In 2011, I...

...welcomed in the new year in Uganda with some of my best friends and illegal fireworks.
...watched and encouraged Emily in starting an orphanage for kids with disabilities. Look how far it's come! www.ekisa.org
...fell in love for the first time.
...had good coffee with great friends.
...grew in my faith.
...learned more about God's grace and mercy than I ever knew.
...did things I said I'd never do.
...regretted some things that I didn't do.
...graduated from university. Finally.
...had my heart broken and put back together.
...took my 4th trip to Uganda.
...had my heart stolen by even more kiddos.
...fed a monkey by hand.
...named a one-month old baby girl in the slums.
...visited a prison for teenagers.
...relaxed at a pool overlooking the River Nile.
...rode a camel.
...watched families embrace life with their adopted children.
...fell more and more in love with Africa.
...was a bridesmaid in a wedding for my sweet friend, Laurel.
...spent time with people who have challenged me in so many ways.
...learned how to be a better wife and mother in the future.
...took steps of obedience that I didn't want to take.
...didn't take steps of obedience that I should have taken.
...ate fish head soup.
...met the people I will be spending 2012 with.
...had the priviledge of being part of my friend Katie's book tour. Read about her work here: www.kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com and here: www.amazima.org
...was at a home-birth for my friend's son.
...ended the year on a beautiful, 70 degree day with some of the people who have affected my life the most.

Lord willing, in 2012 I will...

...start the year in the arms of loved ones.
...go to 11 different countries and spread the hope of the Gospel.
...make a difference in the world for the Glory of His name.
...have as much of an effect on others' lives as they have on mine.
...ride an elephant.
...love better than I ever have.
...be a faithful prayer warrior.
...draw in closer to His heart.
...let go of what could have been, and trust that it is in His control.
...swim in the ocean again. (It's been too long!)
...see a witch doctor come to know Jesus.
...grow in my faith.
...not get too terribly sick.
...let go of friendships that God meant only for a season that has passed.
...embrace the friendships that He has given me for the present.
...be a catalyst in the spreading of the Gospel.
...see girls freed from the sex trade.
...learn many new things.
...learn things that will make me a better wife and mother in the future.
...allow Christ to weaken and strip-away the footholds that the enemy has in my life.
...see more orphans be adopted into their forever families.
...let my guard down so that I can learn more from others and they can learn more from me.
...see people get healed.
...die to myself daily.
...go great white shark cage diving.
...go on a beautiful hike. Or 2. Or 7. Or 11.
...drink good coffee with great friends.
...go to sleep in so many different places that I'm not always sure where I am when I wake up.
...trust Him more and more for what He has in store for me. The people, the places, the plans. Trust that He is good and wants to bless me as His daughter.
...end the year in the arms of loved ones.

2011 has been quite the year.. Excited for 2012!

I have lived a very blessed life. It's had it's share of ups and downs like anyone else's, but looking back, I'd say it's been pretty easy. I have a very loving family. I've never wondered if I would eat that night or if I could continue to pay school fees. I've been told about Jesus for as long as I can remember. And recently, this has been a very hard concept for me to understand. 

In my limited experience on the mission field, I have met people who have truly suffered. I have friends who watched their families hacked to pieces by machetes. I know people who do not know where their next meal is coming from. I have friends who grew up in refugee camps. People that I love have AIDS. I have a friend who is the only living member of her family because the rest were killed by the LRA. My sweet, "adopted" Ugandan mama lost her 3 year old son because he was electrocuted by the fence of a neighbor who was stealing the electricity to run it and had it set to an illegal voltage, and she walked out of court with no punishment. I have held children that have been abused and neglected. I know mothers who have lost every single one of their children to HIV and malnutrition. I know children that have been dumped in pit latrines to die in the sewage.

I listen to their stories. I laugh with them; I cry with them. And I look back on my own life and wonder why I've always had it so easy.

Today this was on my mind a lot. As I look toward the year ahead, I wonder how I can possibly be an encouragement to a woman who has been viciously raped and is now pregnant. To people who have been abused by the church. To girls caught in the sex trade who have never seen what true love is. To orphans that are old enough to understand that they were abandoned. How can I possibly be an encouragement to the persecuted church when the hardest thing about going to church MY ENTIRE LIFE has only been getting up and ready in time?

And then I am reminded. It's not about what I do. It's not about where I go or what I say. It's not about my story. It's about His story. His story shining through mine. My God, my big, glorious, perfect, holy, just and loving God is the same God for me as He is for them. Though the details will be different, He is in my stories as much as He is in theirs.

