Precious Ones

Last week when I wrote about Africa, I shared some of the things that honestly scared me to death. We spent a little more than one week in Kampala, which is a big city. We did some work for Calvary Chapel Kampala like cleaning and painting. Their church is on the fifth floor of a building in downtown Kampala. Kampala is so big and so crowded. We only saw another white person about every fourth day, so ten white folks walking down the street in a straight line was a definite sight. People would literally stop walking to stare. They start by looking at your shoes to see how rich you are and then make their way up. After looking you over completely, their eyes land on your purse as they decide whether or not to mug you :). Seriously. But besides being stared at a lot, we made it out of there without any problems.

Finally, they decided to let us go to Kitgum. It was amazing to see God work because he turned my heart from being terrified to being excited by the time we went to Kitgum. So we boarded a twenty passenger plane and headed north to the village of Kitgum. We landed on a dirt runway and rode in the back of a truck to the Kitgum guesthouse. I don't have my cd's with the pictures on it right now, but I'll post the pictures tomorrow. Kitgum was so primitive compared to Kampala. One thing we didn't have was electricity. Then, a couple days into our time there, we lost water. That means the city water ran out or something and we had no water to take showers or flush toilets- and that's when the outhouses in the backyard come in handy. Even though the name of them (Squatty Potty) sounds cute- trust me, there is nothing cute about them!

Kitgum is the area we were supposed to go to all along. That was where all of our ministry was planned and it was awesome. Even though Kitgum is the dangerous area, I felt the peace of the Lord so much there. Talk about peace that passes all understanding! I just read a report that two days ago, the Ugandan government soliders engaged in a battle with the LRA rebels and killed 14 of them in Kitgum (to give you an idea of the danger).

The first thing we did was visit an orphanage. A Christian man who heads the Nutrition Unit at the Kitgum hospital took it upon himself to open the orphanage after seeing so many sick children with no one to take care of them. All the kids have some sort of illness, ranging from skin conditions to HIV/AIDS. A lot of the kids are orphaned because their parents died of AIDS or were victims of war. Some of their parents were innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of a battle and other children were children of the rebels who were killed by the Ugandan soldiers. There is one little girl whose mother was a rebel and was fighting the government soldiers with this little girl strapped to her back. The girl was probably 6 months old. The mother and father were shot and killed and the soliders brought the baby to the orphanage. She is so tiny, but is healthy and happy. It's amazing to look at these precious children, to hear their miraculous stories of survival and to know that God has such amazing plans for each one of them. Right now, there are about 32 kids there and they are all under three years old, but the orphanage is hoping to expand so that the kids don't have to go to a different, larger orphanage. Far Reaching Ministries helps to support this orphanage, so donations to them go towards helping these babies. The cool thing about the orphanage is that they are teaching the children the Bible and are raising them in the Lord.

More about Kitgum later....