some things with the same perspective again! I’ve realised that small things we take for granted like running water are such a blessing. Having a family free from HIV and an NHS service that give free healthcare for all are both great!

As for me, I have realised that I never appreciated what I have, but in truth until this trip I never quite realised just how much I do have! The very fact that I had the money and time to go on this trip are something of a blessing I’d not considered till actually there. I have also realised how selfish I can be and will endeavour to from this point on, as best as I can and with much help from the holy spirit try to be a blessing to others, thinking of their needs before my own!

I also realised how appalling my bible knowledge has become, so have decided to read the bible-the whole bible, in a year, I’m on day 4 in but it’s going well so far!
Now I know how much I have, I know I need to get my giving sorted and have been very challenged to give of my resources and my time to the furthering of God’s kingdom, As first and foremost we all need Jesus!

The comfortable life-I no longer think is for me, I absolutely adored being on such an adventure with God, thrown out of my comfort zone, fully reliant on him! I want to serve him, in everything I do, being back in the UK I have such itchy feet to ‘get back out there’ but I think I need a degree first, I’m a very practical girl and want to help people in practical ways. I’m trusting God and willing to go wherever I’m sent, and frankly I’m uber excited! Though equally excited to start a new uni term and get stuck in serving God there.

In conclusion, this trip has challenged and changed me in ways I didn’t think possible, but God is like that, God is soooo good!


To congratulate you in reading so far I thought i’d throw in some:
Classic quotes:
‘Nobody cares’ –Fordy 3am at the airport
‘if I were a boy I think I’d like...’ –Pete Murray
‘Finding a wife’ –Pete Murray-asleep
‘Ooh! What’s this I’m tasting’ –Jet-asleep
‘No not a camel’-Jet-asleep
‘Come Saturday they’re probably Jew a rest’-Nibs talking about the Sabbath
‘I wouldn’t want to be a panda, they don’t like mating’ –Duncan
‘It’s not waterproof’- ‘what do you mean it’s not water’
‘Let’s get some good bed action-I mean sleep action’ –Vicky
‘Make sure you wear protection-sleep under a mozzie net’-Duncan (in response to Vicky’s prior comment)
‘Let’s make a baby and head out’ –Mark to Michael the bus driver
Gilly gave us some classic Christian chat up lines: ‘I’d go through Job for you’ ‘I didn’t know what predestination was, till I met you’ and ‘I don’t know if you noticed but my bible’s leather bound’
Vicky goes through everyone names then introduces Pete as ‘thing’
‘All the people with large breasts are going to go play netball’-pastor Richard



Thank you sooooo much for all you prayers, love and support.
Ridiculously loads of love
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