Uganda Orientation

It’s a long one, but Please read it all J

So the first week of being in Uganda is coming to a close as I hang out at the office this morning before attending my first church service which I am very excited about.  Apparently Uganda church services can go on for hours with tons of singing and dancing and all sorts of craziness so I look forward to that cultural experience most definitely.
Heres a few pictures from our trip:

On our drive out to Jinja


The Nile River


Proof that I was actually there.  One of the church retreat centers that EMI is working on is right on the Nile


Yep thats me



Sadly this is a little shack where probably at least 10 people live



Kids playing, but having a great time

The last week has been pretty amazing though incredibly exhausting as we have filled days with all sorts of orientation things such as learning specifics about different cultural things from the local Ugandan staff that work here at EMI.  One thing I have already learned about culture from our on staff chef is that Public Displays of Affection (PDA) i.e. holding hands, hugging, kissing anything… is laughable.  Janet, our chef, laughed at the mere thought of holding her husband’s hand or hugging him even in front of her children.  I thought that was so interesting, and to be completely honest kind of thankful that Maddy isn’t here (sorry Maddy if you are reading this, I still would gladly have you here! J).  I love holding her hand in public or just hugging and being close to her so just so interesting and funny that that is so different here.   And not just different like laughable funny to think of the thought of doing anything with your husband or wife not even boyfriend or girlfriend.  It’s not wrong though, just different J

Also, we have had an hour lesson on how to speak the local Lugandan language which sadly, I don’t really remember much of anything, but if you are wondering there is lots of clicking, popping, and making all sorts of weird noises which makes it hard to learn… jk… it’s a normal language just different with more consonants than normal and lots of “K”s.   So I should fit in just fine…

Lets see what else, well I guess I feel like we have been treated like royalty here with all our lunches and dinners made for us thus far which will change, but my goodness the food here is AMAZING!  I love everything we have had that I think I have had seconds at every meal because it is just that good!  I am not even sure how to explain a lot of it, but all super flavorful with all sorts of different spices.  Lots of vegetables, potatoes, and rice plus meat though meat is comparatively expensive.  Not expensive by American standards by any means, but in comparison to how cheap everything else is, meat is a little pricier which is fine.

So with that, at first you can see that it is cool that 1 american dollar is worth 2300 Ugandan Schillings so that is awesome, but then you start to think about what that means and how poor it means it is here.  Sad, to give you a reference of how poor it is.  Last night, David this local Ugandan came over to cook dinner for us.  He buys all the groceries brings it, cooks everything, serves it, and cleans up and the food was SO SO GOOD! It cost 5000 schillings a person or about $2.25….. sad huh?

Poverty is very evident, but you don’t know what to do or how to help.  This is another thing where I have just learned so much in the last few weeks about how complicated poverty is.  It is not as easy as anyone thinks.  I don’t even know where to begin, so many problems.  Here is a quick little summary of a few problems:

Tons of ministries and other non-profits do so many amazing things, which is just awesome, but we are so anxious to help and want to get our hands dirty with the people and want them to do things the “right way” when it is actually the American way which may not work for them or it leads to us coming in doing all this work for them giving ourselves a pat on the back and leaving.  Well, did we help and do something good? Yes.  Did we improve their lives? Kind of, but really only temporarily because within a short amount of time whatever we helped them install breaks down and we didn’t teach them how to fix it or why it is important to fix it.  This is just the beginning of a problem. 

A lot of times, we have messed up and we know the old adage of “teach a man to fish, don’t just feed him.”  So we have done this as well in the past just giving out a lot of hand outs to these countries which is not what the majority of them want.  Most of them want to learn skills to get themselves out of poverty.  One of the EMI staff shared with us that when he was in Africa, a lot of the villagers told him to come get them whenever he was going to be working on any of the project so they could learn.  They are eager to learn.  I am making some generalizations here, but bear with me.  Different than a lot of the poverty in America who are okay with handouts, these people don’t want handouts.   They want to learn.

Last problem, to address real quick has to do with many people coming to help and we get in there with a desire to help and get our hands dirty so the ministries bring a team to build houses which isn’t always bad, but at least here there are lots of skilled good local workers that good be working on these orphanages, hospitals, etc.  so we come in trying to help and end up stealing jobs that can help these people feed their families or send their kids to school.  This is another sad thing that many parents have to take their kids out of school because they can’t afford it anymore.  Because the school rates have gone up here to…. $50.  That’s not per day, per week, per month, per semester even.  That is for the whole year.  Isn’t that sad?  So now these workers who we took their job trying to help have their kids act orphaned so they can go to school for free.  Heartbreaking!

This is where EMI is trying to come between.  We aren’t trying to build anything.  We engineer and design it and hire locals to build it.  They benefit from the facility built as well as the process of the facility being built while we also teach them different things throughout the building process.  Obviously, share the love of Christ with them!  How to be a better man, a Godly man.  What that means and looks like.  Teaching these men to take pride in their work and challenge them to improve their skills. 

Anyways, I will get off my poverty soap box… he he, but if you want to learn more, contact me or there is a good book about it called When Helping Hurts by Brian Fikkert and Steve Corbett.

So what partially got me onto to that was yesterday, we took a trip to Jinja then to the outskirts of that to see more a village sort of poverty that is really going on.  It was so sad, but the amazing thing is and the beauty of God is these people who live in a mud hut with a straw roof are happier than majority of Americans I would guess.  We have so many depressed, anxious, people with all our billion dollar pharmaceuticals and these people who literally have NOTHING are happy.  Just because they are physically poor does not mean they are spiritually or emotionally poor because for the most part a lot are rich in those areas.  They love God with all their soul, might and strength and trust Him greater because they have to!  WOW, we can definitely learn something here!  I most definitely am because I want to learn from these people, and I want to help them.

