Uganda, NJA KUSALIRWA!

I've now been back at Olivet for one week due to student teaching stuff. School starts Wednesday. Now, I must say, I love Olivet and the atmosphere it provides, but part of me wishes my semester abroad could begin all over again. I wish instead of going to class Wednesday I'd be jumping on a plane, meeting 40 new incredible friends from all across America, and traveling 30 hours to arrive in Uganda. The apprehension felt in the time leading up to departure, the nervousness felt as I met new people and arrived at my new host family's home, and the fear that overcame me the minute I was alone with them would all be worth it if I could just go back again. But for now, I suppose the giant Uganda flag and pictures from the semester that are covering my apartment walls, the occasional emails from my host sister telling me hilarious stories learned at school, just like old times, and my poor attempts at making rice, g-nut sauce, and chapatis will have to do. Uganda, "Nja kusalirwa!" (Uganda, I miss you)

Well, my last update was a month and a half ago, and while there probably have been things I could write about, I just haven't actually sat down to write. And I'm not really this time either, so don't get too excited :-) I just finished writing a paper for the Uganda Studies Program about faith development during the semester. Near the end of the semester, they chose about ten of us to discuss our experiences in relation to our spiritual growth, and then asked us to submit a paper describing the process. Since I haven't thought of anything else to write about lately, I thought I'd post the paper. It's not much, but hey, it's an update! Enjoy.

Spiritual growth is something that, as Christians, we all strive for each and every day. If we are not growing in Christ, then our spiritual lives become stale and stagnant, even meaningless. The great thing about Christianity is it never grows old. Just when we think we have it all figured out, we will face new challenges, new questions, or new information that add to the knowledge and beliefs we already have. The learning and growth process should never stop. But contrary to what we would like, the spiritual growth we long for does not always happen on the mountaintops. Rather, it is through the challenging situations, through the unknown, and through questioning that the greatest growth takes place, at least in my life, and no time in my life thus far better describes that than my semester spent in Uganda.

Upon arriving in Uganda, I expected God to start working immediately, and I expected it to be big. After all, I was there for a reason, and that reason, I convinced myself, was so I could grow as a person and grow in Christ. But just days in to the semester, I slowly saw those expectations shattering, and as I asked myself what on earth I was doing there, I began to doubt God’s plan. When classes started and professors began to ask the tough questions about Christianity, I suddenly realized I knew much less than I thought I did, and I still had a lot to figure out. I did not have all of the answers, or any of them actually, and that caused my spiritual frustration to grow even more as I saw everything I once thought I knew and believed in being challenged and questioned. Not only were my expectations shattered, but many of my previous Christian beliefs were as well. It was not until late in the semester that I learned how beneficial that breaking down my beliefs actually was.

While my time in Uganda may have been challenging and frustrating many times, I would have it no other way. For it was through the challenges and the questioning that I found God. Struggling to enjoy life with my host family caused me to genuinely depend on God and trust in His plan. Being forced to discover that I do not have all of the answers when it comes to Christianity caused me to seek God for answers. While it was frustrating at times to have professors present us with questions and never provide us with answers, it caused me to really seek and discover answers on my own, which is something I had not before experienced in my life full of spoon-fed “Christian” answers. Had family life been great, had God showed up immediately in a big way, or had questions about faith been non-existent, I would have had no reason to seek God and learn to trust Him. It was only because of the challenging situations that I saw my desperate need for God and it was only through experiencing poverty hands-on that I saw the world’s urgent need for a loving God. It was through seeing a young girl begging for food on the side of the road and continuing to pass her by that I began questioning what it really means to be a Christian. It was by working through cultural differences that I learned how to look at every individual through the eyes of God. Had God done something drastic at the beginning of the semester, I would have missed the opportunity to learn to look for God in the small, everyday events of life. Had my family-life been wonderful throughout the entire trip, I would have missed experiencing the amazing power of prayer when the situation turned completely around. So while it may seem, and I may have felt at times as if my time in Uganda completely shattered my faith-life, I would have to say the opposite is true. Yes, I experienced many times of spiritual frustration as well as many challenging situations. Yes, I grew unsure of the true meaning of Christianity. Yes, I realized how little I actually know about Christianity, and I questioned God throughout most of the semester, but that, I have learned, is the beauty of spiritual growth. Only God could take such challenging situations and such frustration and turn it in to such spiritual growth. My faith did not grow because I saw God acting in big ways. It did not grow because life was easy and I thanked God for that. It did not grow because I found all of the answers. It grew because He brought me through the challenges, He allowed me to seek Him for answers, and He taught me to trust in Him despite difficult situations. Perhaps one of the biggest lessons I learned when it comes to faith is that I will never have it all figured out, and I will never have all of the answers, and that is ok. Perhaps I could have learned all of these lessons in America, but I truly believe it was the situations I faced that caused me to seek God and discover the God of the whole world rather than keeping Him in the American box. Sure, it was a semester full of challenges, but looking back, I would not have it any other way.

