we're not half as bad as God is good

okay we are going to the capitol of Uganda today, Kampala, today for church, shopping, and an african dance show. BUT i am making this post as a promise i will write about the story of this girl named B i met yesterday. stay tuned

As promised:

Well the past few days my health has been deteriorating a bit, and it is frustrating because i came here to work with, love, and spend time with these kids. The nurse just said she's going to keep an eye on me. I've had chills/fever, and been achy for the past 2 or 3 nights, and yesterday a lymph node on the right side of my neck started to get pretty swollen. She said i am most likely just fighting off something, which is fine. I just want to not feel achy and weak so i can get back to my kids. Yesterday in Kampala was fun besides not feeling to well. We drove to the capitol in the morning and went out to lunch/looked around the mall. Kampala is for sure more westernized, and at some points there were so any whites around us, we forgot where we were. We ate at the "New York Kitchen", the girls all got "new york style pizza", pretty wild to have that in Uganda, huh? Then we went to church, and shopped around the different craft places. I bargained down and bought a lot of neat stuff for people back home. We then went to an "African Dance performance" which lasted longer than 3 hours. The dancing part was really neat, and there was some funny political satire about the Ugandan government through out. But overall, it was just really long, and there was too much talking and not enough dancing.

I'm really hoping to get back my strength/energy soon, i tried to work in the morning and only lasted a little over an hour. I really don't like laying in bed here, it's not like a sick day from school or normal work. I love these kids and i want to just be better. So i guess just pray for me about that.

Story of B:
(again we use just the first letters of names on blogs just out of respect for children and workers, etc.)

On saturday I worked with Baby A in the morning and Baby B at night. After dinner with Baby B, as with most of the children, they go to the bathroom, they are bathed, we put them in diapers/pjs, and we put them to sleep. As the children were being bathed, there was one mama, B putting them in their diapers, and she would hand them off to me to get their pajamas on. Usually the mamas and aunties are just trying to get the bedtime routine done as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Night time isn't normally a time for conversation. But B started to talk to me and she asked how long i would be at Amani for, if i was in school, and finally how many people were in my family. I told her there were 5 of us, my Mom, older brother, and a younger brother and sister. She asked, "what about your father". and i explained to her that he had passed away when i was 14. She replied with, "Oh i'm so sorry". I told her it was okay. Of course i then asked her about her family. She said, "We were 7 and now it is just me". She went on to talk about something, until i quickly realized what she had just said. I asked her what had happened to the others in her family, why there were no longer 7. She went on to explain that she was from the North originally, and that her father had died of cancer, and her Mother and all her siblings had been killed by the rebel army. So here i am, working next to a woman only 1 year older than me, who just offered sympathy to me for the loss of a father, when she has lost absolutely everything, every single member of her family. This was another time i began to cry, but quickly got myself together so i could hear more of her story. Sometimes here i don't know if i am crying out of happiness and hope when i see the strength of these people. or if it's the grounding and overwhelming confusion of why? I guess maybe a lot of the time it's both. As i continued talking with B she told me that her mother had been raped and killed by Joseph Kony's army, and that her siblings had all been killed as well. I kept telling her she didn't need to talk about any of this if it was too difficult, and she told me "no, it is good to talk about it. i do miss my family, but mostly at times when i need a mother and father, and they are not there". I don't think i could ever understand being an orphan at any age, but much less having my entire family taken away before the time i was 21. She lives here in Jinja now and works/supports herself. She was telling me her favorite cities in America were New York, Boston, and Los Angeles, and that she wanted to come and visit one day. I told her that it really isn't that great. I told her how different we are, and how much of our lives are just spent acquiring things, money, possessions. She talked to me about how in Uganda people are satisfied much more quickly, and about the importance of relationships with people, with family. I told her how much i envied the strength of the Ugandan people. How although things are more difficult in Uganda, they have a quality of life that seems nearly impossible in our consumer/all about me, culture. I asked her if it was hard for her to understand why God would allow these things to happen to her, why he would leave her all alone with no one. She said, "i just can't, i don't understand why, but i know that he loves me, and i know he is there". I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out why a loving God allows people to hurt like this. Not really questioning Gods existence in it, but his reasoning. And i think after never finding an answer for that i've come to the reasoning that there are bad things in this world, there is hurt, there is pain and suffering. That comes with our freewill and selfish nature. His plan is always bigger than we could ever understand, so i guess i can also just rest in that. I guess it would be pretty foolish to believe that we could understand and find the answers to everything. There are already so many things in science, in our existence, that we can't really explain with concrete evidence. While faith, and not a blind faith, are constantly tested, and second guessed. I come to this place where i could never say there isn't a God, and that there isn't purpose behind our existence. The rest is learning, and figuring out what that is supposed to look like i guess. While B and i talked through some of this, i told her how we couldn't fathom going through what she has been through. i'm really grateful i got a chance to meet her and hear her story.

i didn't probably write that as well as i could have if i was feeling better, but just wanted to share B's story with you.