So many things we can learn

What else what else…. Oh ya the EMI staff people here are just incredible.  AMAZING stories!  So during this week we have had dinner at each staff members house which is within walking distance from where I live so that is cool, but each night at their house they have shared their testimonies.

I will maybe just give a snip it of a couple, but they are all incredible

Well Phil and Emily Greene, have been here almost 2 years in their late twenties.  Phil is a Cal Poly Alumni!  Ya cal poly!  Anyways, both of them are missionary children, born and raised in Africa, then went to college in the States.  Is that incredible or what?  Phil’s parents are still in Kenya and have been for 35 years and Emily’s parents are in Chad.  I don’t remember how long they have been there probably around the same time.  They met and started dating in high school at a boarding school ran by missionaries in Kenya.  Incredible story.  Both have some amazing things, one just real quick about Emily when she was a little girl in Chad, some Muslim Radicals came and attacked their house, destroyed everything, but their family huddled together in the kitchen and could not be touched because the Hand of God protected them!  You can say what you want think I am crazy or Emily is crazy or remembered it wrong, but that is God.  Choose to believe I guess or not thought I truly hope you do because that is the God of the Bible that protects His Children.  Look all over the Bible, I am thinking of I believe in Acts when Paul is bitten by a poisonous snake and he is just fine because it wasn’t his time to die yet.  God had bigger plans just like He did for Emily’s family.  Jesus conquered the grave so we don’t have to fear death and if its not our time God will protect us.  No this doesn’t mean be stupid and challenge God, look at the way Jesus was tempted to do this and said No Satan, I am not going to tempt God by being dumb thought he could have thrown himself off the mountain and been fine.

Well actually this is long enough so I think I am going to save Steve and Melinda Hoyt’s testimonies for another time, but be ready because they are Completely different and now still an amazing work of what God does with all of us broken people relying on the strength and power of Christ through us.

Lastly, a little scripture exploitation that God has really put on my heart as I read through 1 John.  An incredible book that is really challenging me.  I challenge anyone to read it and really think about what it is saying.  It is insane.

So I have really been pondering kind of this dichotomy that John proposes here of 1 John 1:8 and 1 John 2:4

“Whoever says ‘I know Him[Jesus Chirst] ’ but does not keep His commandments is a liar and the Truth is not in him.” ~1 John 2:4

Wow, man this is crazy.  So is this proposing some kind of legalism that if we ever break a law then we don’t know Jesus?  Don’t worry it’s not, but it is saying some heavy truth.

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” ~ 1 John 1:8

Wait, what I thought we just heard that if I break the law or sin then I am not a good Christian or I don’t know Jesus, but now that has been flipped upside down (a common thing done by Jesus just read the Gospels).  John is now saying that if I claim like the other verse that I have not sinned so I must know Jesus, but this is flipped around saying if we claim we have no sin then we are kidding ourselves to even think we can possibly not sin.  Is it just me or does this seem a little contradicting?  Lets try to dig into this a little bit. 

Lord willing I can explain this in line with Scripture and please call me out if I am off base here.  Here is what I would claim with my knowledge and understanding the point John is trying to make here.  First, let’s be honest.  We are sinners.  I love Matt Chandler (a pastor from the Village Church in Texas, amazing preacher look him up, great bible teacher!) says at the beginning of a service if you show me a person who claims to not have sinned on their way to church this morning, then I will show you a liar.  Basically, we sin all the time.  We are sinful, lets be honest and just admit it.  Jesus came to save sinners like you and me so lets be humble and admit it. 

So now that we have admitted we are sinners in desperate need of Jesus, this doesn’t mean well you know I am just going to sin again anyways why even bother trying not to because I still fail.  That is the beauty of Christ.  We can’t earn our own righteousness anyways but God gives us His Son’s which lets be honest in comparison do you want your own righteousness or that of the Son of God.  I don’t know about you, but I am going to take the righteousness of Christ because that is like saying do you want to be happy for 1 minute or joyful for all of eternity…. Hmmm tough decision.  I am going to go with Jesus.

In addition lets get into that other verse so we know now that we are sinners so how could we have the truth in us and not break the commandments.  Here is my understanding of this.  I believe what John means is if we aren’t even trying our best with the help, strength, and Grace of Christ to fight our sinful desires.  For example, lets say I struggle telling the truth so if I just accept that and pick out the sins that I don’t do and keep my lying going then we may think we are doing pretty good.  Because we are not.  We have to fight our struggles.  I think this is what John is meaning here.  We need to be striving for perfection all the while knowing that we aren’t and won’t be perfect so we trust in Jesus as our Lord and Savior.  Hopefully that makes sense.  This is complete opposite of most things anybody is used too and counterintuitive, but that is Jesus… Wait so I am going to work my butt off trying to be the best I can knowing full well that I am not going to make it and I will fall short…. That’s right! J 

We gotta pick up our Cross and fight the good fight of faith daily!  And it is hard.  Jesus doesn’t say it will be easy whoever is telling you that it will be easy and Jesus is here to make life easy is a liar and a false prophet.  Jesus changes everything.  And I say this hopefully with the utmost humility and don’t think myself highly at all just an unworthy servant God chose to use, but I met Jesus just over a year ago and now I am living in Africa trying to figure out whether God wants me to live here permanently.  That could not have been farther from my plan, but Jesus turns things upside down.  Let’s die to this world and this with one hand in Heaven with Jesus and the other down here on earth as His hands, feet, and voice to serve and help others.  That is the greatest joy.

Much love!  Please write me!

In His Humble Service

K2