Resources replacing God?

I just finished an awesome conversation with a friend about prayer. Both having had cross-cultural experiences before, we discussed the amazing passion for prayer we saw demonstrated across the world in far away countries. We discussed their utter dependence upon prayer in their daily lives. They never just prayed because it was on their list of things that make them Christian, they prayed because their lives and their survival literally depended on it. They desperately needed God to survive, and they acknowledged that daily in their prayer lives.

Many of you will remember reading about the overnight prayer service I attended while in Uganda. We were gathering to pray for our town, Mukono, because of the witchcraft taking place throughout the town. It was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had, and certainly one of the most powerful. Yet I wonder, would we ever do that here? Would people really gather all night in a church just to pray? They believed their prayers would be heard and answered, and they believed prayer was their only option.

We went on to discuss the frustrations we face as American Christians. How quickly our prayer lives grow stale. How quickly we forget about that amazing passion we saw overseas. Why is it that other nations can have such a passion for prayer, and yet we can't seem to finish a prayer without falling asleep or letting our minds wander to other less important areas? And then we figured it out. Well, maybe anyway. Look at the living situation of the Ugandans I spent four months with. What other option do they have to fulfill their needs other than prayer? If they get sick, they can't just stop by the corner drug store and buy the latest medication, they can't afford to see a doctor, so their only option for healing is prayer. If their crops are dry, they can't just turn a knob, stretch out the hose, and water them. Their only option is to ask God for rain. If their food starts to spoil, they can't just run to the grocery store and choose from hundreds of options, their only option is to pray. They really are totally dependent on God.

We are so blessed as Americans. We often take our resources for granted, as it's quite easy to forget about the world around us and how lucky we truly are. Yet sometimes I think those blessings can also be a curse. We discussed how maybe, just maybe, we can't find that passion for prayer here because we have so many other resources to try out first. Yes, being able to go to the doctor and receive treatment and medication is a wonderful thing. Watering our lawns or gardens is great. Having a variety of healthy foods to keep us well-nourished is certainly a blessing. But where does God fit in to those pictures? Yes, we pray for people when they're sick, but don't we sometimes have just as much faith in the doctors and medicine as we do in God? The truth is we are just as in need of a savior as any other nation, but maybe our abundance of resources sometimes keep us from realizing that.

And finally, we discussed how sometimes it seems we seek out every possible option before we finally decide to seek out God. The book Jesus with Dirty Feet by Don Everts describes it well. "Over and over and over Jesus repeated his message: 'You need me. You are lost, dull sheep. I am a shepherd. You are blind. I am a healer of the eyes. You are stumbling in darkness. I am light. You are starving. I am bread. You are dying of thirst. I am water.'" And while we want to think we really truly believe that we need Jesus, we fight for it. "We grow indignant to the message because we don't see our need," Everts continues. "We insist we're doing just fine on our own. Hunger? Thirst? Darkness? What are you talking about, I feel fine! We seek other answers. The Greeks sought out wisdom. The Jewish religious leaders carefully focused on law. The Romans achieved social order."

Yea, we're incredibly blessed to live in America. We're incredibly blessed to have the many resources that we do. But we have to be careful not to let those resources replace our need for God. Perhaps the reason we don't seem to find that same passion for prayer here is because we unknowingly depend on other resources rather than on God. Who knows....just something my friend and I found interesting enough to discuss, so I thought I'd share...