He will use me to encourage. He will use me to speak peace and comfort and boldness and whatever people need to hear. He will use me to heal. He will use me to bring joy. He will use me to preach the good news to the poor and set the captives free. He will use me because I want Him to use me.


Today He chose to remind me through my Jesus Calling for the day.. Let me share a bit of it with you:

"...however, some fears surface over and over again, especially fear of the future. you tend to project yourself mentally into the next day, week, month, year, decade; and you visualize yourself coping badly in those times. what you are seeing is a false image, because it doesn't include Me... when a future-oriented worry assails you, capture it and disarm it by suffusing the Light of My Presence into that mental image. say to yourself, "Jesus will be with me then and there. with His help, I can cope!" then, come home to the present moment, where you can enjoy Peace in My Presence."

Yes. He will be with me. Even when I feel so inadequate and as though nothing I can say will bring His joy and peace and comfort. Even when my suffering pales in comparison and I don't know how I can possibly be an encouragement... He will use me.

Mostly, He will use me to love on the people that I come into contact with. All of them. The orphans in Haiti. The sex-trafficked women in Moldova. My teammates. The witch doctors in Swaziland. The pastors in China. My squad. The widows in India. People in each country, at every hostel, and on every train.

Because His story.. It's about love.

I've recently come to the conclusion that life isn't about where we end up.
It's not about the final result. The completed task. The finished race.

It's about the journey. The process of how we got to where we are. What we learned along the way.

You see, I had a plan. My plan was to finish college (which I did), buy a one-way ticket to Uganda (which I did not), and be well on my way to life as a full-time missionary living in Africa (which I am not.)

Needless to say, life is not going according to my plans.

Instead, I graduated college, spent my third summer in a row in Uganda, came home, and started raising support for something else. Something that, in all honesty, I did not want to do. Instead of moving indefinitely to the country that I have fallen in love with over the past two and a half years, I will be leaving in January to spend eleven months visiting eleven countries that I do not feel called to and am not in love with. Not exactly my first choice.

But that's the thing. It's not about where I end up. It's about the journey.

A few weeks ago I headed down to a small town in northern Georgia to go to training camp for my upcoming trip. To say I went in hesitant would be an understatement. Although I had already started raising support, I went into training begging the Lord to close the door. To give me a peace that I wasn't supposed to go on this trip, that He had something else in mind. To let me walk away from the week happy that I had gone, but sure as sure could be that this trip wasn't for me.

Instead, I had the most exhausting, overwhelming, intense, draining, and hard week of my life. Bar none. And I knew. By the end of the first night, I knew that I was supposed to be there. Dang it.



I do not even know a tiny bit of what the upcoming year holds for me. It's not about the fact that at the end of every month, I will be laying my head down on a pillow in another country. It doesn't matter that at the end of the year, my feet will again hit American soil. It's not about that.

It's about where He takes me throughout the year. The still, small moments when I feel His presence and hear His voice. The hearts that are yearning to hear the Gospel, the good news of a Savior who loves them just the way they are-- even in the midst of their mess. The moments when He uses conversations to change lives. The diapers that need to be changed. The moments I see Him in a way that I never thought I would. The times where I learn to die to myself and choose to live that way. The children that need to be held. The people that need to see HOPE, myself included. The moments where I learn to pour out every drop of love that I have simply because He has loved me so well.

So I'm going on a journey. (Tentatively) Dominican Republic, Haiti, Romania, Moldova, Mozambique, Swaziland, South Africa, Nepal, India, China, and Philippines here I come.

Join me?

Life here is hard sometimes.

People who sincerely don't want their kids. Neglect. Abuse. Inconvenience. Manipulation. Corruption. Deception. Injustice.

Injustice has been a big one on my heart for the past couple of weeks. Several weeks ago we learned of an organization doing work in the children's prison and rehabilitation centers. Last week, we met with their in-country director. He told us all about the (in)justice system here in Uganda. He told us how after the age of 12, if you are accused of a crime, you are sent to a "remand center." You are there for a minimum of 3 months before your case is heard in court. If you are found innocent, you are then sent home. (Yes, after serving 3 months.) If you are found guilty, they send you to the "rehabilitation center" aka the child prison in Uganda for up to 3 years. Crimes tend to be theft or sexual immorality (yes- you can go to prison for being sexually active under the age of 18 here) although sometimes parents send their kids to this prison simply for being stubborn or disrespectful or disobedient. (Hello teenage years- who ISN'T stubborn, disrespectful, and disobedient? Sorry, Mom.)