"We know that Americans pity Africans," he told me. "But sometimes I think Africans pity Americans."
"How so?" I asked him.
"Americans seem to expect that everything will be provided for them. For us, though, this ear of corn is a gift from God. This evening's rain is a shower of mercy upon us. This healthy breath is life-giving. And, maybe tomorrow we will not have such things, but our hearts are so full from God's provision."
~Jena Lee in Hope in the Dark

"While talking with a friend from Rwanda, I was struck by our global friends' compassion toward the Western church. In many ways, they feel sorry for us. They see our arrogance toward the rest of the world, our addiction to pleasure and comfort, our culture of sensuality and excess, which make it hard for us to fathom many of Christ's teachings- they see these not as evidence of superiority, but of disadvantage and poverty. They mourn our deep losses and have told us that they pray for us about these very things."

"We see what you're up against," he said. "When you have medicine to cure the dandruff in your hair and for the fungus in your fingernails, it's hard to believe that you need God on a daily basis. That's a difficult thing to be up against."
~Rick Mckinley in This Beautiful Mess (GREAT book, by the way!)

Interesting thoughts, hmm? Having been in Uganda for four months, I can understand a piece of what these people are talking about. When it rained, it was always a blessing from God, no questions asked. Even on Easter Sunday, when it rained for eleven hours straight, we couldn't spent the day outside like they usually do, and my sisters got soaked while cooking the family's special dinner, they came in and told me the rain was such a blessing from God because first of all, we needed more water that week, and second of all, the rain kept the drunks off the roads, which in the end, kept people from dying. The church service was interrupted because of the rain (we couldn't hear because of the tin roof). We had to walk home from church that day, twenty-five minutes in a downpour, completely soaked by the time we arrived. What was going on in my mind? "God, couldn't you have waited a little longer to let it start raining? Wouldn't it have been a much nicer day had it been beautiful and sunny?" (Not to mention that when it rained, it was a very hard task to convince my family to let me go outside to the pit latrine!) What was going on in their minds? "Thank you, Lord, for this wonderful blessing of rain!"

Each evening before and after dinner my family would pray. They usually prayed the exact same prayer daily, which was frustrating at times, but although their words were always identical, they really meant them. "Thank you Lord for giving us all one more day on your earth," was one of the common lines. We say that, too, I'm sure, but do we really mean it? There, where malaria, AIDS, and a number of other deadly diseases threaten their lives constantly, they realize the true gift that each day here on earth really is. They know God provides for them everything they have. They realize that what they have is not their own, but simply a shower of God's blessings on them. They don't take anything for granted.

Maybe we could learn something from them....

For Mildred

For those who don't have Facebook, and for Mildred, who didn't get to see the pictures over the weekend, here is a collection of random photos from Uganda....enjoy!

The "fantastic four" (Becca, Danielle, Sharon, and me) at a resort we spent the afternoon at in Rwanda

Brooke, the IMME leader, and me

The main building we had classes in

The IMME room on campus. Since we didn't have dorm rooms like the rest of the students, all twelve of us spent the majority of our on-campus time in these two little rooms...quite convenient and a great place for bonding (aka, the famous music videos!)

The entire group of USP students on our last day

Cooking goulash for my host family on an outdoor portable coal stove!

Birthdays traditions: In Uganda it is apparently a tradition to pour water on the person whose birthday it is....and they thought they should continue that tradition even in Rwanda, so as you can see, I'm soaked.

Inside of a mass grave at one of the Rwanda Genocide Memorial museums. This one was outside of a church. You actually walk underground inside the mass grave and see rows and rows (probably thousands) of skulls and bones....and you are right there with them...no glass to separate you from them.

The clothing that remains at the genocide site

We stopped at a rock formation site and toured it....and of course, as was true anywhere we went, the children who lived nearby followed us

Danielle, Sharon and me "climbing" the mountain at Sipi Falls

Oh the lovely mosquito nets....

A stop at the equator: The fantastic four and V-money

Mudding/building a home for the pygmies! One of our favorite experiences of the entire semester!

Beautiful scenary from campus

The Way of the Cross on Good Friday

My wonderful "shower" room during rural homestays

Matoke, pre-cooking

Yep....I ate that....and it was DELICIOUS!

Just one of the gorgeous views of campus...

My host mom running the "printing press." It usually started around 3:30am and made a loud clicking noise about every five seconds. She was the school's secretary and did all of its printing from home...

Julie, Mom, Dad, and Nathan greeted me at the airport when I finally arrived... the sign says "Welcome Back Betsy! A warn shower, running water, and a cold glass of milk await you!" And she actually had a bottle of COLD water and homemade chocolate chip cookies waiting for me!