Upon arrival, you are typically put in the "black house" - an approximately 6x4 foot cement room with barred windows at the very top and no mattress, no mosquito net, no hole, and usually not even a bucket. Injustice. You can stay there for weeks at a time. Maybe getting one meal a day, maybe allowed to clean out the room once a day.. Maybe lucky enough to have a bucket to use instead of the floor. Maybe. They do this because there are no fences at the prison. Instead, they break you down so far mentally that you don't even think about running away. Beatings are common. Injustice. After your time in the black house, you go to a large room with lots of windows, some mattresses, and some holes in the ground. You are still not allowed to leave that room. More weeks are spent there. Eventually, you are allowed into the normal rooms to serve the remainder of your sentence. These are big rooms with bunk beds, and thanks to this organization- mosquito nets. If you are somehow being sponsored, you can attend school. There are about 120 kids serving time there and about 100 of them are in school, which is a huge praise. They have about 30 workers.

We went to this prison last week. We were shown around after signing in at the office and stating our purposes. I walked into the black house. Names had been scratched into the walls. One child wrote "I WILL NEVER BE IN HERE AGAIN." Those images are now scratched into my mind. I cannot imagine the isolation. Weeks at a time in that room? Injustice. These kids are so much stronger than I will ever be.

We walked into the bigger room where the kids "in between" time is. There were about 40-60 boys of all ages in that room. Convicted of crimes? No. Kids that were rounded up off the streets in the government's attempt to "clean Kampala." We sat down with them, and through a translator, several of them shared their stories. We know that some of them were lying.. Some of them really were begging on the streets. (Which is illegal here.) But some of them.. You could tell they were telling the truth. Wrongly snatched from the streets near their homes. Injustice. Like one boy that I will never forget. He couldn't have been more than 10 years old. He had been staying in Kampala with his uncle, receiving treatment at one of the hospitals there. He had finished treatment and was getting ready to go home to southern Uganda, a few hours from the capital city. Home to his parents. His family. He was throwing some rubbish away outside one night when the police grabbed him and forced him onto a bus. He tried to tell them that he was just throwing his uncle's garbage away- he could see the house from where they were. He pointed. He tried to explain. They didn't care. He was forced onto the bus and brought to the prison. With tears in his eyes, he told us that if he just knew his uncle's phone number, he would have been there to get him by now. I will never forget his story. Several like it. The boys begging us to do something, to help them get out and go home. We sat with them on the floor, heartbroken, humbled, and furious that there was nothing that we could do. Injustice.

We left that room and went to talk to the few girls at the prison. Again, we sat down with a translator, this time in a room with chairs in a big circle, and the girls were free to move about the compound as they wished. The girls told us that life was not too bad for them there. That they had more freedom than the boys. That they were tired of the same food, beans and posho, every day. Some had been there just weeks, some for almost a year. Several didn't even know how long they would have to be there. Before the translator had come in, I asked the girls if they knew English. They said no. I was surprised because many people here know English, especially if they are coming from the city. (Which many of them said that they were.) During our time with the translator, he sometimes said things in English and they would laugh. After he left, I told the girls that I knew they knew English, and that I really wanted to talk to them. They laughed, knowing they had lied to me, and I convinced them to pull their chairs closer. I asked them if they REALLY thought that life was not too bad for them there. They said that was somehow true, that it could be worse, but that it was not good. That they missed their families. That they would not be so stubborn if they were at home again. (Several of them said that they were there simply for refusing to go to school. We know that some of them were lying, but some of them were not.) They said that beatings were very, very common there and could be for the slightest of things. They also said that it was very common to be put in the black house as punishment for weeks at a time. They had all been put there. Injustice. Talking to these girls stirred my heart. I wanted so badly to reach out to them. To stay for the rest of the day and just let them know how much God loves them. How much I love them because of the love Christ has given me. How I hope to be able to go back to them, or at least be able to reach out to girls in similar situations because of the impact that talking to them had on my life. I want them to know that I will not forget them in my prayers. That my life will be different because of my time spent with them.

Injustice is everywhere here. It's in the baby that is dumped in a pit latrine or dumpster left to die. In the teenage girl who rebelled because she never had parents that taught her about Jesus and the way to live her life. In the starving child who was being fed only tea because of an HIV+ mother. In the disabled teenager left on a mat in a hut all day, every day. A day will not go by without injustice staring you straight in the face.

Thankfully, I serve a God who is just!

"If it is a matter of strength, He is mighty! And if it is a matter of justice, who can challenge Him?" -Job 9:19
"For the Lord is righteous, He loves justice. The upright will see His face." -Psalm 11:7
"And the heavens proclaim His righteousness, for He is a God of justice." -Psalm 50:6

"Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations... In faithfulness he will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. I, the LORD, have called you in righteousness; I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people
and a light for the Gentiles, to open eyes that are blind, to free captives from prison and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness." -Isaiah 42

Peace & Love.